4 years of British citizenship (En)

It’s been four years since I got my British citizenship.

God, where do I even begin? So many things have changed since then— some drastically, the others inevitably, but everything certainly doesn’t look as it did before.

Now I understand how naïve my whole perception was of pretty much everything here: naïve doesn’t mean stupid I guess, just blissfully oblivious.

Within the last few years Britain has been trying hard to cut itself off from the EU, then Euro-scepticism succeeded, and it left me bitter. It is no surprise to all of my friends that, as a Remainer, I don’t feel comfortable about the whole situation with the British departure no matter how weak the EU seems to look at the moment for a variety of reasons; simply “it’s better to be together despite the clunky bureaucracy” is still playing strongly in me, although the last things in the vaccination wars were atrocious (to say the least), and the EU didn’t carry itself well at all.

But anyway.

There is a (mostly conservative) preconception that Russian intellectuals, once gone from their native country and settled elsewhere in Europe, would immediately turn into ardent neophytes literally in love with everything in their new homeland and try as hard as they could to “cancel” (lol, I hate this word) their previous existence. Well, partly it’s true: after all, they (we) found the best place to live for our families, and ourselves, and the rest is up to us. Some of us indeed look somewhat childish in our level of infatuation with the new land, but it’s still forgivable I guess.

After all, to be completely honest, I myself could be regarded as this person (at least, partly): to be—and will be—forever non-British, I love this country as wholeheartedly as I can (although, my age and life experience make me less and less emotional towards such overwhelming feelings), but I also manage to spot all the wrongs, which is sad but normal.

That notorious feature of Britishness, “vitriol out of frustration” does good for me: as a typical educated Russian, frustrations are an inseparable part of my very existence, and sprinkling it with vitriol makes it even better, lol.

Despite Brexit and the ghastly situation with Covid (and don’t even get me started about the lack of winter!), I don’t want to live anywhere else: I feel like I belong here, with my constant slips and infuriating errors and misspellings in English, my strong Russian accent, my earlier mistakes based upon classical English literature on how things could really go here (spoiler: not very different from anywhere else).

I love Brits, I truly do. I love my fellow East Anglians (Fenland is my manna dew), love Scots and Northern Irish folks, love Welsh people. They all are very nice even when they don’t demonstrate openly that they like you (they, in fact, may, despite all the prejudices), and they are those comfortable “others” with whom you can spend your time being silent (a treasure!).

And that sunny and warm day four years ago will forever be one of the best days of my life.