"TRY TO LEARN OUR WAYS"

Wonderfully funny, preening piece by John Humphries in the Expat section of the October Oldie.

As we recall, JH is famed for that Peloponnese property pratfall.

Anyway, this month's strutting is all about how he bawled out a camper-van-driving Kraut for filming a local funeral.

Humphreys writes unclearly so I'm not sure who did what or when or wherever, but there's a pivotal sentence about,

"The liturgy droned on, the day grew hotter and eventually I wandered back to the house feeling more than ever that the village was home."

Do you hear that familiar alarm bell?

The one that sounds when foreigners start mouthing off about feeling more than a lowly speck on the landscape or mote in the eye of the locals?

Loipon, red alert for the punchline and Humph doesn't disappoint.

He's strolling around the village expecting to be praised for sending Jerry packing.

Neighbour Petros comes up and tells him he should have "stayed and followed old Michaelis to his grave with the rest of us - it's the custom."

Wait for it ... to Petros is ascribed the hackneyed bogus money line:

"Try to learn our ways, my friend, or people will say you're a foreigner."

B'boum! How we love to trot that one out.

Can't you see the faux modest smile as the locals wink and giggle to each other with patronising mirth.

I showed the article to Γνήσιο το άρθρο and much derision was there for the 'Try to Learn our Ways' claptrap:

Having clasped Humphreys to their collective bosom to the extent of actually recognising his foreign ass as a foreign body in the landscape, why would they then waste further time wildgoosing him with impossible fantasies of aping their ways?

Dept of Try to learn you'se a for'ner: Only a non-Grik imagining how a Greek might speak could cobble up such a tin-eared phrase.

As for the bit about being mistaken for a foreigner - gasp! Surely not?

Totally blank looks and bafflement. Only a foreigner would entertain the laughable idea of being anything BUT a clunky foreigner.

Do try to track down the piece - page 70 - and read it in full. It's like a clever parody of every Wannabe Expat-craves-Native article.

That it's set in Greece makes it even more amusing and poignanter.

Kommentaria:

Cool Sinbadian link leading to this

Branestawm Time: Sinbers indulging his 'complicated passion' full fathom five here and here.

Somebody chip in and tell him wot any fule kno.





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