Coming back home can be an eye-opening experience. Pictures in the papers and on TV of a student caught urinating on a war memorial in Sheffield, a young Geordie lass made to clean up the street she'd fouled after a spot of binge drinking, rip-off prices everywhere and evidence daily of a society that has adopted a snarl as its default expression. Thank goodness I have also managed to see glorious Durham Cathedral (and a Sunderland victory aided ever so slightly by a beach ball). But perhaps you'll think my rant in today's edition of The National, Abu Dhabi is unfair ...
It may just have been that my head was still in the clouds as I gazed in admiration at the French coastline during my plane’s descent into the Mediterranean airport of Toulon. But I could not shake two thoughts: what is wrong with Britain, and how long have you got for the answer?
Any return to France after time away seems to induce a mixture of happiness to be going back, and sorrowful reflections on the negative aspects of what I am leaving behind.
Some of this may be unfair. Even so, I feel entitled to ask why:
• it costs £4.10 (Dh25) to drop a relative off at Heathrow airport (I must have been all of half an hour)?
• so many young women as well as men feel the weekend is not complete unless they get hopelessly drunk and behave in an atrociously antisocial manner?
• the papers are uncommonly full of murder cases involving educated and outwardly successful couples?
• television news bulletins and the contents of supposedly serious newspapers could easily be the work of fugitives from the tabloids? (Did a review in The Observer, noting with disapproval that a new book on economics included five chapters on prostitution, have to be illustrated with – you guessed it – a large photograph of provocatively dressed prostitutes in Budapest?)
I could go on.
There is no complaint from me about Ryanair’s audacious £12.61 for two insipid sandwiches and a shared bottle (small and unchilled) of water, since no one obliged me to buy them. But it has become difficult to find any item or service for sale that does not use either “only” or “just” immediately before some exorbitant asking price.
Ticket machines at railway stations lead you through a lengthy procedure before announcing that they cannot dispense your tickets, even when valid credit cards have been inserted. No company or public service can safely be telephoned unless you have at least 20 minutes to spare while wading through the automated answering system and then waiting for a human voice or summary disconnection. The English seaside, on the strength of two visits to Brighton, has never looked tackier. Everywhere, people are so stressed that repeats of Fawlty Towers make Basil look a model of serenity. Don’t even let me start on reality television and talent shows.
But memo to self: calm down.
Britain may sometimes seem the sick man of Europe, or at least to be confined to a ward of the most acute cases. Yet a lot of what I have described happens elsewhere, too. What was waiting for me on my arrival in France? A staggering checkout bill (£80 or so) for half the supermarket purchases you’d need before paying the same at Lulu or Spinneys, and news of a riot by gormless Paris St Germain football fans after an outbreak of swine flu among their team members forced the late postponement of a match in Marseille. If Britain really is going to the dogs, it is not alone.
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