10:00am Monday 26th July 2010
By Jeremy Smith
I think I now know why foreign language students in this city are such a target for Oxford’s home-grown thugs.
It’s obvious when you think about it – whether they are French, Italian, Spanish, American, Brazilian, they all share one thing in common – they’re happy.
Deliriously so. And they never seem to have a ‘down time’ either.
Whether it’s first thing in the morning or last thing at night, you can’t help but be affected by their energy, their joy, their simple joie de vivre.
So it’s little wonder that some of our more Neanderthal yobs (you can’t miss them – thin and spindly, with a pimp swagger and ‘Hard As Steel’ tattoo) are aggravated by their presence.
After all, the foreign boys are better looking, better at football, and funnier. And in this instance, the girls are certainly better at football.
Which means anyone stupid enough to be confused by, among other things, a fork, a mirror, and a door handle, is going to suffer some serious blows to their ego.
I love it every summer when Cornmarket becomes, for a short while at least, a younger and more boisterous version of the United Nations.
Every nationality it seems is represented, either outside McDonald’s or KFC, and from 7pm, the city rocks to an infectious dose of international exuberance.
Singing, laughing, joking, screaming, chanting, dancing – anything indeed with an ‘ing’ on the end.
And here’s a thing – perfectly harmless and perfectly innocent too.
It’s a funny thing, but a few years ago a diving instructor I knew told me he could always tell what nationality a person was by the way they behaved under water.
The Italians always pointed at everything (the coral, the fish, the sand) and exclaimed with their hands; the French always swam fantastically gracefully; the Americans travelled in packs and wore the costliest gear; the Dutch were nervous and reserved, staying close to the surface; the Germans were always checking their dials, gauges and apparatus and the English... they were always bitching (even underwater), breaking off bits of coral and, having returned to the dive boat, vindictive enough to accuse everyone else of getting in their way.
True, he was Australian, but nevertheless, what he said rang true.
Especially since, over the years, I’ve bumped into English school/college parties abroad, and you can always tell, even before you hear them open their mouths, that they’re one of us.
They’re surly, agitated, and looked bored by everything (which, I grant you, in Brussels IS fair).
Still, the simple fact is that our international guests, young though they may be, make a fantastic, and yes very welcome contribution to the general ‘buzz’ of this city.
They may make it difficult to navigate several streets, and increase waiting times in Starbucks by hours, but that’s a small price to pay for their infectious exuberance.
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