A momentous day for us this week when we opened the letter telling us that our French naturalisation application had been approved just over 6 months after our interviews. There was much shreiking and dancing around the garden.
We now have to wait for our French birth and marriage certifcates to be prepared so we can apply for French passports. As before reactions from all our French friends and acquaintances have been positive, the only negative remarks have been from a few English who apparently feel we are being "unpatriotic". Actually I have always felt that blind patriotism is somewhat overrated and is the cause of much worldwide dissent and in current times there is much about Little Britain which leaves my heart cold. In fact we will retain our British nationality, we will continue to pay much of our income tax in England ( because of our former local government employment), and we will continue to visit as long as we have family and friends there. But we will now have security in our adopted homeland, we will have a vote here, and we will stay proud Europeans whatever idiocy prevails across the channel. The timing could not have been better as Mayhem reaches the edge of the cliff with her lemmings today.
But as I have said before, although overjoyed to have been accepted as a welcome French citizen, I am acutely aware how lucky are we to have the chance to even think about choosing where we want to live - our personal paradise - when there are so many less fortunate displaced people around the world, and here in France, just desperate to find a safe haven to escape real horrors and persecution in their homelands - another and much more important story for our times.
For us the Spring is truly sprung - it's good news time, my shingles have gone, the weather is looking up, the garden is full of buds and flowers, I've heard cuckoos, we have already had our first guests of the year and the calendar is filling nicely.
aiçi sèn pla
