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Windy Man

The saying goes that a place is made by the people, and I don’t think that is ever more relevant that here, in the UK. My fleeting return was bittersweet. The country is on its knees, barely able to offer basic standards of living, and yet it is filled with wonderful people, staying positive the only way they know how: complaining about it over a pint.

The Old World

One thing that struck me when first arriving back on my own soil was the constantly visible history of the UK. Walking through the streets of Shrewsbury, a town with an average age of about 65, I marvelled at the beautiful old stone and brick homes. As mum and I made the journey into town we passed houses hundreds of years old, still standing, and still habitable. When they were first built they were made for single families and their servants, now they were broken into multiple occupancy flats and apartments. The majesty and grandeur is still there, though.

Old UK building in Shrewsbury

Town itself was even more of a marvel. Skinny little streets, barely wide enough for two small European cars, wind up and through the town between buckling and bent 14th century houses. Small cafés and pubs are nestled under bent rafters, with small windows letting in just enough light to illuminate the wood lined walls and cubbies under low beamed ceilings. The thousands of people, drinks, and lives lived in each fill the rooms, even when they appear empty.

History is visible everywhere in England, telling the story of the vast wealth, periods of poverty, wars, and progress. It’s painted like a tapestry across the whole country, from the furrowed fields filled with the scars of ancient agriculture to the possessive naming of streets and alleyways. England is populated with stories and ghosts of forgotten times.

Skulls in the Shrewsbury abbey UK

The Stiff Upper Lip

The past few years have taken me within a hairs’ breadth of civil wars and political unrest. Latin America is fantastic at making itself heard against the blatant government corruption and abuse of the people within it. Now, I am not condoning all the individual movements, and I am not at all saying that many of the parties involved are models of the perfect society, but returning to the UK and witnessing the passivity of the people under such an oppressive and abusive government turns my stomach.

A pigeon next to an England flag

Even looking a short distance beyond our shores and into Europe should be enough for us to realise that a little civil unrest can do a world of good, yet here we stand as a country, bent backed and broken under a leadership that does nothing but take. Nobody, from the hard-working and supposedly wealthy, to the minimum wage, raw fingered worker, is getting their far share. The UK is a country that is unable to provide even a modicum of what a civilised, developed country should.

Public services are crippled, with ambulances taking hours to get to even severe incidents, the police are beyond a joke, healthcare is dysfunctional to the point of disrepair, and the cost of living is so high that even couples in small homes are hesitant to turn on their heating as winter rolls around. It isn’t that tax is too high and pay is too low, the very infrastructure of the country has crumbled into a barely recognisable shell of a once proud and admirable country.

Small boat in London river

And yet, here we stand, shivering, poor, and malnourished, lining up at food banks across the country, watching our old, robbed of their benefits, dying in droves from the cold, and we say nothing. We don’t take to the streets, burning the companies profiting from our discomfort. We don’t march outside the homes and offices of the government, as they pull every last piece of lint they can from empty pockets. We simply sit at home, watching the news, and believing the lies and distractions from around the world.

I wonder if the English will ever have the spine to rise up and make a difference before it is all too late. It breaks my heart to see the people I love, crippled by the country they live in, adamant that things are going to get better. I left because I had the freedom and will to do so, and that was my solution. But this isn’t something everyone else can, or should, do.

Bristol Graffiti

The Culture Comes in Pints

The reason I came to the UK in the first place was to reconnect with the ones I love. I know a few people who travel long term, and they have little connection to the people they left behind. They have, for one reason or another, left behind their folks from home and set out with the ideas of a new start. I never did that, and have maintained friendships, in some form or another, from across the ocean.

Sitting down in the pubs I love and remember, and being surrounded by wonderful people at the drop of a hat, was more affirming than I think I realised at the time. Almost my whole time spent in the UK was filled with people offering their homes to stay, taking me for dinners and drinks, catching up, and slipping straight back into the routines we had before.

London pub

We shared stories, laughed at the same stupid jokes, made the same foolish late night purchases, and nothing had changed. This was what I had missed, and it was every bit as good as I remembered. My home has changed a million times over my life, rarely more than in the last two years. People speak about missing their “home bed”. For me, it is sitting down to a pint with my English pals and chatting shit until closing time.

There is a drinking culture all over the world, be it mint tea or cold pints, but I think the English have it down best. The cosy English pub is unmatched as a location of life. Bustling through the front door and into the cosy, stale beer smelling, wooden tabled room of a pub, full of chatter and warmth is a moment purer than most. The pub is the communal living room of the UK, where everyone is welcome, and everyone is at home.

Pints and crisps

Times are hard in the UK, and people are poorer than I have ever seen them, and yet they are open-handed, and open-hearted without fail. As soon as I landed, I was welcomed into Luke’s home, and given clothes that suited the weather of the UK better than the ones I had. I had a bed to sleep on, food to eat, and friends to talk to. As my stay went on, there was more of the same.

I never struggled for a place to sleep here, jumping from home to home and friend to friend, despite not having seen any of them for almost two years. Sure, the English can be grumpy as all hell, and we will never stop quietly grumbling, but when it comes to open-heartedness, honesty, and hospitality, we’re up there with the best.

Despite the weather chilling me to the bone, and the state of the country turning my heart to stone, the undying kindness and strength of the folks here warms me in my little patriotic soul.

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