Re: Outsiders.
 

Now I agree!

I actually thought at the time it was perfect to make peace between the Christian and Islamic nations. You know, it´s pretty clear by now. "We can hurt you, you can hurt us back"
Let´s be friends, tataaa, Worldpeace in a nutshell!

(sorry for off topic comment, and Geert Wilders is a nutcase!)

Re: Outsiders.
 

I'm actually waiting for the day that the Jews and Muslims realise they are one and the same and they join up to defeat the Christians... now that will be fun.

Re: Outsiders.
 

About the West Country, to lighten the discussion.

On a rainy, early morning I walked my dogs in a newly planted forest near Launceston.. Half-way across the forest, we came to a river crossing and could have turned right or left, which the dogs wanted to do, but I decided to go straight ahead into a dark part of the woods.

Twenty yards later I realised that the dogs were glued to my side. There was a howling wind and I stepped into the thick forest to light my cigarette. While I was struggling to light it, I noticed that my hair was standing on end, and I had long hair at the time.

I lived nearby and asked the locals. A man had killed his wife there and hanged himself, 50 years earlier. Nonsense, of course it is, only my dogs knew the truth.

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Errr..... riiiight.....

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It's just an expression. It doesn't mean anything disrespectful. People say I learnt Spanish 'on my back'. It only means I have a Spanish boyfriend. Nothing wrong with that. I don't find it insulting.

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Getting back to the above for a moment ;)
Yes you raise a valid point & of course the more we learn the easier it could be to trip up ?

Never known anyone celebrate the battle of Britain, but I guess you were just using this as an example ?
Interestingly (well for me) there was a program on about the Polish pilots in the battle & to summarize they were the most ferocious, had the highest kill rate and lost a lot of men in the conflict.
On VE day each country who's troops fought was represented for the march to celebrate & they were from every corner of the world ...... except Poland !
They had to stand in the crowd, because if they were marching it may well have upset the lunatic in Moscow who had been given Poland in the spoils.
The very reason that Britain had entered the war of course, so the treachery was doubled for those Polish who had fought & died.

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I didn't say I found it insulting I said I found it uncomfortable reading... but as you will have seen the discussion moved on so lets join in and... move on. We can't all agree on everything eh?

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Talking about outsiders, we’ve got a small church near to us which is considered to be English but it’s actually Scandinavian. The 50,000 British expats who live in the area have taken it over by sheer weight of numbers.

It’s not very well attended, apart from VE day when it’s packed inside and out with wrinkled veterans showing their colours and medals.

Possibly because of the tax receipts from the 50,000 Brits and their voting strength, the Spanish mayor attends each year and stands to attention when the flags are raised.

It always makes me smile, his knowledge of his own country’s history counts for little, and he’s a politician right down to his plastic smile. He’s been in power for 20 years and his majority increases with each new veteran arriving. That he belongs to the PP (Conservatives) goes without saying.

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During the second world war we moved to a small island from Glasgow after the Clydebank blitz and were known for the next three years as the vaccys. I married an Orcadian and lived on his small island for15 years and was known as an incomer and ferrylouper so I was happy to be greeted in Spain with open arms and have never felt like an outsider and speaking the language is only a small part of the reason. If you live in a small community you have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty not invite people over for a sundowner which most of us thought was the name of a drink.

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If it was a newly planted forest, how did he hang himself there 50 years previously?

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It was previously felled and replanted? :confused: That's quite normal. That's what the Forestry Commission do every day. Lots of places in Scotland are now felling conifers and replanting native species.

Re: Outsiders.
 

I was an outsider when I lived in the West Country, much the same as I am an outsider here in Spain. On reflection, it was probably a bigger deal back in the UK. Big cities are a melting pot and I feel comfortable in them. Or among a large group of expats (outsiders) who have also chosen to live abroad.

Spanish people seem to accept us and our funny ways, I’ve never seen their ex-service personnel parading around with their colours and medals. Several hundred expats who live locally carry one of the heavy Spanish religious objects through the town during the main fiesta and always get the loudest cheers from the spectators. They like us to show our respect for their country’s tradition, without going over the top and brown-nosing them, as one of the posters on here states so eloquently (and he’s Spanish).

At least once a fortnight, I go to a Spanish café really early to purposely meet a group of local Spaniards, most of whom are elderly men. They invite me to their tables and we put the world right over coffee, though a few of them have a small whiskey to start the day and loosen the tongue.

But sometimes they don’t invite me over, often because one of their sons who are mostly unemployed nowadays, are sitting at the tables. Sadly, those unemployed men are getting more and more resentful of guiris, wrongly proclaiming that they are stealing their jobs.

Maybe they’re not wrong in their thinking.

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General Anders forces were well looked after by Britain after the war in gratitude for their services to the war effort. They were housed and fed for many years and looked after by The National Assistance Board and my father as a civil servant was an administrator in several camps. Their relatives were collected from camps all over Europe and north Africa and brought to Britain to join them. The Poles prospered and eventually the camps were no longer required. Most lived in Britain for the rest of their lives and many are buried in Highgate cemetery in London. So where is the betrayal?

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The betrayal I guess was the handing over of poland and poles to the Russians.

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I felt more of an outsider in the west country than here.

And I was born there.

Lovely clotted cream though, especially on my scones, pronunced scones not scons.

Ill always be the extranjera here but not always the outsider.:thumbsup: