People think we're mad...
No one has explicitly said it, and many of our more politically clued-up friends actually think we've called it correctly, but I'd say in general the vast majority of people I meet think we're overreacting to Brexit. Maybe we are, but only time will tell and time isn't on our side.
The general themes I hear again and again, especially now I have officially announced that we're leaving is
'surely, it'll all work out ok, isn't it worth just waiting to see?'.
I've had several interesting conversations over the last few weeks...
One with a EU national friend, who lives here but hasn't looked into any Brexit implications because he has a job so it is
'bound to be fine' (for him, his foreign wife and all their kids!)
He looked somewhat shocked when I said we were leaving and pointed out that under the no-deal scenario none of his current rights were guaranteed and yes, he has a job, but should he lose it at any point, what would the implications be of living as an unemployed EU national in the UK post-no-deal Brexit? The simple fact that banks, landlords, the NHS etc are yet to receive any guidelines on how to deal with the remaining EU nationals going forward should there be a no deal should be enough to set the tiniest of alarm bells ringing, but for the most part people like to assume the best.
Another conversation was with an acquaintance who said it was bound to all get sorted as she couldn't leave with her foreign spouse for the EU as she was currently undergoing some medical treatment. It is true, she needs to complete that, but it is definitely not true that that means everything will work out ok in the end!
Two friends' husbands have lost their banking jobs in the last fortnight to 'moves to continental Europe, just in case'. If the government signs a deal, these jobs aren't coming back and the friends' husbands and their newly unemployed colleagues will need to fight over the remaining banking jobs, in a sector that is not exactly recruiting at the moment.
A huge amount of economic damage (and damage to our reputation as a trustworthy business-oriented country) has been done even if the UK cancels the whole thing tomorrow. Foreign companies are scared to invest with this level of indecision and uncertainty, university lecturers who've put the wheels in motion to leave, will continue to do so until things have fully calmed down, researchers will carry out their work at EU unis in the meantime just in case things go a bit mad again - they just don't need that hassle...
But I think even more than the economic uncertainty, the thing that is making me most uncomfortable is the wave of right-wing nastiness this whole process has unleashed.
For twenty plus years my kids have walked round ASDA and the likes speaking a different language with me or with their dad, feeling a wee bit special and a wee bit exotic, proud even. They are Scottish but they are also something else. If you don't see their names or you only speak to them in English, you have no inkling they are different. The older ones have won prizes at high school for coming top in English, so living in a different language at home doesn't exactly have an adverse effect. They are not less than Scottish, they are more than Scottish. That has universally been met with intrigue, excitement and positivity. Just last week in school my girls were asked to host a Denmark stall at the school's diversity day. Here in Scotland that is still an acceptable thing to celebrate, but for how much longer? The UK is no longer the country it was. I am beginning to feel that I should warn my kids against showing their foreignness as explicitly. On the school trip they do to Blackpool at 12, I might feel compelled to tell them they are best not to speak their other language out loud. At some point in the future will we reach the point where they might be better changing their surname from Buchanan-Widmann to Buchanan? If that is the case, then this is not their country. My family thrives on its diversity and having to hide it means we will no longer be us. As the UK becomes smaller and more insular, I can't help but feel we will become second-class citizens. I want to feel excited in the future if my kids bring home partners from other cultures, countries or religions, not frightened for them.
When we reach the day that I lose my EU citizenship, and with it my right to freedom of movement, it will be too late to wish I had jumped ship on time. Nothing will bring back my ability to make that choice, so that is why we are doing what we are doing. My kids aren't just British citizens, they are citizens of the world, or of Europe at least, the kind of people our
esteemed leader refers to as
citizens of nowhere. Hiding who we are so we are allowed to stay in a country where fewer an fewer foreign people come to study, do research, invest and live is not an option.
My mother has eight grandchildren: 3 who are exclusively Scottish, and 5 who are dual nationals. In the future will these cousins be separated into first-class and second-class UK citizens by their passports or surnames, despite the genetic link?
But even once we're living abroad, I still hope for my country and for future generations that it can see sense as once again turn to look outward and see what it can learn from cooperation and integration.
But I think even more than the economic uncertainty, the thing that is making me most uncomfortable is the wave of right-wing nastiness this whole process has unleashed.
Charlotte has long since surpassed me on the baking front, but I have to say this pandan cake she rustled up yesterday has to be her most moist and delightful offering yet.
When we announced on our blogs a few weeks ago that we had decided to abandon the sinking ship, The National newspaper contacted us both and asked us each to write a piece on our imminent escape. Those articles in turn, were picked up on by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten and they too asked us for an editorial.
Henceforth, I will always refer to them as cylinder sausages. 😁
When Charlotte signed up to study Economics and Spanish at Glasgow university in May of 2018, her course starting in September of the same year, she based that decision on the 2017-18 Glasgow University prospectus that described her five year course, with the third year spent in Spain as a language assistant. This isn't the same as an Erasmus scheme, where you study abroad at a university. I know this scheme well, having taken part in it myself in 1987-88, when I was the assistante d'anglais at Lycée Jean Lurçat in Bruyères, France. (How many times I had to correct them when they referred to me as the assistante anglaise!) Here's a photo of my flatmate (the German assistant) at our school from '88!
Within hours she'd scathingly branded me, my family, and most of our friends as 'citizens of nowhere', rather than as we tend to celebrate 'citizens of Europe'; citizens with family and friends everywhere. For thirty years I had celebrated our diversity, our mixed culture and the many languages we use at the dining table every day in life. I loved that all my kids could fluently speak two languages and had two passports each. But suddenly the person in charge of the country where I lived, a narrow and insular excuse for a person, was telling me the way I had lived my life since I'd met my first foreign boyfriend at sweet 16, was illegitimate and no longer tolerable. My type of family was to be stamped out going forward. Would a day come when instead of proudly teaching their classmates a few words of their other mother tongue, they'd have to hide their foreignness? Would they have to drop their foreign surname from their CV later in life to get an interview?
Kids can get offended at the oddest things and one thing that has offended Amaia all her life is that she was not invited to her parents' wedding. The fact that she wasn't actually conceived until 5 weeks after we got married, is apparently not an acceptable get-out clause either! We had both our other daughters at the wedding and therefore we have offended her deeply by not waiting to see if we were going to have any more kids, then waiting till they were born and old enough to wear a pretty dress!
Newton Mearns and Barrhead are currently taking part in Beat the Street. From being reluctant to go on our daily walks, Anna has become a demon walker, organising outings with friends and even walking the more than two miles from school to our house. The unusually lovely spring temperatures are helping too, so since the whole thing began a couple of weeks ago she has now clocked up more than 30 miles on foot!
But, his birthday came round last week and stressed to breaking point with all this Brexit nonsense, I couldn't really come up with something imaginative this year, so I opted for this. I figured he could digitise the stuff he had over a week then sell it second hand for almost the original price.
