Being English in England

I've been here eight months and the entire time I've spent in England has been almost as unsettling as my first eight months in China.

But the sum of the experiences I've had to date pale before the effect of having one's Nationality questioned.

It seems I haven't paid enough tax to be English.

Which makes me what? A nomad? A refugee?

I may have been brought up overseas – and travelled around - but I and a dwindling band are relics of a by-gone age, you uneducated gits. Born in the dying days of what it meant to be part of the British Empire. Living still – in rather chastened state – pretty much all over the places people either regard as exotic or strange. We are the English Expatriates.

We were many things in many places, but we were always English. I was bullied at school, (and probably scarred for life) for Being English. And I bore it like a stalwart British woman, by god.

The stories of my childhood, and the poetry, and the history of it, is my history. If I am not English, where am I 'from'? Whose history is my history?

So if you thought the Colonial System vanished with the worlds of Hercule Poirot or Jeeves and Bertie, then let me tell you that that kind of life continued well into the 60's (,and still does, in a watered-down version, to this day)which actually means during my lifetime. I never knew of any other way to be more damn British than I was.

I was British as all the people around me were British: we all lived lives in places like Malaysia and The Pacific and Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea and China, and in India like SIR Cliff Richards' (Sir Cliff? Really? Sounds rather like addressing a sheer mountain)and other acceptably English expatriate English people: we lived our lives in the Colonies.

 But we all went “Home” to England on our Long Leaves. And because boat travel was largely in use during my childhood and into my adulthood, travel took time. Which was rather good, as people slowly adjusted to the different temperature changes. For while people often need a break from relentless heat, being swathed in insect repellent and eating local cuisine, plunging overnight into temperature changes by aeroplane as we all do now is rarely a stimulating experience.

Expatriates worked in The East, The Far East and The Tropics. Those categories sometimes often overlapped but did not include those who worked in Europe, who were rather often regarded as somewhat sybaritic. Those who worked in the aforementioned shadows of a dying Empire, would serve 21 month contracts and then take three months leave. So everyone went Home for three months at a time. Or changed postings. Or never went Back.

We never felt any-the-less English.

After a certain tenure, one can take a 6 month break in many cases. In which one would 'travel' home via a few stops along the way ( no matter where you were living in The Tropics, these stops nearly always included either Hong Kong or Singapore for a few days) .

We would go on touristy trips all over the British Isles on our Leave, weaving in visits with family.

We would always have a couple of M & S, or more exotic or iconic shopping bags in our plastic-bag stash when we got Back. (Back was very rarely Home).

So we stayed English.

In fact I myself, unlike the children of many English children at Home, was absolutely steeped in Englishness.

I specialise in Englishness even now: English women writers. Of the 16^th century and forward, no less. I know more about being a woman in England than most of the technically-educated people who are waving my Englishness above my head in a somewhat tantalising way, just to see if I am worthy.

So yes, I am bloody English. Just like most of the English people I have known throughout my life, I've lived in pockets of England all across the globe. We all come Home for weddings and funerals and holidays and visits and sometimes for school; and then, when all the contracts and the postings are finished, we all come Home for good.

And ….(lets get this out of the way)....we've all lived with household help. Gardeners, Maids, Nannies, Cooks and people to wash the clothes and iron the clothes; and to sew buttons back on and stitch up a falling hem in the process. In various degrees and computations.

We all went to boarding schools because, unlike in the days of The Raj, we could now fly Back for all the holidays. Sometimes, in the Summer Holidays, we could even fly Home.

We often married people from other parts of the Expatriate world and went off to live a lifetime together going Home for holidays and making plans for when we go Home to retire.

That was normal. That was part of Being British for those who didn't go for the twin-set and plastic mac option. It was a completely legitimate, quite widely recognised, and fully sanctioned Other Way to Be British. It dates back to the time when we once had more options. Its was a viable, alternative way to live as an Englishperson.

Now, I find, I am of an unknown genre. I am an aberrent anachronism and the interpreters of Her Majesties Law in Government offices across the land, deem me and my ilk not as Historic Monuments, nor Living Time Capsules, nor even Wise Guardians of Historic Traditions, but as Not English. Our existence was not revealed to them when they sat for their A Levels.

Now is the time I could quite legitimately start declaiming about the ashes of my fathers and the children of my sons; or my fathers historic war efforts, or the bones of my ancestors making up this good rich earth. But that would sound as though I wasn't aware that the Victorians hadn't beaten me to it, rather thoroughly, in the maudlinly patriotic stakes.

Instead I shall confine myself to saying: 'aving a larf then, or wot?

If you strip my Englishness away from me there isn't much of me left.

How dare you, you nasty little Government men!