seeking (Car)difference

Croeso i Gymru

My stomach sank with a bewildering sense of betrayal as I passed the signpost, crossed the bridge and queued to pay the toll.  How could you do this to me? England seemed to ask my back.  You total bastard.

I know, I'm not sure, sorry, I squeaked.

The bad things flashed back from my six years spent there at the beginning of the last decade; those vile Welshmen who literally sneered and spat at your gall to wear an England shirt on a big matchday; the less seriously intended but still grating anti-English ‘banter,’ the impossibility of finding live football screening if a rugby match is on, the painfully tenuous Welsh angles to news.

I’m English and love England, but I also love Wales and many of its people.  Pressed to choose a preference, I’d have to choose England.  Paradoxically, as it turns out.  Because having pressed myself to choose, I’m choosing Wales.

I’m in a service station a short distance over the border, en route to Cardiff for a couple of days viewing properties and will stay with a friend there overnight. It’s not a decision taken lightly but it would seem that a better standard of living can be achieved for less money there.  While I'm very fond of a couple of football clubs there, that's it: I don’t need London and it certainly doesn’t need me.  This morning’s drive proved that Wales can be made by car from London in two hours at no great stretch, train routes are straighforward.

There’s the added potential of having more friends back in Cardiff too - older ones with more shared history and theoretically stronger bonds - but whether they’ll be accessible to me given their respective domestic trappings is up for debate.  Even whether they’ll feel inclined to see much of me.  It could easily be the case that I'd see them just as infrequently.

Either way I feel it’s worth the punt, the change, the difference – albeit a comfortably familiar difference.  Six months on another rental agreement – despite all of the paperwork, bills and moving fuss that goes around it – is no great commitment.

If any new opportunities come along or my independent work proves unsustainable, I can sail off again.  Although I’m not averse to the idea of a rudder, should one decide to present itself.

Diolch Cymru, we’ll see.