Opinion

Things ain't what they used to be

By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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October 22, 2005—The fact is I'm desperate. Britain is becoming barmier by the minute. And if the day comes when I'm obliged to head for "home" in order to qualify for the requisite National Health dentures, I will no longer have to merely speculate about the horrors that lie in wait.

First, I'll have to adjust to a chunk of my savings fuelling our ignoble missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and, perhaps other blighted lands on the neocon "to do" list. A bitter pill, indeed! That's if there's anything left after I've shelled out almost the GDP of one of the world's smallest nations for a bed-sit in Brixton.

Then I'll have to wave cheerio to almost a third of any future income I might garner for the privilege of waiting three months for a hospital bed, paying for the education of other people's children, funding government "back to work" schemes and getting my rubbish removed.

Worse, are we even allowed to say "rubbish" any more without getting manhandled under the new-fangled Anti-Terrorism Act?

Images of octogenarian Holocaust survivor and long-term Labour Party stalwart Walter Wolfgang come to mind here when he dared to heckle Jack Straw with the shocking "R" word at a recent Labour Party meet and was set upon by the police before being dragged out of the conference hall under the Anti-terrorism Act.

Indeed, what are we allowed to do and say on our overcrowded island, so different from the one I kissed goodbye in the 70s, when it was just recovering from a life-changing "flower power" social-and-cultural revolution.

Ah! Those were the days—days without a surveillance camera in sight, when smokers could cheerfully puff-puff their way to an early grave without a tut-tut to be heard, teens could ghetto-blast or kick a ball through a neighbor's window without being slapped with an Anti-social Behavior Order (ASBO), and porn was the province of Playboy, Penthouse and the then sleazy Soho and not in your face as you took the tube to work.

Those were the days when nicely-rounded kids were no longer labeled obese, and could tuck in to their jam roly-poly awash with watery custard with relish, when parents could still send little Simon or Sara to school with a greasy chip-butty and a bag of crisps without being deemed abusive, and when uncles could cuddle their nieces or nephews without fears of being suspected of latent pedophilia.

Then, we eat fish "n" chips with newsprint and doctors routinely administered penicillin to treat infections, adrenalin to asthmatics, and amphetamines to fatties. Now Britons are lucky if they're allowed to purchase more than two bottles of over-the-shelf cough syrup at any one time and soon their favorite vitamins will go the way of melatonin, down the memory hole.

And, then, too, British Rail employees who carried travelers' luggage were called "porters." Ignorant of the fact that members of this respected profession now enjoy a fancy-schmancy title, I actually asked for a porter at Paddington only to be told to (expletive deleted).

I compounded my lack of neo-protocol by leaving a counter-tip for a station waitress in Reading and had it thrown back in my face. Was my offering too insignificant or is tipping considered insulting? I'm still agonizing over that one.

It looks as though I'm doomed to be a stranger in my own land—a land where the friendly bobby has been replaced by gun-toting anti-terrorist squads with a license to kill.

It's a land where individuals may soon be tracked and compartmentalized thanks to biometric passports and ID cards and where suspects can be detained for up to three months, electronically tagged, stripped of their nationality, deported or kept under house arrest at the whim of the all-powerful home secretary.

Just imagine. One may not be allowed to call a school blackboard a blackboard (goodness only knows what it is nowadays) any more and the books of Enid Blyton (my childhood favorites) have been removed from library shelves as being sexist and racist. Worthy sentiments, perhaps, but racial profiling is rife and followers of the bigoted BNP are burgeoning.

Blimey! I'm better off where I am. Here in Egypt, I can drive without a seat belt, walk on the grass with impunity, speak to a real human on the phone rather than a machine and when I telephone my bank, I get to moan to the actual manager, not somebody who has been trained in British colloquialisms in far-away Bombay or Delhi. And luxury of luxuries, I can get my laundry cleaned and ironed within 24 hours.

Here, I'm free to take my chances in a turn-of-the century French lift, which creaks as it scrapes against the shaft. I can smoke an apple-flavored shisha without busybodies warning darkly of impending lung cancer. And I never have to worry about queuing up for the January sales, late commuter trains, or finding a gap in the clouds to bronze my pale bits.

Neither do I get dragged into heated discussions concerning the antics of "past their sell-by date" celebrities on Big Brother, or American entrepreneurs and Russian oligarchs shopping for soccer teams.

Despite my shrunken, wine-gum hued passport and my penchant for places afar, I'm still a proud Briton. Bring on the revolution, get rid of bossy Blair and Blunkett along with the rest of the Whitehall nannies, and have soapbox will travel Hyde Park Corner here I come. That's if it still even exists by the time I get there.

What's that you say? I can almost hear my compatriots thinking "Good riddance you spoilt old relic of a bygone age. We don't want you!" Don't worry darlings, the feeling is entirely mutual! I prefer to make my own corner of a foreign land forever England, and I guess I'll just have to manage my salmon and cucumber sandwiches and cream scones without the dentures.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.