A Hard Landing

                                            

"In the gloaming by the fireside, with you I'll be content.

In the glowing by the fireside, every hour will be well spent." 

22 months on ...........  Mr and Mrs Flotsam and Jetsam (debris from Covid 19 since January 2020) .........

10.30 pm  26 November 2021

.........   departed Kuala Lumpur for the spouse's kampung in Leicester.

Our luggage and ourselves arrived safely .......... 

In KL (top) and almost 24 hours later in Leicester (bottom)

.
 

...........  despite a hairy landing at Heathrow.  Kudos  to the Captain and crew of MAS flight MH 04 .  We were quite "shaken but not stirred" by the landing experience.  

This awaited us when we opened the door to the sitting room.

Our mail (and junk mail) after 22 months, though Colin had set aside about 4 times of the above into another box.

Two weeks on since our arrival .......... we have just about got over the jet lag,

but ..........

1. ....... still have not entered the City Centre to deal with various administrative matters because the locals are not keen on wearing masks and maintaining the social distancing rules.  Our maskless computer man has blithely refused to be vaccinated.  He claims as he had Covid 19 (though I do not think he had got to the stage of being at death's door) in 2020, he had developed a natural immunity like most of his relatives in Bangla Desh.

2.  As luck would have it,  Omicron arrived in UK at the same time as our arrival.  As the country is super-charged with the spirit of Xmas festivities,  people are desperate to get their booster jabs.  They were willing (or had) to queue for as long as 5 hours at walk-in centres - in the cold, standing on pavements and by roadsides to make sure they are protected!   Our concern is this: will Malaysia allow us to get back home?

3.  However, we had to expend almost all our fortitude and energy in dealing with our Romanian neighbours.

It was quite sad to to listen to the woes of the Gujarati barber who lived just across the road from us. 

"We voted for Brexit to get them out.  Instead the good, hardworking ones left and the rubbish have remained."

They have been fly tipping in front of his shop (which included a dead cat) many a time.  When he complained they dumped paint on the front door of his shop!!!

And Gohil added, " We have to suffer this - all in the name of Human Rights!!"

Last week we attended a meeting of the Evington |Road Neighbourhood Association where we heard more gory details of how the neighbourhood had suffered since the immigration of East Europeans since 2007 when the former Communist states of Eastern Europe were incorporated into the EU and  when UK was still a member of the Union.  This mass migration into UK (about 3 million) suited the agenda of the gaffers and the business community who were looking for cheap labour.  Does this ring a familiar note in my part of the world about over 100 years ago?

It seems that the criminal and anti-social activities of our EC citizens (now fully fledged British) in our neighbourhood is sourced from the "tribal" conflicts of the various nations of Eastern Europe,  from Romania, Serbia, Albania and the states of old Czechoslovakia. 

Perhaps we have our own in Malaysia .........

July 2021

.......  but not like this as in Leicester.  One of those thugs is our neighbour.

As for these two geriatrics who were (especially for Iain) looking forward to "going home", to visit our old friends and  settling down for a wee while in our "armchair by the fireside", we had to deal with harassment by our neighbours' children as soon as we shut our door behind us.  We had to set up a camera at the front window, make a report to the Police and the spouse decided to summarise our plight at the hands of our East European immigrant-neighbours and hand it over to the authorities.

Whither our Human Rights???

For a detailed picture of our saga with our "new immigrant" neighbours, read this episode from 2019.

https://anaksihamid.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-lefty-liberals-lament.html

And when our Muslim computer man - an immigrant from Bangla Desh who came to UK 42 years ago - was told of our experience along this road and our age, he commented, "Well, you had your life!!!"

In Malaysia, the young and not-so-young often said to us, "Syukur Alhamdulillah!" when they were informed of our age.

I am so glad I did not discard  my Citizenship and abandoned the land of my birth to be a British Citizen.  But I was almost in tears when one morning a few weeks ago, Iain said this in utter despair;    "This is not my home any more."

Just a cuppa tea and mince pie, but it's not my home any more.

I understand how you feel love.  Some of the time, in fact most of the time, I also feel my Tanah Air has left me.

  

I shall conclude in traditional British style : a sort of two-fingers defiance.

from upstairs ..

   

......  from downstairs.

       

After all, though I am 77 and the spouse is 79,  we still have our work (writing ) to do and a life to live.

Syukur Alhamdulillah - for giving us this gift.