At Least Someone Else Is In The Same

[emmie]

boat,
gloomy, surely not
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22985889

[ichkeria]

I've lived in France and love the country.
But I've never thought of French people of having a particular "joie de vivre". In fact in my experience the French think the British are jollier than they are.
Maybe it's a question of neighbours looking over each other's fences and thinking each is having a better life than they are :-)

[emmie]

i have visited many time and lived there a short while, i liked some of the things in France, the food especially, but their attitude to work was always rather slow on the uptake.

[emmie]

don;t you think it has something to do with live now pay later attitude, all lovely and rosy, until you have to pay, and now they are realising like other countries that having the best of things comes with a price.

[FredPuli43]

Never understood joie de vivre. The French certainly don't have it and never have had, in my experience; it is more something that they aspire to having, like Summer for us, than something which they possess. They are fundamentally a rural people in their ways, and you know how happy farmers always are.

[emmie]

not so much about their love of life, more than they are and will be struggling in the near future, i think that is what John Simpson's report was also about. That austerity measures will hit, that they have to wake up to the fact that high pension payouts, and early retirement aren't going to keep on happening, belt tightening all round