Somewheres in this universe there's a place that you can call home

Many of you may know that I am half-English, half-French. Ricky Gervais is as well apparently. He claims that this means that he is a bad lover and has bad breath. What being a mongrel breed has done to me is leave me with the feeling that I’m never quite at home in the UK and never quite at home in France.

I’m a Eurobrat, son of a European bureaucrat, with a good education and no-where to call home. Not that I’m complaining, it is just the way it is. I have a few other friends who are all in this situation or have lived through similar circumstances, and I’m sure that they can relate to this feeling as well. I guess that I am a symbol of European integration. One of the first European off-spring.

But this story that has come out today, and it could have changed my life forever. Apparently, France and the UK were considering a union in the 1950s. Guy Mollet (the French Prime Minister) on 10 September 1956 came over to England and discussed the possibility of France and the UK merging, with the Queen becoming head of a new state (‘Brance’, or ‘Fringland’ maybe). Anthony Eden was apprently lukewarm to the idea, and Mollet responded by asking to join the Commonwealth instead. The French later rejected this proposal and turned to the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and a closer union with their continental neighbours. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But what about me? I could have lived in 'Fringland' and felt at home, I would have finally had a real place to call home that reflected who I was. Bloody roast-beef eating frogs! Why couldn’t they have sorted this out? Imagine the football team as well. We would have really kicked arse. And the food combinations would have been interesting. But for a simple twist of fate I could have lived in a country that really represented who I am. Sigh.

We Better Talk this Over