When I bought Sally the GS, she only came with one set of keys. The following week, I happened across a stall selling keys at an autojumble and politely asked the stallholder if he had any ‘70s Citroën keys. My enquiry was met with a brusque, "you want French keys, go to France."

It's an attitude I've encountered a lot, since the first car I drove regularly was my mum's Peugeot 309. Lots of mechanics refuse to work on French cars and lots of shops don't stock parts for them. They say that they're complicated and unreliable, and there's no market for the parts. Bullshit. The 309 is more conventionally engineered than my Rover 2000, and there are a damn sight more of them about. Built in Coventry, the 309 is as English as I am - and has been to France less often.

I work as an EFL teacher, teaching English to foreign people. Summer is high season for us, with lots of school groups coming over in their holidays, but it's getting harder and harder for our European neighbours to visit us and get on with the serious business of learning the language of business, diplomacy and air traffic control. Current exchange rates mean that everything's expensive here, plus the fact that we've stayed out of the Euro. English banks don't accept Euros, which means that we cannot accept them in payment and our customers have to lose money by changing their currencies to pounds.

But it doesn't even end there. This summer, students of mine have been beaten up for the heinous crime of being foreign on three separate occasions.

There is something rotten happening in England's culture. Racism is becoming acceptable again. We are becoming close-minded, insular and hateful - and the only losers will be us. The rest of the world can do very well without us, but we cannot get along without them.