In the beginning
I can’t say when it began. No blinding revelation. Impossible to pinpoint one event but there is no denying the creeping realisation that it was time to think of going. Just the steady, debilitating, weariness which comes with the gut knowledge that no matter how many times the politicians tried to tell us - things really aren’t going to get better. They really aren’t. In fact they are going to get a whole lot worse, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.
Was it when my eldest son came home from school five years ago having been mugged in the street outside the tube station? And you know what? No one, not a soul, not one businessman or mother walking past intervened as this child was being pushed up against the wall and frisked for his valuables? He’s no shrinking violet and wasn’t having it. He was late home after rugby and they didn’t reckon on what they got – he punched one of them. Not the usual reaction and it must have surprised them because the two boys who’d attacked him backed off in surprise.
Did the anxiety deepen when, a month later the same two came back and grabbed him further down the same street and told him that this time they were going to knife him for daring to punch one of them? You bet it did. He could have ended up another statistic so easily. Just that day, a group of builders were having a fag outside one of the houses they were renovating and, seeing what was happening, intervened. When we called the police they were relaxed. All in a day’s work. They had their suspicions who the gang were, took our son to the police station, showed him a range of mug shots but that was the last we heard of it.
Two years later, Son Number two was followed home from school through the park by a group of boys. One of them broke away from the others and, in what seems to have been some kind of weird initiation ceremony, forced him up against a wall, frisked him and found the only interesting piece of equipment he had on him - his mobile. The others stood back, egging on the attacker from the pavement on the other side of the road. The mobile was old and unsophisticated so it was chucked on the ground with contempt. It was back to the cops again for us. They were round within minutes of the 999 call and the sergeant bundled our son into the back of the unmarked police car and drove round the neighbourhood to see if they could find the culprits. No joy. Needless to say they had melted into one or other of the housing estates which dot our middle class London “village”. It was months before Son Number 2 stopped worrying about walking home. His, and our, anxiety was not helped when a few months later, a sixteen year old was stabbed to death in the mid afternoon while walking home with his girlfriend five minutes’ walk from our home.
Mugging is now so common place that no one is shocked any more. But why do we have to put up with it? Friends have moved out of London to the country or sent their kids to boarding school to escape it. My husband and I would say to each other “perhaps we should think about emigrating” but it was more of a mantra than anything like a realistic ambition.
But the more we talked to others, the more we discovered that we are not alone.
Where did the rot begin? It’s certainly here. Several years ago a friend told me that, in his opinion, the symptom of the malaise in this country was the virtual collapse in the public service ethos. When my father was discharged from Ealing General Hospital after a bout of pneumonia, the medics forgot to take the needle out of his arm which had been there for the drip. A few years later my mother was in the same hospital. She’s a fully qualified nurse and midwife and would complain to the nurses that used commodes were left by bedsides all night. The response would be “The day staff will sort it out”. Needless to say, my mother caught C Difficile. It could have killed her. It very nearly did. A few months later, after a fall at home landed her back in Ealing General Hospital with a broken femur, things were no better. The woman in the bed next to her had contracted an infection in her leg after going in for a standard knee operation and so could not be discharged. Nursing staff struck me as callous. It was the height of summer and baking hot. A new patient was admitted to the ward with a broken leg while I was visiting. Desperate for water she had rung her bell repeatedly. No one came. In the end I picked up her jug and went to the hospital kitchens to get her ice and water. Furious at the lack of care afforded the patients, I went to check up on what was keeping them from responding to calls from patients. The nursing staff weren’t busy – they were chatting and laughing at the nursing station. If I went up to make inquiries as to my mother’s progress, I was ignored until their private conversations were done with. The patient (and or their family members) came last.
In Summer 2001 we renovated our home. Our delightful Albanian painter “George” would regale us with tales of how stupid he thought the British Government was and how, if he ran the country, he would put a stop to all the illegal immigrants. He had arrived in the UK in the back of a lorry and immediately claimed political asylum by claiming to be a Kosovan refugee. As an Albanian he had no right to stay in the country so he said he was a Kosovan! While waiting to see if his claim for refugee status from a war torn region could be swung past the immigration authorities he would travel to and fro in the back of a lorry to Albania for Christmas, weddings and other family events. “What fools the British are”, he would say. But his ruse worked. Now with Permanent Leave to Remain, he has learnt English and pays his taxes. Nothing wrong with that or with him, he will be an asset to this country, but there is no doubt we have lost control of our borders. He was not entitled to any kind of asylum but had claimed it anyway. He freely admitted to us that he had abused the system, but it was a wide open door, so he just walked right in.
Driving home one evening several years ago with a nationally (and internationally) recognised journalist known as a “social commentator” she told me that she no longer indulges in social commentary so much as charts the steady demise of this country.
How right she was. Coming back home from work by car not long ago I turned left off the main road into my street and spotted a woman whacking her small child, who looked about five years old, around the head with such viciousness that he was screaming in shock and pain. I slowed, stopped the car, wound down my window and glowered at her. “What you bloody staring at, bitch?” she hollered at me. In my most reasonable sounding voice I asked her to stop hitting her child. “I like hitting him and I’ll do what I like – fuck off. What you going to do about it anyway?” she bawled back at me. “I’ll call the police”, I replied. Big mistake. That was a red rag to a bull. I drove off and parked a hundred metres further off down the road, outside a pub. I was rummaging in my handbag for my house keys when there was a tremendous crash on the roof of my car and someone clawing at my car door. “Get out, get out of yer fuckin’ car and I’ll fuckin’ have yer, white bitch”. I grabbed my mobile phone and that was it. She went ballistic. Unable to open the car door (I had fortunately done what I always do when driving in London – locked all doors), she became completely hysterical “Are you phoning the cops?” she yelled. Then, to my horror, she got out a coin from her purse and dragged it across the paintwork and the window screen while kicking the car door. People piled out of the pub to watch. Great spectator sport, but no one was prepared to intervene. Why not? I guess they thought that if they jumped in and pulled her off the car it would be they who would be questioned by police…and quite possibly arrested and charged with one offence or another. And because she was Black, I am sure that added to the explosive mix of fear. Because no one wants to get caught up in anything remotely likely to get them accused of being racist. Better just let her burn off her fury and give up. To hell with me, my car, my safety.
Eventually, dragging the sobbing child down the street, she walked off, turning to scream and shout as she went that I was a “fuckin’ white bitch” and that one day she would come back and get me. A man, walking his golden retriever, came up to me and told me to “forget it - she’s nuts”. And that was it. Just another everyday scene in modern day Britain. A minor event, I know. And I was lucky. I wasn’t injured or worse (though my car is damaged). But no one, not a soul, did a thing to help me. It wasn’t always like this. Twenty years ago, even fifteen, I am quite certain people would have intervened.
And as for the little boy – who knows? I hope his neighbours or teachers keep an eye out for him. But are they also too scared to act for fear of being labelled racist?
Working with the Metropolitan police I was staggered at how many officers openly expressed their sense of desperation at the state of this country. They are expected to be social workers, whilst daily facing acute danger on the streets coupled with a dire lack of respect towards them. They see the deterioration of society and despair.
And then it happened. My husband was offered a job in the USA. It was March 2006. Was it now time to put our money where our mouths were? Were prospects so bleak in the UK that we should uproot our family and go? We thought long and hard. We came to a compromise – my husband would take the job, settle in, see how he liked it, leave me and the kids in the UK. If my husband thought he’d made a terrible mistake he would return and we’d have lost nothing. But if he was convinced the USA offered a better lifestyle and future the rest of the family would ditch this country and join him. And so he went. I have had a “Virtual Husband” for over a year now. And, as we predicted, things in the UK are only getting worse.
We are now into our second year of living apart. We see each other in the school holidays only. It’s crunch time. To leave one’s country is a tough call. To sell off the family home, abandon the friends, family, doctor, dentist, everything one is familiar with is a huge step. If I go, that’s it. No coming back. So, to chart the ups and down, the fears and hopes I decided to keep a log of the emotions, trials and tribulations as I enter my “make or break” year. Do I stay or do I go? What do friends and relatives have to say to my dilemma? The countdown has begun!