Back to the future
HAVE you ever done something that appears slightly daft to your friends? No? If so, that’s a pity. I have, many times. Can’t help it, you see. Setting off for TRNC on January 12, 2006, was one of them. “You’re going where?” incredulous friends in Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, asked. A 15-year Parliamentary career lay in tatters at my feet. I had lost my seat in 2001, by the handsome margin of just 33 votes! (I often joke that I later found out who 17 of the 33 were, but as I’m not a vindictive man, I went to all the funerals!).
Then came a failure to retake my seat, in 2005, which sealed my fate. Thirty-nine years of active Tory involvement was over, no doubt to the great relief of my former constituents in Cheadle — especially the Liberal Democrats!
They didn’t put up bunting and employ a marching band, but they might as well have done. Not only that, politics had already cost me my marriage. No-one else involved, just politics.
By 1997, my wife had understandably had enough. Both of us being injured in the Brighton bomb didn’t help, nor did the constant interference in our lives of certain sections of the local Tory ladies fraternity, but, hey ho, that’s another story.
Time for a change? You bet! Off to the TRNC I went. Never regretted a moment since. Despite rampant over development and bureaucratic frustrations galore, I still love this place. Always will. It’s not what it was, but where is?
So, now in my 74th year, what lies ahead for me? Well, I’ve always believed life is for living, whatever the risks.
If an opportunity arises, whatever your age, seize it. If no opportunity exists, make one. Hence my decision to step down as Honorary President of the British Residents Society (BRS).
I proudly remain an Honorary Life Member, but that is all, after 14 years involvement in various BRS roles. It is a hell of a wrench, believe me, but it has to be done. A new life awaits me. “Once more into the breach, dear friends,” as Shakespeare’s Henry V proclaimed. The world
economy might be Covid shattered, the cost of living rising everywhere and Putininspired nuclear brinkmanship returned to haunt us, but what the hell! Go for it!
So, where to now? Back to the UK? You must be joking! What? Return to the land of Bank of England-predicted gloom? Ten per cent inflation by the end of this year? Rising unemployment? Post-Covid stagnation? Soaring energy bills? Britain’s history rubbished? Statues of the great being pulled down? Royals Harry and Andrew doing more damage to the monarchy than any Republican firebrand ever dreamed of?
Sinn Fein and the SNP threatening to tear the UK apart? More commonly used words banned than I’ve had hot dinners? “Beergate”, “Partygate”, Boris and Kier? There’s even doubt as to which public toilet people should use and total confusion as to whether a “woman” can have a penis, or not! (I think my reader knows my answer to that one!)
Most of us, who view all the above as a somewhat strange form of “logic” that would have got folk certified and confined to a lunatic asylum 20 years ago, look on in bemused disbelief.
It’s all enough to make the world’s greatest optimist hesitate about returning to the UK, let alone me, now isn’t it? So we can rule that one out, can’t we? After all, do I look
suicidal? (Answers to the editor, not me.)
Confused? (I don’t blame you.) Well, here comes the truth (surprisingly, from an expolitician). You see, when my exwife Frances and I divorced, we never fell out. We remain very close friends to this day. I kept in touch with her and her family, her mother especially, who I loved dearly. Frances and her sisters even asked me to speak for the family at the dear lady’s funeral. I did, returning from the TRNC especially to do so.
Frances kept in touch with my sister, son and nieces. Even when separated, it took us almost seven years to actually divorce. Nearly 20 years passed, then we graduated from the odd phone call, to actually seeing each other again, indeed, every time I returned to the UK.
Then she started coming to visit me here in TRNC, just as we had done when we were married and before I ever thought of living here.
If I appeared somewhat besotted with her to my TRNC friends, the reason was simple — I was.
So, to hell with the UK gloom merchants, the Bank of England, the politically correct abusers of free speech, Harry Windsor and the other selfabsorbed, self-righteous goody goodies, wreaking havoc with all the majority of ordinary folk believe in.
I’m off to the UK to live with Frances. Who knows where that will lead?
A new start, a new adventure, a new beginning, for both of us, in a village called
Alrewas, in Staffordshire. Somewhere that is still England. Somewhere I have visited regularly for years because my dear friend, Wendy Walker, formerly of Ozanköy, lives there.
Home of the Cyprus Rock, in the National Arboretum, a monument to those who died in the service of the Crown, at the hands of Eoka, during the 1950s Cyprus Emergency. The anniversary of the unveiling of the Rock takes place in August. I will be there, so will Frances, Wendy Walker and my friends. So, you see, my Cyprus connection goes on — another of my unbreakable bonds.
So, there you have it. The truth is out. No UK politics, just Frances and I, facing whatever life confronts us with, living together again.
Somewhere new for us both. What’s wrong with that? Will it be easy? Of course not. Nothing worth doing ever is. I will miss living in the TRNC, because I still genuinely love it. That is not total abandonment. I intend returning for visits and remain committed to the Turkish Cypriot cause. You can guarantee that.
Just one piece of bad news remains to be imparted, especially for my reader! I am to continue writing for Cyprus Today. I saw my reader the other day. He was beaming. He had heard I might be heading to the UK — hence no column! Relief at last! (Or so he thought.) Soon my fortnightly rants will be from the UK madhouse, instead of this one! Wish me luck, I’ll need it!