I want my country back. I want it to be great again; it feels so different now. I hear conversations on the tube I never used to hear, and it makes me uncomfortable. I want my country back I worry that we’ll forget what “British” really means. This isn’t what that generation fought for, not so long ago. What would they think if they saw what we’ve become? I want my country back They’re not like us at all. They don’t fit in. They don’t even try. They’re just out for themselves. They don’t play by the rules. They don’t care about our values. I want my country back. I want to take control. I want things how they were in the good old days. Cold nights, warm beer, drizzle underdogs and queues. Sarcasm, lack of respect for authority. Inclusivity. Diversity. A country that welcomes your contribution to society whoever you are, wherever you’re from, whatever your faith. I want my country back. T...
Memories of working in Sierra Leone: I’ve had enough of this. Their voices start to blend into the mechanical monotony of the air conditioning unit. Sitting opposite each other at the far end of the table, they gesticulate like policemen directing traffic at a busy junction. “I’m just going to get some fresh air, I’ll just be outside” I say as I begin to shuffle past them to the door. They pause their conversation to theatrically rearrange the furniture; ensuring I don’t come within a couple of metres of them as I go past. As the door opens, the stale heat envelops me. I light a cigarette and make my way over the cobbled courtyard to a welcome area of shade. We’d just got a call to say the little boy had died. The news was like a sucker punch. Hit after hit after hit had been raining down but this had come when we were looking the other way. He’d been through so much. From the day he arrived at Kerrytown, he’d never been far from death, but his malnourished body had foug...
I’ve got a confession to make. I’m in my early thirties, I have a wife and kids and a fairly responsible job, and for the vast majority of the time I’m winging it. I am technically a grown up. In 2010, whilst loading a pram into the back of our second-hand Skoda I felt the last vestiges of my youth float up into the ether. And from that moment on, I’ve been waiting. Waiting for someone to sit me down and explain to me what it is to be grown up. To talk through tracker mortgages, self-assessment forms and school catchment areas. To explain pensions, life insurance and to tell me how to bleed a radiator. To give me a card I can keep in my wallet that says “Adult”. One that I can look at every now and then say to myself “Don’ t stress about it , you’ve got this”. I ’m starting to think it is n’t ever going to happen. That I’ll go through life an imposter: busking-it, making it up on-the-hoof, a joker in a world of sober-suited professionals with “5 year p...
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