A trip back

Right, the dust has settled from my latest English visit.  I've been home a week and had time to reflect.  So, a few thoughts - not all of them palatable, I'm sure.



First up, I had a great time, as usual.  My daughter and I travelled on a LOT rewards flight  so the cost was minimal, and both flights between Heathrow and Warsaw were pleasant enough.  As usual with the airline (a flag carrier increasingly masquerading as a slightly posher RyanAir) the outgoing Embraer 190 and returning Boeing 737-800 flights were comfortable, even if Economy Class catering only runs to a coffee or tea and a chocolate wafer biscuit - poor fare for a flight of over 2 hours.  But outbound we managed to get access to the Business Lounge on my Star Alliance Frequent Traveller Silver Card, so we had a decent fill of hot food, pastries and drinks before boarding.  The privilege wasn't returned at Heathrow, where I was brusquely informed I could go in the Lounge but my 11 year old travelling companion would have to wait outside as "the lounge was very busy".  From where we were standing at the reception desk it looked half empty, but there you go - no room at the inn, so Boots sandwiches (for budget reasons) it was.  Coming on top of a close to an hour check in delay because the entire Terminal 2 baggage handling system broke down as we arrived, meaning we had to wait for harassed handlers to turn up with trolleys to manually collect our bags (one of which did not arrive in Warsaw until the Thursday - we flew on Tuesday), it kind of took the gloss off both the shiny new Queens Terminal and the entire trip.

But my sons and my elder sister were as ever very welcoming, and I really enjoyed playing
Grandad Bob while my daughter revelled in being Auntie Ally looking after 3 lovely and energetic 2 year olds.  We split our time between north Kent, where my boys live, and my sister's country cottage a couple of miles inland from the north Norfolk coast close to Wells-next-Sea and Hunstanton.  By and large, while typical for July in England - that is to say warm to hot with a mix of sunshine and cloud with the odd shower - the weather meant we only managed a couple of beach trips.  It was a marked contrast to the three or four weeks of clear skies and 30C plus we had been basking in in Warsaw before the trip.

We had a good day trip around the Norfolk coast from Hunstanton to Great Yarmouth, along the coast road, and managed a paddle or two along the way, then the next day a shopping trip to Kings Lynn and Hunstanton gave further paddling opportunities that my daughter happily took.  I've been to the area many times over the years - my sister has lived at Docking more than 20 - and remarkably neither Lynn nor Sunny Hunny have changed much in all that time (except to get more shabby and run down looking, especially Lynn), and the road between them past Sandringham plagued with more traffic.

Then on the following weekend, we all piled into my son's pick up truck and headed off to Dymchurch on the Kent coast, in a more continental 27C and sunshine.   I've driven through it a couple times years ago but never stopped, and it was a very nice surprise.  The tide was fully in to the steps leading onto the beach so we had to wait a couple of hours before there was sand enough to leave the promenade, but it was worth the wait.  The beach was beautiful, clean and sandy, and pretty much empty, and excellent for sand-castles,  The sea was surprisingly warm, but having forgotten swimsuits we had to settle again for paddles.  We had a good time with the only down side being the travel, particularly homeward, which was a nightmare - of which more in a minute.

The final excursion we had was to my birth town, Edenbridge, close to the Kent-Sussex border.  My mum and dad are buried together there, and I always make a pilgrimage to put fresh flowers on the grave.  The town has changed tremendously since I last lived there, way back in 1978, and now boasts a set of traffic lights at the top of the High Street.  But the police station is now a block of flats, the secondary modern (sorry, comprehensive) school has closed, its extensive playing fields now modern hosing estates.  At the Primary school, the open air swimming pool my parents scrimped and saved and laboured to help build is gone, filled in, concreted over and turned into a netball court.   The White Horse Hotel, a fine pub in my youth, is now just another Costa Coffee outlet, and many of the High Street shops have either closed down or changed into antique shops.  In the Square, where my old residence Church Street meets the High Street, there used to be a ladies' hairdressers, a small bookshop, a toy and fishing tackle shop, a tobacconist and sweetshop and a grocery store   They are all now antique stores, as is the tobacconists across the road where I used to go every Saturday night as a child to buy my dad ten cigarettes and the classified edition of the Evening News that he used to check his football pools.

The character of the town has gone, but that I guess is the price of progress.  However, I did discover some compensation, with the Eden Valley Museum, now open for business in the old Church House, where in my youngest days I used to go to bible class (and right next door to the Crown Inn, where my sister worked the bar for many years and my cousin Sam and his group the Croppers used to host the Edenbridge Folk Club in an upstairs room.  I remember seeing the Strawbs live there, just before they recruited Rick Wakeman, went electric and had a top ten hit with Part of the Union - I preferred their acoustic set, it was brilliant).    We had a lovely hour wandering around, looking at the old pictures and exhibits and chatting to the two ladies running it - and all for free.  There were so many memories: a picture of my auntie, who ran a sweet shop in the High Street and gave me bags of dolly mixtures, pink candy shrimps, lemon bon-bons and all kinds of goodies pretty much every day; a group of people from the well known local builder's merchants with my old football coach prominent (he is still around, a sprightly 85 or so, and a regular contributor to the historical society magazine) and many picture of the epic floods in late 1968 that left our house (a good half mile from the river) with 3 feet or of filthy flood water in the front room, but rewarded me with a week or two off school ("clearing up the mess, sir...").  The museum visit was possibly the highlight of the entire trip (at least for me).



But it was not, I'm afraid, an idyllic trip.  Put simply, England today is not the England I grew up in.  It's not even the England I left in 2000, when I started in earnest my travelling life that led me eventually to making a new life (and family) here in Poland.

Change happens. I understand that.  I've seen many examples, both good and bad, over the years, in many countries.  There is more, much more traffic on the roads, for instance - I remember driving from my sister's place in Norfolk to my then home in North Kent in not much more than an hour and a half in around 1997.  It was a midweek evening, but still - that journey time now would just about get you to the top of the A11 at Barton Mills, with a good 70-80 miles still to go.

Coming back from Dymchurch, the M20 has a contra-flow on the northbound carriageway that stretches from south of Ashford to just north of Maidstone.  We drove it early on a Sunday evening, when you would expect traffic to be at its lightest, but for the entire thirty odd miles we were stuck in slow moving lines of cars, buses and container lorries, inching their way up from the coast.  I don't think we got out of second gear for the entire trip, except when we stopped (again.....) and had to drop down to first.  It was hot, it was boring and incredibly frustrating - especially since there was not a trace of any roadworks going on over the length of the contraflow.  About half way there was a single stupid sign which read "Warning! Road works for at least 6 months.  Delays possible".  We read that as we sat motionless and fuming in the traffic jam.

But it is not actually roadworks.  No: the contraflow is at the forefront of the government's planning for the event (daily more likely) of a No Deal Brexit.  The contraflow will then turn into a lorry park for the ports of Dover and Folkestone, where additional security checks will of course be needed. So to satisfy zealots like Farage, and Johnson, Gove and Rees-Mogg, who between them managed to convince a clear but none the less small majority three years ago to vote to Leave the EU - without a fucking clue what that would actually mean or cost in practice - vast swathes of the Garden of England and its inhabitants are being subjected to increased traffic and pollution.  Good, eh?



Brexit has, of course, opened a veritable Pandora's Box of ills that had perhaps been festering for years (although I have no real recollection of them being as public or widely held in my younger days).  The north-south divide had been there since Thatcher's policies destroyed industries like coal mining, steel and shipbuilding in the north of the country, leaving communities of unemployed and unemployable living in deteriorating housing, whilst simultaneously pushing a free-market, wheeler-dealing, winner take all financial services industry in a de-regulated city of London in the south, where there were more winners than losers (including, I will admit, myself) living in ever bigger more expensive housing.  Council houses were sold off as part of the Tory dream (largely still a fiction) of a property and share owning well to do middle class democracy, and the houses disposed of in this way have never been adequately replaced.

To this already potent mix, the campaign in 2016 added a big smattering of anti - Islamic racism, a dollop of anti - European hatred (an innocent tax paying Polish resident, married with kids of dual Polish - British citizenship - much like mine, in fact - murdered in the lead up to voting by some snotty little Essex boy because "he spoke funny"), and a good wedge of Little Englander hysteria (another tragedy - a well respected Labour politician knifed to death, leaving a husband and two young children, by a maniac yelling "Britain First!").  Lies and misrepresentation was liberally used by both sides of the campaign, and there was a marked absence of reasoned and truthful debate of the issues faced by the entire country.  It split families and relationships and communities on lines other than party political - on the basis of age (Brexiteers tended to be older), on the basis of nationality and religion, on employment (the unemployed or those in manufacturing industry tended to be Brexiteers, whilst those in service industries such as banking and insurance, tended to want to Remain).

After the result, the inability of the government to deliver Brexit has led to more and more anger and frustration, with Parliament itself being even more split than the country it claims to represent.  Two Prime Ministers have resigned over the issue (neither will be missed) and the day we flew home Boris Johnson was elected by 150,000 or so Tory members to be the PM for 60 odd million of us who by and large can neither trust nor stand the man, nor believe a word he says.  This is the man at the forefront of the Leave campaign, trundling around in a red bus emblazoned with the slogan "Leave EU - deliver £350million a week extra for the NHS!" - a lie that suckered in thousands of voters.  The man who announced that "Turkey is about to join the EU and open our borders to sixty million Muslim terrorists" - ignoring the facts that a) this means every living Turk, from moments old to aged senility must be a terrorist, since that number was the TOTAL population of Turkey, and b) despite over 20 years of discussions, the country has met only a handful of the 25 or more conditions laid upon it before the country can even be considered for membership, so is unlikely to join the EU at all in our lifetimes.  This little yarn opened the way to even more anti Muslim rhetoric and screams of we want our country back from the British National Party and a host of related hard-right extremist thugs.

I could write at length about this entire shitshow that will take a generation to clear up and heal the wounds in society (never mind the broken economy that will soon be upon us), but frankly it's way too depressing!  What I WILL say is that in my many trips back to England since the vote, I have noticed that the anger and frustration in a divided nation, far from being healed and brought together (as promised ad nauseum by politicians of all parties) has in fact become even more strident and widespread.  Question Time on the BBC is no longer an entertaining chance to allow politicians to explain and debate priorities and the country's needs and has descended into a weekly bearpit of anger with a studio audience baying abuse at a panel of second rate no-mark and wannabe politicians more intent on abusing and blaming each other by soundbite than attempting to answer the questions raised.  Once Must See TV, I never watch it now.  The same goes for the Andrew Marr Show and Sunday Politics - they have been my means of keeping track on what is happening in my homeland for years, but no more.  I find it sad.

Britain is an angry country now.  Two times on this trip I was involved in incidents that even a year or two ago I'm sure would not have happened.  The first was in the car park of a Lidl store in Kings Lynn.  I was reversing out of a parking space, and stopped to allow a camper van to pass behind me.  Then I finished the manoeuvre and headed to the exit.  Within yards I came across the same van backing into a space, and stopped to let him park.  I smiled and waved to him to carry on.  As he  backed in, the passenger door opened and a burly young man leapt out and started gesturing and yelling abuse at me.  No idea why.  I left them to it.  The second was in Bluewater shopping centre at Dartford.  My daughter and I were walking along when my mobile rang.  I pulled it out of my pocket, still strolling slowly along, and glanced at the screen to see who was calling.  A guy walking the opposite direction, shaven headed, overweight, shorts sand trainers, barged past with "Out the fuckin' way!" yelled at me.  I ignored him, mainly because my daughter was with me.



How and when this will change I have no idea, but I suspect it will be many years - perhaps not in my lifetime.  I love England - it has many lovely places and, by and large, lovely people.  With family and grandkids there I have ties that will not be broken, and I will continue to visit them for as long as I can.  But it seems to me there is a sickness there that is blighting society.  I can't blame it all on Brexit, that would be both too easy and simply wrong.  Nor can I guess at how it will heal or how long that process will take.  But sadly it is no longer a place I would be happy to live - even if I could afford to (another issue - everything is so expensive now!  My pension won't stretch that far.).

It will always be my homeland - but no longer my home.

Getting Old....

“Genteel” is a word not much used nowadays. "Growing old gracefully", it usually meant.

It typically describes the elderly, living out their twilight years, sitting quietly at home sipping tea from bone china cups and saucers and munching on small sandwiches and cream cakes and biscuits. The ladies were usually portrayed wearing flower patterned pinafore dresses under soft wool cardigans, with perhaps an apron over that, and slippers. In summer the scene would shift to a sunlit flowery garden, and wide brimmed straw hats would make an appearance. The gentlemen, meanwhile, invariably wore grey flannel trousers neatly pressed and with turn-ups, perhaps with braces and always a shiny black leather belt for support, a tawny checked shirt with a green or brown knitted tie, topped by a grey v-necked pullover. In summer, this might be replaced by a sleeveless grey v-necked pullover and a trilby or cloth cap (dark grey or dark green gingham check and bought from Barbour of course). Both wore slippers: the ladies’ typically were pastel coloured with a kind of off-white sheepskin ruff around the ankle, while the gentlemen's tended to light brown, probably with a thin dark brown check pattern, and fur lined. Outside in summer, the slippers might be replaced by a pair of sensible and highly polished black leather shoes (or perhaps soft brown leather loafers with thin crepe soles).

The ladies would be reading magazines like Woman, or Women's Own, Country Life or The Lady. The men were usually labouring away at The Times crossword puzzle, or harrumphing over the Reader's Letters page. In the background a radio would be playing softly, the BBC Home Service (classical music and current affairs programming) or the BBC Light Programme (popular music). In the summer, live commentary from the Test cricket or Wimbledon tennis would also feature. Conversation might be desultory, often angry or critical, and driven by the content of the press and radio programming.

This is all 1960s and ‘70s stereotyping of course, and anyone familiar with latter day tv sitcoms like One Foot In The Grave or Terry and June will recognise them immediately. I remember both, vividly, and also my nan – who fitted the genteel definition to a T, bless her. My mum had her moments too, but was generally less genteel in her old age. Dad missed out on that, dying at the young age of 56, but the picture painted here fitted him well enough anyway, with the exceptions of the newspaper (he always read either the Daily Sketch or, after its demise, the Daily Mirror – as befitted the proud working class gardener he was) and the packet of cigarettes, Swan Vestas matches and ash-tray on the table next to him.

Of course, not everyone fitted the ideal. Many people were a lot louder and brasher in their retirement, regular visitors to working men’s clubs and local pubs at any time of day or night, especially in bigger towns and cities, for a game of darts or bar-billiards, or a good old political/sport/religious row (delete as required). But still, they were content to do not so much, after a hard working of life of 50-odd years, and able to live off their pensions.

Things have changed.

For a start, pensions have been considerably devalued in the intervening years. Sure, they've gone up, but still not in step with price increases. Living on a pension alone is incredibly difficult now, especially for those who still have some household debt like mortgages and loans and not much in the way of savings. I know this because although I am pretty much debt free and live in a country where goods, food and services are a lot cheaper, my pensions from 50 years' hard work barely cover what I need - and that's with a reasonably favourable exchange rate. This time next year it may well be more difficult, given the Brexit Shit Show is now running hell for leather towards a No Deal with all the devastating effects that will likely mean to Britain's economy and currency. The theft of taxing my income from what are essentially a lifetime's savings accrued through income tax, national insurance contributions and private plans (meaning I'm being taxed twice on the same money!) makes no sense to me. Beyond the old chestnut of "well, that's what the government wants/law says" - which is all the explanation any financial advisor or accountant has ever been prepared or able to give me - means nothing.

Second, people live longer and are healthy longer. This of course means we are expected to work longer with talk of a retirement age of 70 increasing. Physically - fine: I'm sure most people will be fit enough to work another few years, but would most of them really WANT to? I know I had had enough at 65 but did another year anyway. By the time I approached 66 it just seemed enough was enough - it was increasingly hard to raise any enthusiasm and there were other things I wanted to do with my life. Another 4 years' mandatory graft would have driven me nuts (or nuttier, anyway) - not because I am neither strong nor healthy enough to do it but simply because it no longer floats the boat.

But living longer and being healthier, and crucially stronger and fitter, means that people of 60 or so (when traditionally gentility set in) don't actually WANT to vegetate in front of the radio and munch cucumber sandwiches. We still want to be doing things. So we do.

The number of seniors (a much nicer term than old age pensioners, in my view) taking foreign holidays, camping, hiking, and back packing rather than on Saga all-inclusive coach trips or package holidays, has never been higher, despite the issues we all suffer in terms of pension income described above. The number of grey haired and bearded bikers roaring around on motor bikes is rising. Ditto those in renovated sports cars - or indeed any car. Not all of us are dragging caravans around behind the car - camper vans, self contained and easier to manoeuvre and park are increasing in popularity too and give the freedom to travel on our terms. I quite fancy one myself, actually. And there are tents, lighter and easier to carry and erect than ever before. In a nutshell, we are more adventurous these days.

We want to remain active as well, and this doesn't mean hanging around the local crown green bowling club dressed in immaculate whites. It means getting out and doing things. My 72 year old widowed mother-in-law has been going to university here for a couple of years now, and as well as meeting a whole raft of new friends she gets to go to the opera, to concerts and on various trips to resorts here and overseas with them. I have no idea what course she's taking, but she's enjoying herself for sure. Back in England an old friend and work colleague started a University course (a BA, I think) in European History at London University when he turned 70, and is loving it. Another old friend has recently been elected to represent the Conservative Party on his local council back in the UK at 66. Funds permitting, I would happily enrol in a degree at the Open University – but unfortunately funds do not permit.

Of course, in some areas people quite happily work well beyond pensionable age - the arts being particularly fertile ground. Just because you're over 65 doesn't mean your brain switches off. Writers still write (or, like me, start writing more), painters paint, and musicians - well, what can I say? They go on forever. Bruce Springsteen (age 69) has just released a new and critically acclaimed album, Phil Collins (68) despite arthritis, is touring again - the wonderfully named Not Dead Yet Tour - selling out stadia worldwide (Warsaw last week: some friends went and said it was great). Rod Stewart (74) and Chris de Burgh (70) are playing over here later this year and sold out already. As for the Stones, all of them well over 70, they have just paused their latest World Tour to allow Mick Jagger (75) to have his heart valves replaced. He's now back in the gym and the band back in the rehearsal room with the No Filter Tour set to continue. More power to their elbows, says I - and to their music, too. Heroes all.

And what of myself?

Well, I’ve done the suits, ties and shiny shoes bit, putting on a (perhaps false) impression in the office. I’ve served my time commuting in a variety of places, some easy and some appalling, but most hot and sweaty whatever the climate. I’ve had my fill of early morning and late night flights to and from places I don’t want to be in but have had to go to to satisfy someone else’s demands. Ditto the uncomfortable hotel beds with too soft pillows wrecking my neck and my back.

My suits and shirts and ties are now confined to my wardrobe, gathering dust. At some point I must have a sort out and donate a lot of them to charities – I’m not going to need all of them, just the better ones at Easter, Christmas and, perhaps, family events like weddings and Christenings, First Communions and, at some point, funerals.

Now, all I need are jeans, tee-shirts, sweaters and trainers, plus a parka, waterproof jacket and ski-jacket for winter. In summer substitute shorts and sandals. Some chinos and casual shirts for evenings out. I have a big selection of baseball caps, at least one from everywhere my travels have taken me (apart from Chennai), and two or three cloth caps like dad’s. Plenty to be going on with.

Physically, I’m ok, carrying a bit of weight, but walk and bike a lot to keep it manageable. What’s left of my hair is white, which matches the goatee. I don’t shave every day but trim the goat and shave my head every couple of weeks, or when my wife and daughter tell me to. Unlike a good many seniors these days, I have no body piercings or ear-rings – I don’t understand them. I have a set of tattoos, a 60^th birthday gift from my wife. On one upper arm are my birth sign and those of my eldest sons, and on the other the Chinese horoscope signs for me, my wife and youngest kids. They look cool, now they’ve faded and weathered in a bit, especially when I’ve been out in the sun and worked up a bit of a tan.

Jewellery? My wedding ring on one hand and on the other the signet ring my dad gave me on my 18^th birthday, the year before he passed. I have a silver chain loaded with a small St. Christopher medallion from a market stall outside the Vatican, a tab I bought in Egypt that holds my name in hieroglyphics (including a perfect Lost in Translation spelling mistake), and a very small badge from a leather bracelet, long since rotted away, that bears a likeness of a pre-historic cave painting and is the symbol of the Almeria province in southern Spain, where it was found. Finally, bought at a market stall in small Polish seaside village, a string bracelet carrying seven Ban The Bomb symbols in mock ivory.

In short, if someone described me as “an ageing hippy”, I would be happy with that.

It seems to me that the great thing about growing old(er) in mind and body is that you lose your inhibitions along with the need to keep up appearances (another BBC sitcom from way back when that nicely caricatured gentility). It's certainly the case with me.

I've always had a rebellious streak, and I find it coming out more and more the older I get. I take, and am happy to communicate, strong views on a number of things these days, whether it be politics generally (and Brexit, Trump and populism more specifically), climate change and the environment, history, the future and the role of tech....any number of things. My views are not always in sync with either the popular view or those of whoever I'm talking too, and I admit to stretching them a bit to enliven the debate. But they are honestly held, and while I respect other people's views I reserve the right to strongly disagree with them, whether they like it or not. My late brother-in-law was similar, and I understand better now how and why, I think.

I have no problem wandering around wearing not very much. I'm not embarrassed about the extra weight I'm carrying, nor the bald head, nor any other physical imperfection, real or imagined. I am what I am, and my body is what it is – I can't really change any of it so I'm happy in my own skin. Whether that is an immature position to take or adult, brave or stupid, I neither know nor care.

The fact is I'm growing old Being able to write a piece like this helps me accept and explain the fact. And I intend to make that process last as long as possible - a telegram for the King (or an e-mail or whatever) on my 100th birthday would be good..  

The aim is to do it (dis)gracefully and enjoy the ride.