Moving to Fuerteventura

We loved England, and still do, but it’s like the breakdown of a marriage. “I still love you, but I’m not in love with you any more”… We’re proud to be English, but we chose to leave… We opted for moving to the Canaries as much through having an established network of friends here as anything else. It could have been anywhere – the place, believe it or not, was not that important to us, we just wanted to emigrate – and definitely to the sunshine.

We miss rolling hills, we occasionally miss the cold snap – we miss snow (well… Alan does… not me!), we miss rain, we miss running streams, we miss the green, we miss Sunday roasts in a village pub, we miss our family and pals and most of all we miss Alan’s boys (although one now lives here permanently). But, if we were still there we’d still be missing them, just in a slightly different way as they discover their own way through life. What we don’t miss, is Alan’s 13 year old son getting mugged by other kids, the crippling cost of living, the reports of American style drive by shootings in inner cities, the worsening education system, the stress, the horrendous traffic, the change in attitudes… And, what we really don’t miss is the racism – the hatred for people from Eastern Europe who have moved quite legally to England to try and make a better life for themselves. If you have ever spent any time in Eastern Europe – it’s not nice in many places, they come to England with hope and optimism, only to get treated like dirt by many… The only people who should be held in contempt are those people who choose to either move illegally, or those who choose not to live by the laws of the country… If you don’t like it, you have a vote, blame your government, nobody else. As a result we chose to leave and now live now on a barren rock, a stunningly beautiful one, in the Canary Islands. It has one of the most incredible landscapes in the world, which may, to some, seem like an acquired taste. We love the place, we love the stark landscape. And we love the relaxed way of life… we too are now immigrants and economic migrants, and we get treated better than a foreigner moving to the UK by far…But in return for the hospitality we are shown, many ex-pats will not even attempt to learn the language – most likely the ones that back in the UK would be the first to moan that Mrs Patel’s mother at the corner shop has “has been here 20 years and has never bothered to learn English”. They need to learn that ‘The Empire’ is dead and it is they who now have the responsibility to integrate…   Of one thing we are sure, our next move – if it decides to come – will take our bodies, hearts and minds even further from the England we once loved so dearly…