June 2007

I can just see the queues at Dubai and Abu Dhabi airport now, the overpowering smell of aftershave and perfume, the moment of tension as the border guard’s manicured hand taps your passport number onto the computer keyboard and the bored expression as s/he waves you through. And then the smile as you know you have six weeks, an exotic destination or two and a bank account full of money to spend. You lucky dogs. And then the thought – just two maybe three more years of this and I’ll have saved enough…. Just one more contract…..

We’ve been back almost a year now and the report card is looking ok – no-one has starved to death, our house has not been repossessed yet and the sun has shone on brief occasions in the last few weeks. Yes, even the odd flash of sunlight in between the heaviest rainfall in recorded history in Britain for June and devastating floods across the nation.

The things we still miss are friends, salary cheque, swimming pool, barbeques, camping, and Trudy’s parties. But these are balanced by… … er, balanced by what? The friends and family we left behind, English pubs, the seasons, countryside, culture, not biting your lip every time the latest psycho manager adds some new humiliation to your day; not having wankers flashing their lights in your rear mirror as they drive at 160 miles per hour two inches from your bumper; escaping the tedium of the 1,000 km long mall; ‘Freedom!!’ as Mel Gibson screams before his heart is ripped out in Braveheart.

After a year there is no profound advice to give except ‘save, save, save!’ It’s scary how much money you get through resettling. Money has been the only worry – obviously getting a job has been difficult but it can be done, if you are prepared to start on two hours a week at the local FE College, or work full time shovelling cement alongside Polish labourers.

We’re still not been getting out that much, but we did have a glorious day last weekend sailing on Sarah’s sister’s husband’s yacht down the river Ex from Topsham to Exmouth. The sun shone all day and we slept overnight on the yacht after mooring by a pub and drinking the local beers and ciders. West country cider, mmmmmm. As regards sailing - I love the bit where you sit on the deck with a glass of something, watching the light reflecting off the estuary. The stuff with all those ropes and sails seems a bit of a distraction from that side of things. Young Tom only seemed to like the ropes part of it – so hopefully he can be trained up and I can just snooze like a pensioner on a cruise ship if we ever get invited again.

This week TV continues to take up the best part of the evening after a hard day of walking the dogs, hanging out endless baskets of washing and reading Robin Day’s or some other overpaid BBC journalist’s turgid autobiography. Everyone moans about the telly but I think now is a golden age. There certainly is more rubbish than ever on the box, but if you are handy with a remote you can see all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff. When we left England 11 years ago there were just 4 channels so if you didn’t like Coronation Street, Eastenders or American sitcoms the chances are you were stuck watching the likes of Floyd getting drunk while cooking a delicacy in some sun-drenched corner of Europe (on a good night) which was no comfort in mid-February in Manchester when it had not stopped raining for two months.

Now there’s always something to pass the time. A film, a comedy, a reality TV programme, last night The History of the Barbarians by Terry Gilliam, Krapp’s Last Tape starring Harold Pinter, the Simpsons and Have I Got News for You – still going strong. Even the most mundane looking programme can be interesting and tell you a lot about living in Britain. For example Points West - a dull as ditchwater local news programme got an architect called George Ferguson to look at the multimillion pound regeneration of Gloucester Docks which is about an hour’s drive north of us. The docks only have a handful of visitors a day, despite having a ton of money thrown at it. So the architect went to the centre of two busy, successful port towns: Copenhagen and Amsterdam to see what made them tick. One of the first things Ferguson learnt from his Dutch and Danish peers was the importance of slowing everything down to human speed. In the old centres of both towns everyone either walks or cycles or perhaps gets a tram for the longer distances. Cars are very, very expensive to park and drive in the centre of town and are generally about as rare as a horse on the streets of London. The economies of Copenhagen and Amsterdam are thriving because people enjoy being out and about – chatting, having coffee, browsing in the market stalls, eating in pavement cafes and watching life go by. The old central dockside areas are peaceful, pleasant, pedestrianised areas to be in so people live there, eat there, meet there and spend their money there.

Gloucester by comparison is dominated by car-clogged roads so nobody walks or cycles anywhere or goes within a mile of the docks. So after doing his research the architect presented his ideas for regenerating the old port area to the local council worthies by showing a film of what he had learned in Denmark and Holland on a big screen at night by Gloucester dockside itself. He emphasised that you have to make it people friendly, have attractive spaces rather than concrete squares with the wind howling around about. This bring lots of small businesses, traditional crafts and market stalls to the area. He wanted to change the infrastructure to encourage cycling and walking so that people would stop and stay.

But he might as well have brought a wheelbarrow full of dog shit to the old duffers on the council who sat there with folded arms and sour faces. They didn’t believe that Gloucester had anything to learn from fancy European cities and whinged at him: ‘People may like walking and cycling in Amsterdam, but this is Gloucester and we do things differently.’ ‘Yes, you stupid old farts’ were the words hovering about his tightly pursed lips. I wanted him to grab them by their woollen sweaters and throw them into the dock.

Lets face it England is not and never will be a part of Europe. We love dirty, polluted and rubbish-strewn streets too much. We want our kids to lie around sniffing glue or dart about in hoods spraying graffiti on motorway underpasses. Better still they should learn to joyride cars expertly around faceless estates and then leave them burnt out in the deserted parks for younger kids to smoke crack in. If life was good in Britain what would people have to complain about? We don’t want the streets clogged up with people chatting or riding bicycles. We are a nation of Jeremy Clarksons who would rather sit in a thousand mile traffic jam and run down cyclists in enormous four-wheel drives at the traffic lights than actually stop and get out of our effing cars for a minute to smell the tulips. It won’t be long before we go the way of Los Angeles where you’re liable to be arrested for walking anywhere.

That New European Constitution

Today the EU are busy redrafting the European constitution and one suggestion that has been floated is to have a rotating administration where different countries take exclusive responsibilities for specific policy areas for a number of years each. Then after every country has had a go we’d know which countries do the best jobs and maybe make them permanently in charge of particular departments. The trouble is this could go very well for some years and really badly in other years. In a good year it could look something like this:

Country Area of Responsibility

England: Music and television

France: Food and wine

Italy: Fashion and design

Finland: Foreign relations

Switzerland: Banking and democracy

Germany: Engineering and train timetables

Sweden: Anti-corruption and social services

Norway: Energy and environment

Spain: Art and Nightlife

Czech Republic: Beer and jazz

Denmark: Health and the economy

Hungary: Steam baths and goulash

Holland: Transport and drugs

Scotland: Stand-up comedy and whisky

Ireland: Literature and Guinness

….but in a bad year it could look like this:

Country Area of Responsibility

England: Transport and foreign relations

France: Music and television

Italy: Anti-corruption and democracy

Finland: Nightlife and art

Switzerland: Stand up comedy and goulash

Germany: Food and jazz

Sweden: Beer and whisky

Norway: Whaling

Spain: Steam baths and engineering

Czech Republic: Energy and the environment

Denmark: Wine and literature

Hungary: Social services and environment

Holland: Guinness

Scotland: Drugs and Health

Ireland: Fashion and design

Any other suggestions? I’ve left out dozens of European countries, but what can you say about the likes of Macedonia and Portugal?

Write soon with your holiday news and all the goss.

David