Why do you love France?

[cassis]

[quote user="Pads"]

[quote user="cassis"]Do people really think that everyone makes their own luck and, by implication, everyone therefore gets what they deserve? [blink]

[/quote]

No Cassis I dont believe people make there own luck as in things like accidents, health etc.....  

[/quote]

Thank Gawd for that - after all, lots of people have miserable lives despite working like dogs. I count myself very lucky - I've worked my nuts off all my life but I don't take all the credit for being happy now and enjoying decent standard of life.  To say that we all make our own luck is crass.  Things can always go nichons en haut despite your best efforts.

[mint]

[quote user="Mel"]

Rose - wonderful story - best wishes to you!

Sweet17 - my MIL comments were tongue-in-cheek thinking that WBB's were as well. I apologise if I got that wrong, no offence intended.

[/quote]

Mel, of course, you didn't intend any offence.  I was only having a dig at Wooly and he is well able to bear it.

I only tease him because he is someone who'll enjoy the joke as much as the next person.

I wish you could have met his brother who sadly passed away earlier this year.  Talk about OTT but, perhaps Wooly 2 will tell you about Wooly 1 sometime.

Even Christine Animal, whom both Woolies adore, could not keep them in check!

[Just Katie]

Well to be honest, I don't think I could ever love a country the way I love my own.  I understand the people of my town, they are rough and raw and, to me their humour is the best in the worlk.  If I pop into town I could spend hours talking and gossiping as it is the sort of place where everyone knows everyone and, unfortunately, everyones business too.

I know many of you, especially from the more expensive parts of UK move to France to your beautiful stone cottage with oodles of land and, in a close knit community.  I already have all this in my beautiful country, surrounded by many friends and family.  I work within a system I understand and, the same goes for my childrens education.  And all without all the confusion and red tape.

If my children bring their friends home, I know what type of family they are from (sorry, but as a parent I must admit to being a bit judgemental).

So where many forum users have moved from fast living UK to rural France, I have moved from rural UK to Paris and love the fact that I could skip down the Champs Elysees in my jim jams and a purple hat and nobody would bat an eyelid.

City living is very liberating. 

Anyone fancy renting a stone cottage with woodburner in Wales?  Views of the Brecon Beacons are free!!

[woolybananasbrother]

Lovely country that. Used to walk up and down Pen y Fan years ago. Paradise when the blo ody rain stopped

[Just Katie]

I often walk up there.  It is literally five miles from my front door.  I love walking in the rain and getting cold and wet.  Then coming home to a hot bath and a snooze in front of the log fire. 

Guess what?  I can still do all that in Paree!!

[Kitty]

[quote user="sweet 17"][quote user="Mel"]

[/quote]

I was only having a dig at Wooly and he is well able to bear it.

I only tease him because he is someone who'll enjoy the joke as much as the next person.

I wish you could have met his brother who sadly passed away earlier this year.  [/quote]

Sweetie, Wooly's brother is not a dead brother, an ex-brother or even a past brother.  He is a pis**d brother because he's taken to the bottle, judging from what Wooly says.

Only a little off subject because WB and WBB is what I like about France...

[mint]

[quote user="Just Katie"]

I often walk up there.  It is literally five miles from my front door.  I love walking in the rain and getting cold and wet.  Then coming home to a hot bath and a snooze in front of the log fire. 

Guess what?  I can still do all that in Paree!!

[/quote]

Katie, are you anywhere near Craig y Nos?  Apologies if spelling is incorrect.  I always wanted to see Madam Pattie's place.  Or do you own it now, Katie?

[Frenchie]

I talked to a friend of mine today, who is also a teacher of English, and when I told her I was going to the UK in august , she said " oh lucky you, I just love and miss England so much" ..

EH oui, je ne suis pas la seule !!

( I'm not the only one , see!!)

[;-)]

I can't wait to be there again ..

I guess the grass is always greener...... 

[Logan]

I ‘love’ France because basically I have a masochistic nature.

Let me explain. I don’t feel I am quite alive unless I feel pain of some description on a daily basis. It keeps my nerve endings in tune and my brain on full alert mode.

That’s quite something for a septuagenarian.

You see living in France is painful. You only have to look into the eyes of your neighbours. They seem beaten and vanquished by the system. The faces of most French people appear so sad and downbeat. Smiles come very infrequent. People appear miserable, vanquished. 

If you live or travel in other countries that look is not quite the same. In Italy for example Italians are happy and carefree. The reason I would suggest for that is in the daily battle with the state they ensure they win just a little for themselves.

In Spain it’s the same. Everyone deals in cash just to avoid the dead hand of the tax man and retain the rewards they have worked for.

In France that’s not possible. Well, usually very difficult. The state always wins. Always has the last drain of the glass.

So if you live in France banging your head against the wall of officialdom and state control becomes a sort of perversion. Doing it for long enough, as I have, it starts to become worryingly enjoyable. That pang of sheer joy when you achieve a very small success against what seemed previously to be such insurmountable odds. The challenge of it all and the uncertain chance of success or failure becomes such a buzz. A bit like gambling.

Do not tell me you have never felt it. If not believe me you will eventually.

So in short I do love France. How could I live anywhere else? I have become inexplicably addicted to pain.

[woolybananasbrother]

Yes Logan you are right. Which is why I feel so angry at the 'system worshippers' who preach conformity and obedience on this site.

[mint]

Logan, I enjoyed your post and it did make me smile quite a lot. But, I can't and don't agree with you.  Mind you, that's not to say I don't detect more than a grain of truth in your post.

It's just that I am still relatively new here and the system hasn't quite reduced me to what you describe..not yet anyway.

[Chancer]

Logan and WB I believe you are so, so right.

Today I went to the inaugural fête arienne of our new airport and it was pants, the crowning glory was the Patrouille de France which resembled a convoy of hearses en route to an internment.

During all this I was amongst the largest gathering of the local population that I have yet encountered and they are not an attractive bunch let me tell you, during the day WB's comments about the consanguins in his area kept springing to mind but having read your comments Logan you are bang on the money.

[Just Katie]

[quote user="sweet 17"][quote user="Just Katie"]

I often walk up there.  It is literally five miles from my front door.  I love walking in the rain and getting cold and wet.  Then coming home to a hot bath and a snooze in front of the log fire. 

Guess what?  I can still do all that in Paree!!

[/quote]

Katie, are you anywhere near Craig y Nos?  Apologies if spelling is incorrect.  I always wanted to see Madam Pattie's place.  Or do you own it now, Katie?

[/quote]

Sorry Sweetie, I have never heard of Craig y Nos.  The spelling looks fine and translates to Rock of the Night.

[mint]

Katie, it's west of Swansea at the foot of the Brecon Beacons.  Madam Pattie was an opera singer who built a kind of manor house where she had a miniature theatre for operas and so on.

Very well known in her day.  I went years ago, not to the house but to Craig y Nos which was very picturesque.

[Tressy]

[quote user="Just Katie"]... I have moved from rural UK to Paris and love the fact that I could skip down the Champs Elysees in my jim jams and a purple hat and nobody would bat an eyelid.[/quote]

Well, you have declared you've moved to Paris, and no one here has even noticed, so you may as well take your jim-jams off.

The hat has to go too, for sure.

'Mazing.[:D]

[Tancrède]

[quote user="Logan"] …to avoid the dead hand of the tax man and retain the rewards they have worked for…

In France that’s not possible… The state always wins. Always has the last drain of the glass.

[/quote]For single people, unless strenuous and timely efforts are made to circumvent it, the final and post mortem exaction is levied at 60%  -  more of a heroic gulp than a last drain.

Excellent comments  -  though I do not take quite such a disheartened view.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Things we like about France:

The history

The culture

The grass is always green (we come from Oz)

The wildlife

The privacy (very people understand you and so you can talk freely in public generally)

Gardening is a piece of cake

The road network is very good

Things we're not so keen about:

Kids on those stupid little motorbike things

Caravaners

The very greedy tax system (where does all the money go???)

The fact that nobody understands you especially when you speak French :)!

But overall, it is a very nice place to live. I see it as a cross between the UK and Australia. It has the history of the UK but a more laid back attitude of Australia. I'm talking village living here, I dare say it's different in cities, but then all cities are generally the same whatever country you're in.

[Anne&Gordon]

My husband is an Aussie too and loves it here for exactly the same reasons! Me? I just love the country ways, the fact that the area we live in is a close supportive community and it feels like the UK 25 years ago.

[woolybananasbrother]

These things are seen as pluses to us but may not be so to rural communities who might prefer to have higher wages and more freedom of opportunity. The trouble is that they are not given the chance to find out because of the weight of the administration bearing down on them, forcing them to stay in the box into which they were put by about 14.

One thing I have found in both France and Belgium is that the distance between the people and the administration is more of a ravine these days and that almost nothing is being done to bridge the gap. It is if there were two classes of citizen. The resentment that this causes will one day boil over, as it did in Belgium when two little girls (Julie and Melissa) were sequestered and done to death in an absolutely hideous manner and the public blamed the police. 250000 Belgians took to the streets of Brussels, and I must say, visiting the country at that time I have never known a people so angry and determined to force change.

The contract between the people who agree to be governed and the State, who are given the right to govern under certain conditions, had been broken. It has never been the same since.

One wonders whether this could happen again in France as it has before? I suspect it could.

Comparisons with the UK are begged here too but I will keep off that hot little potato

[cassis]

[quote user="Anne and Gordon"] it feels like the UK 25 years ago.[/quote]

Or like the Isle of Wight in 25 years time. [:D]

[Just Katie]

[quote user="Tressy"]

[quote user="Just Katie"]... I have moved from rural UK to Paris and love the fact that I could skip down the Champs Elysees in my jim jams and a purple hat and nobody would bat an eyelid.[/quote]

Well, you have declared you've moved to Paris, and no one here has even noticed, so you may as well take your jim-jams off.

The hat has to go too, for sure.

'Mazing.[:D]

[/quote]

I did it for you my friend [;-)]

Anyway, I LOVE running up and down Champsies in my Jarmies, working and posing over lunch in the business district and stopping for a coffee and more posing as I walk home from work.  Oh and bumping into famous footballers when I pop out for a pint of milk.  I HATE Paris in the rain because the whole place smells of dog poo[:@]