I am 41 and originally from Stoke-on-Trent but now I live in Nantes. I did my PhD at Nottingham University and then worked there as a human biology lecturer and education researcher, although now I teach English rather than science. We moved to France three years ago when my husband’s former company was bought out by a French firm. I don’t know how long we will be here. I used to think that home doesn’t really change when you are away, but after recent events I might have to rethink that one.
It’s been a great adventure so far; even being surrounded by things you can’t understand can be relaxing as you have to let things slide. Occasionally, of course, the language or cultural barrier is insurmountable, and then I get a fleeting insight into how it feels to be immutably “different”, since I will always sound like René Artois from ‘Allo ‘Allo. Most of the time, though, people are friendly and helpful and I plough on, making well-meaning grandes bêtises. Probably the most scarring to date was trying to describe a new skate park’s half-pipe to some French friends and yet somehow in fact managing to describe fellatio instead. I couldn’t be corrected immediately as my new so-called friends were all laughing at me too much.
My parents are not particularly political and so the only newspaper I remember having in the house was our local The Sentinel. I started reading the Guardian regularly when I was a student, initially because I really liked Graham Rawle’s Lost Consonants. As I didn’t read national newspapers much before, I hadn’t realised they could be so different, although a I did a week’s work experience at the Daily Express one summer and all I remember is that they wanted me to find pictures of Princess Diana wearing similar outfits to Camilla Parker-Bowles. The Guardian (where I failed to gain any work experience) was by contrast, a natural fit.
When I have a whole paper to choose from I prefer the sections on the environment, health and technology. I also like to read the opinions. I always have time for Polly Toynbee. The sections I always discard (or give to my friend Ruth) are those on travel (I mostly find other people’s holidays so dull) and property (I honestly don’t enjoy snooping around other people’s houses).
The series of stories that stands out most in my mind was the exposé that started in 2011 about phone hacking at News International. The whole affair was a great piece of journalism, although the subject was so tawdry. The mesh between the press and Westminster was fetid, though after both Brexit and the US elections I am feeling almost resigned about it now. I was a keen supporter of remain as I appreciate what the EU has brought to the UK in terms of research, legal protection, employment and peace. I found that many of the articles I read as external links from friends on Facebook or via Twitter were from the Guardian online. I found their style to be more reasoned, less simplistic and usually less fear-mongering than the some of the other stuff out there.
I do worry that I am rolling around like a fat pup in like-minded opinion. I follow people with quite different viewpoints on Twitter and that is always insightful, if complicated. I think Brexit was motivated by a genuine desire for change, but for me the way it happened has just left the bit from Animal Farm about looking “from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again”, and how it was “impossible to say which was which”, rolling around inside my head.
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