the editor writes ...

After Friday's "F" fest and invitation for feedback, the editor writes from deepest France ... happy to share on here ... another perspective for the blog ...

"I see from your blog that the idea of a retreat in Stanhope is not catching on as you would like it. Maybe it is something about the location and a position on a Camino in sunnier & warmer Spain or Portugal might be a better bet. Cold, wet Brexitland is not a welcoming place and given the price of property being hugely expensive, then I'm not surprised that you have had not had a lot of interest when it comes down to cash. I see it here more and more with people buying places wanting to do them up to live here then being faced with the reality of spending cash and time to fix up a place that they then realise is just a romantic notion. It is different living in a place that was great on holiday but much less enjoyable on an ongoing basis. The choices are stark: try and flog the gaff to another expat romantic or become an alcoholic. The third way is to have a bunch of things to do to keep you occupied and make life more interesting - but you would have to do that wherever you choose to live. A lot of people choose to do the first option but discover that flogging houses to people over here is hard outside of the popular areas as a glut of broken dreams is unloaded onto a crowded market that turns over very slowly.

"As for the second option, that too is visible in villages across the country with the bars being composed a clientele of expats getting steadily pissed in the absence of local people wanting to listen to their woes.
My option has a few takers but largely they are refugees from a country that they feel has no opportunities for them to lead a civilised life but merely an existence of dull boring work that is increasingly poorly paid and a 'social' life revolving around a circuit of watering holes with a cast of hundreds if not thousands of souls terminally drunk. With the attendant threat of violence being visited upon them by alienated others then I would tend to agree with their strategy of getting as far away from Brexitland as possible. This was always going to be the end-game in the Neocon plan of creating a mass of alienated individuals who could be manipulated into attacking whoever was deemed the target group. Today it's Muslims, tomorrow it's one-legged trans people, after that another bunch of people. You know how it is."

Thanks!