By Arnold Jansen op de Haar

I’m going to exchange London for the English countryside. The type of area that organises competitions for growing the biggest vegetables.

At the moment I live in a London apartment block and I mainly hear people speaking Arabic, French and Russian in the lift. The search last month, together with my sister, was in an area mainly populated by English people.

Some EU nationals are becoming very unsettled about the threat of Brexit. For example, Joris Luyendijk recently wrote in The Guardian that he no longer dares to call out loudly to his fluent-English-speaking children because of his Dutch accent, as people will notice that ‘they are foreigners’. There is more and more hate against foreigners, so he argued.

Dear Joris, almost everyone in London is from abroad, and often a whole lot more exotic than Dutch. This is London, a cosmopolitan city. I don’t know of any other city that gives foreigners so much freedom to do as they like. If you are afraid of people hearing your Dutch accent, and thinking: ‘Oh my god, I hope they don’t hear I’m Dutch!’, then the fear is really inside your own mind.

So I’m certainly not leaving for this reason. I think London is a marvellous city. It’s just that the space at home is not big enough to write a novel, and moving to a bigger living space here is not an option at the moment. So we are going to do something totally different. An adventure!

Our first search was aimed at rural. Yes indeed, Joris, among these weird English. In our case it led us to finding a wonderful eighteenth-century thatched cottage in south-west England. It is a pity that rural properties often lack a decent internet connection.

Another house actually had very good connectivity, but that was because it was in line with the main runway of Brize Norton airforce base (the same place where I, in a very distant past, had taken a helicopter handling course). Yet another house was located next to an army base, in a village that consisted mainly of housing estates for military families. And although I have nothing against the army, quite the reverse, this didn’t feel quite rural.

Well, I could continue in this vein. About a cottage with an interior that was completely wrecked: an entirely stainless-steel kitchen with a bar and bar stools. Or about a very posh estate agent who was recommending a house that had holes in its roof, and about whom I later on the web found comments like ‘he does indeed have a double-barrelled name but can’t be contacted when there is a problem’. (‘And my whole family had the same experience.’)

A good indicator is a visit to the local pub. ‘Every Friday karaoke night.’ 

Until we stumbled upon a house in the small town of Malmesbury. No one here in London has heard of Malmesbury, but I already feel that I must come to Malmesbury’s defence.

For example, Æthelstan, the first Anglo-Saxon king of England, was buried in its abbey in 939 and the town has the oldest inn in England (since 1220). Even though there are about six other hotels in England which lay claim to the same title, I back The Old Bell Hotel in Malmesbury.

I can also inform you that it’s not far from Highgrove, Prince Charles’s country estate, and that we will acquire a dog called Harry.

He’s actually not named after Prince Harry, who recently was declared prince le plus sexy de la planète by Le Figaro. It sounds much sexier in French, but you don’t want to create any problems with the English. No, the dog is named after my uncle Harry, who died well before I was born, but who was my mother’s favourite brother. (You leave nothing behind, you take everything with you.)

So, after more than two years in London, I’m leaving for the countryside with my sister. Among the English. And I will simply call Harry in a loud voice with a slight Dutch accent, Brexit or no Brexit. Now the only thing left is to write that novel.

© Arnold Jansen op de Haar
© Translation Holland Park Press

Visit Arnold’s home page to find out more about his other publications.

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