Brits and Emotions

So here I am,back in France, Lyon this time... trying to do what may be impossible. Have a good time living in France. Why so hard?

Where do i begin...

France is a dream in the English mind. It is a holiday dream, or a dream of the childhood holidays that you had and were most happy. I know the latter is certainly true in my family, where we all have tried to have a stab at living in France on some level as an adult. Other people may come to it via a different route; a lover is a common route and I've done that one too.

As an English woman I realise that we are a rare breed - " funny". English/Irish/Scots/Welsh... we do humour. It's part 0f us. It doesn't make us more sexually attractive even in our own culture but we do it anyway. Because we like to laugh.

The French don't appear to do 'banter'. They are a much more formal civilisation and would check the temperature of the situation between strangers ... the Brits use 'banter' with strangers to break the ice of formality. The good side of this is that it keeps the day to day 'peppy'. Other nations can perceive us as rude. I've even read Sunday supp articles on why the Brits are so humorous about everything and the theory has been because as a nation, we do it to avoid emotions that we cant handle or are uncomfortable with.

Hmm...Mebbe.

I was stuck on a Euro star train for hours last Xmas. In the carriage were Brits, a South African, French, Spanish. Only the Brits made gallows humour jokes about the continuing ridiculous of the situation. We were not avoiding our emotions of frustration and anger. We knew that there was nothing we could do and we needed to keep our spirits up and ourselves mentally occupied i this situation.No other culture said a word - they did not connect with each other and try to offer each other any comfort or solace. I think we Brits used humour because we knew full well that there was absolutely nothing to laugh about. We didn't feel uncomfortable with out emotions. There was nothing to laught about so to be perverse we laugh.