Category: Divided Kingdom

I’m scared. But not of your dog. (A fear-shaped Britain)

Are you scared? Would you readily admit you’re scared? Openly? Or hesitatingly, in a quiet voice, half-hoping no one heard? Would you confide in someone, eyes down and face turned away, your mouth forming the words – I’m scared?
    I don’t. I don’t say it. I don’t let the words take shape, because once they do they come alive. I muzzle them, I muffle them, I drown them out with other words like faith, because faith smoothes the edges of fear enough so it doesn’t take that shape that keeps me up at night. But I’m awake at night anyway, because I’m scared.
    The fear is Britain-shaped. It’s a fear-shaped Britain. It traces the borders of an island kingdom that was once my home. Borders that were, then, nothing but lines on a map, the broken lines of a gentle guide, with spaces in between so you could come and go; borders that are now lines drawn against me, telling me that my place is not within. Wherever my place is, elsewhere, it’s not within. The broken lines that now mean “cut here”.
    A cut, that’s what is feels like. Being cut away, cut off, cut loose.

My friends in London, on the inside, when they ask, they say When are you coming home? I’ve been away because the guidelines said I could, the gentle borders told me I could come and go. But now there’s hardness and what scares me is I don’t know what I will find when I return. What boundary lines, what barbed wires, what broken things. Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca: that island doesn’t know me. Like Odysseus washing up finally on the shores of home, without a trace of triumph, no fanfare, no confetti, no loving wife to make the shape of welcome with her open arms. Only a loyal dog to wag his tired tail in recognition. But what dog will greet me upon my return? If it’s the British bulldog, that’s a guard dog, not a pet. It’s not the bouncy puppy that you adopted as your own, the one you fed treats all these years and trusted not to bear its teeth, the one that grew to know you. It’s a snarling beast grown fat on hatred and fear, whipped into a frenzy and straining against the boundaries that it was reared to protect, and it’s been groomed to go for the heart. It will rip your throat out but first it will break your heart.
    Home is where the heart is, but where is the heart in all of this? Broken, like the lines we’ve crossed. The lines that once connected the dots; the lines that now divide. Cut here.

And me and you are all of us who are scared, we’re just dots. Cast adrift, unable to connect and make a shape. What shape would we make if we connected? Would it look like Britain, or would it form another picture entirely? How hard would its edges be, how flexible its boundaries? Would it be a shape that soothes or feeds the fear? Would it contain us? Would it define us? Would it set us free?

That island doesn’t know me, but I thought I knew. I thought I knew my place and that puppy that I trusted not to hurt me when I held my hand out for its paw. What good is faith when it turns against you, snarling, and rips your home to shreds? But no, fuck you: you might turn me out, but you won’t turn me faithless. I’m scared, but not of your dog. I won’t drift away, unconnected, to elsewhere, to anywhere but within, just because of the lines you’ve crossed. I know I can find my island again. I can find my way back. And I need no fanfare, no confetti, no recognition, no brass band to welcome me home; I just need you not to break it while I’m away, and the space to come and go.

Draw your lines where they matter. Give that dog another bone to chew on. And fucking say it, that you’re scared, let your mouth form the words, let them come to life and dance – I’m scared – but don’t let the fear shape you. Don’t let that be the shape that defines us all. Connect the fucking dots.

This is the last of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part one, part two, part three, and part four here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

Let it not be lost. (The United Kingdom that we love.)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

The longest day of the year has been and gone. So has the worst. This is what I declare today, on the 27th of June, midway through the year: enough. Let this be the worst of it. Let the second half of 2016 be an opportunity for figuring our shit out, and healing.

I say healing – not licking our wounds. We are not wounded, even though we are in pain. We are not wounded unless we choose to take these wounds on, to let them break our skin and our spirit. Unless we take on the mentality of the wounded, the injured, the put-upon. And then what? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression? Retaliation? Self pity?

We are in pain, but we are not wounded. We are grieving. Some of us are grieving; some of us are rejoicing, celebrating an outcome that we think is for the best; some of us are confused; some of us riddled with regret. But I say us, did you notice? All of us are us. The Leavers, the Remainers, the in-betweeners, even those who only thought of googling the EU after they’d voted, even the ones who decided, on the day, it wasn’t all that important to turn up, even people like me, who weren’t given the choice at all: they are all us.

It’s not easy to say this. I feel no connection to core of the Leave voters. I feel no connection to those motivated by racism, xenophobia or nationalism. I feel no connection to the ignorant, because ignorance can be cured or, at least, ameliorated (perhaps by doing a google search on the EU before voting to leave it) and it is not – as demonstrated by all of those declaring themselves devastated by the outcome of their actions – any kind of bliss. I feel no connection to those who hold on to a past, a time before, that can never be recreated, who voted for the ghost of Great Britain instead of the living, breathing people that make up this country today.

It’s not easy to say this, because some of these people want me out. To some of them, I’m not the collateral damage of a decision driven by loss of faith in European politics; to some, I am the problem. They didn’t vote for themselves, they voted against me. It’s not easy, in the face of people rejoicing in the fact that they’ve voted me out, to not feel wounded. But I have to try because to give into this is to perpetuate the division that I’m fighting against, in my heart and with these words. To give in is to legitimise it. And that’s when they’ll have truly won.

Trying to take in the world, today, makes me feel a little nauseous. It reminds me of dystopian fiction, a reality that looks vaguely familiar, but not, and makes your stomach turn. The Leavers and the Remainers have already become terminology; they have taken root, they have taken hold. They are used as if they’d always been around, as if we’d always been using them. Already, in the space of a few days, we cannot imagine there was ever a time when that split didn’t exist.
     Dystopia: the Divided Kingdom. Where Leaver and Remainer are the only available choices; where there are no more classes, and no more opportunities, only two factions at war. Where you have to wear the government-issue yellow or blue armband at all times, so that you may be instantly recognised as one or the other, and no one has to waste time talking to you to ascertain where you stand. Endless queues at specially-converted clinics, blue or yellow, where they brand your identity – Leaver or Remainer – onto your skin, and secret, back-street places popping up, where you can have the mark burnt off, for those, unthinkably, who want to switch allegiance. And later, branding babies at birth. And later, coding it into your DNA. And somewhere, out of sight yet too much in-your-face to be tolerated, the unmentionables, the identity-less: the EU citizens. Cast adrift, segregated in special ghetto housing, and knocking on unmarked doors for black-market papers, so that they, too, may be branded, and belong.

Does it sound far-fetched? This is what happens when you perpetuate division. When you legitimise it. This is what happens when you split people down moral lines, with rhetoric and fear. You don’t have to go too far back to fetch an example: do you remember a man called Hitler? Do you remember Apartheid? Have we already forgotten that world, just three days ago, when these were things with which we did not agree?

We are all of us grieving. We are grieving for the United Kingdom we once knew, the United Kingdom we still believed in just three days ago. A country built upon imperialism and colonialism and nationalism and racism, but that evolved. That grew to include us, that chipped away at the divisions to make sure all of us were us. That forgave itself for the –isms of the past, and gave itself the opportunity to grow. We are grieving, all of us, for the country that we loved.

But the nationalists and the racists and the colonialists and the ignorant have always been around. This referendum did not create them, it only gave them voice. It allowed them to identify as Leavers, as opposed to Remainers, and it gave them a leg to stand on when, for so many years, they had none. When their legs would have been kicked from under them, just three days ago, the very moment they gave voice to hate. It placed them in the moral majority, alongside people who genuinely did vote for what they hope will be a better world (regardless of whether you or I agree), and they are piggybacking on these people to gain credibility. But, on their way to a better world, outside of Europe or within it, I doubt many of the Leavers want racists riding on their backs. Let them walk alone, and then be counted. Let them see that they don’t count for much.

Because the United Kingdom that we love may not be lost, not irrevocably, not yet. Not unless we give in, not unless we perpetuate division and legitimise hate. Not unless we allow ourselves to be wounded and lash out. Retaliation? No. Self-pity? No. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression? No. We may be grieving, but we are not trapped. We don’t have to follow the same old patterns, blindly, that invariably lead to the same results. We can grow to include them, these others, to accept them for what they are and still be us. It isn’t easy to say this, in the face of so much hatred, rejoicing in a victory that it calls moral, tainting those around it with its brand. Daring to show its face, all of a sudden – but these people have always been around. They may be in our faces, now, but we don’t have to give in, and we don’t have to carry them on our backs. They haven’t won, not yet. We can show them that they will not be tolerated. The world may be changing, but these are still things with which we do not agree. We can neutralise them, not legitimise them, by being us. In the name of the United Kingdom that we love, we can still be us.

This is what I mean by healing. Skin unbroken; spirit intact. Not like it never happened, but like it happened and we learned.

So let the 23rd of June be the worst of it. Let it be the worst day of the year. Let us not be wounded; let our pain help us heal. Let our grief bring us acceptance. Let us figure out our shit, instead of flinging it at each other. Let us learn; let us grow. Let us forgive ourselves and the United Kingdom that we love; let us still believe in that place that included us; let it not be lost.

This is the fourth of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part one, part two, part three, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

Image credit: BBC News From the People’s Vote march in central London, March 23rd 2019

This is the voice of the voiceless (Divided Kingdom)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant
Migrants walk to cross the border into Croatia, near the town of Sid in Serbia

I’m not political. I know enough to know I know too little. And besides, politics is often about winning arguments and proving your point, and I have neither skill nor interest in those two things. But there is something stirring inside me, a voice low but firm. It is unsettled and it’s unsettling. It wants to be heard. It is the voice of the EU exile, the resident-turned-immigrant overnight. It is the voice of those who found out yesterday how quickly a right can be overturned; that a right can be taken for granted but it can equally be taken away. It is the voice of all of us who learned yesterday what politics actually means. And it is turning us political.

We are privileged, and we cannot conceive of a world where our right to live the lives we’ve built, where we’ve built them, could be challenged or taken away. But that is the world we live in, and it happens every day. Those refugees washing up on our borders and terrifying us: what do we think happened to them? They had lives, too, that they took for granted, in places they called home. They had rights that were snatched away. And here they are now, at our borders: unwanted, and wanting nothing but to be where they feel that they belong. These things happen, all over this world we live in, but not here. Not to us.

I don’t want this happening to me, either, and I’m not advocating for cynicism or what goes around comes around, though it does. I’m not saying that it serves us right or that we deserved it, this blow to our naïve arrogance, or that it’s a lesson we needed to learn, though perhaps it is. I don’t believe in carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders just so we know how heavy it is. I don’t believe in cross-generational karma or history dictating the present, or inheriting the sins of the past. I’ve done nothing wrong and whatever’s coming around I did not bring onto myself. I am only guilty of taking for granted a right that was granted to me, at one time. I don’t want this happening to me, or you, or anyone, here or in any place. But times change and rights are revoked, and it’s happening: here, now, to us. We are exiled in the land of limbo, with the lives we’ve built in bundles on our backs, travelling in a direction entirely uncharted and we don’t know, when we reach the borders, what we will find.

It doesn’t serve us right and it isn’t fair and we don’t deserve it, but it’s humbling and, perhaps, a little humility is something we need. Along with the shock and the hurt and the indignation that we’re feeling, justifiably, and the strength we’ll need to muster to see us through. Along with the hope that we’ll need to summon if we don’t want to remain voiceless, because it’s only hopeful voices, now, that have a chance of breaking through boundaries, of crossing the borders and being heard. That is our task, now; that is our responsibility: to find that hopeful voice, and let it be heard. Dignified but humble; understanding, at last, that we are not immune. That we are not too privileged to find ourselves outside; to be turned from us to them.

It isn’t fair, because we have been voiceless. Because the citizens of the UK were granted a voice but we were not. Those of us who’ve built our lives upon a right granted in this country, but when that right was challenged, we had no voice. All those who spent the day in a daze yesterday, with heads lowered and heavy hearts. Silent, or only muttering the same stock phrases; who, in many cases, could manage nothing more eloquent than what the fuck.
    It’s isn’t fair, because our British counterparts, the citizens of the UK who’ve built their lives in our countries, were given a voice. They had the chance to protect those lives. They had the right, but we did not. It isn’t fair but it is politics, and that it just the way it works. And this is not against those who rightfully voted, our British counterparts and the citizens of the UK. I want to thank you, the 48% who voted for unity, for yourselves and for all of us, and even those who, infuriatingly, voted to Leave and then changed your minds. I want to thank you for lending us your voice when we were voiceless, and for speaking up for us when we were rendered mute with shock. You have done more for breaking the boundaries between us and them than you imagine, and you must not be ashamed for the choices of the other 52%. Don’t carry that weight on your shoulders; it’s too heavy, and it isn’t yours to bear.

There is something stirring, a voice that had been muted, and it is turning us political. But this is bigger than politics and numbers and the laws that grant and revoke our rights. This is about people, and the voices we use to talk to each other, so that we can be understood. Anger, hurt, indignation are all justified, but we’ve heard those voices before and they never take us very far. This is history in the making; this is when we choose what we bring on to ourselves. If those tightening borders can serve to bring us closer rather than driving us apart, together, we have a voice. Bigger than any number a referendum can throw up. The voice of people, regardless of where they were born or what rights they were granted by the paperwork they carry. Low but firm, dignified but humble, and hopeful: that is the voice that needs to be heard. Positive. Not political, but human. This is what needs to be understood: we don’t want to prove a point or win an argument. We just want to live our lives in the place where we built them, and not carry them in bundles on our backs, camping out at the borders, unwanted, and wanting nothing but to be in the place that we call home.

This is the third of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part one, part two, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

Photo credit: Refugees walk to cross the border into Croatia, October 2015 © Antonio Bronic / Reuters

Divided Kingdom (The day after)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

divided-kindom

Brexit gave me a very romantic moment this morning. The birds chirped and the bees buzzed and the sun shone upon me as I picked up my phone and proposed to M by text message. ‘You might have to marry me’, I said. He’s not a sentimental man, but I’m sure there were tears in his eyes when he read it. This is a joke I’m making, on this day when there is nothing to laugh about. Ha ha.

I’m crying as I write this.

All my life, I’ve stood on the funny side of things and found something to laugh about. And I have laughed today, but bitterly. There is a bitter taste in my mouth. Bile. Hatred. Division. I’ve laughed, because you don’t just break the habit of a lifetime from one day to the next, but things are being broken all over the place. And today, I don’t know where I stand.

It’s not about the breaking up of a union that, despite the best intentions that I’m sure were present, somewhere, at its inception, was arguably ill-conceived in the first place. What’s broken is this human race, that looks around and sees only difference, that looks around and fails to recognise itself in the humanity of others, that sees otherness wherever it looks. Humanity: the great equaliser, but it’s the lowest common denominator that’s at play today, and it is fear. In all of our equations, X equals humanity divided by fear. We’re broken, and our edges are jagged; we don’t remember how we fit together. We don’t remember that we ever did. From one day to the next, we forget.

It’s too soon to write this. I don’t know how I feel. Something has happened and I want to talk about it, but there really isn’t much to say. Something has happened, yet nothing has happened yet everything has changed yet everything looks the same. The birds are chirping and the bees are buzzing and the sun is shining upon us all, and I cannot connect this feeling inside, the cold dread, the fight-or-flight tingle in my limbs, the bile rising up and turning my jokes bitter, to what I see when look around. I see myself as other, as others now see me; I recognise nothing at all.

I’m crying as I write this, but you don’t break the habit of a lifetime from one day to the next, and I’ve made jokes today. Like, I’ll be a new Anne Frank and hide in an attic and write my memoirs, ha ha. But it’s a bitter laugh, and powerless: it doesn’t connect. How could it, when connection is to recognise ourselves in others, and we have failed to even recognise ourselves? When the immigrants of yesterday are the xenophobes of today and they see neither irony nor danger in this, and memory only serves as ammunition, to justify the bitterness and the jagged edges we’re pointing at each other, something is broken. It shouldn’t surprise me, that I feel disconnected, but I was surprised by the news this morning, and I no longer know where I stand.

Divided Kingdom, you are broken, and you have broken my heart. And I know how little this matters. I know it matters almost not at all. But today, to me and to another 3 million residents of a land that’s shifting beneath our feet, of a kingdom divided, it matters. From one day to the next you have turned us into other and, no matter where each of us stands, there is no funny side to this. Just sides and jagged edges and that dreadful, chilling tingle in our limbs.

Fear is the great equaliser. That’s what the X seventeen million people drew onto their ballot papers and divided a nation equals; that’s what they chose. But what we fail to see is that we are all afraid. And if we recognised ourselves in the fear of others, perhaps we’d remember how little there is to be afraid of, after all. Perhaps we’d remember that we all fit together, and that division has never conquered anything for long. Perhaps we’d see that there has only ever been one side, and it’s the one where we can laugh at ourselves. And not allow the bile to turn us bitter. Despite the Xs that divide us, we still have that choice.

This is the second of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part one, part three, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

If I’m allowed to stay (Divided Kingdom)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

uk border

I am not an immigrant tonight. Tonight, I am a resident of the United Kingdom. But tomorrow: what?

I moved from Athens to London in 1996, at age 18. This September, if I’m allowed to stay, I’ll celebrate twenty years in the UK.

If I’m allowed to stay. Can you imagine? Twenty years: that’s more than half my lifetime. That’s my entire experience as an adult; that’s pretty much everything I know about the world, everything I’ve learned about how to conduct myself in it, everything I’ve become. When I come to Greece, I don’t quite know how to make myself fit in. I am awkward, I am strange, I am, somehow, a little displaced. I don’t know how to ask for the things I need; I use English words where the Greek ones elude me. I apologise too much, and hold doors open for people who storm through them, casting me hurried looks of confusion or contempt. I have trouble crossing roads because the cars keep coming at me from the wrong side, and they don’t seem to obey the rules of traffic that I’m used to. I don’t belong here. My passport may be Greek, but I’ve been marked for Britain. I am a Londoner. I’ve never been an immigrant, so far.

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never stolen anyone’s job. I’ve never accepted lower than average wages, making it impossible for the British jobseekers to compete with my rock-bottom immigrant standards. I came from a country that considered itself prosperous; I came to go to university, not to survive. I didn’t come for better; I came for good. If anything, my standards were unrealistically high.
    In the early days, in the late nineties when barwork was still cool, my colleagues behind the bar were all British, every single one of them, and we all interviewed for our positions. We were all on minimum wage and we all spent most of our earnings on beer and dancing and late-night kebabs.
    And later, when the EU opened its doors to many more nations, the ratio of foreign to native workers in the hospitality world settled at around 50/50, perhaps even tipping to 60/40 in favour of the foreigners, but it wasn’t because the latter were being chosen over their British counterparts. It was because the British weren’t applying. I know, because I was the one going through the CVs. Having gone off and done other jobs and got myself a Masters in Creative Writing, I wandered back into barwork in the mid- to late-noughties. My own generation had long moved on by now, and the kids, it seems, were no longer interested in serving drinks. I don’t know where they went or what they were doing, but they certainly weren’t queuing up for jobs in pubs and being rejected in favour of cheap Polish (and Greek) labour. Perhaps they were signing on: they were, after all, entitled to benefits; we were not. Because – in case you wondered – no: you don’t just stroll past the borders and sign on, and then sit back and drink cider out of a plastic bottle and have lots of foreign babies to drain the country’s resources. They don’t let you do that. Funnily enough. You have to earn it.

In twenty years, I’ve never signed on. In twenty years, I’ve never applied for or received any benefits. In the twenty years that I’ve been making National Insurance contributions, both through PAYE and voluntarily, through self-employment, I have probably received statutory sick pay twice. In twenty years, I’ve visited NHS hospitals three times, and my GP perhaps ten, mostly to renew my prescription for the contraceptive pill (not a single foreign baby in sight). I’ve had one filling part-subsidised by the NHS. I’ve paid several thousand pounds in taxes. I’ve paid several thousand pounds more in rent to British taxpayers.

I think, on balance, I’ve probably put more into this country, financially, than I’ve taken out. I think, on balance, I haven’t drained this country’s resources all that much. I have earned my benefits, but I have never abused them. And I’ve chosen this country, I’ve adopted it as my own and Britain, in turn, has never treated me like an immigrant. So far. This Great Britain, made up of immigrants and thriving on the multitude of cultures that it’s embraced. Gradually, yes, and with difficulty at first, but bravely and wholeheartedly, for the most part, with the openness that makes this Britain great.

And yet, tomorrow: what? Will I become in immigrant, at last, in this country that made me who I am? Will Britain make me an immigrant, at last, twenty years on?

I think I’d like to celebrate my twenty-year anniversary in the pub. I don’t go to pubs that often anymore, but it seems appropriate. I’ll drink a pint of lager with my friends and later, perhaps, we’ll go dancing. We might even have a kebab on the way home, but a nice one, and we’ll sit down to eat it, with cutlery. Our standards are still quite high.

I think I’d like to do that, if I’m allowed to stay.

This is the first of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part two, part three, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

A reciprocity of a different kind

I’ve thought long and hard about how to put this. I’ve agonised over it, gone round and round in circles in my head, practised words that never sounded right, stepped back from the circle and put it off, again and again.

Because I need to ask you for reviews, but without making it sound like there’s any expectation or obligation or pressure. I need to ask you for reviews, but without offering anything in return – nothing more tangible than thanks and gratitude – because this isn’t about enticement or rewards; because it depends on a reciprocity of a different kind. I need to ask you for reviews without sounding like I’m begging. Because that word has come up; that word has been thrown at me by trolls, “Look at you, having to beg for reviews”, and it cut me. Deep. I need to ask you for reviews, and I don’t know how. A full four years after I published my first book, I still don’t know how.

Because I want to ask you for reviews without asking, without having to ask, and it’s impossible. Because if you want something, you have to ask. If you need something, you have to ask. And therein lies the obligation; therein lies the dept: you owe it to yourself to ask. To draw a circle and stand in the middle, exposed, for everyone to see, and ask. Knowing that you might be rejected. That you will be. Knowing that rejection is a certainty.

I didn’t know about reviews when I first started out, four years ago, as a “published author”; I didn’t know about them before, in all my years as a reader. I didn’t know what they meant, how much they meant, how much of an impact they could have. I didn’t know how it felt to have none, or to get your first one. I didn’t know how it would feel to watch that number grow, to have a trickle of strangers pick up your book and read it and then return to Amazon unprompted to post a review because they wanted to share what it had meant to them. I didn’t know how a certain number of reviews could affect your visibility and your ranking and your sales, that mad, almighty Amazon algorithm than has the power to make little lines appear on your sales dashboard graph. And I didn’t know about the trolls. I didn’t know that there were people who knew about reviews, and who would randomly, arbitrarily, inexplicably manipulate the system for the express purpose of doing you harm. Who would go out of their way to place obstacles in yours, to belittle you, to discredit your work, to destroy you with a few careful, careless words. I didn’t know any of this then, but I know it now. Reviews matter.

And we make jokes, those of us who find ourselves exposed to judgement and critique; those of us who, for whatever reason or cause, place ourselves in any kind of spotlight – no matter how small or faint. We laugh, those of us who find ourselves under attack, “Haha, you have a troll; that’s a sign of success!” – but honestly, no: not in my book. Rejection is one thing, indifference another, and you will never please everyone, you’ll never be that person (author, artist, actor, politician, friend) that everyone likes, but the fact that there are people out there so bitter, so angry, so unhappy that they set out to take others down, to deliberately cause them damage, cannot be any measure of success, neither personal nor universal. It is a symptom of a very fucked up society that we’re supposed to be OK with this. That we’re supposed to shrug it off, to toughen up, grow thicker skin, grin and bear it, take the high road, claim the moral high ground.

Speaking for myself, I can tell you that tough doesn’t mean unbreakable, and there are words, perfectly targeted razor blades of hate, that can cut through the thickest of skins, and expose what we all are, underneath: vulnerable. Insecure, frightened, uncertain, and trying to make our way through this life as undamaged as possible. Speaking for myself, I can tell you I never set out to make any claims or take any road except my own, such as it is, as high or as low as it might be. I am prepared to cross a certain number of bridges on my way, but I cannot accept that ignoring the trolls lurking there, being advised to grin as they sink their teeth into me, as they chew up everything I’ve worked for and spit out vicious one-star reviews is any kind of sane response to the situation. Or in any way productive. All it does is foster the troll mentality, set them up in quaint little burrows, wifi-enabled, under their bridges, whence they can launch their attacks in extra comfort. I see nothing to grin about here.

And if we’re gonna talk about morality: speaking for myself, I find the whole thing morally questionable, and highly irresponsible. For both sides. Because, in school- or workplace-bullying, we have at least acknowledged that both parties need support. We do not advise the child who’s had his head held down the toilet to grin and bear it, nor the woman who’s systematically undermined and ostracised at work to grow tougher skin. We do not congratulate them on their status as victims and targets of abuse. And the perpetrators in these situations, those who are driven to cause harm to others, are not simply dismissed as “bullies” and allowed to carry on, nor abandoned to their hatred and unhappiness until they consume them. They are seen as people, probably battling with untold shit of their own, who need help as much as those they victimise. They are not just cast as storybook monsters: they are given a chance at healing, and redemption.

It sounds like I have sympathy for the bullies and the trolls. And, on a human level, I do. There is probably suffering behind their words and actions, and my skin is not so thick that I am untouched by their pain. But when we cross into some fucked-up cyber-fairytale where I am cast as a victim of success and the monsters are allowed to roam free and we’re all ruled by the Almighty Algorithm in the Sky, no: there is obligation here, there is responsibility, and it’s on me. I have to stand up for myself. Amazon is not a kindly schoolteacher or an understanding boss; Amazon is a business. It does have systems in place (more algorithms) to ensure the objectivity of its reviews and ratings, but they can only go so far. Beyond that, it cannot protect me. Amazon is a jungle, and I refuse to be cast as prey.

I can stand up for myself, but I cannot take on the bullies on my own; I need my pack. So here’s what I’m asking of you: to stand beside me. To be my allies, to be my pack. And if you have enjoyed reading any of my books, to say so. I cannot take the bullies down, nor their reviews; I cannot fight the trolls with fairytale swords, but I can fight them with words. Yours, this time. Your words are the antidote to their poison. My words have gone into my books; they are the best, the most I have to give. My books are all I have to say for myself, and I say this in the most unassuming way possible: I cannot do any better than this. They are my best effort to make sense of the world, my best attempt to connect with those whom I share it with. And if I have been successful in that, I am asking you: please say so. Without obligation, without reward, and prompted only gently. By choice. Just like you chose to read my books in the first place; just like I chose to write them, and put them out there to be judged. Knowing that rejection was a certainly but hoping, nonetheless, to forge some ties that go beyond a financial transaction. For a reciprocity of a different kind.

Thank you.

Below are Amazon universal links to all of my books; they should, in theory, take you to each book’s page in your local Amazon store.

100 days of solitude

you can’t name an unfinished thing

This Reluctant Yogi: everyday adventures in the yoga world

Collected: essays and stories on life, death and donkeys

Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

Common People

Death by any other name

For Now: notes on living a deliberate life

P.S. Even those books that have, so far, escaped the attentions of trolls could do with a bit of review love. 🙂

I’m scared, but not of your dog

Are you scared? Would you readily admit you’re scared? Openly? Or hesitatingly, in a quiet voice, half-hoping no one heard? Would you confide in someone, eyes down and face turned away, your mouth forming the words – I’m scared?
    I don’t. I don’t say it. I don’t let the words take shape, because once they do they come alive. I muzzle them, I muffle them, I drown them out with other words like faith, because faith smoothes the edges of fear enough so it doesn’t take that shape that keeps me up at night. But I’m awake at night anyway, because I’m scared.
    The fear is Britain-shaped. It’s a fear-shaped Britain. It traces the borders of an island kingdom that was once my home. Borders that were, then, nothing but lines on a map, the broken lines of a gentle guide, with spaces in between so you could come and go; borders that are now lines drawn against me, telling me that my place is not within. Wherever my place is, elsewhere, it’s not within. The broken lines that now mean “cut here”.
    A cut, that’s what is feels like. Being cut away, cut off, cut loose.

My friends in London, on the inside, when they ask, they say When are you coming home? I’ve been away because the guidelines said I could, the gentle borders told me I could come and go. But now there’s hardness and what scares me is I don’t know what I will find when I return. What boundary lines, what barbed wires, what broken things. Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca: that island doesn’t know me. Like Odysseus washing up finally on the shores of home, without a trace of triumph, no fanfare, no confetti, no loving wife to make the shape of welcome with her open arms. Only a loyal dog to wag his tired tail in recognition. But what dog will greet me upon my return? If it’s the British bulldog, that’s a guard dog, not a pet. It’s not the bouncy puppy that you adopted as your own, the one you fed treats all these years and trusted not to bear its teeth, the one that grew to know you. It’s a snarling beast grown fat on hatred and fear, whipped into a frenzy and straining against the boundaries that it was reared to protect, and it’s been groomed to go for the heart. It will rip your throat out but first it will break your heart.
    Home is where the heart is, but where is the heart in all of this? Broken, like the lines we’ve crossed. The lines that once connected the dots; the lines that now divide. Cut here.

And me and you are all of us who are scared, we’re just dots. Cast adrift, unable to connect and make a shape. What shape would we make if we connected? Would it look like Britain, or would it form another picture entirely? How hard would its edges be, how flexible its boundaries? Would it be a shape that soothes or feeds the fear? Would it contain us? Would it define us? Would it set us free?

That island doesn’t know me, but I thought I knew. I thought I knew my place and that puppy that I trusted not to hurt me when I held my hand out for its paw. What good is faith when it turns against you, snarling, and rips your home to shreds? But no, fuck you: you might turn me out, but you won’t turn me faithless. I’m scared, but not of your dog. I won’t drift away, unconnected, to elsewhere, to anywhere but within, just because of the lines you’ve crossed. I know I can find my island again. I can find my way back. And I don’t need no fanfare, no confetti, no recognition, no brass band to welcome me home; I just need you not to break it while I’m away, and the space to come and go.

Draw your lines where they matter. Give that dog another bone to chew on. And fucking say it, that you’re scared, let your mouth form the words, let them come to life and dance – I’m scared – but don’t let the fear shape you. Don’t let that be the shape that defines us all. Connect the fucking dots.

Divided Kingdom: how Brexit made me an immigrant / free e-book

Four essays on the result of the UK referendum on EU membership and its implications for UK citizens and EU nationals alike, from the point of view of a UK resident turned immigrant overnight. The e-book is available to everyone for free; just send me an email and let me know whether you’d like a pdf or mobi version (for Kindle), or get in touch through my facebook page. Also available on Amazon.

Divided Kingdom: how Brexit made me an immigrant

I am not an immigrant tonight. Tonight, I am a resident of the United Kingdom. But tomorrow: what?

We are privileged, and we cannot conceive of a world where our right to live the lives we’ve built, where we’ve built them, could be challenged or taken away. But that is the world we live in, and it happens every day. Those refugees washing up on our borders and terrifying us: what do we think happened to them? They had lives, too, that they took for granted, in places they called home. They had rights that were snatched away. And here they are now, at our borders: unwanted, and wanting nothing but to be where they feel that they belong. These things happen, all over this world we live in, but not here. Not to us.

But times change and rights are revoked, and it’s happening: here, now, to us. We are exiled in the land of limbo, with the lives we’ve built in bundles on our backs, travelling in a direction entirely uncharted and we don’t know, when we reach the borders, what we will find.

It doesn’t serve us right and it isn’t fair and we don’t deserve it, but it’s humbling and perhaps a little humility is something we need. Along with the shock and the hurt and the indignation that we’re feeling, justifiably, and the strength we’ll need to muster to see us through. Along with the hope that we’ll need to summon, because it’s only hopeful voices, now, that have a chance of breaking through boundaries, of crossing the borders and being heard. That is our task, now; that is our responsibility: to find that hopeful voice, and let it be heard. Dignified but humble; understanding, at last, that we are not immune. That we are not too privileged to find ourselves outside; to be turned from us to them.

Divided Kingdom: how Brexit made me an immigrant / free e-book

Four essays on the result of the UK referendum on EU membership and its implications for UK citizens and EU nationals alike, from the point of view of a UK resident turned immigrant overnight. The e-book is available to everyone for free; just send me an email and let me know whether you’d like a pdf or mobi version (for Kindle), or get in touch through my facebook page. Also available on Amazon.

I’m on a roll!

In the last week or so, I have released not one but TWO new books on Amazon.

newbooks-wp

The first one, collected, essays and stories on life, death and donkeys, contains published and unpublished essays and short stories written between May 2014 and April 2016, in Athens, London and Sifnos.

“If there’s a theme tying these pieces together, perhaps it’s identity, our constant quest for one that fits; that keeps fitting even as we change. We are scattered, like our stories, forever torn between people and places; we are all of us pulled this way and that by the different parts of our identities that don’t necessarily fit together, at first glance, but still come together to make a whole. Perhaps, for me, writing is the thread I use to keep it from splitting apart.

There are other themes, too: there is death and there is love (what else?), and the fear and the uncertainty that death and love both stoke and soothe. There is trust and jealousy; falling and finding your feet on ever-shifting ground. There are the negative feelings that we all succumb to, from time to time, the dark sides of our personalities, and the little sparks of joy that will eventually lead us back to where we want to be. And running through it all, that tentative thread of identity, the seams of who we are in this life, regardless of the where and the how; alone, for ourselves and for others.

Perhaps uncollected would be a fairer description of the little book you’re holding, but there is power in names, and I think the title I have chosen is more of a wish than a description; an invocation, almost a prayer. To be collected, and not scattered. To be collected, even when there are parts of you scattered all over the place. To be able to collect these parts, to bring them together in some loose, imperfect way, and make a thing that’s meaningful. A thing that fits.”

View it on Amazon, in paperback or on Kindle.

The second, Divided Kingdom: how Brexit made me an immigrant, features four essays documenting my response to the UK referendum in June, and its implications for all of us. I’m distributing this one for free! (See below for details.)

“I am not an immigrant tonight. Tonight, I am a resident of the United Kingdom. But tomorrow: what?

We are privileged, and we cannot conceive of a world where our right to live the lives we’ve built, where we’ve built them, could be challenged or taken away. But that is the world we live in, and it happens every day. Those refugees washing up on our borders and terrifying us: what do we think happened to them? They had lives, too, that they took for granted, in places they called home. They had rights that were snatched away. And here they are now, at our borders: unwanted, and wanting nothing but to be where they feel that they belong. These things happen, all over this world we live in, but not here. Not to us.

But times change and rights are revoked, and it’s happening: here, now, to us. We are exiled in the land of limbo, with the lives we’ve built in bundles on our backs, travelling in a direction entirely uncharted and we don’t know, when we reach the borders, what we will find.

It doesn’t serve us right and it isn’t fair and we don’t deserve it, but it’s humbling and perhaps a little humility is something we need. Along with the shock and the hurt and the indignation that we’re feeling, justifiably, and the strength we’ll need to muster to see us through. Along with the hope that we’ll need to summon, because it’s only hopeful voices, now, that have a chance of breaking through boundaries, of crossing the borders and being heard. That is our task, now; that is our responsibility: to find that hopeful voice, and let it be heard. Dignified but humble; understanding, at last, that we are not immune. That we are not too privileged to find ourselves outside; to be turned from us to them.”

Divided Kingdom is available on Amazon, in paperback or on Kindle, at the lowest price Amazon will allow. But I lways intended to make this one available for free, to everyone. Please email me for a free pdf copy.