Mr Grumpy

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A couple of months back the Mrs and I made one of our few pilgrimages back to the UK to take our daughter to see the grandparents. Naturally, we took advantage of having the babysitting service to hand and had a rare night out on the town.

As we were all staying at my parents we didn’t need to rush back for the babysitter and so after we’d had our meal we stuck around in the town for a few late drinks.

We had only been in one such bar 5 minutes, and I was still stood at the bar being served when a group of people, about our age came up behind us. They had obviously had one or two drinks more than us and asked us where we came from.

Given that we have lived in the same Village in Alicante for almost 6 years, It didn’t feel odd for us to reply that we were indeed from Alicante.

On hearing this one of the guys became quite sneering and aggressive towards us both. Even though we are both in our thirties he began a rant about expats moving abroad to Spain only to come back a few years later and start to sponge off the state whenever things got rough, or they need medical treatment etc...

Unusually for me, I decided to reason with him as opposed to let my right hand settle the argument.

I explained that as we owned and rented out property in the UK, we paid taxes to the state, and equally so, we paid voluntary UK national insurance contributions. Since we were both 18 we had been in permanent employment and not taken any benefits out of the UK system.

Additionally, we both worked legally in Spain and paid for state healthcare, but furthermore we had opted to take out private healthcare in Spain aswell.

He conceded that, ok, maybe we weren’t sponging off either the UK or Spain, but that many expats in Spain were. Again, I countered with the fact that surely as we were all part of Europe ‘us expats’ should be entitled to take our healthcare and benefits wherever and whenever the system allowed us to, assuming of course that we had paid in our contributions.

Oddly enough, and much to my satisfaction he apologised and bought me a drink before staggering off, but it got me thinking... I honestly didn’t think that he believed the arguments that he was using in his ‘debate’ for one second. I think that he was jealous and frustrated that he really wished he had the balls to do something about his own situation in life and do something similar – not necessarily move to Spain – just to take control and stop making excuses for how ‘things hadn’t quite worked out for him yet’ (He had already told me that he was an Icecream man, and that he blamed the last 2 English summers for poor business!).

I suppose the point that I am making is this – after reading numerous forum posts on expat life, I am sick and tired of being put in a position where I feel that I have to apologise for making the decision to stop moaning about my life in the UK, and take charge of my own destiny. Like many other people who have made the move over here, I have done so because I don’t expect anybody to look after me , but I will certainly take advantage of every opportunity that I can in life.

....And I would have hit him if he was smaller than me .