Passport burning time

I was reading this blog written by a fellow French Anglophile listing cool things to do in London, and one of them was “Go and watch crazy Brits swim in the Serpentine on Christmas morning”. In the article she mentioned the brave spectators who “got up early even though they celebrated the réveillon the night before, and managed to make their way to Hyde Park with no public transport”. So I left a comment pointing out that British people actually celebrate Christmas on the day itself and there is no réveillon here, and since she seems so well-versed in British culture I was a bit surprised she wasn’t aware of that.

I got my head bitten off! “Such contempt, you just make me laugh, I welcome constructive criticism but not open contempt, you obviously know British customs much better than I do, I must work with the only British people who leave work at noon on the 24th then, why do you think they do that if they’re not having a réveillon, don’t bother coming back to this blog ever again”.

Well fuck you very much then. And people wonder why I’m not interested in spending time in France or having French friends.

I should have expected a negative reaction though, since in a previous post she got really irritated at another comment telling her she shouldn’t talk about “going to the Paki shop” for obvious reasons; she got into a huff about political correctness and it being a perfectly normal word like Indian or Arab and not seeing what the problem was. It was only the next day, after asking the aforementioned British colleagues and seeing the look of horror on their faces, that she admitted she didn’t actually know what she was talking about and wouldn’t use that word again. Twit.