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So homesick! Please remind me of all the bad things about the UK

57 replies

footprint · 03/07/2006 14:58

I've been living away from the UK for 3 years - first Portugal, now Switzerland. I REALLY hate where we are living right now It's been 2 years now and I'm finding it worse not better. I don't like being a SAHM, but there are no jobs and no childcare here. Dd cannot start kindergarten until aged 4 (She is now 2). I miss my mum, I miss English people in general, I miss my friends, I miss having a choice about how I live my life.

Dh is not English and doesn't want to live there again. In my darkest moments I feel like upping sticks and moving back with dd. But couldn't do that to her or dh.

I know "the grass is always greener" but I'm soooooo homesick. Help!

OP posts:
SSSandy · 04/07/2006 13:25

I was not amused.
Thankfully (?) motherhood has made me more matronly and I at least get treated like an adult now.

I remember hiring a boat once at a lake and the woman renting them out screeched out to me "Fraulein!", I thought I will just ignore that since it's a bit of a cheek to say that to a grown up. So then she screams, "Frauleinchen" which is even worse, like little miss. After "kleines Fraulein" I gave up.

When I went to buy a washing maschine, the saleswoman said, why didn't I come back with my mother. Err because I'm a grown up and my mother lives in another country...

footprint · 04/07/2006 17:31

Oh wow, only just had time to get back to this thread. thanks everyone!

I admit that I do like to watch Sky News and chuckle about the heatwave, the water shortages and the "yob culture"

Still miss it for all its nuttiness, but had to leave to appreciate it!

OP posts:
bound4oz · 05/07/2006 15:21

hi all
bad things about the uk, for me anyway, far outway the good, at the moment they are merging all the schools in our area (possibly nationally) so by the time DS is six, hes three now, he will be in a class of approx 50-60 children, you show me these blindingly amazing people that can control AND educate 50-60 children because quite frankly i struggle with two sometimes. The children at school are allocated 37p a day for meals yet prisoners, thieves, paedophiles etc are allocated in excess of ten times this!
Hoodies on every corner, rude people, crappy government (and i did vote!)nhs falling apart (i know, i am a nurse) the country is full of chavs, basically the country is going to the dogs and thats maybe why 90,000 brits leave every year and thats just to oz alone!
maybe switzerland isnt perfect but i think you will find a big change in the uk in just the 3 years you have been gone,
Beth.

expatinscotland · 05/07/2006 15:25

Have I mentioned it's f&^*ing expensive here?

anniemac · 06/07/2006 11:43

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

JoshandJamie · 06/07/2006 12:32

Big Brother

Heat Magazine (and all others in the same vein)

Obsession with G list celebrities

Chavs on one hand. Nobby up-their-own-arse people on the other

Every bank holiday millions of people sit in hours of traffic queues to go to some rainy place with crappy arcades for entertainment with the other millions of people all in the name of getting away from it all. Too depressing for words

The fact that no matter what goes wrong, it will be the government's fault (seldom is anyone else accountable)

This country has never gotten over the fact that its golden empire days are over and now it's just a small place trying to live up a big old fashioned reputation of being Great.

Maybe I should move?

JoshandJamie · 06/07/2006 12:44

Here's a snippet from the brilliant Bill Bryson's book 'Notes from a small island'. This might make you more homesick - or might remind you of what you're missing:

The British are so easy to please. It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That is why, I suppose, so many of their treats - teackes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, rich tea biscuits, fruit shrewsburys - are so cautiously flavourful. They are the only people in the wrld who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake. Offer them something genuinely tempting - a slice of gateau or a choice of chocolates from a box - and they will nearly always hesitate and begin to worry that it's unwarranted and excessive, as if any pleasure beyond a very modest threshold is vaguely unseemly.

'Oh, I shouldn't really,' they say.
'Oh go on,' you prod encouragingly.
'Well, just a small one then,' they say and dartingly take a small one, and then get a look as if they have just done something terribly devilish.

I used to be puzzled by the curious British attitude to pleasure, and that tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to the direst inadequacies - 'well, it makes a change', 'mustn't grumble', 'you could do worse', 'it's not much, but it's cheap and cheerful', 'it was quite nice really' - but gradually I came round to their way of thinking and my life has never been happier.

I remember finding myself sitting in damp clothes in a cold cafe on a dreary seaside promenade and being presented with a cup of tea and a teacake and going 'Ooh lovely!' and I knew then that the process had started.

And that to me somes up what it's like to live here.

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