Who’s Who & What’s What
And On This Page…
- About This Blog
- Who Am I?
- Who Is Ted?
- What Are BATs and BACs?
About This Blog
Why do people blog? I started this inconsequential and little regarded site some years ago to try and answer that question for myself, and, frankly, I’m none the wiser several hundred and something posts and many thousands of words later.
I’d like to pretend that this blog represents some kind spiritual journey, a search for a vision, perhaps, or some ultimate truth. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t even logically chart some project or other: a diary of our move to France, for example. It has no definite beginning and no clear goal to provide an end.
It doesn’t even draw on consistent subject matter, though it is mostly about France. I’m under no illusion that it will ever be a site of major interest, but I very much enjoy writing it and hope that visitors here find something to amuse or to interest them.
Since you’ve read this far, you might like to know a little more background.
Who am I?
My name is Jon Doust. I am English born but have been living in the Vendée region of Western France (just up from La Rochelle on the coast, that bit) since spring 2003.
I am married and have three young daughters who have spent most (in one case, all) of their lives here. We make our living from renting out gites: we’ll never be rich, but we make ends meet.
Before coming here I worked 15 years in the oil industry, a career that allowed me to travel widely and to places that I would never have ordinarily been able to reach. But the downside was that I never saw my family, so when the opportunity to take the money and run presented itself I wasn’t seen for dust.
Remarkably, I have actually had some of the stuff I write late at night published in proper newspapers and even been paid for it. This does not make me a writer or any authority on anything whatsoever, so don’t let me kid you.
I am afflicted with a dog (a Gordon setter, donchaknow) named Bonnie and keep selection of slightly scruffy chickens.
On the ambitions front I am attempting to live to the age of 94 in order to be a continuing irritation to my three lovely children.
Oh, and rubbish though it might be, this is my rubbish, and all material on this blog is copywrite, so please ask if you wish to use something from it.
Who is Ted?
Ted is a native of a small town in Colorado.
He tells me that he is 54, weighs 220lbs (why that should be relevant I cannot say), is (now) four times divorced and works as a sanitary engineer. I think that means he’s a bin man. He is currently dating a lady named Arlene.
He is a little shy (hence only a first name – and that might be a nom de guerre) and deeply mistrustful of the French. He thinks that they are trying to take over the Earth using mind altering drugs painted onto the outside of Louis Viutton suitcases exported around world via the international airlines’ lost luggage system.
Who knows – he may be right.
Nonetheless he is quite disdainful of the habit that some of his fellow countryman have of referring to the French as being “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” He points out that any nation that can lose one fifth of its male population by actively not surrendering, as France did in the 1914-18 show, is probably undeserving of the epithet. Particularly, as he says, from a nation that turned up three years late for two world wars and when they did arrive came equipped with silk stockings and chocolate bars and went dancing.
Ted is widely read and has developed a number of interesting theories about the New World Order. In particular, he is convinced that the World is actually run from a bunker located somewhere beneath his home state that is headquaters to the “Grey Men.” Other details about the Grey Men he has yet to provide to me, but I’ll pass them on when he does. He is also deeply concerned about the “Toad Conspiracy” and is worried that giant, evil, amphibians are trying to take of the globe. This, appearantly, explains Vladimir Putin.
Ted often shares his thoughts with me and, where appropriate, I include his musings in the drivel I write. Ted is into “survival.” Of what varies, but generally it involves him camping out in the woods, living on roots & berries, and touting assorted offensive weapons.
Ted may be real, but who knows. After all, cyberspace is crowded with teenage nymphets named Tiffiny who turn out to be 350lb burger bar chefs from Alabama called “Bubba,” so one cannot be too sure of anything. Perhaps Ted is not really a clinically obese dustman from the Rocky Mountain Region but is, in fact, a 20 year old cheerleader from Tampa. Called “Slinky.” Stranger things have happened, and it would certainly explain why Ted is reluctant to send in a photo and seems to know nothing about baseball. Neither do I come to that, but I would have liked to have been educated.
BATs & BACs
BATs and BACs made an appearance in my life a little while ago. The following is a quote from a post I made that should explain what a BAT is:
“This sort of article is meat and bread to BATs – British And Twisted. Brits who live in France but really would rather not, or, more rarely, who are God-awful snobs, appalled that France ever became accessible to the hoi-polloi via a combination of favourable property price arbitrage and an easing in paperwork requirements. Letting in people like me, in other words.
BATs are in the ascendancy at the moment, their numbers swelled by a stagnant property market in France that makes selling their houses (overpriced and really appealing only to other Brits – the French are not inclined to buy older properties when there new ones to be had at half the price) something of a non-starter.
Their mission is to tear off the rose-coloured spectacles of any deluded souls who prefer living in France to the UK and are imprudent enough to say so, and then to jump up and down on them. They have at their disposal a fearsome array of facts and figures coupled with helpfully impossible to disprove anecdotes: “there were six crack dealers outside the village school last Tuesday and no-one did a thing about because they were all armed with flamethrowers!” Probably a fabrication, but very hard to expose as such since You Weren’t There.
BATs usually have a good command of French and plenty of time to dig around the various media outlets. This gives them their most potent weapon when dealing with the irritatingly cheerful: that they Do Not Know What Is Really Going On In France. This usually clinches the argument because, in fact, a lot of expats don’t read the papers or watch the news as assiduously as perhaps they should. Or even at all.
BATs can sometimes be found at social events or wrapped around expensive pints of poorly kept Guinness in cod Irish bars, but for the most part they prefer the anonymity of internet forums. There are even a couple of BAT-inclined blogs out there. My favourite, because it is terribly well written – far better than this rubbish – is What French Dream? Take a look at these two posts here and here to see what I mean.
And BATs love harping on about the French love affair with McDos, though they often do so in slighty pyrrhic terms along the lines of “the French don’t know anything about food because they eat the same crap as we do!”
So, what is a BAC?
Well, in summary, a BAC is British And Clueless. Stereotypically, a BAC will speak French (if at all) very poorly. They have little knowledge about what is going on in France beyond what they can glean from The Daily Mail or BBC websites, and are heavily dependent on satellite systems for televisual entertainment.
BACs moved to France not because always because they have a particular affection for the place, though they might, but because it is not the UK, to which they sometimes refer as “yUK.” Often they are here having fled the “immigrant hoards who refuse in integrate” not recognising the irony of the statement.
Usually, BACs are located in the more backward-arsed corners of rural France, with healthy communities to be found in some of the least densely populated départements of France, deserted by the French because there are no jobs or anything to do other than engage in unnatural sexual activities.
We don’t have many in the Vendée: it’s a relatively cosmopolitan here, even if out population density here lags that of Northumberland.
In their rural ghettos the social life of BACs revolves around “British” bars and cafés where the more enterprising of them hold fish ‘n’ chip or curry nights. Hot topics for discussion include which local supermarket carries the best range of British goods, last night’s telly and whether or not Ryanair will continue flying to the previously disused local military airfield now masquerading as an international airport.
Of the two, I would probably prefer the drinking companionship of a BAC over a BAT. A BAT may be right about a great many things (though they are not beyond exagerating, being very selective in their comparisons or simply making things up to support their veiwpoints) but they tend towards bitterness, which is not an attractive trait. BACs may be clueless, but they are often more cheerful.
