We pulled over and parked up in front of a small bar in a little town not far from home, approached the bar and ordered a coffee and a lemonade in what passes for French in the Roberts' household. Once we were seated the surreal dream began. All of the customers were speaking English. If you live in a country where the main language is English, this is not at all strange, but, to us, having spent the most part of the last 3 years surrounded by French speakers it was decidedly odd. I admit, it wasn't an altogether unpleasant sensation. Suddenly, we could understand what everyone was saying without having to send the sounds of speech through our dodgy mental translation tools - comprehension was instant - how novel.
It turned out that the bar is run by two English women and is frequented almost entirely by the expats in the wider area. Once it became obvious we too were English we were invited to go back that night to celebrate the opening of the bars' newly made beer-garden - this was to involve a barbeque, beer and a garden. I might like to say that our resolve not to become part of the English ghetto in France meant that we quickly and politely declined the offer but I'm sure, dear reader, you are well able to guess that we trotted off home, dropped off our purchases, fed the cats and arrived back at the bar within an hour or so, welcomed back by the hubbub of English conversation and the distinctive and instantly recognisable aroma of burning burger.
As it turns out, we had a pretty good time. We met an extended family there who play in a band and are interesting, funny and a little off-the-wall. It made for a pleasant couple of hours despite the ubiquitous heavy showers sizzling on the barbie. But now I come to the source of the title of this blog. What I realised during the evening was that suddenly I was able to be nosy with ease. It's not easy to eavesdrop in another language unless you are pretty fluent and I'm not fluent in French. But in this English speaking gathering the sheer number of opportunities to satisfy my long-restricted inquisitiveness was intoxicating! Of course, if you come across some particularly interesting conversational thread it's difficult to join in. I've always thought that the opening gambit of 'I'm sorry but I couldn't help overhearing but...........' is pretty lame. I mean, even if you couldn't help overhearing you can help sticking your nose in and so I have tended to treat these overheard snippets as you would reality TV, that is to be observed but not participated in.
At one point, as I strained to overhear a conversation to my left between a bunch of seemingly well spoken and well-heeled middle-aged individuals I heard 'I can't believe they lent us that much!' in a tone of righteous indignation. The fact that the conversation progressed in a predictable way didn't lessen my straining. To me, people are fascinating and politics are fascinating and ordinary Joe and Jane Public's discussion of politics therefore is endlessly fascinating to me. Each and every one of them (at least as far as I could tell without openly staring into their group) bemoaned the growing burden of their personal debt.
They strayed briefly into Italy and Berlusconi's inability to control his nation's borrowing, cuts in the UK and cuts in France but the overarching complaints seemed to be that bankers were once willing to lend loads of money to anyone (which was very bad of them) and that now the same bankers are not willing to lend loads of money to anyone at all (which is very bad of them) and they have the damned cheek to ask for the money back that they have leant (which is very bad of them). The idea I had first had early that evening, that is to say that being in a group of English speakers would obviously mean that my understanding would be complete and easy was blown right out of the water.
'I'm sorry but I couldn't help.....' sat dangerously on my lips. I wanted, I really, really wanted to join in to put across my point of view. Of course, had I wanted to make anything like a reasoned contribution I would have had to reveal that, far from accidentally overhearing a couple of words, perhaps even a full sentence or two I would necessarily have revealed that I had spent the last 10 minutes homing in on their conversation with a level of decidedly unseemly concentration. I remained quiet.
I wanted to say, but didn't, that there seems to be a glaring flaw in their united reasoning. Politicians, all grouped together in one lump for the purposes of the exchange were blamed unreservedly for the financial woes of the world in general and them in particular. They seemed to put themselves on a third tier of responsibility below that of the evil bankers, who are themselves below the really evil politicians. The fact that restraints placed upon bankers has been relaxed over the last 30 years or so has led to an unprecedented frenzy of unwise borrowing and needless spending to buoy up the economies of most of the 'developed' world would seem to be the source of the woes of these hapless individuals now. Just like the Larkin poem that begins 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do' contains within it the startling implication that we humans are simply at effect of the actions of others, and worryingly that we have no way of changing the course of our individual lives. The 'I can't believe they lent us....' etc. comment can only lead me to believe that the utterer of this statement feels herself to be incapable of saying 'no thanks'.
The choices that our politicians have made over the last 30 years or so (and probably for ever) have been at times extremely foolish and short-sighted - this I don't doubt for one moment. The very idea of unending growth in prosperity, as I'm sure I've derided before, is ridiculous but nonetheless a very seductive idea. Looked at like this, we might feel perfectly justified in blaming politicians for our dreadful financial muddles just as Larkin blames parents. There is a difference of course. We don't usually get to vote for who should be our parents. We do, however, get to vote for our politicians. And in almost every democracy in the world prosperity plays extremely well. Lots of people will happily place their cross next to that one. Of course, if it goes wrong, if we have been well and truly seduced, there is always a simple way to absolve ourselves of any responsibility - blame someone else.
