Sometimes as a Brit resident in Britanny, France you can get the impression you are being tolerated and not accepted.

The politicians emphasise our differences and cause division.

Yes, we did vote by a clear majority and in record numbers decided to leave the EU and paddle our own canoe. Not everyone agreed but democracy dictates the majority prevails only on the condition minorities are not ignored and their anguish as far as possible is mitigated, without undermining the decision of the majority as far as possible. What you don’t do is obfuscate, drag your feet and cause division by dumb insolence.

You respect each other’s borders, so you don’t turn a blind eye to illegal aliens using your territory to migrate to other friendly sovereign nations. Talking of controlling your border to within 300 metres of your coastline doesn’t wash. The controlled economic area of influence between France and the UK is a minimum of 19 miles up to 200 miles. Each country has the right to physically turn back any person legal or otherwise it doesn’t wish to receive. Each sovereign country can decide which international protocols it observes and can within accepted timescales withdraw from them at any time.

If you are merely a resident in a country you have no rights and must obey the laws of the host nation whether you find them acceptable or not.

Friction can occur at both the individual and national level, but this should not deter from the basic truth that the French deep-down respect and love the Brits.

On 7th June we were travelling from Brittany to Normandy to meet with friends at Rouen for dinner aboard a cruise liner docked there overnight. Travelling down the A13 autoroute my GPS was informing us we were in the middle of farming country with just a few farm tracks either side and only the occasional small village. It was also telling us there were no restaurants for over 100 kms.

Tired and a little peckish we decided to pull off the autoroute and search for a café and boulangerie for a coffee and a sandwich. On approaching a roundabout my wife spotted a café and boulangerie that had been joined together. It looked pretty ordinary and with no alternative available we walked in.

The greeting was extraordinary. Once the staff recognised we were English from our accents, all of them reverted to English and behaved as though King Charles and Queen Camilla had entered their premises by chance. Not only that but the customer ahead of us turned around and said, ‘Welcome to Normandy.’

I couldn’t at first understand why the over enthusiastic welcome. Then it dawned, they thought we were English stragglers from the D-Day Landing Celebrations from the previous day.

Despite the sufferings of their forbears during the Occupation and the innocent casualties caused by wartime hostilities, in Caen two thousand civilians died from the bombing, they still appreciated our forefathers sacrifices to liberate them.

We must never forget what we all did. We may have our differences, but we are still close friends.

Don’t let the politicians tell you otherwise.