Good news for when you move to France
Pleasant surprises for when you move to France!
– Apart from grotty areas, everything is very clean, orderly, well-maintained, and even in grotty areas the effort is made
– Roads are excellent, and there are far more and far better motorway stops (mark you, you pay for it)
– The selection in all shops, regardless of the type of shop, is usually excellent
– You can nowadays get sandwiches and other takeaway things for a quick snack; you used to have to go in to a restaurant or starve
– Young French people travel around quite a bit so they are far more open-minded than their parents and grandparents
– The health system is very good. It costs considerably more than its UK counterpart, which is why – not just because the French government spends more but because the citizens contribute more
– The French do not complain about their own country the way the British do (which I think is shameful)
– The climate is generally better
– The French greet each other “Bonjour m’sieurs-dames” when they enter/arrive and say goodbye when they leave. This is far more polite than the British who tend to ignore each other (in waiting rooms for example). That friendliness, however, is very superficial.
– Children are welcome almost everywhere and, on the whole, are better behaved than their UK counterparts
– You can take your dog in to some restaurants
– The French are starting to twig that it is a good idea to speak English, and have accepted, after years and years of denial, that English is the international language. This means that you will be able to understand things if you don’t speak French – but you must learn it.
– The school day lasts longer, so if you work it gives you a chance to get stuff done
– The pre-school, early-morning school and after-school system is great
– It is vastly easier to get domestic help, a gardener, a carer, a nurse, a childminder etc
– After many years of having an appalling road-accident record, the French police has swung in to action and, although the record is not as good as in the UK, it is nonetheless vastly better than it used to be
– Roundabouts and zebra crossings are now understood – a relative novelty
For more about the French (with love and a smile) click here
Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. She is widely travelled and writes regularly for magazines and blog sites. Her sketches are on her web site http://turquoisemoon.co.uk . Her books are available from Amazon and on Kindle, or can be ordered from several leading book stores.
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Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available as e-books on this site:-
https://payhip.com/b/tEva “A Call from France”
https://payhip.com/b/OTiQ “French Sand”
https://payhip.com/b/BLkF ”The Man with Green Fingers”
https://payhip.com/b/1Ghq “Saying Nothing”
They are also available on Amazon & Kindle, or can be ordered as paperbacks from most leading book stores and libraries.
