What’s the best way to ruin paradise?
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Of course the answer is simple…tell the whole world about it! Let everyone in on the secret of your Utopia and every man and his dog will want a piece as well. And it is not often that the English like to share a nice piece of someone elses country that they have effectively colonised for themselves. But that is what has happened in a part of France, Dordogne, and the town of Eymet. Anyone who has been there will vouch for the fact that it has attracted British expats to buy and live there in their hordes. In fact, British people now account for 50 per cent of home ownership there.
For this trend the French can surely blame Peter Mayle and his books about Provence some years back. Personally I found them dull and uninteresting and, in a small way, patronising to the French characters he wrote about. Ever since Mayle wrote about how he bought a ruined barn for a few pence and did it up the Brit’s in their thousands have followed in his wake. Within a few short years Provence was teeming with pale skinned men in socks and sandals and women in knee length shorts, white trainers and tank tops. They bought up all the ruined barns that Peter Mayle couldn’t be bothered with, did them up, and then sold them for a fortune. Unable to afford Provence any longer fellow expats discovered the poor Dordogne, or as it is known now, Dordogneshire.
They fell upon places like Eymet and Sarlat snapping up homes from the unsuspecting French; the Brits arrived with hundreds of thousands to spend but paid only tens of thousands for their ‘bargains’. The French have since caught on about this!
They also snapped up all the ruined barns, abandoned farm houses, run down water mills - basically if it had a wall in place the Brit’s would buy, renovate and live in a toilet block if it was cheap enough to buy. They love buying a pile of rubble and doing it up. Their reasons are many; England has gone to the dogs, it’s not safe anymore, the education is no good anymore, it’s too expensive…France is safe, it’s cheap, the education’s good…
Makes you wonder about this. The Brit’s have stuffed up their own environment so they abandon ship and move into another one that suits them better. They are good at this kind of thing though. But what do they do in order to protect their little paradise? They boast in a newspaper article about how no-one locks their doors, no-one locks their cars, people leave their wallets in the cars at the shops ’because no-one will steal it here’. I mean… DUH!
These proud and gloating expats have just made Eymat very easy pickings!
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