Tag: ancestry

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I can never go back to Scotland?

Faithful readers will notice I’ve been quiet for a while – I’ll explain why tomorrow: this must come first. It won’t change anyone’s mind, but I’ll say it:

I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 2004 to 2008. Because my paternal grandfather was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1900 (yeah), I was able to get a UK Ancestry visa. The rules have now changed: at the time, I was allowed to live, and work, anywhere within the UK, for up to four years – and after staying for four years straight, I could have applied for “indefinite leave to remain”…one step short of citizenship in the European Union.

I fully intended to take that route. Obviously, it didn’t happen that way. I could’ve settled anywhere in the UK, but the second I arrived in Edinburgh, I thought “Why wasn’t I born here?” I utterly loved it there, and I have harboured a hope that one day, I could move back. So I’m being utterly selfish when I say I hope Scotland votes NO to independence from the United Kingdom tomorrow. I’ll know by the time I wake up in the morning.

I could say – I did on Facebook earlier today – that independence won’t solve Scotland’s issues as many think it will. Scotland can’t deal now with the highest heroin abuse, teenage pregnancy, and knife crime in Europe. I know for a fact that Scotland has a separate legal system – I worked at The Law Society of Scotland, as opposed to that of England and Wales. However, not ALL the laws are different: immigration, for example, which I also know about, because I had an Ancestry Visa! And I can just imagine everyone in the Eurozone looking at Scotland, using the British pound, and thinking “Are you NUTS?” What’s it going to be like for artists to go to the Edinburgh Fringe next year? If they’re coming from the US or Canada, will they need a visa for the first time ever?

The government of the UK are twats – Canada has a conservative government too, we sympathize – but that government will end. And as for the animosity some in England have for Scotland? Too many Scots feel the same way about England. I lived there. I know.

Finally: Many people in Scotland are convinced that being a one industry economy will be fine, as long as that one industry is oil. Please, please, if you vote yes tomorrow, LOOK TO NORWAY. Everything Norway has done, do that. DON’T look at Canada for oil advice. We’ve cocked it up.

Slainte.

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How I broke my hand and fell in love with Edinburgh

I’m taking a page from fellow blogger Andrea Beca’s virtual book—-I will be posting now and again about my adventurous four years in Scotland.

I lived in Edinburgh from November 2004 to February 2008. I was about to turn 30, and absolutely hated where my life was at, so I applied to film school, and for a UK Ancestry Visa. The visa is the one I got. I quit my job, gave away or sold all my stuff, and flew one-way to London in June of 2004. It amazes me now to remember I was THAT crazy.

Not completely crazy—I had the first two months there fully planned out before I left. I spent a week in London, took the train to Edinburgh, and after a week there I meant to visit some distant cousins (whom I’d never met!) in Belfast. On my third day in Edinburgh, I trudged up Arthur’s Seat, got caught in a rainstorm, and on trying to carefully pick my way down an extinct volcano of sheer granite, I slipped and did…something to my left hand. Understand that I had never broken a bone before in my life, and had no clue what it felt like. So when in just a few minutes I lost feeling in my hand and it swelled and, I thought: “You’re in a foreign country. BE a hypochondriac and find a hospital.” So I tracked down the double-decker bus and made my first of several visits to the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary, where they confirmed I had broken TWO metacarpals, the thin bones below my pinky and ring fingers. My visit to Belfast was pushed back, and I had a cast on my hand well into my Fringe job that August.

When I was told at the hospital that I wouldn’t be able to get on a plane to Northern Ireland until they had done a second X-ray, my reaction was kind of odd. (And yes, I was actually thinking about my own reaction at that moment, because it was so odd.) I was told I couldn’t leave Edinburgh, and I immediately thought: “Okay.” I had come to the UK with an Ancestry visa which would allow me to work there, but I by no means had a job lined up, or any plans at all, for after summer. But I had been in Edinburgh at that point for 10 days, and had already decided I never wanted to leave. My hand’s broken, my plans and job at a Fringe venue might have been screwed up, but I was “stuck” in Edinburgh, and I couldn’t have been happier.