Do you not have any of those big, bluff, disgustingly cheery, red-faced Germans who talk loudly, laugh and slap you on the back or shoulder while wearing eye-wateringly ugly sports jackets?
You know the sort. The Gert Fröbe type. Usually played hapless POW camp commandants in war movies.
I remember being over there a few years ago during that and wondering what the fúck was going on. It was all over the telly. Every channel seemed to have some sort of unbelievably shít variety show attended by píssed, boot-faced, middle-aged Germans. It was like gazing into the seventh circle of Hell.
One refreshing aspect of moving out of London has been that this kind of stuff is notably more absent. I've not heard a peep about "mental health" from my boy's football organisation, which in all other areas is highly vocal as a community voice.
The only people trying to push it are the tiny cohort of middle class parents at the school.
I think I've previously shared the story about the headmaster at my son's old school in Highgate who said that nothing makes him more proud than when one of his pupils says that they're off for a "councelling session" with the school's Pastoral Support Officer.
Meanwhile the school was being infiltrated by an actual *****phile
Yes, I remember. It's almost as if some of those base instincts and unchecked reactions that people like to call phobias might have some foundation in survival instinct, isn't it? If your instant reaction to the idea of a male nanny is to be suspicious, there are good reasons for that based on the much, much higher likelihood of males to commit sex crimes against children than females.
There's a very good book called 'The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence' that points this out. It makes it clear that our fear responses have evolved over millions of years and that ignoring or overriding them for fear of being rude, racist or whatever is a bad idea. So, for instance, if a lone woman walks into a deserted car park late at night and sees a group of black youths hanging around, she is right to listen to her survival instincts and to turn around and get the fúck out of there because it's really not worth getting raped and/or murdered when the alternative scenario is that you might cause some offence.
These are very unpopular ideas in a modern context, of course, because they prioritise self-protection and commonsense over the risk of offending people.