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lokifanHi guys! I’m sorry to have gone silent. I haven’t posted in seven weeks, wow - that’s a really long time for me. In that month I moved country and started a new job though, as well as a few other things.
I was going to do one post about being back in the UK and then a separate post about the EU referendum and everything related to it because WOW DEPRESSING POST THERE LOKI, but it turns out I can’t because it’s been so deeply embedded in everything since. A post about the Sardinian experience will appear later, but...
It’s honestly been a process of grieving and it’s not done yet. I’m just heartsick. Everything I dislike about my country won out over our better natures. And I don’t just mean the xenophobia and bigotry that was an undeniable part of the vote. I mean the idiotic isolationism and belief we somehow exist separately from our continent, and I mean the anti-intellectualism embodied in our former Education Secretary saying Britain “has had enough of experts”, and I mean the right-wing revulsion against the EU’s protection of labour laws and the environment and human rights.
I’ve defriended a few Facebook Remainers who were being horrifically classist about the whole thing. I don’t know how to talk about the media and education, and the fact that working-class people voted to leave in their droves despite that being manifestly against their best interests (EU labour laws being much more stringent than the UK’s) but I know that talking about “idiot chavs with their tiny minds wanting to feel important” is not the way to do it.
Being in Italy during the lead-up to the vote, and for a week afterwards, was certainly a blessing in some ways; I was shielded from some of the nastiness. But it was also weird and kind of upsetting, particularly after the vote. I had a milder sense of the distress I felt after the Pulse shooting in Orlando: I wanted to be with my community, around people who were sad in the same way I was sad. And it was oddly painful to be in Italy specifically; in very European fashion, they had three flags outside civic buildings (for the city, the country, and the EU) and on the Friday morning I saw the gold stars on blue out of a bus window on the way to work and actually welled up.
My last two weeks in Sardinia were spent working on this summer camp thing, so that Friday I had to be perky and happy and fun with the nine-year-olds while checking my phone during the break and telling the other teachers Cameron had resigned.
A week after the referendum I came home. Which was lovely. Two of my best friends VERY kindly offered to host my reunion party, and I got to see most-if-not-all of my delightful local friends. I’d missed them a LOT and it was a lovely night. Plus a fairly successful experiment in mixing family with friends - particularly my cousin Terrible and his brilliant girlfriend, but they’re both clever, funny geeks who love Steven Universe and she’s poly and queer, so like. If my set of friends didn’t take to them it would’ve been quite a shock :D
Although. Man. That party set the trend for July, where I did a lot of super-fun social things where the atmosphere was like WOO PARTYYYYYYY oh god what’s happening to the world.lizardspots visited (with cool husband in tow) and there was a great reunion dinner, and halfway through told us Boris Johnson was the new Foreign Secretary.
Boris Johnson. Bloody hell.
(My mum picked me up from the airport and helped me get my shit to my new place, which was very nice, and we agreed that while Boris being PM would’ve been TERRIBLE and thank fuck Gove wrecked his chances, it was still annoying. Because leaving is going to be an almighty mess, and Boris should have to lie in the bed he made.
MUM: I don’t want him to be Prime Minister but -
MUM & LOKIFAN: I want him to SUFFER.
LITTLE OLD LADY: *looks alarmed*
And then a few weeks after that I was at Vegan Beer Fest (before you ask, I think sometimes artisanal handcrafted hipster beer isn’t vegan) and it was all WHOOO also is this the end of the Labour Party’s actual existence? Politics is harshing my mellow even more severely than usual.
My parents have lost £10k - i.e. about $13 000 - because of Brexit. (They’d got all the way to the end of a complicated buying-and-selling of houses process, and then the buyers pulled out because Brexit is likely to mean a drop in house prices. So that was a vast amount of money spent on solicitors and agents for absolutely nothing.) And I have no idea what will happen to my industry long-term; short-term we’re having a mini-boom because of all the tourists coming to London last minute to take advantage of the weak pound. More long-term, things like EU-funded programmes for teenagers to have short English courses in London - the kind of thing that could’ve meant work for me in autumn - will probably go to Dublin.
Life in general is very busy - I’m doing evening work at least three nights a week, and still trying to find a job for September and finish all the admin of moving. But it’s mostly pretty good - am super-poor but that’ll be better in September and have had some great soshul tiems lately. New colleagues are nice and there’s so much happening in London in summer. Just need to not think about the wider world or the fandomy stuff I was hoping I’d be able to do.
Oh, and the busy meant I missed Erised sign-ups. Saaaad. :( Signing up to pinch-hit tho!
I was going to do one post about being back in the UK and then a separate post about the EU referendum and everything related to it because WOW DEPRESSING POST THERE LOKI, but it turns out I can’t because it’s been so deeply embedded in everything since. A post about the Sardinian experience will appear later, but...
It’s honestly been a process of grieving and it’s not done yet. I’m just heartsick. Everything I dislike about my country won out over our better natures. And I don’t just mean the xenophobia and bigotry that was an undeniable part of the vote. I mean the idiotic isolationism and belief we somehow exist separately from our continent, and I mean the anti-intellectualism embodied in our former Education Secretary saying Britain “has had enough of experts”, and I mean the right-wing revulsion against the EU’s protection of labour laws and the environment and human rights.
I’ve defriended a few Facebook Remainers who were being horrifically classist about the whole thing. I don’t know how to talk about the media and education, and the fact that working-class people voted to leave in their droves despite that being manifestly against their best interests (EU labour laws being much more stringent than the UK’s) but I know that talking about “idiot chavs with their tiny minds wanting to feel important” is not the way to do it.
Being in Italy during the lead-up to the vote, and for a week afterwards, was certainly a blessing in some ways; I was shielded from some of the nastiness. But it was also weird and kind of upsetting, particularly after the vote. I had a milder sense of the distress I felt after the Pulse shooting in Orlando: I wanted to be with my community, around people who were sad in the same way I was sad. And it was oddly painful to be in Italy specifically; in very European fashion, they had three flags outside civic buildings (for the city, the country, and the EU) and on the Friday morning I saw the gold stars on blue out of a bus window on the way to work and actually welled up.
My last two weeks in Sardinia were spent working on this summer camp thing, so that Friday I had to be perky and happy and fun with the nine-year-olds while checking my phone during the break and telling the other teachers Cameron had resigned.
A week after the referendum I came home. Which was lovely. Two of my best friends VERY kindly offered to host my reunion party, and I got to see most-if-not-all of my delightful local friends. I’d missed them a LOT and it was a lovely night. Plus a fairly successful experiment in mixing family with friends - particularly my cousin Terrible and his brilliant girlfriend, but they’re both clever, funny geeks who love Steven Universe and she’s poly and queer, so like. If my set of friends didn’t take to them it would’ve been quite a shock :D
Although. Man. That party set the trend for July, where I did a lot of super-fun social things where the atmosphere was like WOO PARTYYYYYYY oh god what’s happening to the world.
lizardspots visited (with cool husband in tow) and there was a great reunion dinner, and halfway through Boris Johnson. Bloody hell.
(My mum picked me up from the airport and helped me get my shit to my new place, which was very nice, and we agreed that while Boris being PM would’ve been TERRIBLE and thank fuck Gove wrecked his chances, it was still annoying. Because leaving is going to be an almighty mess, and Boris should have to lie in the bed he made.
MUM: I don’t want him to be Prime Minister but -
MUM & LOKIFAN: I want him to SUFFER.
LITTLE OLD LADY: *looks alarmed*
And then a few weeks after that I was at Vegan Beer Fest (before you ask, I think sometimes artisanal handcrafted hipster beer isn’t vegan) and it was all WHOOO also is this the end of the Labour Party’s actual existence? Politics is harshing my mellow even more severely than usual.
My parents have lost £10k - i.e. about $13 000 - because of Brexit. (They’d got all the way to the end of a complicated buying-and-selling of houses process, and then the buyers pulled out because Brexit is likely to mean a drop in house prices. So that was a vast amount of money spent on solicitors and agents for absolutely nothing.) And I have no idea what will happen to my industry long-term; short-term we’re having a mini-boom because of all the tourists coming to London last minute to take advantage of the weak pound. More long-term, things like EU-funded programmes for teenagers to have short English courses in London - the kind of thing that could’ve meant work for me in autumn - will probably go to Dublin.
Life in general is very busy - I’m doing evening work at least three nights a week, and still trying to find a job for September and finish all the admin of moving. But it’s mostly pretty good - am super-poor but that’ll be better in September and have had some great soshul tiems lately. New colleagues are nice and there’s so much happening in London in summer. Just need to not think about the wider world or the fandomy stuff I was hoping I’d be able to do.
Oh, and the busy meant I missed Erised sign-ups. Saaaad. :( Signing up to pinch-hit tho!