Brian’s comment: a response (part 1)
What do you do the week after you announce you are leaving the country forever? Well, you go on holiday of course. James and I flew out to Dublin for a weekend with his family to celebrate his dad’s sixtieth birthday. It was wet (unsurprisingly - there were floods two hours drive further north) but fun: Kilmainham Gaol was particularly interesting and you can’t go to Ireland without taking in the Guinness in dangerous quantities. The black stuff: so good yet so bad. You can see all the photos at the usual Flickr site.
I’ve spent the rest of this week graciously accepting praise from colleagues who are sorry to see me leaving, and confirming that it is very exciting to be moving to Sydney in ten weeks. (Ten weeks!!) Everyone agrees it is an amazing opportunity. However, after poor old Brian’s comment last week I started thinking: what will I miss about Blighty? What won’t I? Friends and family aside (they go without saying) there are some British idiosyncracies that make it a decent and envied place in which to live. More on that next week; for now, dear Brian, here are a few things that I can certainly live without:
The weather
I’ve said it before: when the sun shines on Britain it is the most beautiful country on Earth. The trouble is lately that there’s no bloody sunshine. The last two summers have been total washouts, literally. I’m sick of living in a permanent state of SAD. (Can you still call it a disorder when it is in fact the norm? Perhaps ‘SAD’ to describe the unusual condition resulting from actually receiving the recommended Vitamin D intake in one day.) After two years of near-permanent autumn I am ready for a bit of summer, and where better to go than a country almost completely covered in desert? Sure, the upside-down seasons are going to take some getting used to - barbecue at Christmas: skiing on my birthday - but I think I can live with that. Turkey dinner on Bondi? Things could be worse.
The transport
For one of the most advanced civilisations on Earth it takes a hell of a long time to get anywhere. Great Britain isn’t even that big; France is three times the size and it takes half the time to go the same distance. Transport in the UK is among the worst in the developed world. You can blame privitisation, lack of investment, or public apathy but the fact remains: if you want to get around the island nation you had better book a couple more days off to get to and from your destination. And it’s not just that the roads are always full and the buses are always late, and the trains are one generation removed from Thomas the Tank Engine: the cost is prohibitive. Oil prices aside, trying to buy a train ticket for less than the national debt of Chad takes more time online than it did to earn the funds in the first place. And you want flexibility? That will be one right eye, please. Case in point, comparable distances: Sydney to Newcastle, Australia? $18 (about £9). Bristol to Birmingham, UK? £34 (about $68). You do the maths.
The national hysteria
I live in a pretty ropey district of Bristol. By day it’s all Georgian buildings and solicitors’ offices, but it certainly changes when the sun goes down. (Regular joke: at least the hookers keep the car crime down.) Just up the road is a bail hostel for recently released criminals including murderers and, until recently, paedophiles (aside). Last year we had a spate of gang shootings in and around the area. All this happens on my doorstep but I don’t feel particularly afraid; life is too short to worry about everything that might happen. I take the usual precautions and get on with things, so I rather resent the Daily Mail whipping it up and making me feel like I live in fear of things that aren’t likely to happen to me, statistically speaking. Yes, bad things happen to good people, but not every kid in a hoodie is carrying a knife and not every person with an accent is an illegal immigrant. (Oh, and The Daily Express, don’t think your advert passed me by either. Getting the man in the morning suit with the buttonhole and top hat to say he stood for traditional values. Yeah, subtle.) I rarely read the papers (thank you, internet) because I don’t like feeling like I want to put my head in the oven. And once and for all: Big Brother is NOT big news. Give it a rest.
Perhaps I give Australia too much credit, but as far as I can tell they have a better perspective on what actually constitues a problem and their papers report the news instead of making you afraid of something and blaming the government for not having fixed it already. That said, I am looking forward to getting over there and catching up on the next fantastic development in the Schapelle Corby story. (Ah, Schadenfreude, my good friend; the family background is my favourite part.)
It’s not all bad in the UK, as I shall expound next week, but these are three areas I shall not lament leaving. Oh, and as you found out yourself, Brian, there are no damn rubbish bins ANYWHERE any more. And people wonder why litter is such a problem. Honestly.
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* Strangely the city council thought that this was the perfect spot to build a nursery school. Despite setting up there first, the bail hostel got the blame for being in the wrong place. Go figure. Anyway, back to the story.
