And where are YOU from?

"Where are you from?"
"Are you from England?"
"¿De dónde eres?"
"Are you Spanish?"
"De ónde és?"

Origin, for anyone venturing outside of their own country, is a hot topic. How many days can go by without me being asked at least one of the above questions? My nationality ranks above my job, my marital status, my education and my ambitions in the list of Top Ten Questions To Ask A New Person. It´s a conversation starter, when confronted by so many new faces on such a regular basis. It´s a conversation filler, when the new face turns out to be a bit short of small-talk. If you´re from the same place - well, hey! Wow! That´s something to talk about then, isn´t it!? What a coincidence! If you´re from different places - cool! What´s it like there? How´s the weather? The beaches? The food?

"Where are you from?" has become one of the most detested questions amongst seasoned nomads. It reeks of unoriginality, boredom, desperation. You´ve reeled off the answer so many times, with catchy little soundbytes devised for your village/region/country/continent, depending on the distance of the questioner´s own origin, and level of geographical comprehension. Thus, in London, I am from Kent. In Portugal, I am from London. In the States, I am British, though the closer I edge inland, the more I become European. In Chile I was, as the most recognised point of reference, from Spain. In Ecuador I was from some where so incomprehensibly distant that it simply became Not Ecuador.

The soundbytes themselves are lame attempts at either self-deprecation, humour, or patriotism, a trait rarely witnessed within England but which is forced to flourish once abroad. A typical soundbyte about my village will also depend, once again, on the other player´s own origin. It could be as follows:

Slough: "Yeah, Kent. Just this crappy little village in the middle of nowhere with one poxy bus an hour to the nearest town. An you only go there if you fancy getting bottled by a couple of orange girls with thongs sticking out above their miniskirts."

Spain: "It´s sort of between London and France. So it´s not as cold as the North. And the food is really ok, no, honestly, you should have a Sunday roast at my grandma´s sometime. No, the beef doesn´t have mad cow disease..."

USA: "It´s this pretty little village with one pub serving traditional pints of Kentish ale, yeah, surrounded by forest and farmland, and at the bottom of the hill, past this really old church, there´s this iron-age burial site with STONES..."

Ecuador: "We have lots of trees in my village too but we have these things called, er, seasons, and, uh, the leaves fall off the trees... yeah, it´s totally weird, and we have glass in our windows cos it´s quite cold, and, um, that´s why we can´t wash our clothes in the river. Well, actually, machines do our washing. Magic."