Tuesday 18 December 2018

How just one ex-pat can cause so much upset.



I can tell this story because the person involved is now deceased. The man in question told me the details himself, and seemed to think he was totally in the right, and deserved support. See what you think.

As ex-pats, our reputations can be severely damaged by the bad behaviour of one of our own nationality. If a Brit, Dutchman, or even an Algerian (for example) is involved in some theft or skullduggery, it can easily rub-off on all of his or her fellow nationals. All become tarred with the same brush.

The story is this. Hereabouts, when farmers fell trees for either heating or timber, they usually stack it by the side of the road, as near to its source as possible. It is accepted that up to a depth of a couple of metres, one can leave felled wood temporarily by the roadside until collected.

The elderly man involved in this tale found a pile of metre-long Oak logs neatly stacked on the edge of 'HIS LAND', and was furious that no-one had asked his 'permission'. He decided to treat the wood as a 'gift', and moved the entire pile to his barn.

It wasn't long before the woman whose wood it was, noticed that it was missing, and informed the police.

The police visited the man (an elderly Brit' retiree), and he admitted that he'd removed the wood 'to the safety and shelter of his barn'. He made some childish excuse about keeping it dry for the lady, but no-one believed him. In fact he was just another common tea-leaf; there are plenty about.

They 'cautioned' him, and he immediately returned the wood to its roadside location. He also visited the woman, whose wood it was, and as a half-hearted apology, offered her a bottle of Champagne; as if he thought that this would heal wounds!  Of course it didn't.

As with any local dishonesty, it didn't take long for the story to spread around the area, and the stupid man later spent his time trying to summon support by telling people that he'd been in the right (he even tried it on me; the idiot).

All thieving is crime, and as an ex-pat he should have known that his own reputation as 'a light fingered Brit' could easily have been heaped upon others of his nationality ("They're all a bunch of crooks" etc). His reputation as a thief never left him, and he sold-up. He found no support whatsoever with fellow Brits, and no-one was sad to see him go.


25 comments:

  1. What a prat. No breeding whatsoever.

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    1. It's a very strange story, made even stranger by his insistence that he was in the right!

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  2. He tried to lie his way out of the situation and that, in some ways, is worse than the thievery. A person who cannot be trusted will always be alone. Good that he moved and started over again and hopefully learned a lesson. Unfortunately, he hurt the reputation of others.

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    1. In this case I don't think it did rub-off on others. People just saw him as the idiot he clearly was.

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  3. He surely would have been well aware of the local customs. No excuse.

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    1. And he lived not far from you too! A total idiot.

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  4. Word spreads quickly in a small community and tales are stretched. It is almost impossible to outlive something like that. Silly man. Turned himself into an outcast.
    Here you earn a nickname as well. It can go down to the next generation too. I wonder he tells the story to his drinking mates now

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    1. He's dead now. I wouldn't have told the story had he not been. He was a 'one-off'.

      Amazing how the trolls defend criminal criminals and their exploits; I'm deleting them as soon as I see them.

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  5. Assuming he had lived in the area for a number of years and would know the customs, he is just a thief. I am not seeing any support for him and I can't really see why there would be.

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    1. I deleted them! My two regular trolls are just argumentative and illogical. They support crazy things in the hope that it will annoy me. I simply delete the sad gits.

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  6. Replies
    1. I wish I'd thought of that. A much better title than mine!

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    2. Oh dear, I'd better log off ;-)

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  7. I think that 9 times out of 10, the log pile would disappear in Britain too, so maybe he was just representing the nation.

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    1. This is an area that has always prided itself on its honesty. Crime of any sort was almost unheard of. So many things we take for granted rely on the honesty of all residents. He let the side down; I can't imagine what went through his mind; other than unwarranted anger of course.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. She told me that if a comment appeared on my page, it would be someone else pretending to be her. Can you honestly imagine anyone wanting to be mistaken for Ursula? Good god; no thanks.

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  8. Ex pats ...locals, foreigners
    Lots of weird people around cro

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    1. And a lot of them hide away in the French countryside.

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  9. My experience is that if you behave yourself, learn the language and attempt to fit in you are very well accepted here in France. However, I was married to a violent drunk (who happened to be American so both of us were expats). One time I took my son into town to watch the England/France rugby match on the big screen (again). When I came back my now ex had downed 16 beers (I counted) and was half way through a bottle of whiskey. Of course he kicked off and I had to call the police because I had kids in the house. As I had my England flag across my entrance door and as (seemingly) all police interventions are reported to the local press, my neighbour asked me if I had heard the story of two Brits getting into a physical fight because of the rugby. I had to explain to her that it was us, had nothing to do with the rugby but more to do with the barrel of booze my husband had drunk that night! Fame at last!

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    1. You didn't mention who won the match!!!

      That doesn't sound ideal. An American committed a murder in a village very close to us. It was apparently an argument over something trivial, that got out of hand.

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    2. Ha, England started off winning but France eventually won the match. But we won the war - it was 2003!

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  10. Farmers round here (Dales) leave stuff on the side of the road to collect later and it stays there.

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  11. Actually....here in Hawaii, it would be presumed that it had been left out by the road side for people to help themselves. An example of needing to know the local ways.

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