Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

We’re in the midst of our customary Christmas closing and generally lazing around at the moment.

Boxing Day brought us our first serious bought of snow for several years and for a while it was looking like we’d be snowed in for quite a while. As usual the French didn’t even bother to slow down on roads completely covered with ice and snow so I’m sure that the accident figures are well up.

France is a slightly peculiar place to be over Christmas in that they don’t formally “do” Christmas thus the shops were relatively empty on Christmas Eve and indeed the toy shops were eerily empty even the week before Christmas. Just as eerily empty as the toy shops in the UK were a few weeks earlier though that presumably was down to the current recession.

Although the shops do close several hours early (as does the post office) on Christmas Eve and everything is closed on Christmas Day, by Boxing Day it’s back to normal everywhere and you’d think that it was a normal shopping day. The law doesn’t allow them to have sales at the moment so you don’t get the usual post-Christmas sales that you do elsewhere and nowhere do you get the 70%+ reductions that are commonplace nowadays because the law won’t let shops sell stuff at a loss (which should create interesting closing down sales in due course).

On the sale front, we were comparing prices with the UK and found a surprising number of things sitting at around two to three times the UK prices at the current exchange rate. Obviously with all the shenanaghans recently with the interest rates  the exchange rates are not really at their “true” levels and if the price differentials are anything to go by it should be around EUR 2 to the pound rather than the current 1.10 or so which implies that there’s going to be either a major drop in the euro interest rate or massive increases in unemployment in the euro zone.

My Dad died on August 24th, suddenly and unexpectedly aged 81.

Frankly, I’d always thought that I’d have some last words to say to him before he went. In fact, I was sure that there would be something or other that I’d have left unsaid. Yet, now that the time has come in fact I find that I can’t think of anything that I should have said which seems a little odd to be honest. How come? Well, we’ve always spoke over the years and if anything probably that little bit more in the past few. So, he knew broadly what I’d be doing in the years to come (or at least as much as I know myself). He knew that Mum, me and his grandchildren loved him and that he’d be missed when he went.

Actually, that being missed bit is a little odd at the moment. I find that I’m not missing him for me but rather for his grandchildren. He’d had a full life of being Daddy to me but, sadly, only got to be Granda for just over six years. I know that he’d never have lived to see them graduating from university but it’s nice to know that he was able to be there for James’ first day at school and he’d expect nothing less than that he would one day be graduating in whatever subject interested him at that time. Actually, that’s not quite true because, as with me, he only ever wanted them to do whatever they wanted to do in terms of education; he felt his job was to provide whatever resources that were necessary to enable me to achieve my objectives.

As with my Nanny almost 20 years back, I’ve very much made a point of not considering him as dead but rather as living somewhere that we never quite manage to get around to visiting. I’m sure that’s a totally crap way of dealing with it in terms of closure but it’s worked really well for me with both my Nanny and my Dad’s brother John. I know that some people feel the need to see an actual dead body to say goodbye to but I much prefer to maintain my little illusion and therefore anyone expecting an open coffin was disappointed.

Anyway, whilst I didn’t have the opportunity to say any last words before he left us, I can’t think of anything that I needed to say to him. Is that strange?

For reasons which all my regular reasons will know I’ve been following the progress of British nationality legislation over the last few years.

Quick summary to bring ‘yall up to speed…. Pre-1982 children born in the UK took their nationality from their father. However, from that point children took nationality from their mother and could only take their nationality from their father if he was married to their mother. This was recognised as being discriminatory and in 2002 a new law was passed which removed that condition (ie that the father needed to be married) but that particular section wasn’t implemented until 2006.

How could they do that anyway? After all, the sex discrimination legislation forbids discrimination like that, doesn’t it? Yes, but there’s an exemption for public bodies which, of course, includes the people who handle UK nationality. However, COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 2004/113/EC of 13 December 2004 removed that exemption as of April 6th 2008 when it was implemented in UK law.

Interestingly though, the nationality people are STILL saying that children born pre-2006 can only get nationality from their father if he was married to their mother.

What’ll be interesting is their response to my recent application for James’ passport which quotes the various laws above and points out that they are breaking the law. (The EU law directs national governments to abolish any laws, regulations and administrative provisions contrary to the principle of equal treatment).

Isn’t it strange the way that when someone you’ve not seen in several years appears on the scene, it’s as though the years between didn’t exist?

I’ve just had quite an enjoyable night chatting with an old work colleage (DG) who’s staying with us this evening. What’s perhaps even stranger is that some of the old fixtures in the workplace are still very much fixtures although sometimes it seems like if I went back there I’d be the only one left of the “old guard”!

In days gone by it would be maybe £100 to get a car serviced but those days have long since gone and I just paid out over twice that.

In fact, it would have been much more but we’d had the speedo set on trip rather than distance travelled so managed to miss out a service completely. Whilst we did that accidently this time I think we may well do it delibrately next time as I’m sure a lot of people are increasingly doing these days with the spiralling cost of the process.

Is it safe though? If you’d done that 20 years ago perhaps the answer would have been “no” but cars have become a whole lot more reliable over that time yet the service interval hasn’t changed. From our point of view, it certainly doesn’t appear to have made much difference in the running of the car, certainly not £200 worth of difference.

OK, we’ve some new oil in the car and presumably it’s cleaner oil than the stuff they threw out, which I imagine is better for the car. However, is it enough cleaner to make it worthwhile paying £200 to have it changed? I’m sure we could have managed to do that ourselves for maybe £20 tops. I’ve looked at the list of stuff they did and there’s nothing on it that seems really worth paying that much for so I figure that we’ll likely skip the next service too.

In fact, the only thing that might have been worthwhile for them to have done turns out to be a warranty thing which they couldn’t do today anyway and we’ve to go back in a couple of weeks when they get the part.