NOT WITHOUT MY TEAPOT

People are sometimes very critical of immigrants who do not integrate into their host society. As an immigrant, I feel I must defend my right to my own culture. The older I get, the more I revert to the national stereotype. I drink tea, watch almost exclusively UK television, read for pleasure in English, and even do a large part of my shopping in the UK these days. They tried to make me eat mussels, but I said no, no, no.

It was not always thus. As a young gel, with the ink still wet on my advanced typing certificate, I hopped aboard the Hovercraft with gay abandon, eager to cast aside a lifetime of cultural conditioning and embrace the world of wine, all-day smoking and Edith Piaf. Like many Brits at the time, I thought France was vastly superior to the UK in virtually everything, especially Sacha Distel, and that I could shake off my adolescent problems by adopting a new identity.


In Paris I remade myself in the image of Juliette Gréco. I learned to eat cheese before dessert, drink tiny shots of strong coffee, shrug and go "pffffft merde alors", and push old ladies off the bus without a backward glance. (I would recommend several years in Paris as a self-assertion course). When women on the bus gave me the Paris stare, I returned it eyeball to eyeball, and won. I walked quickly everywhere, eyes fixed on the ground, in order to (a) avoid eye contact with predatory men of dubious means and (b) to avoid stepping in dog poo. I flirted outrageously with complete strangers - as long as they were not the aforementioned predators of dubious means.


I learned how to fashion a silk scarf into an elegant accessory with a couple of deft twists, and became a French wine and food snob (and still am, when I can afford it). I went to the hairdresser regularly, never so much as took the milk in without makeup on and started to fancy I looked a bit like Jean Seberg with freckles.

Like any self-respecting Parisienne I thought the world stopped at the périphérique, and that bread was baked freshly five times a day as a matter of course. (What a surprise when I went into a 'bakery' back in Blighty and asked what time their next baking was.) The French are blessed with an innate sense of superiority, and do not shilly-shally about customers always being right or any of that old nonsense. In a restaurant once with English friends, we were running late for the theatre and asked the patronne if she could possibly serve the cheese and dessert together to save time. She bristled and said: "Non! You will have your cheese, THEN you will have your dessert." We got our revenge the only way we could, by not leaving a tip. At the time, I admired this kind of arrogance. However, it palls after a few years.


I went to a Communist wedding, where the happy couple tied the knot under a portrait of the right-wing Mayor of Paris (Mr Chirac at the time I believe) while the congregation fanned themselves with copies of L'Humanité and sang the Internationale on the steps of the Mairie. I realized that in France, socialism does not rhyme with austerity, and their version of communism is "champagne for all", although they're pretty vague about who will pay for it. Even the concierge would invest in a few bottles of Veuve Cliquot at Christmastime. I found it a refreshing change from the rigid class structure of England. I used to take a very posh bottle of bubbly back to England for Aunt Flossie every year, until she finally confessed: "Actually, dear, I've always preferred Asti Spumante".


I had to queue up for months to get a French ID card, and once obtained, learned to carry it on me at all times. The French may criticise us for our surveillance cameras, but they are one of the most controlled societies in the so-called free world. You need a bit of paper for everything. I even heard of a man being asked to provide a certificate to prove he was still alive - a "certificat de non-décès". I can quite believe it. The French would not accept a British passport as an ID document -- they said it was a "travel document" and did not carry the requisite details (address, etc.) to serve as an ID document. They could not believe our UK driving licences which folded out to A5 size and carried no photograph. A policeman said to me: "But how do I know it's you?" I replied "Because I say so." He looked baffled.


I learned to drive in Paris, and had to tackle the place de la Concorde on my second driving lesson -- this exercise alone managed to kill any instinct I may have had for self-preservation and to this day I drive like an architect (Belgian epithet, not very flattering), which has come in handy in places like Warsaw, Lagos and Accra. Meanwhile, post 1981, Mitterrand was turning France into a showroom of excellence with his "great works" such as the pyramid of the Louvre and the Arch of La Défense, not to mention innovative projects such as Airbus and the TGV. All Britain had to show for itself was the Angel of the North.




The new wave of stylish French cinema threw out groundbreaking directors like Luc Besson and actors like Isabelle Adjani and Christophe Lambert. Café-concerts were a precursor of today's comedy clubs, and even French stand-up hit a peak with Coluche. It was an exciting time to be in France, which couldn't seem to put a foot wrong in the 1980s. I went to avant-garde theatre productions, saw tattooed men juggling chainsaws and other men dressed in frocks with no knickers on, caught fleas in insalubrious cinemas showing bizarre "art-porn" films, went cruising in the Bois de Boulogne at night to see Brazilian trannies, drank absinthe and lost my integrity in various bars, which I could never find again in daylight. The bars, or my integrity.



I embraced the whole je-ne-sais-quoi, looking askance at my fellow Brits and failing to see what was funny about 'Allo 'Allo. I read Libération and sneered at Le Figaro, smoked incessantly, talked politics and religion at dinner parties and -- short of the black polo neck sweater - became a French poseur par excellence. I even came to think that French pop music was quite good -- it did hit its peak in the 1980s -- and started collecting the works of Serge Gainsbourg and La Compagnie Créole. I could even sing the Marseillaise all the way through. By the time of the Bicentennial in 1989 I was almost totally brainwashed and was even thinking about taking French nationality.


Only when Harold swept me up and rescued me on his white horse (well, red Ford Fiesta, right-hand drive) did I realize the extent to which I had been hypnotized by Gallic cultural imperialism. It was Stockholm Syndrome, only in Paris. I had become enamoured of my captor - my captor being the city of lights. Oh tempore! O mores! I should have stayed in Sidcup.


After a few years back in Blighty I started to hanker for the other side of the Channel again. More than hankered -- I pined. But the old adage is true, it's never as good as the first time. Paris took on the personality of a spurned lover who wanted to punish me for walking out on her. (Yes a spurned lesbian lover). We had a number of unsuccessful trysts, and eventually I got the message and accepted that we were no longer an item. I moved on, but I always kept a photo of the Eiffel Tower in my wallet.




When I came to Brussels, therefore, it was on my own terms. There's no way I was going to try to become Belgian. Luckily, I didn't have to. In Belgium there is no pressure. Particularly in Brussels, where something like 50% of the population is non-Belgian. I have cable TV with all the BBC channels, order my English books by post from the UK, and make occasional trips out to Stonemanor to stock up on Bisto, pork pies, Branston pickle and Robinson's barley water and generally do not make the slightest effort to integrate. Worse, I flaunt my difference -- I wield my Union Jack umbrella (a gift from Gorilla Bananas) with gusto and try to poke out the eye of passing Frenchmen.

Photo credit: G. Bananas

I have no plans to remain here beyond retirement, which as things stand, if they don't move the goalposts again, will be some eight and a half years away. I like Belgium well enough, but I'm going to remain a tourist this time. The chips are great, but I keep a bottle of Sarson's in my kitchen.