Terminal 5 has touched a deep fear in all true Brits.
We fear that Terminal 5 is an accurate symbol of everything that we have become. Grand Projects in our etiolated hands end in chaos: Wembley Stadium, The Millennium Dome, The Millennium Bridge, The Millennium Stadium, and The Scottish Parliament Building. Over budget, over time, not fit for purpose – you name it and we muck it up.
My first reaction (no, that’s wrong, my second reaction) after the Olympic Games were ‘awarded’ to London was, “Oh God what an embarrassment the opening ceremony is going to be in the unfinished stadium!” My first reaction was of course, “Ha, that’s one in the eye for the French!” Though not necessarily in those exact words.
But we do seem incapable of staging a big event without disaster running in parallel. In Terminal (how appropriate is that word!) 5 the chaos has been extended over days and now I understand that there are 25,000 cases lurking in the bright new corners of this immense warehouse of a building.
I was talking with a senior colleague in the school playground this morning (in short sleeved shirt and bright sunshine, I might add for my British readers!) and she was bewailing the degenerated state of British society. A British society which she has left. A British society of which she is no longer an integral part.
I am sure that British people living abroad have a complex relationship with their home country: part sentimental; part dismissive; part nostalgic, part resentful; part condescending; part rueful. I should stop there, I am aware that I am generalising from a very small example base.
When Toni wants to irritate me, he calls me an ex-pat. When I want to irritate him I explain, patiently, that I can never be an ex-pat or foreigner because, where ever I am I am British and therefore everyone who is not British is, ipso facto foreign, not I!
While I do not miss being in Britain every time the sun comes out in Catalonia and warms my bones, I do care passionately about what happens there in my absence. I also need to hear English spoken and life without Radio 4 would be immeasurably poorer for me. I realise that this sounds contradictory, but it is a simple fact that you cannot live for half a century in a country without it imprinting itself on you deepest consciousness. I can be, I am, happy in Catalonia but Britain will never, can never, leave me.
This is my usual long winded way of saying that I am always conscious about and very sensitive about criticism of my country from people who have left it.
I use the example of a school.
You can work in a school for years and within a term of your leaving the personalities working there will have changed. Within a year the normal turnover of staff will mean that, should you return the number of strange faces will be bewildering? In any case, given the size of the school I left, hundreds of pupils enter and leave each year. In the school that I am in at the moment years 3, 4, 5, and 6 comprise about 100 pupils! The Primary School staff comprises 9 souls with some ancillary help. A single member of staff leaving therefore means more than 10% change. A few months can change an institution like a school out of all recognition.
As with a school so with a country.
One can listen to Radio 4 all through the day but that only gives you a highly selective view of the concerns of ABC 1s in their fifties (I understand that is the demographic of the Radio 4 audience!) it is not the same as living there. All the seemingly insignificant trivia of actually living in the country is passing me by: I have only the big picture rather than the actuality of life there now.
Meanwhile the weather forecast is for sunshine for the next four days.
How shallow I can be!
I love it!
We fear that Terminal 5 is an accurate symbol of everything that we have become. Grand Projects in our etiolated hands end in chaos: Wembley Stadium, The Millennium Dome, The Millennium Bridge, The Millennium Stadium, and The Scottish Parliament Building. Over budget, over time, not fit for purpose – you name it and we muck it up.
My first reaction (no, that’s wrong, my second reaction) after the Olympic Games were ‘awarded’ to London was, “Oh God what an embarrassment the opening ceremony is going to be in the unfinished stadium!” My first reaction was of course, “Ha, that’s one in the eye for the French!” Though not necessarily in those exact words.
But we do seem incapable of staging a big event without disaster running in parallel. In Terminal (how appropriate is that word!) 5 the chaos has been extended over days and now I understand that there are 25,000 cases lurking in the bright new corners of this immense warehouse of a building.
I was talking with a senior colleague in the school playground this morning (in short sleeved shirt and bright sunshine, I might add for my British readers!) and she was bewailing the degenerated state of British society. A British society which she has left. A British society of which she is no longer an integral part.
I am sure that British people living abroad have a complex relationship with their home country: part sentimental; part dismissive; part nostalgic, part resentful; part condescending; part rueful. I should stop there, I am aware that I am generalising from a very small example base.
When Toni wants to irritate me, he calls me an ex-pat. When I want to irritate him I explain, patiently, that I can never be an ex-pat or foreigner because, where ever I am I am British and therefore everyone who is not British is, ipso facto foreign, not I!
While I do not miss being in Britain every time the sun comes out in Catalonia and warms my bones, I do care passionately about what happens there in my absence. I also need to hear English spoken and life without Radio 4 would be immeasurably poorer for me. I realise that this sounds contradictory, but it is a simple fact that you cannot live for half a century in a country without it imprinting itself on you deepest consciousness. I can be, I am, happy in Catalonia but Britain will never, can never, leave me.
This is my usual long winded way of saying that I am always conscious about and very sensitive about criticism of my country from people who have left it.
I use the example of a school.
You can work in a school for years and within a term of your leaving the personalities working there will have changed. Within a year the normal turnover of staff will mean that, should you return the number of strange faces will be bewildering? In any case, given the size of the school I left, hundreds of pupils enter and leave each year. In the school that I am in at the moment years 3, 4, 5, and 6 comprise about 100 pupils! The Primary School staff comprises 9 souls with some ancillary help. A single member of staff leaving therefore means more than 10% change. A few months can change an institution like a school out of all recognition.
As with a school so with a country.
One can listen to Radio 4 all through the day but that only gives you a highly selective view of the concerns of ABC 1s in their fifties (I understand that is the demographic of the Radio 4 audience!) it is not the same as living there. All the seemingly insignificant trivia of actually living in the country is passing me by: I have only the big picture rather than the actuality of life there now.Meanwhile the weather forecast is for sunshine for the next four days.
How shallow I can be!
I love it!
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