Lanzarote Relocation

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”… There’s nothing we would rather be than English, but we chose to leave… We chose moving to Lanzarote as much through having friends here as anything else. It could have been anywhere, the place, believe it or not was not that important, we just wanted to emigrate.

We miss rolling hills, we miss the cold – we miss snow, we miss rain, we miss running streams, we miss the green, we miss English village life, we miss our family and friends and most of all we miss the kids. But, if we were still there we’d still be missing them, just in a different way as they discover their own way through life. What we don’t miss, is Alan’s 13 year old son gets 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 crap 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 very 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…  And then of course there are the thieves we have talked about elsewhere. Added to that the tourists, what scum gets off the plane to visit each week who knows… Perhaps the 30 something woman at the taxi rank in Playa Blanca who chose to punch Elle to the ground with her ‘taxi rank mentality’, developed at 3am outside a night-club in Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle, Romford or whatever other rock she crawled from under… Of one thing we are sure, our next move – if it comes – will take our hearts and minds even further from the

England we once loved…

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