I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien [sort of #ProjectPrague blog post]
[Patched together from 2 mailing list comments. Apologies for any remaining disjointness.]
The more about Brexit I read, the commentary, the discussions, especially from pro-Leavers, even the most cool-tempered, moderate, reasonable ones... it's the kind of indiscriminate nonsense and hostility that makes me glad that I no longer live anywhere on that septic island, and hope that I never have to return on a permanent basis.
I mean, sure, Moravians don't like Bohemians, while Bohemians regard Moravia as an empty tract of wasteland. Moravians sometimes also have a very slight distrust of Slovakians because apparently Slovakia sided with Bohemia about something, a thousand years ago. Something like that.
I don't have to care, because I don't belong to any of them. It's all equal to me.
Technically, legally, I was born in Liverpool. The town containing the hospital and my parents' home, 15 miles away.
Then the town I was born in was rezoned into West Lancashire. Does that make me Liverpudlian or Lancastrian? I don't care, my family left both forever in the 1970s and I never wish to return for more than an overnight stop, ta. There's nothing there that I associate with, no particular pleasant memories, no childhood close friends.
The Lancastrian accent is a damned sight more appealing. However, I can't fake it well enough to fool Lancastrians, whereas I can fake Scouse well enough to pass -- at least if I'm drunk enough.
Normally, I speak RP.
But in London, I was a Northerner, blunt to the point of rudeness. I lived there for 22 years and it's far more "home" than Liverpool or Lydiate or Ormskirk or anywhere on the Isle of Man.
Back in the North West, I was a sellout who moved to Mordor. Now, to my Moravian friends, I'm a sellout who moved to Mordor.
When I visited Newcastle or somewhere, or to my mates from around there, I'm not a Northerner at all.
To be frank, to me, it's all tiresome shite.
I'm British by birth, but I don't miss it. Bitter, mild, porter, golden ale; salt'n'vinegar crisps; good chips. You can keep everything else. I'm English but I found Scotland a lot more appealing, except for the weather.
I'm Irish by adoption but can't afford to live there.
I'm Czech by residence but I'm never going to master this language. I'll never belong.
So what does that leave me? I don't really care. I'm free. I can go where I want. For now, I like it here. I hope to live in some other countries and sample some other cultures.
All this partisan stuff, of belonging somewhere and not liking anywhere else because it's Foreign, is alien and ugly and iniquitous to me. Even if it's a harmless bit of fun, it's the sort of thinking that leads to football mob violence, Brexit and war.
I will have no part of it.
I don't really "get" regional pride. I mean, yes, I am aware of the "Northern bluntness" thing and I don't mind that at all, but with a childhood shuttling between outer Liverpool, Nigeria, inner Liverpool, Southport, the Isle of Man and then London for unversity, my accent went all over the place and it taught me that it was useful to be able to adjust said accent a little bit from one region to another.
I don't feel I particularly belong anywhere. I feel very faint nostalgia for early childhood in Lydiate. Much more for Nigeria. I hated school, loved university, so that gave me a fondness for the south east, and when I was able, I headed back there.
Some 22 years later, life in credit-crunch London was getting shitty, for a 40something techie... so when the chance of a job in Brno came up, I leapt at it.
Friends have gone "oh that was so brave!" or "I could never do that!" or "I could never live in country where I don't speak the language!"
It was no big deal. It really genuinely wasn't. Emptying the house was hard work, and I owe a couple of friends who helped a lot. But surprisingly few of them. The paperwork for renting and then actually selling it was a pain. It involved a few flights and inconvenient train journeys. My last 3 or 4 days in London, I rented a car, something so dramatically atypical for me it's hard to describe. I dislike driving, I dislike cars, but I needed it.
So, you know, a few days' hard work here and there, and bam, I was in South Moravia wondering WTF I was doing. But then the new job started and about 3 days later I was too busy to worry. So I haven't done, since then.
It's all been great. A fun roller-coaster ride.
I have a friend who's very proud of the fact that all his life he's lived within 3 miles of where he was born, in a suburb of Nottingham. I've stayed there a few times. Nice enough place. I've been to a few SF cons in Nottingham; I quite like it.
But that sounds like some mediæval hermit choosing to live on a platform on top of a pillar to me. Even the thought, the idea, fills me with dread. I'm not a scouser or a Londoner or an Englishman. I happen to be British. Now I'm Irish too. I happen to live in Bohemia and it lives up to the adjective. I like it here. I fancy living in Paris for a few years at some point, and maybe Berlin, and possibly Asia for a while, and maybe Latin America at some point -- I want to polish up my meagre tatty Spanish.
I don't and won't belong to any of them.
I suppose I feel that feeling that one belongs to somewhere, and believing that the place one belongs to is better than other places, is iniquitous. It seems fun, a harmless joke, but to me, it feels similar to "harmless jokes" about nig-nogs or chinks or nips. It's not meant as such but it smacks to me of deeper feelings that I regard as harmful and dangerous, although I must stress here I am NOT imputing such feelings to anyone here!
I just find the whole area, the whole notion, a bit distasteful. Most people seem to think it's fine, it's nothing.
Some of my closest friends here are a Romanian woman, a Dutch guy, a couple of American guys. One was a French man of Caribbean extraction, but he moved away. One of the Americans is married to a Czech woman, but he did that after he'd been here a decade, it's almost incidental.
We all share this rootlessness. We don't dislike our homelands, but by the same token, none of us seek out the company of our countrymen over here. In fact we vaguely avoid it.
There's another sort of foreigner here. They are often people married to locals who they met soon after they arrived. They mostly have kids.They integrated a bit more into Czech society and they don't socialise with foreigners.
I think of 'em as rubber Czechs, har har. I don't quite get what they are doing or try to do either. I'm not Czech, I'll never be Czech and I don't intend to try to be a fake Czech. I don't expect to live here the rest of my life. I have lots of Czech friends, I sometimes go to Czech events and so on -- I try not to be a resident tourist. But I'm a foreigner, an immigrant worker, and I don't see any point in trying to hide that.
When I was a schoolkid in Southport, we did a day trip to a spinal-injuries hospital with a big childrens' unit. I don't remember where. I briefly tried wheelchair football. It was terrifying. The wheelchair-using kids seemed suicidal: as if they were thinking "I'm already broken, it can't get any worse -- banzai!"
I found it very interesting. I was too young to think "ooh, everyone should spend time in a wheelchair."
But I did, for a while, in 1994. Not from choice, of course. After I binned my ZZR1100.
It was immensely educational. I briefly belonged to another section of society, and I learned some things that were surprising to me. I saw how another part lived and some bits weren't good and they weren't to do with the actual physical disability at all.
Everyone should do it.
Well now I sort of feel that everyone should live abroad for a while too. Somewhere far away and a bit culturally different. Somewhere they don't speak the language and somewhere there are not many of their countrypeople around them.
I'm not saying it harms people not to do this. There's nothing wrong with my mate from Nottingham. But by the nonexistent gods, it's been good for me. I should have done it a decade earlier.
I reckon it'd be good for everyone.
Loving where you're from is fine. Thinking it's better than anywhere else is not fine. By and large, so long as you're not in a warzone or a famine, nowhere is better than anywhere else. And very definitely no people from anywhere are any better as a group, or any worse as a group. There are good and bad people everywhere and in about the same mix, I suspect.
The more about Brexit I read, the commentary, the discussions, especially from pro-Leavers, even the most cool-tempered, moderate, reasonable ones... it's the kind of indiscriminate nonsense and hostility that makes me glad that I no longer live anywhere on that septic island, and hope that I never have to return on a permanent basis.
I mean, sure, Moravians don't like Bohemians, while Bohemians regard Moravia as an empty tract of wasteland. Moravians sometimes also have a very slight distrust of Slovakians because apparently Slovakia sided with Bohemia about something, a thousand years ago. Something like that.
I don't have to care, because I don't belong to any of them. It's all equal to me.
Technically, legally, I was born in Liverpool. The town containing the hospital and my parents' home, 15 miles away.
Then the town I was born in was rezoned into West Lancashire. Does that make me Liverpudlian or Lancastrian? I don't care, my family left both forever in the 1970s and I never wish to return for more than an overnight stop, ta. There's nothing there that I associate with, no particular pleasant memories, no childhood close friends.
The Lancastrian accent is a damned sight more appealing. However, I can't fake it well enough to fool Lancastrians, whereas I can fake Scouse well enough to pass -- at least if I'm drunk enough.
Normally, I speak RP.
But in London, I was a Northerner, blunt to the point of rudeness. I lived there for 22 years and it's far more "home" than Liverpool or Lydiate or Ormskirk or anywhere on the Isle of Man.
Back in the North West, I was a sellout who moved to Mordor. Now, to my Moravian friends, I'm a sellout who moved to Mordor.
When I visited Newcastle or somewhere, or to my mates from around there, I'm not a Northerner at all.
To be frank, to me, it's all tiresome shite.
I'm British by birth, but I don't miss it. Bitter, mild, porter, golden ale; salt'n'vinegar crisps; good chips. You can keep everything else. I'm English but I found Scotland a lot more appealing, except for the weather.
I'm Irish by adoption but can't afford to live there.
I'm Czech by residence but I'm never going to master this language. I'll never belong.
So what does that leave me? I don't really care. I'm free. I can go where I want. For now, I like it here. I hope to live in some other countries and sample some other cultures.
All this partisan stuff, of belonging somewhere and not liking anywhere else because it's Foreign, is alien and ugly and iniquitous to me. Even if it's a harmless bit of fun, it's the sort of thinking that leads to football mob violence, Brexit and war.
I will have no part of it.
I don't really "get" regional pride. I mean, yes, I am aware of the "Northern bluntness" thing and I don't mind that at all, but with a childhood shuttling between outer Liverpool, Nigeria, inner Liverpool, Southport, the Isle of Man and then London for unversity, my accent went all over the place and it taught me that it was useful to be able to adjust said accent a little bit from one region to another.
I don't feel I particularly belong anywhere. I feel very faint nostalgia for early childhood in Lydiate. Much more for Nigeria. I hated school, loved university, so that gave me a fondness for the south east, and when I was able, I headed back there.
Some 22 years later, life in credit-crunch London was getting shitty, for a 40something techie... so when the chance of a job in Brno came up, I leapt at it.
Friends have gone "oh that was so brave!" or "I could never do that!" or "I could never live in country where I don't speak the language!"
It was no big deal. It really genuinely wasn't. Emptying the house was hard work, and I owe a couple of friends who helped a lot. But surprisingly few of them. The paperwork for renting and then actually selling it was a pain. It involved a few flights and inconvenient train journeys. My last 3 or 4 days in London, I rented a car, something so dramatically atypical for me it's hard to describe. I dislike driving, I dislike cars, but I needed it.
So, you know, a few days' hard work here and there, and bam, I was in South Moravia wondering WTF I was doing. But then the new job started and about 3 days later I was too busy to worry. So I haven't done, since then.
It's all been great. A fun roller-coaster ride.
I have a friend who's very proud of the fact that all his life he's lived within 3 miles of where he was born, in a suburb of Nottingham. I've stayed there a few times. Nice enough place. I've been to a few SF cons in Nottingham; I quite like it.
But that sounds like some mediæval hermit choosing to live on a platform on top of a pillar to me. Even the thought, the idea, fills me with dread. I'm not a scouser or a Londoner or an Englishman. I happen to be British. Now I'm Irish too. I happen to live in Bohemia and it lives up to the adjective. I like it here. I fancy living in Paris for a few years at some point, and maybe Berlin, and possibly Asia for a while, and maybe Latin America at some point -- I want to polish up my meagre tatty Spanish.
I don't and won't belong to any of them.
I suppose I feel that feeling that one belongs to somewhere, and believing that the place one belongs to is better than other places, is iniquitous. It seems fun, a harmless joke, but to me, it feels similar to "harmless jokes" about nig-nogs or chinks or nips. It's not meant as such but it smacks to me of deeper feelings that I regard as harmful and dangerous, although I must stress here I am NOT imputing such feelings to anyone here!
I just find the whole area, the whole notion, a bit distasteful. Most people seem to think it's fine, it's nothing.
Some of my closest friends here are a Romanian woman, a Dutch guy, a couple of American guys. One was a French man of Caribbean extraction, but he moved away. One of the Americans is married to a Czech woman, but he did that after he'd been here a decade, it's almost incidental.
We all share this rootlessness. We don't dislike our homelands, but by the same token, none of us seek out the company of our countrymen over here. In fact we vaguely avoid it.
There's another sort of foreigner here. They are often people married to locals who they met soon after they arrived. They mostly have kids.They integrated a bit more into Czech society and they don't socialise with foreigners.
I think of 'em as rubber Czechs, har har. I don't quite get what they are doing or try to do either. I'm not Czech, I'll never be Czech and I don't intend to try to be a fake Czech. I don't expect to live here the rest of my life. I have lots of Czech friends, I sometimes go to Czech events and so on -- I try not to be a resident tourist. But I'm a foreigner, an immigrant worker, and I don't see any point in trying to hide that.
When I was a schoolkid in Southport, we did a day trip to a spinal-injuries hospital with a big childrens' unit. I don't remember where. I briefly tried wheelchair football. It was terrifying. The wheelchair-using kids seemed suicidal: as if they were thinking "I'm already broken, it can't get any worse -- banzai!"
I found it very interesting. I was too young to think "ooh, everyone should spend time in a wheelchair."
But I did, for a while, in 1994. Not from choice, of course. After I binned my ZZR1100.
It was immensely educational. I briefly belonged to another section of society, and I learned some things that were surprising to me. I saw how another part lived and some bits weren't good and they weren't to do with the actual physical disability at all.
Everyone should do it.
Well now I sort of feel that everyone should live abroad for a while too. Somewhere far away and a bit culturally different. Somewhere they don't speak the language and somewhere there are not many of their countrypeople around them.
I'm not saying it harms people not to do this. There's nothing wrong with my mate from Nottingham. But by the nonexistent gods, it's been good for me. I should have done it a decade earlier.
I reckon it'd be good for everyone.
Loving where you're from is fine. Thinking it's better than anywhere else is not fine. By and large, so long as you're not in a warzone or a famine, nowhere is better than anywhere else. And very definitely no people from anywhere are any better as a group, or any worse as a group. There are good and bad people everywhere and in about the same mix, I suspect.