17th September 2008

In writing this daily blog I try to embody some of the cultural and political bonds that link Britain and France. As such I like to think I'm a sort of modern-day Alistair Cooke, who all those years ago used to broadcast via his weekly BBC radio programme 'Letter from America'. He was born in Manchester in 1908 but became a US citizen in 1941. Of course back in 1946 when Cooke first started broadcasting across the globe, he could have had no idea of the technological revolution to come. Nor could he have had any inkling of the difficulties oldsters like me would have in trying to communicate globally from my humble abode here in rural France, aeons away from the BBC expertise that Cooke could call upon. How to find out the French word for some of the keyboard symbols like @ or # ? These sort of things are never in my French:English dictionary. And you all know what happened when him indoors went to buy a computer mouse yesterday! But, petit a petit, little by little, we get by. By chance, I have now discovered that the # symbol is called dieze in French. When I'm trying to decipher an incoming phone message, the French telephone operator leaves her dratted recorded message: '...if you want this, tappez dieze......' So, voila! That's one problem solved. Of course, all of these are the trivial problems of a new immigrant to these shores, but what of the future? Will the current appalling economic and immigrant problems endemic in Britain bring more and more British to France? If so, let us hope that, like Alistair Cooke back in 1946, they learn to integrate by adopting the new culture, despite all the consequent hysterical comedy situations that engenders. After all, by reading my blog every day, you'll have gathered that I should know.