As a Scot, to ask 'What is Englishness?

Here is the Norman Tebbitt test! Joan, which side do you support in an Ashes series? My NZ sister has become such a Kiwi that she even supports the All Blacks against Scotland. Traitor! She had the nerve to take me to task for supporting England (and any of the other Home nations) against the ABs.

annodomini Lucky for me I don't follow sport, except cycling sometimes. I was glad when the Australian Cadel Evans did well, and equally glad when the English Bradley Wiggins did well.

However, with the Ashes, I have to admit that even though I don't watch the action, I did feel a bit of quiet smug self-satisfaction that England won!! It drives the locals to distraction, which makes me laugh a bit.

Margaret I'd only been in Vienna few months, the time I came home to meet my fiance's family. I'd lived there a while before, 1965-1966, and had become fluent in German, Anyway, in that few months working there in early 1967 I'd spoken no English at all. It takes a few days or a couple of weeks to get back into Yorkshire English: when I met his family I hadn't reached that stage - my English was still accentless, so I was branded a snob. The fact I'd been doing a big translation for the WHO didn't help - that sounded like a snob job.

It is so very easy to upset people when you've lived abroad - you not only sound different, you see things differently. I would imagine people are more broad minded now though, as England is so multicultural compared with back in the 60s.

Joan, after I'd been in Hamburg for a few months, I was called for interview at the Luxemburg Palais de Justice, for a post as an English/French interpreter which I'd applied for over a year previously. I was interviewed in French by a very imposing panel of civil servants, who looked more and more puzzled as I answered every question in fluent German.

It becomes quite sad in the end really. If I now won the lottery I would not know where to build my second home in England and actually I realise that I no longer want to go there. I would miss my house in Germany too much. That doesn't make me German. My personal history makes that impossible.

Anyway I now have two GCs starting grammar school and they have both proudly told the class and their English teachers that they have an English Grandmother. My own children felt it set them apart and tried to keep it secret. I am English and will remain so, like all the other people who live in a foreign country - we make the best of it and sometimes the best is better than it would have been if we had stayed at home.

* Maggiemaybe * That is so funny! But understandable. I was ill once in Vienna and went to the university hospital (free to students). The medics knew I was English and used English but I was so ill that I answered in German without thinking!

There is a lot we don't know about language acquisition and use, but knowing more than one language is good for the brain, and is now believed to ward off dementia.

Margaret you said: It becomes quite sad in the end really. If I now won the lottery I would not know where to build my second home in England and actually I realise that I no longer want to go there. I would miss my house in Germany too much. That doesn't make me German. My personal history makes that impossible.

These could be my words, substituting Australia.

I live only 45 miles from where I was born, but I still feel 'exiled'. Stupid, I know when so many of you have moved across the world. However, many of the things you are all saying, about not knowing where you belong, ring true for me even though the distance is very short. I often feel homesick for Yorkshire but I know there is nothing there for me now, which makes me realise it is not a place I long for, but a time. That time is gone.

Yes, Nightowl I long for times past too - the 1960s was a terrific time - partly because I was young, but also because it was!

We do see it in a rosy way though - just ask the former East Germans about 'Ostalgia' - ie longing for the communist East German past.

Once, in Kenya, I was sitting outside a café at the coast, sipping coconut juice through a straw, when a German tourist came up and asked me in German if it tasted good. "Ndio," I answered in Swahili - "Yes".

I too am nostalgic about the 60's Joan. Everything was fab, we had our whole lives ahead of us and the world was waiting to be explored. A heady time indeed and a great time to be alive.

Talking of small worlds, I live on the south side of Glasgow, not too far from your brother and I also have a daughter, Glaswegian, living in OZ!

Ciamar a tha thu, Gaol mo cridhe, My DD2 is also a Glaswegian living in Queensland and it sounds as if, even although you are so far away from your Mum, like my DD and I, the strong bond we have cancels out any distance.

Have a wonderful Christmas with your family. Slainte

annodomini Aw, I can understand that. There is a calmness that I feel when I go to places like that. It IS like going home. x

Joan Neilston?! I grew up just outside of Uplawmoor from the age of 11 to 17! Neilston was our local town! This is bizarre...

Barrhead is a working class but perfectly respectable town near to but a little south of the city. Barrhead is actually very close to the suburb I grew up in, Newton Mearns, which is more middle/upper class. About 10mins drive of that. I say upper class as there are always those who think they are the bees knees, if you know what I mean.

Neilston is similar to Barrhead.

Sherwood is a brilliant suburb, just 3 mins closer to the city than we are and I know the cop shop you are talking about! Very safe street! I actually had to go to that cop shop for my finger prints for my perm res visa.

Runcorn I also know very well as I work for the largest property company in that area and we cover Runcorn! Great suburb with the train station straight to the city if you want it.

Brittain St I pass daily. Just next to the train station in Oxley.

Oh my goodness. Such a small world indeed! xxxxxxx

When we were children in the 40s and 50s, we used to go by car from Ayrshire to Fife for our annual summer holiday at Granny's, passing through Barrhead on the way. It was home to Shanks's sanitary ware factory and was therefore known to our family as 'potty town'.

I don't think the 60's were a very good time to be homosexual. Or a battered spouse. Or an abused child. I don't look back to any time in the past through rose-tinted spectacles - even though they were good years for me personally.

We listened to an excellent radio 4 play about the Profumo scandal. I was about 14 at the time, and more interested in youth club, boys, hair and horses at the time. I've read about it since then, but the play was good at setting the social and political scene. I accept we still have hypocrisy but the laws on homosexuality, and social attitudes to the status of men and women, gays and lesbians is much healthier.