Despite a month of April to
despair the most hardened of us, we are currently being served a fresh
instalment of the “stay in Britain for the holidays” advertising campaign.
In it you will understand beyond
the shadow of a doubt that the giant causeway is better than any rocks to be
found around the Mediterranean, that the Tate Liverpool trumps any other museum
in the world, that the waves of Bridlington are so much better than those of
any other surf resort thanks to the most unobjectionable of reasoning. These wonders are better wonders indeed because
they are wonders FROM HERE!
Ah, proximity, this most
over-powering of value-scale.
Why try to encounter new worlds,
why face the diversity of the human mind, why stretch your brain with a
different language and a different way of thinking? Who would want to see art
made by other cultures, who would want to find a different landscape awaiting
them in the morning? In the words of Stephen Fry, it is “just not worth it”.
Foreigners are nothing but
troublesome. They don’t speak English properly and they use those pesky euros
(whose existence was no doubt brought forward by an obvious wish to annoy the
British). They require effort. They may even challenge your cushioned view of
yourself and your culture. Why bother? It is simply not worth it.
When one of the twelve-year olds
I teach puts his hand up and asks “why bother learning French miss, what’s the
point?” I put the lack of enthusiasm down to laziness and a rather obtuse
vision of the world, one that does not see beyond the white cliffs of Dover or,
(and they are much the same country), the treacherous balconies of Magaluf.
When an advertising campaign
validated by the government takes up very much the same view, it actually makes
me cry.
As a foreigner who has made the
effort to dedicate many years of my life to learn the language, read the books,
see the paintings, learn the history, watch the films, follow the TV shows,
understand the jokes, practise the variety of accents of Great Britain, it
makes me sad to have to accept that Great Britain simply is not a willing to
extend the same courtesy to me.
