I'm not an expat, and the odds are, my daydreams about our pleasant times in France notwithstanding, I never will be one. I've read enough to realize that what's an idyllic day in a small French town for me is just another damn day (or should I say, juste un autre jour fichu) for them. They've still got to get the trash out, pay the electrical bill, and find a doctor when they're sick, just as we do. I actually came to this realization decades ago when my brand-new-wife and I were walking along a street in San Francisco, and I realized that what was a glamorous, vibrant vacation day to me was to most of those people just another day handling the Bigglesworth account, riding in a crowded elevator, and trying to find a place to get a decent bagel. But it's in San Francisco! But it's in France! Well, yes, there is that.
Still, I like to muse about it, and as such I was delighted to find a site, run under the auspices of the British newspaper, The Telegraph, that is written by British expats. The writing is generally good, and the topics are things that I don't find elsewhere. These two, for example -- an article about a possible French private school strike, and what that might mean to the fortunes of the middle class, not to mention, M. Sarkozy, and an article about the effects of Irene on a small town in the Catskills region of New York.
2 comments:
The Guardian just started a new US edition. I'm sort of torn; I like the foreign coverage of the British edition, but the Us edition looks quite good, too.
I've never been one for the Telegraph; it's far too Tory (and Colonial Colonel) for my liking!
(I've been reading The Guardian since I was a nipper! And when I had a paper-round, I delivered exactly... No, none, zilch, nada, no Guardian's. My Dad was the only person in the entire neighborhood who bought it. And he picked it up himself, when he was walking the dog. (They don't have a dog now, but he still walks down to the newsagent's to pick up his Guardian.)
Colonial Colonel?
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