Europe endless ..

My last week as a European and, ironically, I'm trying to keep a British 'stiff upper lip' about the UK's forthcoming Brexit this Friday. (As an ironic wink I'm writing this whilst listening to Kraftwerk's 'Europe Endless'. You can't beat a bit of Krautrock on a Monday morning .. )

This is the very definition of 'up in the air'. We ex-pats haven't got the foggiest idea how it's going to affect our lives over here in France. Hopefully, not too much! Perhaps it'll be just a case of signing up for a new visa, with a little more paperwork to prove our income and so on .. or maybe I'm being as naive as it comes. Lesley and I are lucky. We haven't got kids going through school here and we're not pensioners (yet) relying on the French health system to keep us in good order. What we are though is settled, and fear that any changes might put a spanner in the works of our new life ..

Our fate is in the hands of others. We pray they are understanding, sympathetic and wise ..

Disastrous .. or not!

Twenty years ago we were hurtling towards the biggest man-made disaster .. ever!! As the end of the century approached we were all aghast at the complete and imminent ruination of mankind in the form of .. The Millenium Bug!

It was going to wipe our computers clean, destroy all possibility of life's continuation as we knew it and make all our aircraft fall from the skies. (Cue excuse to use my amusing news photo from the early 80s ..)

And what happened? Nothing! We all got het up into a hissy fit for faff all although, I have to admit, I was a little sorry at the arrival of the year 2000 because I'd made a good few bob working for a PR company tasked with the job of promoting IT care for Millenium Bug computer checks.

I'm kinda, sorta, semi-optimistically hoping that, at least for us in France, the approach of Brexit will fizzle out in a similar way. That, after all the scaremongering, abuse and sad pitting of Brit against Brit, it will all amount to .. well, nothing as bad as we all fear. For us ex-pats in Europe it's going to mean more paperwork for sure but, once we're all in the 'new' systems, I'm praying that life will just go on as normal, and you lot in the UK can have your life apart from Europe and leave us all alone ..

It's either that or I keep a sharp eye out for passing aircraft ..  

 

Bye-bye Britain ..

Off to see Al Murray tonight, and really looking forward to his take on Brexit. If you don't know him, he's a comedian whose character is the uber-British 'Pub Landlord', constantly having a go at the Europeans and yearning for the days when Britain was 'great'. Is he going to be delighted that his desires have apparently been put into action? I'll let you know tomorrow ..

For those of you reading this from outside the UK, Brexit is causing a hell of a lot of turmoil in this country. Nobody has a bloody idea what's going on, but it's starting to dawn on the 'Leavers' that perhaps waving bye-bye to the EU isn't such a good idea after all. Yesterday I was talking to a guy who's had enough of all the uncertainty, price rises and so on, and has decided to move to Spain.
Oh, and he voted to leave the EU..

#idiot #despair #tunnelwithnolightattheendofit ....