We found quite a beast the last time we were on Irvine beach. I was going to blog it at the time for posterity but I completely forgot - so here it is today. Thomas isn't convinced it's a jelly; thinks it might be an alien who has fallen to earth!
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Thursday, May 03, 2018
We have come to a decision
And so at 11-30 last night, with one click of a button, Charlotte's life split into parallel universes.
There was the one where she left home and joined Marcel in Edinburgh to study Law at Edinburgh Law school - rejected.
There was the one where she stayed here and joined my old Alma Mater to study Law there too - rejected.
There was History, again at Glasgow, also rejected.
After many months of agonising over whether to go for a course, she knew to be prestigious, difficult and worthy of her 6 A Highers but which held no interest for her and which would lead to a job, which again was not in her heart of hearts right for her, we reached May 2. May 2 at midnight is UCAS deadline day. Marcel has been an absolute star for the last month, downloading her past paper exams and course materials and talking her through what is actually involved in a Law course, an invaluable source of advice, which he, as oldest child, had no recourse to three years ago when he was deciding.
He underlined to her the fact that even the maximum SAAS loan on offer could not cover the cost of university accommodation, let alone food, travel, books and social life, so she would be looking at a minimum 16 hour a week job on top of full debt. He had her imagine how it would feel to read 500 pages a day on a subject that she was not interested in. He also explained that even if she does what she loves, preferably something reasonably challenging to get into, she can still to a postgraduate conversion to Law if she suddenly had a change of heart. He's been showing her the dissertations he's had to hand in this month (as part of his Honours finals) and having her read through them. Like many of her friends, Charlotte had applied to Law because it was hard to get into and sensible, rather than because she could ever see herself in that field. Shockingly, some who have already accepted their places know nothing of what they are going to study, as she found out when she, in turn, showed them the past paper exams last week.
She loved the idea of moving to Edinburgh, as Marcel had done but she knows he works 20 hours a week for Apple to pay to live there. Apple pay well compared to many student jobs and Lots is more reserved so less likely to get that type of sales job. She decided as a compromise, to promise herself a year or two in Edinburgh after graduation, maybe even a postgrad at Edinburgh.
So she had to find a compromise... something difficult to get into, but which matched her skills which are both literary and numerical, which leads to a well-paid job but doesn't mean she has to drop out of her language learning which she enjoys, something where she can work if she needs to but can also not work if the workload is too heavy.
So she has gone for Glasgow, my own uni, where I hope she will meet a lifetime of friends, just as I did, and where I hope she will walk through the quads in spring and be bowled over by the sheer beauty of architecture mixed with nature.
And as for the course itself - Economics with Spanish, or as she put it 'Maths but with a purpose' and the amazing opportunity to follow in my footsteps as an English language assistant in her third year, but in Spain. I think she'll be happier than she'd have been studying something just for the sake of it, and to be honest, I still wish Marcel had followed his first passion (English) and done a conversion afterwards, rather than watching him, as I am doing now, running between the Apple store and the library, with little time to appreciate the wonders of the beautiful city he's living in.
A theme that came through strongly at Mearns Castle's graduation ceremony was that you should follow your passion, and choose a career you want to get up for in the morning. You only get one life, so spending it doing something you are not passionate about, would be rather sad.
There was the one where she left home and joined Marcel in Edinburgh to study Law at Edinburgh Law school - rejected.
There was the one where she stayed here and joined my old Alma Mater to study Law there too - rejected.
There was History, again at Glasgow, also rejected.
After many months of agonising over whether to go for a course, she knew to be prestigious, difficult and worthy of her 6 A Highers but which held no interest for her and which would lead to a job, which again was not in her heart of hearts right for her, we reached May 2. May 2 at midnight is UCAS deadline day. Marcel has been an absolute star for the last month, downloading her past paper exams and course materials and talking her through what is actually involved in a Law course, an invaluable source of advice, which he, as oldest child, had no recourse to three years ago when he was deciding.
He underlined to her the fact that even the maximum SAAS loan on offer could not cover the cost of university accommodation, let alone food, travel, books and social life, so she would be looking at a minimum 16 hour a week job on top of full debt. He had her imagine how it would feel to read 500 pages a day on a subject that she was not interested in. He also explained that even if she does what she loves, preferably something reasonably challenging to get into, she can still to a postgraduate conversion to Law if she suddenly had a change of heart. He's been showing her the dissertations he's had to hand in this month (as part of his Honours finals) and having her read through them. Like many of her friends, Charlotte had applied to Law because it was hard to get into and sensible, rather than because she could ever see herself in that field. Shockingly, some who have already accepted their places know nothing of what they are going to study, as she found out when she, in turn, showed them the past paper exams last week.
She loved the idea of moving to Edinburgh, as Marcel had done but she knows he works 20 hours a week for Apple to pay to live there. Apple pay well compared to many student jobs and Lots is more reserved so less likely to get that type of sales job. She decided as a compromise, to promise herself a year or two in Edinburgh after graduation, maybe even a postgrad at Edinburgh.
So she had to find a compromise... something difficult to get into, but which matched her skills which are both literary and numerical, which leads to a well-paid job but doesn't mean she has to drop out of her language learning which she enjoys, something where she can work if she needs to but can also not work if the workload is too heavy.
So she has gone for Glasgow, my own uni, where I hope she will meet a lifetime of friends, just as I did, and where I hope she will walk through the quads in spring and be bowled over by the sheer beauty of architecture mixed with nature.And as for the course itself - Economics with Spanish, or as she put it 'Maths but with a purpose' and the amazing opportunity to follow in my footsteps as an English language assistant in her third year, but in Spain. I think she'll be happier than she'd have been studying something just for the sake of it, and to be honest, I still wish Marcel had followed his first passion (English) and done a conversion afterwards, rather than watching him, as I am doing now, running between the Apple store and the library, with little time to appreciate the wonders of the beautiful city he's living in.
A theme that came through strongly at Mearns Castle's graduation ceremony was that you should follow your passion, and choose a career you want to get up for in the morning. You only get one life, so spending it doing something you are not passionate about, would be rather sad.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
A week off
We spent the Easter break in Germany. Like every time I have stepped on a plane since June 23rd 2016, I felt a heavy physical weight being lifted from me as I ascended the steps of the aircraft. Being away from the UK is definitely good for my mental health at the moment. I could suddenly get on with life instead of holding my breath while waiting to see which mad alley the UK government is going to drive my family. When I look at the spring flowers in my garden, I wonder if I will be here next spring to see them bloom. In Germany I simply looked at the spring flowers and enjoyed them. In Germany no one is talking about Brexit, it is not on their horizon, so insignificant it is in their scheme of things and that is immensely calming, until you remember that while they are happily getting on with their lives, yours is still in limbo.
I'm home less than a week and I can already feel my levels of anxiety increase. My mood goes with the ebb and flow of each successive Brexit article as it speeds past me on Facebook or Twitter; I've long-since abandoned most mainstream media. Obviously the whole Windrush scandal has huge implications for families like mine. People who have lived here their whole lives are being taken from their homes and families and deported 'back' to a country they have never been to, because their paperwork doesn't conform to rules the home office has put in place retrospectively and we're told not to worry as the status of EU citizens is 'more or less done and dusted'. Forgive me my scepticism and lack of trust.
Charlotte now has twenty days till she must definitively pick her university course. When her Higher results came in last August, I assured her we would know with plenty of time to spare what we would be doing. At that point I figured we would know the shape of Brexit by Xmas at the latest. With that knowledge on board, we would be able to decide whether it was safe to stay or whether leaving together would be our only chance of guaranteeing our future together as a family. We had decided we could live with EEA/EFTA, in fact with anything that incorporated free movement, but that without that we'd need to seriously weigh up leaving. It was inconceivable to us that with twenty days to her deadline, Brexit could still fall anywhere between hard Brexit on WTO terms and cancelling it altogether. She has to decide whether to stay with her family and go to Glasgow or uproot her life and join her brother in Edinburgh and that decision was to be made based on whether her family would be here or not. For six hundred and sixty three days our family has been in limbo. For six hundred and sixty three days, I have not been able to answer a question as simple as 'Will you still be living here when I go to uni?' Just try for a moment to imagine living six hundred and sixty three days not knowing if you are about to have to move country. I'm so sick of it. Totally and utterly fucking tired of everything. I won't even apologise for swearing because I am so drained by the whole thing.
Our next deadline comes at the end of June. By the end of June she will need to apply to SAAS for her university tuition fees and student loan. Obviously the amount of money she will require living with us in Newton Mearns will differ greatly from the amount she will need if she suddenly has to rent a flat in Glasgow if we leave. Again, we can't answer her question of where she will be living and how much money she will need.
Leaving at the very least means selling a house, closing down our company and all the paperwork that would entail, revoking three school places, finding two new jobs in the same country, finding two new schools and somewhere to live. It means boxing up the belongings we have in our five bedroom house and finding a way to move them and the money to do so. It means selling two cars. It means paying a fine to get out of our fixed term mortgage. It means preparing Marcel and Charlotte and my mother who lives alone and is in her mid-70s for our leaving. It means preparing the three other kids for losing all their friends and family, their home, their school and their language... everything they have ever known in their lives. It means finding the money to suddenly pay for the two older kids to live with no base. All this takes a lot of time and we've already had six hundred and sixty three days of that time wasted.
How much longer are the government planning on slowly spit-roasting families like mine? Is it too much to ask to just be able to enjoy spring without worrying?
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Nine days left
In nine days time, I will be able to say 'I have three kids at school'.
Until you have made the journey, no one can prepare you for how short your child's school years are. As childless people and even as parents of little ones, our point of reference is our own journey through school, and as we all know that took foreeeeeever! I started school in 1972 and left in 1985 and that felt like a lifetime. 1972 seems like the distant past, I can barely remember it, 1985 feels so recent to me, I can still remember how I felt walking out of my high school for the very last time. In those days there was no prom and no graduation, you simply finished that day's classes and walked home. How strange that would seem to today's children!
So how come it is over in a flash when you are the parent? The thing is, the first couple of years at primary school, when they are learning everything from scratch takes a reasonable amount of time, but from about p3 time speeds up. They don't really learn anything new, they just get better at what they've already learnt, so p4-p7 takes a much shorter time than p1-p3. People will tell you that when they go to high school, they are only just through the door when they are suddenly coming out the other end. s1-s6 feels somewhere between two and three years, in real terms. They have only just got there when they are suddenly narrowing down subjects for Nat5, only half way through that course when their Highers are chosen and no sooner do their s5 results come in than they are applying to uni, and if my kids are anything to go by, they are applying without the slightest idea of what they want to be!
Charlotte is currently sitting on four unconditional uni offers (and one still outstanding, but given it is the easiest course to get into, I can safely say she's sitting on five unconditional offers, realistically). So over the next four or five weeks she will need to decide whether her future lies in Glasgow or Edinburgh, in Law, in Economics, or in History (all three with languages). As her mum, I am not sure she is ready to make that decision, but I guess she probably feels more equipped to make it than I would give her credit for. She is no longer this little p1 girl on her first day in Kirkhill, but a young woman at the beginning of an exciting path.
She is planning to spend the summer in Madrid, where she will be working as an au pair to two little girls, the same age as her sisters. The pay is almost non-existent, but in terms of experience, it will open a world of opportunities to her and I can hardly wait to get her home an hear all about what she has done. In a way, it would be better if she could make her uni choice at the end of the summer, as I expect her stay in Spain may completely change her outlook on the future, just as my summer at Perugia uni in Italy did for me when I was 18.
So how come it is over in a flash when you are the parent? The thing is, the first couple of years at primary school, when they are learning everything from scratch takes a reasonable amount of time, but from about p3 time speeds up. They don't really learn anything new, they just get better at what they've already learnt, so p4-p7 takes a much shorter time than p1-p3. People will tell you that when they go to high school, they are only just through the door when they are suddenly coming out the other end. s1-s6 feels somewhere between two and three years, in real terms. They have only just got there when they are suddenly narrowing down subjects for Nat5, only half way through that course when their Highers are chosen and no sooner do their s5 results come in than they are applying to uni, and if my kids are anything to go by, they are applying without the slightest idea of what they want to be!
Charlotte is currently sitting on four unconditional uni offers (and one still outstanding, but given it is the easiest course to get into, I can safely say she's sitting on five unconditional offers, realistically). So over the next four or five weeks she will need to decide whether her future lies in Glasgow or Edinburgh, in Law, in Economics, or in History (all three with languages). As her mum, I am not sure she is ready to make that decision, but I guess she probably feels more equipped to make it than I would give her credit for. She is no longer this little p1 girl on her first day in Kirkhill, but a young woman at the beginning of an exciting path.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
A weekend of Brexit ponderings
It has been another Brexit emotional roller coaster of a weekend.
Thomas and I were invited to a Brexit focus group being run by Birmingham university to share our personal issues with others whose lives are affected in the same or similar ways. The group consisted of a Belgian woman with a Belgian partner and two young kids based in London for the last 20 years, a Swedish grandmother-to-be who came to Scotland in the early 90s and raised her family with her Scottish husband, a middle-aged Hungarian woman who had been here five years with her four kids, a young Spanish man in his early twenties who moved here with his father when he was a young teenager and went through the Scottish high school system, and finally Thomas who has been here since 2002.
It became clear that every case was unique. That might be the reason this one-size-fits all has so many people falling through the gaps... In the world of Theresa May, our situation is black and white, in the real world we are every shade of grey, and families like ours, which she once sneered at for being citizens of nowhere, are actually proud to be citizens of everywhere, part of an intricate web of nations that we call family.
The Belgian had had her kids in Belgium as it was an hour away on the train, but that meant her children had no claim on being British despite having lived all but the first two days of their lives here. They will not be able to make a case for being British for ten and fourteen years respectively. The woman would never have popped home in labour if she'd known the enormity of the consequences for her family, of course.
The Swede's parents are still alive but in their mid-90s. She had assumed that as she herself reached retirement age she could nip over occasionally and help them whenever they became frail, but even six months away would nullify her 30 years in the UK and she would be ineligible to return despite having a British husband and kids, so she is unable to care for her relatives under the new rules. She had already acquired the right to remain before Sweden became a full member but the paperwork has been destroyed so she has no way to prove she can stay.
The Hungarian's youngest child has been here since she was 12, but attends a special school for partially-sighted artists - she has nowhere she can go back to that can accommodate her special needs so she too is in limbo.
The Spanish boy has Scottish qualifications so can't easily return to Spain, but Spain (like several EU nations) doesn't allow dual citizenship, so if he was to apply for naturalisation, he'd lose the right to move back to Spain at any point in the future and that is where the rest of his family lives. He can't even give returning to Spain a trial run of more than six months as that would nullify his right to remain here with his father and friends, where his qualifications are valid. So he is realistically neither eligible to stay, nor able to leave.
Our own case was the most complex of all, and the most complex the woman in charge of the study had encountered to date... I am a UK citizen, only. Thomas is a Danish citizen, only, but it is more complicated than that...
Despite being born in Denmark to a Danish mother and having lived there till his 30th birthday, Thomas is not a Dane by birth, but a naturalised Dane. In the 70s, when he was born, a child was assigned the nationality of its father and his father was a German expat in Denmark when he was born. When his father naturalised Danish when Thomas was around ten, Thomas and his sister were forced to lose their German citizenship and gain Danish. This makes Thomas's Danish citizenship more precarious than anyone else born on the same day in the same hospital to fully Danish parents. On paper, he is an immigrant who naturalised as a Dane. Crazy, or what? When Denmark recently changed its rules to allow dual nationality, he tried to apply to get his original nationality back, but the consulate in Copenhagen has destroyed the paperwork so that is going to be long and cumbersome but necessary... Thomas wants his original nationality back to pass on to the girls. Although they currently hold Danish passports, those will be revoked if they do not move to Denmark before they turn 22. If the UK is still playing silly buggers, they will lose their EU citizenship and freedom of movement at that moment. Germany, like France in the case of my older kids, doesn't revoke nationality once it is acquired, so that is Thomas's reason for pursuing his original nationality. So, those are his complex nationality issues.
His UK issues are numerous too. He originally moved here with a full-time job so worked for seven years for a UK employer. At that point the UK entered a downturn and he was made redundant. He then started up his own company which took a number of years to be anywhere near comparable with his original job. In the meantime he has moved house twice. Paperwork has been lost, pay slips and P60s are gone. Approximately 30% of EU citizens who apply for the right to remain are rejected because of missing paperwork. Ironically, the longer you have been here, the more likely you are to be rejected as the longer the period you have had to lose your paperwork. Although you only need to provide evidence of five years here to be issued with the right to remain (which incidentally costs money and is not valid after Brexit), you actually need to provide full paperwork for the complete duration to be eligible to apply for UK citizenship (that is if you have a spare £1200, and your original country allows dual citizenship and you have all your paperwork and money and time to shell out for language tests and tests to prove you understand life in the UK - where you've been paying taxes since you arrived). And to put it bluntly, who wants to do all that to acquire the right to continue living the way you did freely till two years ago (only with diminished rights)? Until this happened Thomas had the right to bring his parents to live with us if they became frail at some point in the future, now he will lose that right. Many EU citizens would never have moved here and many UK citizens would have never moved abroad, had they known this reciprocal agreement would be withdrawn. We all like to know our parents can be cared for in their old age. Now, we are very stressed at knowing we may have to watch for afar, unable to assist. So, those are his main issues. They are by no means all of our complications, but they give you a feel for how we are living at the moment.
Then there are mine... I have three kids who aren't his. Two are over eighteen, so technically adults. They were registered as French citizens at the Edinburgh consulate at birth, though they no longer have anything other than a scan of that document. To apply for French citizenship documentation, they need to fly to London and prove they are eligible. This is costly but doable if they want to retain their right to freedom of movement. But one of those kids is twelve. At twelve he needs his biological father to countersign the documents in his name in order to be given a French passport. He has not seen his father since he was six years old, so this would mean tracking him down, which we have recently managed to do, flying him from his home in South East France (at our expense) and us from here to London and meeting up. This would have a huge emotional impact on the child, forcing him to confront a past that he may want to leave till he is older and more emotionally equipped to deal with the fall-out. As if Brexit itself isn't stressful enough for families like ours. As if potentially losing your home, extended family, friends, school, country and siblings wasn't already enough...
So if I can get Léon's paperwork in order and the two biggies can do that for themselves, then the only (ha!) remaining issue is that I lose my freedom of movement on 29 March 2019 so if we decide it is going to become impossible for a family like ours to continue living in this country, ironically I need to escape by that date, even if the others can allow themselves to stay longer to see what is happening.
If I need to flee first, I will become landlocked where I touch down as I will lose my freedom of movement for approximately five years until I can apply for the nationality where I have moved to. This means I need to preempt where Thomas is most likely to find a decent job, and the kids will be able to adapt to a new school system and even potentially a new language. Obviously, I'll need to polish up my crystal ball.
We've already heard of banks refusing to renew mortgages of EU citizens as their status is unclear; our current package runs out next summer, so if we become ineligible for a new package, we could be forced out of the home we have been paying for since before Anna was born and all through no fault of our own.
So we risk having to lose our home, being forced to close down a company we've spent nine years building up, look for two new jobs in the same country(!), move our kids school and change their primary language, split our family for a minimum of four years as Charlotte will already be at university here when we need to go. And realistically, it could mean splitting our family forever... will they really follow us after four years study here?
Those of you who are not directly affected by the Brexit vote can go weeks without it being top of your agenda, those of us in mixed families have lived it and breathed it every day since June 23 2016. That makes 642 days where it has been the only or at least main topic of conversation and take it from me, that makes it bloody tiring. It is the first thing I think about when I waken up and the last thing I think about when I go to bed. I dream about losing my home and my kids, about not being to help my mum who lives alone, three streets from me. We spend a minimum of two hours a day talking it through - that is 1284 hours and counting! Everything is on hold; I can't buy a new blind for my dining room - what's the point if we might have moved within the year? I won't even plant new bulbs in my garden. Everything seems temporary and fluid. When you are as directly affected us, you know every detail and every twist and turn. You know every company that has left and every drop in the pound.
Everything in my life is beyond my control and some days I just want to gain back that power. Some days I think, today, I'm going to leave because you've broken me and I can't face this level of uncertainty any more. Other days, I think, they must surely come to their senses and stop this madness. Companies are leaving, students are no longer applying, doctors and professors are leaving the UK behind, house prices are falling, inflation in the supermarkets is hitting crazy figures. Butter has jumped from 85p to £1-45 in Aldi in just 16 months. Medicine prices are set to spiral. Ireland... I don't even need to explain that one. We hear of foreign interference, of illegal vote rigging and all sorts and still both May and Corbyn bungle on towards the abyss.
If I sell my house, rip my family in two and drag my kids out of their school only to see it all cancelled I will be devastated, if I stay and this goes ahead, I will be devastated. I go round and round on this merry-go-round till I can hardly breathe.
It felt good on Friday to talk to others in our situation. No one really understands and as I rant daily on Facebook and Twitter, I am, at best, ignored. But speaking to people who could relate to it also meant allowing myself to be affected by them and that is emotionally draining.
Saturday saw the March for Europe all over the UK (not that you'd know from watching the BBC, which now openly blanks everything that does not suit its agenda). The speakers were wonderful and very articulately explained the catastrophic effect this will have on the younger generation, my children.
Patrick Harvie really summed up the anger I feel at losing my freedom of movement. For me, it is personal. For me it is saying that the way I have lived my adult life is no longer acceptable and will not be tolerated in my children's generation. I cannot accept that and hope I never have to, but unlike Patrick, I am willing to move and change nationality, if that is the only way.
Professor Tanja Bueltmann spoke to me like a family member - a foreigner who has made her home here, as my husband (and the one before him) did. I was very taken by her summing up that Brexit means a future built on the foundation of hate and lies (and Cambridge analytica by the looks of it). Brexit means a future that relies on chlorinated chicken and holding hands with a Putin puppet. Brexit means a future that seeks to recreate a past that never existed in the first place. Brexit means a future that will rob Britons and young Britons in particular of a world of opportunities and of rights. Brexit means a future for the few and not the many. Make no mistake and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Mike Galsworthy from Scientists for the EU spoke passionately of why this is madness and the effects already hitting the scientist and medicine community.
Each of them, and the other speakers explained clearly why we must stay angry and fight this until we run out of time and then we should continue to fight it still.
By the end of the weekend, I was emotionally exhausted, deeply depressed, exhilarated, full of hope, full of fear and I had aged about a year. I will keep muddling on for now and may still jump ship before it is too late, but I will never be guilty of apathy, at least.
Thomas and I were invited to a Brexit focus group being run by Birmingham university to share our personal issues with others whose lives are affected in the same or similar ways. The group consisted of a Belgian woman with a Belgian partner and two young kids based in London for the last 20 years, a Swedish grandmother-to-be who came to Scotland in the early 90s and raised her family with her Scottish husband, a middle-aged Hungarian woman who had been here five years with her four kids, a young Spanish man in his early twenties who moved here with his father when he was a young teenager and went through the Scottish high school system, and finally Thomas who has been here since 2002.
It became clear that every case was unique. That might be the reason this one-size-fits all has so many people falling through the gaps... In the world of Theresa May, our situation is black and white, in the real world we are every shade of grey, and families like ours, which she once sneered at for being citizens of nowhere, are actually proud to be citizens of everywhere, part of an intricate web of nations that we call family.
The Belgian had had her kids in Belgium as it was an hour away on the train, but that meant her children had no claim on being British despite having lived all but the first two days of their lives here. They will not be able to make a case for being British for ten and fourteen years respectively. The woman would never have popped home in labour if she'd known the enormity of the consequences for her family, of course.
The Swede's parents are still alive but in their mid-90s. She had assumed that as she herself reached retirement age she could nip over occasionally and help them whenever they became frail, but even six months away would nullify her 30 years in the UK and she would be ineligible to return despite having a British husband and kids, so she is unable to care for her relatives under the new rules. She had already acquired the right to remain before Sweden became a full member but the paperwork has been destroyed so she has no way to prove she can stay.
The Hungarian's youngest child has been here since she was 12, but attends a special school for partially-sighted artists - she has nowhere she can go back to that can accommodate her special needs so she too is in limbo.
The Spanish boy has Scottish qualifications so can't easily return to Spain, but Spain (like several EU nations) doesn't allow dual citizenship, so if he was to apply for naturalisation, he'd lose the right to move back to Spain at any point in the future and that is where the rest of his family lives. He can't even give returning to Spain a trial run of more than six months as that would nullify his right to remain here with his father and friends, where his qualifications are valid. So he is realistically neither eligible to stay, nor able to leave.
Our own case was the most complex of all, and the most complex the woman in charge of the study had encountered to date... I am a UK citizen, only. Thomas is a Danish citizen, only, but it is more complicated than that...
Despite being born in Denmark to a Danish mother and having lived there till his 30th birthday, Thomas is not a Dane by birth, but a naturalised Dane. In the 70s, when he was born, a child was assigned the nationality of its father and his father was a German expat in Denmark when he was born. When his father naturalised Danish when Thomas was around ten, Thomas and his sister were forced to lose their German citizenship and gain Danish. This makes Thomas's Danish citizenship more precarious than anyone else born on the same day in the same hospital to fully Danish parents. On paper, he is an immigrant who naturalised as a Dane. Crazy, or what? When Denmark recently changed its rules to allow dual nationality, he tried to apply to get his original nationality back, but the consulate in Copenhagen has destroyed the paperwork so that is going to be long and cumbersome but necessary... Thomas wants his original nationality back to pass on to the girls. Although they currently hold Danish passports, those will be revoked if they do not move to Denmark before they turn 22. If the UK is still playing silly buggers, they will lose their EU citizenship and freedom of movement at that moment. Germany, like France in the case of my older kids, doesn't revoke nationality once it is acquired, so that is Thomas's reason for pursuing his original nationality. So, those are his complex nationality issues.
His UK issues are numerous too. He originally moved here with a full-time job so worked for seven years for a UK employer. At that point the UK entered a downturn and he was made redundant. He then started up his own company which took a number of years to be anywhere near comparable with his original job. In the meantime he has moved house twice. Paperwork has been lost, pay slips and P60s are gone. Approximately 30% of EU citizens who apply for the right to remain are rejected because of missing paperwork. Ironically, the longer you have been here, the more likely you are to be rejected as the longer the period you have had to lose your paperwork. Although you only need to provide evidence of five years here to be issued with the right to remain (which incidentally costs money and is not valid after Brexit), you actually need to provide full paperwork for the complete duration to be eligible to apply for UK citizenship (that is if you have a spare £1200, and your original country allows dual citizenship and you have all your paperwork and money and time to shell out for language tests and tests to prove you understand life in the UK - where you've been paying taxes since you arrived). And to put it bluntly, who wants to do all that to acquire the right to continue living the way you did freely till two years ago (only with diminished rights)? Until this happened Thomas had the right to bring his parents to live with us if they became frail at some point in the future, now he will lose that right. Many EU citizens would never have moved here and many UK citizens would have never moved abroad, had they known this reciprocal agreement would be withdrawn. We all like to know our parents can be cared for in their old age. Now, we are very stressed at knowing we may have to watch for afar, unable to assist. So, those are his main issues. They are by no means all of our complications, but they give you a feel for how we are living at the moment.
Then there are mine... I have three kids who aren't his. Two are over eighteen, so technically adults. They were registered as French citizens at the Edinburgh consulate at birth, though they no longer have anything other than a scan of that document. To apply for French citizenship documentation, they need to fly to London and prove they are eligible. This is costly but doable if they want to retain their right to freedom of movement. But one of those kids is twelve. At twelve he needs his biological father to countersign the documents in his name in order to be given a French passport. He has not seen his father since he was six years old, so this would mean tracking him down, which we have recently managed to do, flying him from his home in South East France (at our expense) and us from here to London and meeting up. This would have a huge emotional impact on the child, forcing him to confront a past that he may want to leave till he is older and more emotionally equipped to deal with the fall-out. As if Brexit itself isn't stressful enough for families like ours. As if potentially losing your home, extended family, friends, school, country and siblings wasn't already enough...
So if I can get Léon's paperwork in order and the two biggies can do that for themselves, then the only (ha!) remaining issue is that I lose my freedom of movement on 29 March 2019 so if we decide it is going to become impossible for a family like ours to continue living in this country, ironically I need to escape by that date, even if the others can allow themselves to stay longer to see what is happening.
If I need to flee first, I will become landlocked where I touch down as I will lose my freedom of movement for approximately five years until I can apply for the nationality where I have moved to. This means I need to preempt where Thomas is most likely to find a decent job, and the kids will be able to adapt to a new school system and even potentially a new language. Obviously, I'll need to polish up my crystal ball.
We've already heard of banks refusing to renew mortgages of EU citizens as their status is unclear; our current package runs out next summer, so if we become ineligible for a new package, we could be forced out of the home we have been paying for since before Anna was born and all through no fault of our own.
So we risk having to lose our home, being forced to close down a company we've spent nine years building up, look for two new jobs in the same country(!), move our kids school and change their primary language, split our family for a minimum of four years as Charlotte will already be at university here when we need to go. And realistically, it could mean splitting our family forever... will they really follow us after four years study here?
Those of you who are not directly affected by the Brexit vote can go weeks without it being top of your agenda, those of us in mixed families have lived it and breathed it every day since June 23 2016. That makes 642 days where it has been the only or at least main topic of conversation and take it from me, that makes it bloody tiring. It is the first thing I think about when I waken up and the last thing I think about when I go to bed. I dream about losing my home and my kids, about not being to help my mum who lives alone, three streets from me. We spend a minimum of two hours a day talking it through - that is 1284 hours and counting! Everything is on hold; I can't buy a new blind for my dining room - what's the point if we might have moved within the year? I won't even plant new bulbs in my garden. Everything seems temporary and fluid. When you are as directly affected us, you know every detail and every twist and turn. You know every company that has left and every drop in the pound.
Everything in my life is beyond my control and some days I just want to gain back that power. Some days I think, today, I'm going to leave because you've broken me and I can't face this level of uncertainty any more. Other days, I think, they must surely come to their senses and stop this madness. Companies are leaving, students are no longer applying, doctors and professors are leaving the UK behind, house prices are falling, inflation in the supermarkets is hitting crazy figures. Butter has jumped from 85p to £1-45 in Aldi in just 16 months. Medicine prices are set to spiral. Ireland... I don't even need to explain that one. We hear of foreign interference, of illegal vote rigging and all sorts and still both May and Corbyn bungle on towards the abyss.
If I sell my house, rip my family in two and drag my kids out of their school only to see it all cancelled I will be devastated, if I stay and this goes ahead, I will be devastated. I go round and round on this merry-go-round till I can hardly breathe.
It felt good on Friday to talk to others in our situation. No one really understands and as I rant daily on Facebook and Twitter, I am, at best, ignored. But speaking to people who could relate to it also meant allowing myself to be affected by them and that is emotionally draining.
Saturday saw the March for Europe all over the UK (not that you'd know from watching the BBC, which now openly blanks everything that does not suit its agenda). The speakers were wonderful and very articulately explained the catastrophic effect this will have on the younger generation, my children.Patrick Harvie really summed up the anger I feel at losing my freedom of movement. For me, it is personal. For me it is saying that the way I have lived my adult life is no longer acceptable and will not be tolerated in my children's generation. I cannot accept that and hope I never have to, but unlike Patrick, I am willing to move and change nationality, if that is the only way.
Professor Tanja Bueltmann spoke to me like a family member - a foreigner who has made her home here, as my husband (and the one before him) did. I was very taken by her summing up that Brexit means a future built on the foundation of hate and lies (and Cambridge analytica by the looks of it). Brexit means a future that relies on chlorinated chicken and holding hands with a Putin puppet. Brexit means a future that seeks to recreate a past that never existed in the first place. Brexit means a future that will rob Britons and young Britons in particular of a world of opportunities and of rights. Brexit means a future for the few and not the many. Make no mistake and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Mike Galsworthy from Scientists for the EU spoke passionately of why this is madness and the effects already hitting the scientist and medicine community.
Each of them, and the other speakers explained clearly why we must stay angry and fight this until we run out of time and then we should continue to fight it still.
By the end of the weekend, I was emotionally exhausted, deeply depressed, exhilarated, full of hope, full of fear and I had aged about a year. I will keep muddling on for now and may still jump ship before it is too late, but I will never be guilty of apathy, at least.
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