The past is a foreign country

One year ago today, we arrived in Zurich with a carload of Branston Pickle. One year ago tomorrow, I started work.

In an unintentional recreation of this momentous journey, I recently drove back to England for a few days. On the return ferry crossing, I did something unusual, and coughed up the extra £15 to travel first class from Dover to Dunkirk. I don’t know what impulse made me check that box on the form, but I’m glad I did. Paying a bit more gives you the use of a private lounge with free coffee, juice and biscuits. Naturally, you aim to consume at least fifteen quids worth of Custard Creams to ensure the investment isn’t wasted, before sinking into the extra comfy seats for a couple of contemplative hours. The lounge has enormous, circular windows, through which one may ponder the meaning of life. And specifically, one’s own.

Watching the white cliffs recede, as I seemed to do for a long time, gave me no choice but to dwell on what I was abandoning, and what I was heading towards. The most important thing I’m leaving behind is my wife, who still has loose ends to tie up before joining me. That’s the sad bit. Most of the rest is pretty joyful.

My attitude towards the UK now resembles what I’ve felt about my home town, London, for many years. I’m grateful to my parents for having the foresight and decency to ensure I was born and raised in such a tremendous city. I walk around London with that indefinable sense that tells you: “This is home”. Which is ironic, as I just don’t want to live there anymore, and haven’t wanted to for a long time. I don’t want the unturnoffable noise, and the claustrophobia endemic to every big city — even though that sense of chaos is the very thing that thrills and energises me when I’m there. But you have to get the dosage right, and a couple of teaspoonfuls after breakfast is all I can manage these days. That London feeling has now infected the whole country.

I chuckle appreciatively whenever I hear that famous Cecil Rhodes remark that “To be born an Englishman is to have won first prize in the lottery of life”. It sums up the attitude that is so despised by our lesser cousins in the colonies and elsewhere. And yet it isn’t the nation it was in the Rhodes era. Empires and kids up chimneys are no longer fashionable. We can all celebrate the advances that have liberated the masses, taking them out of the Coketown mills and laying them gently on ten million DFS sofas in front of ten million plasma TVs, where they are free to snore gently for most of their lengthening, work-free lives. And as that snooty sentence illustrates, we have also seen pride in the old place drain away.

There are many great things about England. I was reminded of this on the Saturday night, when we drove down to Lewes to celebrate the half centuries of the great Sweder and Seafront Plodder – or Ash and Andy as they are known out of RC uniform. We were able to feast on all the things I miss about Blighty: real food, real beer, real music, real language, and real mates. And all in a real English town. Lewes is weird: a fact not just accepted, but positively celebrated by the town’s curious residents. Let’s not encourage them by listing its eccentricities.

It’s on nights like this that the holes in my reinvention are exposed. Just like the night I spent in the great Nag’s Head in Reading a few days earlier, immersed in the comforting harmonies that only a beer-charged, ribald choir of English pub chortling can produce. It isn’t just that uniquely jovial sound, but the temporary fog of wisdom and humour that goes with it. I miss it, and at times like those, I falter. But then I wake up, and see things as they really are.

So just 12 hours after draining my final juicy pint of Harvey’s in Lewes, I’m embracing my wife and setting off for Dover — and actually feeling quite relieved to be doing so.

Just as telling as my indifference for most of what Britain has become, was the sense of excitement I had when seeing the first sign for Basel, towards the end of the 700 mile drive. It felt like a homecoming.

Given its tiny size and population (7.5m), Switzerland seems to have a disproportionate influence on most things. It punches above its weight, which is probably why it divides people – both inside and out. Some Brits splutter with indignation when I say I live here, while others seem envious, presuming it must be some sort of Sound of Music theme park: all yodelling and fondue; mountain hiking in the clean air; swimming in glassy lakes, and trains that run on time.

And it has to be said that actually, it is quite a lot like that. But oh, those bloody trains that run on time. For some, they also seem to symbolise the bad. Critics think that too much efficiency must be a bad thing; that a bit of chaos is good for the creative soul. For them, the country is money-obsessed, utilitarian and boring.

This divide exists among ex-pats inside the country too. Some love to whine about the shops being shut on Sunday, and the alleged tendency for neighbours to report you to the police for having the wrong sort of flowers on the balcony. Most of these stories are apocryphal – like it being illegal to flush the loo after 10pm. But it can’t be denied that the Swiss like their rules, and more to the point, like to obey them. Pedestrians will rarely cross the road until the green man says it’s OK, even if there is no traffic about. When I joked to a Swiss neighbour about this tendency, his deadpan reply made me think — and still makes me think:

“But if we cross the road on red, our children will grow up thinking it’s OK to break the rules”.

And that’s the big difference between the two countries. The Swiss are more obedient than the Brits. As a result, their lives tend to be safer, more orderly, more predictable, and OK, perhaps, more dull.

I’ve decided I like a bit of order, possibly because my life hasn’t had too much of it in the past. Perhaps there’s something to be said for the sensation of jackboot on windpipe. Yes, even my own. My politics have certainly shifted rightwards over the past few years, as is the apparent tendency in most people as they age, but I reckon that my year in Die Schweiz has given that natural impulse a nudge.

It’s a quirky nation, which is the key to being happy here. After my first few weeks, when I briefly felt slightly disorientated by my life’s new landscape, it suddenly struck me that Switzerland is a very funny place. As long as you remember that, and learn to appreciate the humour in some of the absurdities, you’ll be fine. Sometimes it’s better to chuckle. When I was pulled over by the police recently for falling foul of an invisible speed trap, my uniformed oppressor relieved me of 40 CHF and gave me a brief lecture in excellent English. I told him this was the first time I’d been stopped by the police in Switzerland. “Congratulations,” he said, “this is a very big day for you.” Then we guffawed, shook hands, and I went on my way.

It’s a grand country, and an extremely proud one. The Swiss work hard, and work effectively. Stuff gets done. There is no obvious culture among the Swiss of welfare dependency, even though unemployment benefit (being paid almost all your previous salary for up to two years) is surprisingly good. It’s just not what people are like. If they want something, they arrange for it to happen. How different from Britain where, somewhere along the line, the welfare system ceased to be just an admirable safety net and became, for many, a pretty comfy armchair from which to mock and disparage the system that feeds them.

Damn it, let’s have a rant.

It’s good that kids are no longer shoved up British chimneys; it’s good that we have more leisure time and live longer, healthier lives. Our system of democracy is far from perfect, but it’s less bad than most others. It’s good that most of us enjoy greater civil liberties than we did 150 years ago. Even 50 years ago. But too much cake can be a bad thing. Provision of welfare may be the mark of a civilised society, but I despair at the British left’s refusal to face up to the possibility that it might not be the untouchable panacea, and that too much dependence on the state can point to tectonic shifts in a nation’s social, moral, and economic topography. Their solution for dealing with the cracks in the walls is to jump up and down a bit harder. They won’t be truly happy till we’re all up to our necks in rubble. But by then, there will be no one left to rescue us.

“I would like to have a job but what’s the point? I would lose all my benefits. I prefer to stay at home and watch my kids grow up”. This is a near direct quote from a TV programme I watched on the BBC last week. Middle-aged guy, proudly nodding towards his teenage children, dressed in their new looking replica football shirts. I’ve no problem with people making the decision not to work, if they can afford to do it. It’s when they expect other people to pay for it that I get pissed off.

It’s a good thing that the state can ensure its people don’t starve, and have a roof over their heads. But once the provision of these services moves from being a last resort to being some sort of inalienable ‘human right’, we are in trouble. Not because it’s bad to be helpful. It’s good to be helpful. But there is a bigger picture that welfare proponents are unwilling to acknowledge, let alone discuss, let alone agree to do something about. It’s clear that aspiration, self-sufficiency and motivation dribble away. The provision of a good thing: assistance, becomes provision of a bad thing: a corrosive over-reliance on the money and efforts of other people. For these self-styled victims, it seems nothing is possible unless the state provides it. How many times have we heard people complain angrily that the government isn’t providing them with jobs? People are outraged, furious, that they are not being presented with a personalised menu of occupations to help them while away the time until they can claim their pensions. So it’s “Just gimme the money, and stop asking inconvenient questions”.

One of the first things I learnt after moving to Switzerland is that the state wants to know who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m living. Everyone, Swiss and immigrant, has to register their presence at the local Gemeinde. Within 14 days of moving, you must make yourself known to the authorities, or you are in trouble. So you visit the local office with your completed form and two unsmiling photographs. They ask you questions, charge you about £60, and off you go. A few days later, all being well, you get your ID card through the mail. You are now on their books. This information is used to ensure you pay all the right taxes and insurance. Your car registration, health insurance details, employer, even your annual halbtax public transport registration all end up on the database.

When the last UK government proposed introducing ID cards, you’d have thought they were ordering us to sacrifice our firstborn, such was the reaction. There would have been riots in the streets (there are about most other things) if they’d gone ahead. We want the state to provide us with everything — housing, education, jobs, training, defence, health care — but feel affronted when the bastards ask us to do something in return.

I guess I must rather like the big brother approach. It’s strange that it makes me feel safer, while opponents presume it will make their lives hell. Maybe I’m more innocent, even gullible, than most, and maybe this is why I feel comfortable here. Paradoxical perhaps, but I find this contract with the state to be liberating and grown up. I feel trusted, so I trust. I feel respected, so I respect. I feel secure, so I do not steal. A few weeks ago, when the weather was warmer, I walked past an open-top sports car parked outside a restaurant. On the back seat, two seconds away from an easy theft, was a brand new, boxed, 42 inch TV. Probably  a good £800 or $1200 worth. Its owner was presumably in the restaurant, enjoying lunch, with no fear that his new TV wouldn’t still be there when he reappeared, an hour or two later. How long would it have lasted in the average UK street?

Life isn’t perfect here. It isn’t perfect anywhere. Sometimes that bureaucracy and paper-driven efficiency can be wearing. But it seems like a small price to pay. I like Switzerland, and I hope I can stay here. I like my job, and I like the friends I’ve made at work. I like my leisure time.

Why would I want to return to the UK?

Um.

Apart from the fruity aftertaste of that pint of Harvey’s — and of my wife — I can think of no compelling answer to that question. And I’ve had a long time to think of one. As the global  economy deteriorates further by the day, so I feel more sure that I’m better off out of it.

I feel safe here.

I’ve only to glance through the window of the apartment, at the lovely view over  Lake Zurich, to douse any doubts. Over there, the city’s medieval cathedralscape.  In the other direction, south-east, we have the mountains, now beginning to whiten, barometer-like, into a distant warning of winter.