There were people lining a sort of a street about twenty persons deep, and I was one of them. The atmosphere was fantastic – a bit like London’s Notting Hill or New Orleans’ Mardi Gras carnivals.
The stage was the gap – the roadway, if you like – between the crowds that faced one another. Performers were taking it in turns to do their thing over a stretch of about fifty metres. A tall, gangly, thin old black man, who vaguely reminded me of a bald Chuck Berry stopped in front of me as he was doing his act, and said, ” It’s your turn! The people want to hear your song!”
“I don’t have a song”, I replied, to which, he took me by the wrist, and said, “Everyone has a song”.
He led me by the wrist up the gap between the two crowds dancing – walking as people do in joyous processions frequently glancing at me and all the while smiling at me and the crowds. I was very shy, not embarrassed, but I didn’t know what to do
I began to hum, and then sing words that I thought only he could hear. He encouraged me, and the onlookers seemed to do so too.
Slowly, I started to sing slightly louder. The spectators could not have heard me, but they smiled and moved rhythmically, swaying to and fro.
As I gained confidence, my song grew louder. I stumbled over some of the words and phrases, but it didn’t seem to matter… people were on my side, and I loved them, and my old guide, for it. I woke up before I finished singing my song, but I still had the words running around my brain.
En andlig guide, en spöktiger, och en skrämmande mamma!
av
Owen Jones
Översatt av
Charlotta Zaar Böll
Berättat av
Ida Berglöw Kenneway
“Villfarelsen” är den första delen i en serie av tjugotre noveller om den andliga utvecklingen hos en ung flicka som heter Megan. Hon har latenta övernaturliga krafter och hon är nyfiken på att utveckla dem, men ingen annan som hon känner verkar ha någon aning vad hon pratar om.
Eller gör dom det? Både hennes mormor och hennes mamma gör allt de kan för att stoppa Megan från att ta reda på mer. Historien visar Megans frustration med de levande, så när hjälp kommer från den andra sidan, tar hon emot den med öppna armar och utvecklar långsamt men säkert sina övernaturliga krafter.
Detta är berättelsen om Megans uppvaknande.
“Villfarelsen” handlar om de paranormala krafter som finns inom oss alla, vilket borde göra dem helt normala istället för paranormala, om människor inte var så rädda för det övernaturliga, vilket i sig självt också är helt naturligt.
Det här är en bok för alla som någonsin har funderat över det övernaturliga, paranormala eller metafysiska- Det handlar om den normala andliga utvecklingen som alla högre själar måste gå igenom för att nå sitt ultimata, oundvikliga öde, hur lång tid det än kan ta. Dessa berättelser bygger på faktum på flera sätt än en.
Mijn vader was een Spiritistische Genezer, net als zijn moeder en drie zussen, terwijl zijn vader en zeven broers een beetje bang waren voor het concept. Mijn moeder geloofde in de principes van Spiritisme, maar haar ouders waren katholiek en waren er extreem tegen.
Mijn vader vertelde me echter altijd dat mijn moeder een heks was, en ze gaf vaak toe een witte heks te zijn. Mijn vader zei dat haar moeder ook een oude heks was, maar ik denk dat dat kwam omdat ze niet met elkaar konden opschieten. Toen mijn ouders trouwden, woonden ze bij mijn grootouders van moederskant, en nog een korte tijd nadat ik was geboren.
De basis voor alle verhalen in de Megan-serie vinden hier hun oorsprong. Mijn moeder vertelde me veel verhalen over mijn babytijd, dus ik ben de baby waarnaar ik verwijs, hoewel de rest van de serie naar mijn moeder verwijst. Ik heb ons tweeën samnegebracht omwille van het verhaal. Grrr de tijger was ook mijn vertrouwelinge, hoewel mijn beide ouders haar konden zien.
Blijkbaar droeg ze Grrr op voor me te zorgen wanneer mijn moeder me voor een korte tijd moest verlaten, bijvoorbeeld terwijl ze naar de WC ging. Ik herinner me dit alles maar heel vaag, maar ik kende mijn moeder eenentwintig jaar voordat ze op tweeënveertigjarige leeftijd overleed, en ze was volkomen bij haar verstand.
In short, A Night in Annwn – International is about the Annwn Series, which relates the story of Welsh sheep farmer Willy Jones’ last few weeks on Earth, or on The Surface as he later comes to call it; his subsequent life in Annwn, which is ancient Welsh for Heaven, but it was underground; and his decision to be reborn in order to help mankind.
In A Night in Annwn,Willy Jones is missing his deceased wife and has let himself go, much to the dismay of his daughter. One day, he undergoes a Near-Death Experience (NDE) and wakes up in what he assumes is hospital, except that his nurse seems incredibly familiar. After a time in Heaven, which he is told is known by its ancient Celtic name of Annwn and is underground, he wakes up in a hospital in Cardiff on The Surface. The experience changes his life, but he does eventually die and goes on to live his Life in Annwn.
Willy pairs up with his wife again, and goes about re-leaning life in Annwn, until one day, he, his wife and daughter decide to be reborn as Bodhisattvas to help mankind, This is the theme of the third book in the series Leaving Annwn.
A Night in Annwn has been translated by professional translators into the following languages so far. Life in Annwn has been translated into some of them, and some have even been narrated by professional voice-artists, however the translations and narrations are on-going processes, so you may need to check back to see if your language has been covered yet. If you click on the book covers below, you will be presented with a sample of the text in that language courtesy of Amazon, although the books are also available on iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Tolino and Audible in other formats.
“The Misconception” is the first story in the Megan Series Audiobooks of twenty-three novelettes about the spiritual development of Megan, a young girl. In the first story, she is twelve years of age. She has latent, supernatural powers and is curious about how to use them, but no-one that she knows seems to have any idea what she is talking about.
She tries asking her mother and even asks friends at school, but she gets no help. However, it is unclear whether her mother has had previous experience with the paranormal, although we do see early on in the first novelette that Megan’s maternal grandmother was against the paranormal too.
Her grandmother and her mother do everything they possibly can to prevent Megan from finding out any more. The first volume shows Megan’s frustration with the living, so when help comes from Beyond, she grasps it with both hands and slowly develops her supernatural powers.
The Megan Series Audiobooks is about Megan’s psychic Awakening.
‘The Misconception’ is about the paranormal powers which lie in all of us, which would make them not so much paranormal as quite normal, if people were not so frightened of the supernatural, which is quite natural too.
In the following books, and they are being released at the rate of one a month, we see Megan’s behaviour under different circumstances. We also meet the people, and animals, who interact with her. The main characters are: Megan’s mother, Suzanne; Megan’s father, Robert; her spiritual guide, Wacinhinsha, her maternal grandfather, Gramps and her familiar, a huge Siberian tiger called Grrr.
Wacinhinsha is a senior Spiritual Guide who has come to help Megan because she had no-one else, and was actually being punished for her curiosity into the paranormal and supernatural. He is a native American, what most people outside the USA would call a Red Indian of the Sioux tribe.
Wacinhinsha has a deep knowledge of spiritual life and is willing to help Megan with anything that she wants to know, which no-one else she knows is seems able to do.
Her grandfather, Gramps, has been dead for about thirteen years, but he is still very much a novice. He wants to help Megan and tries to get involved but his inexperience trips him up sometimes. Despite that, Megan is close to her Gramps as she has known him as a ‘ghost’ since she was a baby
Grrr is a tiger that died a long time ago. She cannot speak any language but tiger, of course, and humans do not understand much tiger – Megan is no exception. However, Megan and Grrr tend to understand each other a little more than anyone with a close pet does, although Grrr is not a pet by any stretch of the imagination.
The Megan Series Audiobooks
These books are for everyone who has ever wondered about the supernatural, paranormal or metaphysical – it is about the normal, spiritual development that all higher life forms have to go through in order to reach their ultimate, unavoidable destiny, however long that may take. These stories are based on fact in more ways than one.
Reviews are available on the website you will reach by following the link below. Please leave your own short review too.
The Megan Series audiobooks, ebooks and paperbacks are on Amazon and also available in many other languages (see Foreign Translations above)!
I started drinking quite late for a boy in my home town of Barry, South Wales. It was in the Seventies, when, I assume, my hormones kicked in. Bars, or pubs in Britain, in those days, were very different places than they are now. For a start there wasn’t a single jukebox in town.
Anyway, up until then, I had been more interested in my coin and stamp collection than pubs. However, eventually, friends – the dreaded peer pressure – persuaded me to go to bars and look for ‘women’, although what we normally did was renew friendships with girls that we had been separated from at eleven, due to the segregation of boys and girls in our educational system.
In general, pubs were quieter then, far smokier, and not somewhere to go for something to eat. Most working-class pubs sold crisps, perhaps a pickled onion and a scotch egg, if you were lucky. There were designated smoking rooms, but nobody went in there to smoke. They were usually very quiet, and so, suited to illegal gambling (cards), or club darts matches. The main bars often had blue clouds of smoke floating five or six feet from the ground.
There was no music. In England, I did witness people playing the piano, but in Wales, people sang mostly hymns, rugby songs and arias. My favourite singing bar was the Park Hotel, or the Ship Hotel before they renovated it and tossed the singers out.
Many’s the happy Thursday (traditional payday), or Friday and Saturday evenings that I went there looking for a sing-song, even if there wasn’t a rugby match on TV. Otherwise, people talked while drinking and played dominoes or cards (especially: Crib and Don) for small stakes.
I clearly remember the evening that the first jukebox arrived in the Park Hotel. There were plenty of customers in there, although it was still daylight outside, but it was strangely quiet… as if a local had died.
I was standing at the bar alone, supping my first pint of S.A. when an older man stood near me, ordered a pint, took a long swig, and started to sing. I put my pint down and joined in… so did several others. It was a classic situation…
And then we all clearly heard a few bars of a top-ten record. The man stopped and I looked around. Who would have the effrontery to play a radio when someone was singing, I thought. Then I spotted it. I had assumed that it was a new bandit, and looked at the barman.
He looked very embarrassed and shrugged. “It does that…” he said. “It’s the first jukebox in Barry. The landlord is hoping it’ll make his fortune”.
“But nobody is playing it!” said the man nearby.
“No… if no-one uses it for twenty minutes, it plays a few seconds of a tune at random”.
“But, if no-one is using it, then it’s because nobody wants to hear it…” my new friend mused.
“Sorry”, said the barman with a glum expression, “that’s how it’s been set up”.
I later realised that that first jukebox in Barry really was a bandit. Singing in the Park died out within a week, and we were robbed of part of our culture. Unfortunately, it has never come back, and people wouldn’t know the words to the great old hymns and arias any longer, even if there was a power cut.
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Wayne Gamm was born on a remote sheep farm on a mountainside in north Wales on a stormy night in June. The midwife and even the family itself wanted him to be delivered in hospital because he was going to be large and he was Gwynedd’s first baby, but for reason’s that will become apparent, his mother and grandmother, Rhiannon, thought that might be very dangerous.
All of Gwynedd’s family had been born on the farm, Yr Ardd Y Ddraig, The Dragon’s Garden, for as far back as they knew – a family bible put that at 324 years – and they were all either witches or warlocks.
The problem with the males though was that they were ‘lose cannons’, meaning they had difficulty focusing their powers. Wayne followed suit, although all witch babies have to learn self-control, even the females.
Gwynedd and Rhiannon had high hopes that Wayne would be more capable than his male antecedents, but it turned out that he had such great power, and so little control, that even his own family were wary of him.
He was feared and shunned at school by teachers and fellow-students alike because they knew from experience, that things could get a little weird when Wayne was around.
The more astute noticed that when he was happy, good things happened, but when he was upset, anything could befall anyone. Luckily, Wayne was a happy person by nature, but this made it worse for him, because he didn’t want to hurt people, so he refused to accept that he was causing the disruptions.
They called him Fate Twister behind his back.
Wayne grew up dejected, rejected, lonely and in denial.
This is the story of the early life of Wayne Gamm, Fate Twister.
William Jones, a sheep farmer from the Brecon Beacons, had led a happy life, until his wife, Sarah, died young. It left him devastated and seemingly bent on self-destruction. His daughter, Becky tried to help, but even she was losing patience with her father.
One evening, he is certain that he has died and been put out of his misery, but it was not to be. He recovered. However his life was never to be the same again.
He had discovered Annwn where his wife lived, and his newly found vitality changed his life and that of all those with whom he came into contact.
A Night in Annwn is a love story that spans the greatest divide – that between life and death; a look at a near-death experience and a new take on the mythological Welsh Heaven, which is Annwn.
Be prepared to see another side of Welsh Celtic mythology, but you will never think of death in the same way again.
Listen to a fifteen-minute clip of the Night In Annwn audiobook read by the wonderful narrator Andrew McGuirk (he lends so much pathos to the story) free here:
The saga of my bus pass begins in the now sleepy seaside town of Barry in South Wales. I happens to be my home town, and I returned to live there with my Thai wife of fifteen years in June 2018. I am now sixty-four years of age, so I have been qualified for a bus pass for four years.
However, I have lived in Thailand and Spain for most of the last fifteen years, so I didn’t bother to apply for one. I was soon to wish that I had started the application process earlier. From my first few days home, friends were extolling the virtues of the bus pass – one even called it ‘his best friend’.
A bus pass removes the restrictions on mobility that are imposed by a shortage of money, which a lot of older people experience despite what the media would have the youth believe about wealthy, greedy pensioners propping up the price of houses. Who are these pensioners going to leave their houses to, for God’s sake?!
Anyway, my bus pass… so, I went down to the local council offices and asked at the Information Desk.
A very large, but young woman, asked me what I wanted as she dabbed at the perspiration apparent on every inch of bare skin. I told her and she slid a form towards me, which I took, filled in and handed back.
“I cannot accept that without proof of eligibility”, she said with a strange look of satisfaction. “Proof of date of birth, a utilities bill, and a signature from your doctor”.
“I don’t have a doctor, and since I’m renting a room and have only been here for three days, I don’t have a utility bill either… I will probably never get one either”.
“That’s your problem”, she said and proceeded to ignore me.
I walked to the nearest doctor’s surgery, registered, and then took the council form to the ‘Buccaneer’ pub to think about it. An hour later, I phoned the surgery for an appointment for a check up.
“August 14th., 8:15? Does that suit you?” I was asked by a cheerful receptionist.
“Well, it’s six weeks away, on my birthday, and a bit earlier than I was hoping to have to get up”, I said light-heatedly.
“September…” he started. I interrupted him and agreed to the August appointment.
When the day came, the check-up fell way below my expectations, but that is another story, to continue my bus pass saga, the doctor refused to sign it.
“I am not here to validate your age or place of residence”, he retorted rather angrily.
“But the local council said…”
“Hearsay”, he cut me off. “If the local council want me to sign anything, they can write to me here!”
My birthday had not started well, and it set the tone for the day.
A week later, I went back to the local council, where the grumpy fat lady had been replaced by a friendly young man. I handed him the form.
“Confirmation, please, sir”.
I passed him the letter from the doctor confirming my appointment and my passport. They were sufficient, so he scrutinised the form.
“You need to get your doctor to sign this where the box has been marked with a cross”.
“He won’t do it, unless you ask him officially. Perhaps, he’s looking for a fee…” I quipped.
“All doctors sign these firms, take it back to him and tell him…”
“No”, I interjected. “I will not be the shuttlecock between you both. Here is my application for a bus pass”.
He took it. “This will be rejected”, he said glumly. “My advice is to change your doctor… it really is common practice for them to sign these forms…”
I received a rejection letter from the council today, which stated that I should return the form to my doctor for his signature. I’ll send that off tomorrow and let you know how I get on later.
And if you’re wondering why I don’t just take it to the doctor, I don’t want another six-week wait.
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Conclusion
The experience of the United Kingdom, especially since 2010, underscores the conclusion that poverty is a political choice. Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so. Resources were available to the Treasury at the last budget that could have transformed the situation of millions of people living in poverty, but the political choice was made to fund tax cuts for the wealthy instead.
It was a British philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who memorably claimed that without a social contract, life outside society would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The risk is that if current policies do not change, this is the direction in which low-income earners and the poor are headed. Loneliness rates have soared in recent years and life expectancy rates have stalled in the United Kingdom, with the latest statistics showing a sharp drop in the annual improvement that has been experienced every year since the records began, and an actual drop for certain groups.
The compassion and mutual concern that has long been part of the British tradition has been outsourced. At the same time many of the public places and institutions that previously brought communities together, such as libraries, community and recreation centers, and public parks, have been steadily dismantled or undermined. In its fiscal analyses, the Treasury and the Government constantly repeat the refrain that fiscal policy must “avoid burdening the next generation.” The message is that the debt burden must be paid off now. The problem is that the next generation’s prospects are already being grievously undermined by the systematic dismantling of social protection policies since 2010.
The negotiations surrounding Brexit present an opportunity to take stock of the current situation and reimagine what this country should represent and how it protects its people. The legislative recognition of social rights should be a central part of that reimagining. And social inclusion, rather than increasing marginalization of the working poor and those unable to work, should be the guiding principle of social policy.
The UK should introduce a single measure of poverty and measure food security.
The government should initiate an expert assessment of the cumulative impact of tax and spending decisions since 2010 and prioritize the reversal of particularly regressive measures, including the benefit freeze, the two-child limit, the benefit cap, and the reduction of the housing benefit for under-occupied social rented housing.
It should ensure local governments have the funds needed to tackle poverty at the community level, and take varying needs and tax bases into account in the ongoing Fair Funding Review.
The Department of Work and Pensions should conduct an independent review of the effectiveness of reforms to welfare conditionality and sanctions introduced since 2012, and should immediately instruct its staff to explore more constructive and less punitive approaches to encouraging compliance.
The five week delay in receiving benefits under Universal Credit should be eliminated, separate payments should be made to different household members, and weekly or fortnightly payments should be facilitated.
Transport, especially in rural areas, should be considered an essential service, equivalent to water and electricity, and the government should regulate the sector to the extent necessary to ensure that people living in rural areas are adequately served. Abandoning people to the private market in relation to a service that affects every dimension of their basic well-being is incompatible with human rights requirements.
As the country moves toward Brexit, the Government should adopt policies designed to ensure that the brunt of the resulting economic burden is not borne by its most vulnerable citizens.
Now, that may not mean much to you, but the S. A. Brain’s Brewery, which was located in the centre of Cardiff for centuries, used to be the most famous beer in Wales!
Brains Dark was legendary, but disappeared a couple of decades ago as younger people took to lager instead. The company started to produce special ales instead. So, many events special to Wales – like the Rugby World Cup – would have a special, short-term beer brewed specifically for it.
Next, Brains ‘tried’ replacing Brains Bitter with Brains Smooth, but I, personally, don’t think that drinkers took to it and some time during this confusion, their flagship beer, Brains S. A. became more and more difficult to find.
Brains S. A. affectionately known as ‘Skull Attack(er)’ was only 3.7% (or so) A.B.V. but it had the reputation among drinkers for ‘having something else’. I have seen many seasoned drinkers from ‘away’ feel seriously affected by three or four pints.
However, Brains S. A. is almost impossible to find these days – even more so that forty years ago, when the excuse was that Brains ‘didn’t travel well’.
Has S. A. Brain Moved On?
Well, it won’t be going anywhere now, because Brains has sold all its ‘large pubs’ now, and Miller is brewing all its beer. That means that I , and most Brain’s beer drinkers, won’t be drinking the stuff again.
It’s a crying shame… I feel that Brains has let its loyal supporters down, and I don’t want whatever the Americans think that (Brains) beer should taste like.
So, I’ll switch to European lager and British cider and hope that Brains enjoys the money they made from all the generations of Welsh beer drinkers who supported them
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O’Brien’s – The Community Pub in the Centre of Barry
When we arrived in Barry, my home town, on the thirteenth of June, we were looking for a place to stay – not a hotel, but a lodging of some kind or a flat. However, we had to stay in a hotel for two days in order to have somewhere to leave our bags while we trudged around town looking for somewhere.
So, we went into the neatest pub, a Wetherspoon’s, for breakfast and asked about a room. No-one knew anywhere, but I asked a taxi driver too. He named a few pubs that I knew, but as I was walking away, he added: ‘… but don’t bother with O’Brien’s in town because it’s full of alchi’s and druggies!’
We tried all the most likely places, but without any luck, and even tried a few guesthouses, but all in vain. Then, with hours to go before becoming homeless, we were walking in town past O’Brien’s when a man who was smoking in the doorway stopped me.
‘Owen, isn’t it? Remember me?” We went inside and renewed our friendship of fifteen years previously and I told him my woes. ‘You can stay with us’, he offered.
Eleven weeks later, we are still there, and we have been back to O’Brien’s quite often.
I want to say on the record, that we have never found a more friendly pub in the UK, and that the people who frequent the establishment are among the nicest I have ever met. People can see our predicament, they are not stupid or blind, and there isn’t a visit there goes by when we are not asked how we’re doing, or when someone doesn’t offer us a drink or some helpful advice on housing, the NHS or the local authority.
Martin, the landlord, has also always been very welcoming and friendly, just like his staff and customers. It is a crying shame that this true community pub is going to have to close soon. I don’t know the ins and outs of why, but the dying town centre and its completely unjustified reputation cannot be helping.
If anyone is listening/reading who has a few bob to invest, come and take a look at the place, it would be a travesty for the local community if O’Brien’s has to close.
Please, step in and save the our community pub, some investing Angel!
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: O’Brien’s – The Community Pub in the Centre of Barry
It has taken me most of this year so far to get my first audiobook – A Night In Annwn – read as an audiobook, but the process is now complete and you can listen to the first fifteen minutes below free of charge.
It does take quite a long time, but this is not really anyone’s fault. Rather it is a completely different process and the author has to learn the new role of Director.
The Director
The Director, not unlike as you see in film credits, is in charge of setting the guidelines and choosing the producer according to criteria that he sets. This mainly has to do with the voice of the producer (narrator) of the audiobook.
When the Director has shortlisted a few voices, then auditions have to be held, and a final producer selected. From then on the Director has to be available to answer any production queries that arise on the fly.
Eventually, the chapters are ready to be edited, and the Director comes back to the fore, for each chapter has to be listened to and compared with the original text.
Alterations can still be made at this stage, and a cover has to be made. It is the Director’s responsibility to get all this done to his satisfaction. When the book has been approved, the audio company’s Quality Control takes over. Nevertheless, the Director may still get the audiobook back for editing.
Quality Control
Once it passes that stage, it goes on to the aggregators ( Amazon, Audible and Apple) to be checked by their Quality Control systems. About a week after that, the audiobook will go live.
A Night In Annwn is one of my favourite books because it is so different, and the wonderful reader, Andrew McGuirk, adds an extra dimension to the words and atmosphere.
Those of my regular readers who have followed the five-year saga of my trying to get my Thai wife into the UK will recognize the reference, because Getting My Thai Wife to the UK has been my biggest problem for a decade.
Well, I have had some good news today. An acquaintance of mine has successfully taken his Thai wife from Spain to the UK with very little hassle. This is exceptionally good news for me because our circumstances are almost identical.
We have both been married to a Thai woman for more than ten years, been married in Thailand, and lived in Spain for more than two years.
When my friend took his Thai wife to the UK, he went through the Channel Tunnel. They were stopped and questioned, but after providing the necessary evidence that they were married, were admitted with a visa ‘without end’ – in other words, there was an entry date, but no required exit date – an open-ended right to stay.
This is much more than I would ever have hoped for!
It gives one plenty of time to apply for a residency card. This is fantastic, because one of the requirements of a residency card for a Asian wife is a six-month tenancy agreement, and I am just learning how difficult it is to find accommodation.
Brexiteers’ Lies
In fact, it is horrendous, no matter how easy the Brexiteers say getting into this country is! Pure lies – the UK is famous for being VERY tough on immigration – the rest is lies. I have been married for more than ten years – if it is so easy, why am I struggling and have I been for more than five years to get her in?
Answer me that Brexiteers! You have been hoodwinked…
Now, we are in the UK, but the quest did not stop when we arrive. It gives us a chance to recoup though, and to be honest, we are in need of another victory, as the last were obtaining a Spanish residency card for my Thai wife and a UK visa for her. Next we will need somewhere permanent to lay our heads, and after that the big one – a UK Residency Card…
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My Thai wife and I arrived back in the UK for the first time in five years last Wednesday, so our first encounter with British bureaucracy was at Rhoose airport’s immigration. My wife was coming in on a five-year Spanish Residency Card, and the official had never seen an Asian with one before. The poor man didn’t know what to do, so he gave her a six-month visa.
A friend coming in six months ago in exactly the same circumstances, obtained an open-ended right to remain for his wife, but they could also have given her ninety days (I think). ‘Get her residency as soon as you can’, he said to me quietly.
The following Friday, I went to the Job Centre to see about a National Insurance number for her. The official turned to his computer, and I waited while he called up the right page. After ten minutes, I asked whether there was a problem. ‘No’, he replied, ‘I’m just Googling how to apply for a new NI number’.
I couldn’t believe my ears! British bureaucracy… even civil servants, now have to use an American search engine to find the correct government policy! It doesn’t sound right to me. I wanted to ask whether they still receive training, but civil servants are not renowned for their sense of humour.
It turns out that we have to travel fifty miles to make the application!
So, that left residency to sort out, and to get more information, we visited the local Citizen’s Advice Centre (C.A.B.). The man took one look at the stamp in my wife’s passport and left to discuss the matter with his supervisor. ‘I’m sorry’, he said, ‘but this is way over our heads. We can’t even understand how you got this far!’.
‘Research, hard work and perseverance’, I replied.
‘We can only suggest that you go to see an immigration lawyer’, he said offering me a list to choose from.
I declined it, and left, thinking how sad it was that the C.A.B. had degenerated into a mere funnel for the local branch of the legal profession… especially since legal aid has been abolished.
What sort of a country have I brought my wife back to?
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Forty-four kilos is the average luggage allowance for a couple flying abroad – twenty-two kilos each. That is how much you can take with you, even if you are starting a new life – even if you are emigrating. It is the airlines’ norm. I can see why that is and I have no argument with it.
However, that is from the airline’s point of view.
Two years ago, my wife of twelve years and I left Thailand for Spain to start a new life there. It was very exciting and a great triumph, because it had taken us a lot of effort to get the correct papers together for my Thai wife. (They included a WHO health certificate, a certificate from the Special Branch that she had no criminal record, plus marriage certificates etc – all in Thai, Spanish and English and certified by the Thai authorities).
However, the most difficult thing by far was choosing the twenty-two kilos of luggage that we each wanted to take with us without paying for any excess. I suppose it was a little easier for me than my wife, because I had moved from the UK to Thailand with my twenty-two kilos twelve years previously, and with the exception of a blood-pressure monitor and updated clothing, I took the same things back to Europe with me. However, it was very difficult for my wife.
It was a question of clothing for her, and I know that she sneaked some of her stuff into my bag.
Now, we have been here for two years and she has a heap of extra clothes, shoes and accessories to choose from. My guess is that she will need to leave about three-quarters of her stuff in a local charity shop.
So, if you were to move abroad, whether it be forced or by choice, do you know which twenty-two kilos of your stuff are most important to you?
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We have started to make our Final Preparations for the UK, since we will be flying on June 13th. which is now twenty-five days away. I can’t say that I am looking forward to moving yet again. Moving our home from Thailand to Spain last year with forty-four kilos of our most important belongings was traumatic enough, but then we had to change our residence five times. We have been happy in our current apartment and now we have to move abroad again.
Not only that but we have nowhere to go – nowhere definite, nowhere of our own, anyway.
Not only that, but all the problems associated with getting a visa for an Asian will start again too and in the worst country in Europe to have those troubles in too.
Britain seems proud of treating foreigners like criminals at the moment.
The worst thing is that nothing is guaranteed – it could go either way, but one gets the distinct feeling that people seeking residency are not welcome. It is a horrible feeling, especially since the Asian in question is my wife of fourteen years.
European versus UK Law
At present, European Law over-rules British Law, so I have the right, under certain circumstances, to take my wife back to the UK with me. However, under British Law, I do not unless I can ‘afford’ her. Under British Law, only money counts, but then that is not so surprising, since British society is arranged to suit the wealthy. No matter what criticisms Brexiteers may throw at Europe, at least love and family still mean something on the Continent. In Britain judgement has been reduced to the size of the bank balance in question.
It is sad, very sad.
Still, we have to go back, and before the government pulls up the drawbridge. Hence the need for us to begin our Final Preparations for the UK.
Still, I’m not looking forward to the journey ‘ome…
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