A Diane Johnson, on her trials and tribulations coping in France (of which she writes, evidently in all seriousness and while also somehow keeping a straight face), in the Washington Post (via Joe — “…These people, this morally repugnant elite, more than anything are responsible for the United States’ image in the world…” — at ¡No Pasarán!):

PARIS For Americans living in Europe, like my husband and me, watching the U.S. dollar slide into the vale of no value has been a bit like gaining weight: At first, when you notice those additional pounds, you tell yourself it’s only temporary…

…Small luxuries are the first thing to go. In our family, with a great feeling of sacrifice, we first stopped ordering mineral water in restaurants, saving as much as 4 euros an outing! This turns out to be everyone’s first stratagem, and it doesn’t make a dent. Then we calculated that cutting out one restaurant meal would save around $200 a week, or $800 a month!…

…Gone is the impulse purchase of cepes or expensive terrines of foie gras. Someone advises us with perfect seriousness that drinking wine is cheaper than drinking Coke, but that doesn’t help us since we do that anyway. Another friend recommends buying a phalaenopsis orchid plant that lasts months instead of spending 20 euros a week on cut flowers…

…I think of stopping our subscription to Le Figaro, but not to the International Herald Tribune, without which we’d be lost. Cooperatives for exchanging the New Yorker have sprung up. I pass on my Times Literary Supplements and New York Reviews of Books to my friend Eric in Germany…

Almost all we Americans living over here are struck by the lack of sympathy we get from people back home, beginning with Congress, which builds in subtle forms of punishment for the fun of living the European life, such as making expatriates pay taxes in both countries and refusing us Medicare. Paradoxically, we expats never feel more American than when we’re over here in Europe, where we’re suffused with patriotism and passionate concern for our country. But here is where we live, and no one likes to be uprooted — or, more especially, to uproot their kids. And many who work in specialized fields here would have trouble finding jobs back home, where things have moved on without them. My husband, a professor of medicine, is retired from the University of California and works on world health issues for organizations based in Paris. I’m the trailing wife — no hardship, since a novelist can work anywhere. And one of our kids is married to a Frenchman here and has produced three little Français, so we have lots of reasons to stay, even apart from the safer streets and wonderful trains…

One can only commiserate. Here in England, for example, we (my English wife and I) similarly know the beset feeling.

Absolutely, it’s scandalous: Why shouldn’t Medicare NOT cover her health care in France, considering all of the billions saved annually by there being no government cover for domestic non-impoverished non-retirees? And sadly, people like myself (in 2007) were soaked through having to pay U.S. federal taxes on what they earned above the equivalent of U.S. $85,700 — meaning that if you inexplicably earned as little as $90,700, for the privilege of still voting in U.S. elections, carrying a U.S. passport, and never having to do jury duty, one was appallingly liable for taxes on an astronomical $5,000 of it. In 2008, it will be even worse, when the first $87,600 may be excludable. (Shortly, I expect to hear from my accountant as to how much it may still be possible to hide in Liechtenstein.)

A distasteful struggle to makes ends meet, the likes of that causes. Matters are especially tough now, considering our little get about car, a new Aston-Martin 6 year old Volvo, is up for its MOT again next month. In fact, we are extra fortunate to be dealing in U.K. sterling due to the fact we don’t imagine we are doing a Hemingway impersonation we are actually resident here permanently, and aren’t paid in tacky American dollars by oh, cringe foreign employers.  So we are perhaps far more able to fit in locally in this elevated society in which some Americans often feel a bit apart — where it can cost you only 80p to park for a hour on a side street, merely £5.70 for a gallon of petrol, and teenage thugs model youth add so much to the ever-relaxed, sophisticated quality of life enjoyed by all.

Indeed, despite the rapacious Americanization strangling the globe, thankfully remnants of the days of yore can still be found, if one knows where to look. Where in the U.S., for instance, is it possible to see impromptu jousting exhibitions . . .

. . . undertaken by vigorous young men out to prove themselves in the manner of their ancestors . . . and sometimes in the most unlikely of places?:

And the daily pulse of life is without a doubt far more intellectually exhilarating and uplifting than anywhere in the States. Why just yesterday, for Bank Holiday Monday, since our personal staff begged for one day off a couple of days earlier the wife took a few moments between her daily horseback ride and the regular visit to our estate of her favorite haute couture designer to organize an Ocado supermarket home delivery. We knew we’d need it because we had decided to pass on our weekly get together with the Stuart heir to the English throne and his adorable children partake of chicken fajitas for dinner, last night. Afterwards, I took a rejuvenating turn about the neighbourhood (sorry, one falls so easily into at times confusing English and Amurican) with the hound.

Which reminds me of a funny one. First, you don’t mind if I have another gin and tonic? Okay, a couple of nights ago, the hound and I encountered a nodding aristocrat local, lately emerged from a cafe public house, who while doing his evening walkabout admiring the area’s flora leaned against a tree and relieved himself. Then, when I got back to the house, I applied his monthly anti-tick coverage. (The hound’s, I mean.) So different from America.

Still, living in a quiet, coastal English community does have some downsides. Rural people are often more stand-offish than those in London, and harder to get to know. For example, no one has even apparently attempted as of yet to look to use our car. That in comparison to when one night, on our London driveway a few years back, someone had (between about midnight and 5 AM) thoughtfully tried to remove the driver side door lock and take the vehicle for a spin. After all, it being England, once he’d used it for his errand, he would have returned the car, full tank, forthwith — so considerate are people here overall compared to the mostly uncouth Americans at home, you know.

Morals are also more modern and flexible here compared to the Christian fundamentalist-dominated, stifling U.S., if you know what I mean [ ]. Just the other day, the wife crossed paths briefly with the stunning Euro-babe 70ish, Swiss retired schoolteacher who lives alone a couple of doors down. Referring to me, the woman playfully said to the wife, “I would like to chat him up” . . . which I know only because the wife later related the conversation to me while laughing so hard she practically had tears streaming down her face. Not everything’s different, though, for the wife forewarned me she plans to keep a closer eye on me from now on.

That’s all just for starters. However, after our move down south in 2007 both the wife and I are thrilled to be gone from do find we miss all the life and culture of violent, dangerous, congested London. Especially longed for are our trudges commutes around underneath that vibrant city. (Finsbury Park is a hidden gem well-to-do American visitors doing the Grand Tour shouldn’t overlook.) The overcrowded, often filthy and expensive, strike at the drop of a hat comfortable, friendly and value for money London Underground, with its jihadists who blow themselves up (or try to) wonderful variety of people one interacts with daily, is particularly missed. Also wistfully recalled are the evenings in the West End, and the puking people and drunks posh gents you encounter, especially at weekends . . .

. . . Oh, excuse me, the house servants are nowhere to be found (it’s hard to get good help these days) and the phone’s ringing. [How do you use this machine again? That's right, press "green".]

“Hello…uh, huh, just a second…yes, a second. Yes, that’s right I’m not British, so even though it’s become wonderfully transatlantic, my accent might still be a bit hard to understand, I know.”

And I know you reading this are likely intensely keen to hear oh so much more, but I do have to head off now. Yes, I’m aware also that there’s some voting going on in a couple of places in the U.S. few people ever would much think about if there weren’t, and that I usually have something to say on the electoral subject. However, it’s Bianca, my new tax haven accountant in Vaduz, calling on the secure line a lady I think might be in India, who wants to know if I would be interested in changing my long distance provider. Ssssh. Don’t tell any of the little people back home what they’re missing of “the European life“.