Emigration – janeishly

I don’t know what your reaction was to the announcement by the British government of a new, points-based immigration system, but mine has developed over a period of days, like a particularly interesting coloured bruise.

The official points list – would you qualify?

The biggest, purplest, patch comes from the fact that I’m not actually sure I’ve ever known anyone in the UK who has a job paying more than £25,600. I certainly wouldn’t want to bet my life on knowing more than three or four of them.

Then there are various colours made up from “What counts as an official sponsor? Or an appropriate skill level?” to “What foreign-born person with a PhD is going to bother to try to gain entry to such an obviously xenophobic country?” and “You have read the level of English in Brexiteer comments, right?”

And then I contemplate my own arrival in a foreign country, aged 35, with no obvious skill set and a minimal grasp of the language. I got a job as a hotel cleaner – along with all the other immigrants – and spent the first couple of months in the job nodding vigorously, saying “Oui” and then copying the more experienced cleaners when the manager instructed me to clean such items as “les plinthes” (that’s the skirting boards, in case you too never encountered this particular term during your school French lessons).

By the time I’d lived in France for a year, I spoke the language fluently enough to get a job selling houses. By the time I’d done that for a year, I could speak it well enough to rock up in an obscure hamlet and engage the nearest paysan in a patois-ridden conversation about who might possibly have an empty house they’d like to sell.

And by the time I’d moved to another country and gone through the same process again, I realised I could set up as a freelance translator; a job in which I set my own working hours, refuse projects I don’t fancy the look of, and earn about three times what I’ve ever earned from a “real” job (and yes, rather more than the magic £25,600 a year).

Because, unless we spring like the other Cabinet members, fully formed from a public school education and several hundred years of wealthy ancestors, it sometimes takes us ordinary mortals a while to find our place as useful members of society. Occasionally, we even need to move from one country to another to do it. We may even – shock, horror! – have to become self-employed! But that still doesn’t make us unworthy of living in the UK.

Except by choice, of course.

You can find out for yourself whether you’d be eligible for immigration* in this fun game, made by Upstart Theatre.

Here’s my result:

*Answer: almost certainly not.

My colleague and prolific writer Allison was kind enough this week to call me a fellow blogger, so I thought it was about time I actually, you know, blogged.

It’s not entirely my fault that I haven’t written anything here recently. I’ve totally run out of inspiration for comments on the lunacy that is Brexit, and have taken to only getting my political news from the wonderful Ian Dunt on Twitter. If he hasn’t said something, or knows someone who’s said it, the chances are I don’t want to hear it. After all, I can’t do anything about the whole insane mess, and because both I and my partner are now – thank you Sweden! – safely out of the danger zone, I’m trying hard to see only the comical aspects, of which there are many. Many many many many.

I’ve also been really busy professionally, translating two books, umpteen thousand words of mindfulness meditation voice-overs and vast quantities of technical specifications for major Stockholm infrastructure projects (once again, thank you Sweden!)

One thing I haven’t done much of is writing, despite the fact that I’m meant to be doing a bit every week, with the invaluable Tim Clare. Here’s a link to his free Couchto80K writing course; the speed he talks during the 123 second pitch alone would have convinced me to sign up for this if I wasn’t already (ostensibly) doing the weekly writing workout.

Anyway, to my shame I haven’t done many of these workouts so far, but in a rare spare 10 minutes a couple of weeks back, I scribbled out something not entirely unpleasing that kind of captures my whole Brexit/exile attitude.

Here it is. And I’ll try to post more often in the future (sorry Allison).

It’s Sunday, and she’s sipping Earl Grey tea on a blocky, utilitarian balcony in a blocky, utilitarian town in a blocky, utilitarian country and wondering how she got here… and where she goes next. The balcony is not her own. The country is, now, by a kind of forced adoption.

When she left her own country she never intended not to go back, much in the same way that she never intended not to go home again when she set off to go to university at the age of 18. But she’s discovered over time that the goalposts shift when you aren’t looking. So her parents split up and sold the house and sent her belongings to her university digs, and the country she was born in effectively did the same, suddenly deciding it didn’t want to be European any more. And she – who’d always thought of herself as European first and foremost – was faced with making herself a country of one, renegotiating her treaties, setting up her own defence budget, adopting environmental targets… creating a unique new member state.

So here she is, watching the seagulls fly past and wondering how so many people can live squeezed together into such a small area and whether one day she’ll ever want to become one of them – or whether that decision too will be forced on her by outside circumstances.

And that makes her feel, momentarily, like a victim – which she never wanted to be and dislikes as a role adopted by others. But it is just a role, she reminds herself, and one she can refuse or find a path around – or through, if necessary. She knows she can do that. She’s done it before. And after a while it’s not even all that scary any more.

She picks up her tea cup again and smiles. On the whole, life isn’t too bad at all.

Tag: Emigration

The UK Doesn’t Need You! (apparently)

Adjusting to Brexile