It's not just the French that are odd

My new neighbours are French.

The amusing thing to do would probably be to fire off a load of racist stereotypes about why having French neighbours is terrible.

However I'm not going to do that because
a) I'm not a racist
but more importantly

b)I'm glad they moved in:

it's nice to not have a bunch of chavs smoking in a banged up car playing loud music

and it's nice not to have four vehicles next door of which one was a huge van but instead just have one small car even if that is a Renault Ragoo.

However, them being French is still significant because none of them speak great English therefore all we really no about them is that they are a couple with two young children and that their French.

And so, inevitably, when we mention that we have new neighbours, them being French is one of the first things to come up.

And it was when my Mum mentioned it to a former work colleague, but perhaps this was actually relevant because that former work colleague is also French.

And here we hit the bulk of what's on my mind, what you've already read is mere build up and filler.

My Mum's former colleagues response was, reportedly, "oh, you should pass on my number it would be nice to meet up with some other French people."

This response seemed rather odd to me.

What we have is person A who is a, presumably, fully rounded human with thoughts and opinions, likes and dislikes, hobbies and interests and, incidentally, is originally from France. And yet they have come to a decision that it is worth a social interaction with person B purely on the basis that they are also from France.

Here's France as I found it on a map just to show it is bloody massive.*

Now France is not a small place, I found it on a map - it's bloody massive. If I was living abroad, heaven forbid, I would not, necessarily, show any interest in befriending someone because I heard they were British - I mean they could be a Geordie!

According to Wikipedia, there are between 200,000 and 300,000 French-born people in the UK and 8,000,000 of French descent; i.e. they are not difficult to find.

A French person is not such a rare thing that it was even worth meeting up just to go "you'll never guess what - I'm only French as well!"
It's not as if they're from the Pitcairn Islands!

But anyway, this got me thinking, it's not just the French that are odd - this is quite typical of all us silly humans.

We seem to be drawn to dividing up our society upon the most simply defined lines.

I mean, just think about the number of groups there are for the youth or elderly!

Youth groups never really appealed to me. I mean have you ever met a youth? 80% are pricks. 

That's nothing against young people. 80% of all people are pricks.

We seem to have became much more keen on the idea of youth groups in recent years. Just think of BBC Children in Need; in between all the worthy cases, there are youth groups who claim it is important that there youth group remains open because the opportunity to play table tennis in a village hall with someone else who just so happens to be of a vaguely similar age will stop them from stabbing someone.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that having something to do is probably good for you.

But why are we doing this by age? If you're that into table tennis join a table tennis club!!

Anyway, I think I might of made my point. I'm sure this was meant to have more of a profound end but it just sort of petered off so I'll write a conclusion and be on my way.

So what have we learnt here?
That the French feel overly united?
That we need some sort of revolutionary social reconstruction?
That we are misguided in raising funds for youth groups?
No, well you might have, but what I've learnt is that what I think makes much more sense before I attempt to articulate them.

This is probably why my english teacher always told me to plan first.


*Actually, you're right this is a crap picture to put in but I felt that the blog was too long for only one visual break. I wanted a picture pertaining to table tennis but they were all like Olympic players. I wanted a picture of a youth playing it but I learnt, unfortunately, that you should never type "table tennis teenager" into Google Image whilst your mum's in the room.



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