Really?

Yesterday was a day of celebration in the tiny town of Whitton which I currently inhabit. The neighbourhood is sandwiched between Twickenham - a well-to-do riverside haven for Land-Rover driving, middle-class bankers - and Hounslow - a pocket of working-class Asian, Polish and Ethiopean families, bunched under the Heathrow airport flight path to keep their house prices nice and cheap. So Whitton is a bit of both. It has the white suburban feel to it, but it's also pretty rough round the edges. Mullets and football scarves in just about every pub, a big St. George's day parade etc... you get the picture.

So Cancer Research was holding a three-legged-race, presumably in honour of May Day in some vague form, but it was bascially an excuse for people to get dressed in ridiculous costumes and get shamelessly drunk in the daytime, during a long weekend. I was dragged out by my Irish housemate, who rightly told me I wasn't getting involved in any of the local colours and I needed to experience this thing. So down the pub I went, and chewed the fat with Tim, while watching the residents spilling themselves out of their hula-dancer skirts and tight-fitting leather outfits, ironically quoting Little Britain or Shameless, or other similar TV shows.

By the time we got home to eat dinner, my housemate was completely worse for wear, and ended up eating my starter as well as his, spilling his plate on the grass (I served the food in the garden out of well-timed precaution) and pouring wine all over the kitchen floor. He went to bed punchdrunk, and there was no way I was either waking him out of it, or going back to the alien world of the local pub without him. It would literally have been like an episode of Star Trek, with Captain Spock lost among a tribe of Clingon-hostile locals, but without the option of being beamed up by a Scotsman. So I kicked around at home reading, watching TV and realising I'm as much of a foreigner here than I ever was in Stuttgart, if not more.

I enjoy going out for a pint, don't get me wrong. I like standing around a pub talking rubbish as much as the next guy. But it genuinely disturbs people that I don't have an identifiable accent or a single place that I come from. It makes them feel awkward, uncomfortable, and even somehow judged. They keep asking "But no, really, are you Irish or what?", and when they don't get a straight answer (because there isn't one), they sort of peter out the conversation or change the subject and wander off. They're either afraid I'll say or do something they won't understand and will therefore look ignorant or stupid, or else they think they'll say something which is offensive or racist, but won't know till it's too late. After all, the French love their food and the Swedish make Ikea furniture, but what do you talk about (or not talk about) around a French-Irishman with an accent from god-knows-where?

Ah, the thrills and spills of being the product of an 'international' background. You are successfully trained to never quite fit in anywhere except other people who've had a mixed background, however freethinking and culturally aware you think you are. You think you've got the freedom to adapt to living anywhere, without suspecting how people will (or won't) adapt to you...

Meanwhile, as I went out for my evening walk yesterday, I noticed some kids hanging around a chip shop, at about 10.15 at night. I realised one of them was from my year 7 English class, and he was holding hands with a bleached-haired blonde in a miniskirt which left precious little to the imagination. He's twelve! I know this is a sign of aging, when you start railing against young girls' clothing, but I just couldn't get over that this twelve year old was already so streetwise. It just begs the question as to what he's going to do when his real teenage rebellion sets in, if that's his normal Sunday evening at twelve years old.

I'm decidedly not a Whittonite, if that's what they're called. But it's an eye opener, at least.