all. I had perhaps even become a little more cheerful, less inclined to the natural grumbling and cynicism of Brits, and more uncomplicatedly optimistic like the Dutch. I was more likely to speak openly and ask difficult questions directly, and had changed the way I spoke English – adopting the Americanised vernacular of people who had learned the language from subtitled MTV. A pavement was a ‘sidewalk’, rubbish ‘trash’, a motorway a ‘highway’. I had even come to sympathise with the prevailing Dutch view of British people: that they were funny and fashionable, but also a little too pale and
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