Lucky old Britain
Well, aren’t you all the lucky ones…Gordon Brown sitting on the throne (or is it ‘in the high-chair’?) after all these years. Perhaps he’s changed during the last few years, I’m a bit out of touch with things, but my failing memory doesn’t have him down as a very suitable prime minister.
Still, if Tony made a promise all those years ago, that Gordon could have the job when he got fed up with it, then he has to keep his promise. It’s only the security, economy and well-being of the UK at stake after all, and a promise is a promise.
Funnily enough I was thinking about England earlier this week - and twice in one week is a bit of a record-breaker for me. It was prompted by a film called ‘Bend it like Beckham’ that oldest daughter made me watch.
Now, because I’m isolated from all form of civilisation (fingers crossed my French neighbours aren’t reading this) I have no idea if the film was an enormous worldwide hit or a complete flop. Whatever, it was quite entertaining.
The film is about an Indian girl, living in Hounslow, who wants to be a football player. Not surprisingly this meets some hostility from her traditional Indian family.
But what it made me think about is that when I worked in London I felt that I was living in a true multi-cultural place. There are people of every nationality, skin colour and belief all squeezed together, everywhere you go. This is a good thing, albeit a bit too crowded for a sensitive soul like me.
But here in our remote outpost, if truth be told, we see just white people. Even the holidaymakers that visit are more or less all white. OK there are a few exceptions, but not many and there is nothing that would give our children a feel for what it is like to live in a multi-cultural society.
OK I know this is a city-country thing just as much as a UK-France thing, but should I worry? Or care? Will it affect them when they go into the big wide world?
But the biggest problem of all…for the first time in six years I almost had a hankering to spend five minutes on a crowded London tube train in the rush hour, and that is really something to get concerned about…
The film also reminded me that many years ago, when myself and Mrs B first moved to London, we lived in a bedsit in Hounslow while we were looking for somewhere more permanent to live. And in the same house lived the world’s fattest lady, called Mary if memory serves.
She was so large, and the kitchen so small, that we couldn’t squeeze into the kitchen to cook dinner before she had finished - hence we had many late nights, sat on the staircase waiting for her to move out of the way so we could cook tea.
And now we live in a barn where you could fit 10 Mary’s and still have room to roast a pig on a spit. Perhaps I don’t miss the tube as much as I thought…
