British ex-pats forum

Online gathering place for British ex-pats. Access to food and supplies from The Olde Country. Isn't that Old Git in the upper left hand picture on the homepage?

-- Anonymous, May 12, 2001

Answers

Sorry, I thought that clicking the Sustainable Living option on the submission form would give it a header.

Found this in the Bath Chronicle online newspaper, where they have an ex-pat's bulletin board. Nice feature. I spent a year there when I was 20 and went native, brought my husband back with me as a souvenir, and still consider it a hometown in many ways.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 2001

I don't do very well with expatriate groups in general. There have been two basic kinds in my experience.

First, are the ones like Daughters of the British Empire, who haven't yet realized that we lost India. They have a lot of Committees and do Good Works. If you forget to wear your little enamel badge to a meeting, they fine you a quarter. They invited me to join theire august ranks and were aghast when I VERY gently and politely turned them down due to pressures of full-time job, part-time school and part-time work.

The second kind of expat groups are those that have members who sit around, drink cheap plonk, and bitch about the U.S. Their main activity is finding cheap charter fares so they can get home as often as possible and have some decent fish and chips for a change.

The group I organized in New Orleans was different. We used to do pub crawls--like to Houston and back, teaching each other words to indecent rugby songs long forgotten. Now THAT was fun! And we used to adopt Royal Navy ships when they came into port, taking the fellas around the malls and inviting them to barbecues and such. That's what I call Good Works!

Bath is a beautiful city and I'm glad to know you found a husband there. Much better than a snow dome :~) Were you a Universitymouse?

-- Anonymous, May 12, 2001

Gawd, get together with them in the flesh over here? We don't need 'em THAT much. :)

Had an amusing discussion the other day with a friend from high school who went over there on a summer program around the same time, and came back with a Scottish husband. Her college student son had just announced he was getting married to someone he'd known for 3 months. She had known Trevor for only 3 weeks when they decided to get married, I'd known my husband for only about a month when he came downstairs (he lived in a flat upstairs) one night, stayed the night, and never left. Funny that they were short, young courtships, yet of the people we know we are about the only couples still together. Exogamy is A Good Thing?

I went over there on a sort of independent study/junior year abroad sort of thing. I'd gone to a hotbed of progresssive edducation that decided that year that it would give us a $1000 rebate for semesters spent in the field doing something relevant to our majors. So as someone doing photography and Anglo/Celtic folklore, it was just perfect to go over there and shoot lots of pictures of stone circles and ruined castles and abbeys. But I seemed to be minoring in international affairs, I guess...

-- Anonymous, May 12, 2001

"But I seemed to be minoring in international affairs, I guess."

Have you seen any of those posts where I explain that Sweetie tells people I used to be able to say "Hello, sailor!" in nine languages? It was true, too. (NATO fleets visited New Orleans fairly often.)

Sweetie moved in one Halloween night about a month after we started dating (we had known each other longer than that), but I made him live with me for a year and a half before I would marry him. That Joan Crawford-like photo you've seen on ezboard is what I looked like that night. All I have to do is wave a wire coathanger at him and he goes all quivery.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2001