England, My Uneasy Home

I’m not sure if England still wants me.

I feel at home when I'm riding my bike through rolling hills, when I'm wandering on the beach at low tide with my shoes off, when I'm walking in the woods with the doggies, when I'm heading down a busy street and hearing 5 different languages. 

I feel at home when I’m with my partner, when we’ve sat together and enjoyed a delicious meal one of us has cooked.  In the time we’ve lived together, we’ve enjoyed a steady arms race of cooking, as we have each developed our own niche recipes.  I have effectively appropriated a broad Italian inspired repertoire, whereas she remains devoted to Mexican-oriented dishes.  Her vegetarian bean and Quorn tacos are to die for.

Just recently, I was on a usual Sunday ride through the New Forest—a cyclist’s playground, and a place that has become an integrated part of my own perception of my home.  Southampton is a city where I never intended to find myself living, when I, as a 21-year-old, fresh-faced from university embarking on their Naval career, was thinking about the direction of my life.  I’d planned on Glasgow, especially when I was told I was likely to be based in Scotland for most of my career.  And yet… Here I am.  Southampton.  A place that, as I’ve often said, you ‘end up in’ rather than consciously choose.  But, to coin a phrase, the deepest roots are the ones planted by accident.

I like the metaphor of thinking of England as a tapestry.  I was stitched into it, long before I understood the patterns.  Some threads are soft and golden, but some are rough and fraying—threads of empire and violence, of flags waved like threats, of chanting crowds that wouldn’t want me among them.  There’s beauty in the weave, but also blood.  I was sewn in by accident of birth, but over time I’ve darned myself into the fabric with purpose—through the lives I’ve built, the land I’ve walked, the people I’ve held.  Maybe that’s what makes it home… Even if some corners of the cloth would rather that I unpicked myself and left.

I won’t veil the truth.  The current political situation, the British Press, the endless onslaught against my community, which I have already discussed ad nauseam, still fills me with trepidation.  I have at time of writing, a solid 532 days on Duolingo, trying my best to rebuild some European language skills and cure myself of monolingualism.  Part of it is certainly as a hedge against the eventuality of finding myself needing to leave this country, but also… I just quite enjoy learning French. 

Yet, whenever I talk with friends who are actively making plans to emigrate, I find myself anchored.  The beach where I grew up—those long summer holiday morning walks with Bob (my childhood dog, a springer spaniel), the Highwoods near my house, and the rolling hills of the Southern English Countryside.  In my childhood, it was almost always experienced through a Scout hike, or a walk with the dogs, but more recently, it’s often been on my bike.  Sure, I could move to France and yes, there is some breathtaking (both literally and figuratively) cycling particularly in the valleys and hills of the Occitan region, but this place, this Island, is where I find myself anchored.  Sewn into this tapestry called England.

I’ve long been unsure where my national identity lies.  The words “the English” or “the British” so often carry unpleasant undertones.  I’ve felt in equal parts English and British at times, but still… it hasn’t really settled.  I think I want to call myself English, but it feels like I should be ashamed of the flag and crown on my Passport.  I think it’s natural to want to take pride in one’s home, yet so many folks I know reject any sort of identity in their nationality and are ashamed of it.  So, Englishness is an odd concept to me.  I feel wedded to this island and the land, but there’s a certain baggage with that—an unpleasantness that’s dredged up by bald men waving English flags and shouting obscenities.  The sort of hooliganism that makes me ashamed to call myself English. 

An English woman is what I am.

So, I live with a deep dissonance.  This island feels like mine—its woods, its hills, its salt air.  I’ve bled on its bridleways and been fed by its soil.  And yet, I’m told again and again, in headlines and legislation, that I am unwelcome.  My community, the trans community, is under constant siege—by politicians, pundits, papers.  Even with my feet bare in the dirt that once grew my food, I feel exiled. Pushed out of a country I never left for more than a handful of weeks. Estranged from a land that raised me.

What does it mean to belong, if your home won’t claim you back?

Like so many things, sport is a mirror of society—something I’ve explored before—and for me, it reflects how I’ve been treated.  Rugby shaped me.  Often dismissed as brutish or violent, it’s the game that taught me empathy and restraint.  Sportsmanship.  Discipline.  Teamwork.  A sense of common purpose.  It prepared me for the structure and demands of my brief Naval career, where doing my best felt less like ambition and more like duty.  And yet, like so many of the institutions I once belonged to, I’m now told to step away—when all I’ve ever wanted is to stay.

I think that’s why I feel so deeply unsettled when people tell me they’re leaving.  Friends planning their exit. Online voices declaring Britain “beyond redemption.”  I deeply understand it, but I can’t bring myself to agree.  I was taught to stand my ground, to fight for the team, to believe the comeback is always possible.  This country may be battered and bruised, but I’m not ready to walk off the pitch.

Sometimes I think about what it would mean to leave.  Whether I'd feel freer—or just adrift in a different kind of exile.  I wonder if another country could offer peace, or simply a quieter form of distance.  France often comes to mind.  It feels like a lifeboat just out of reach—a country where the press doesn’t hound people like me, where healthcare isn’t structured like a punishment, where trans rights are written into law.  A place across the water that seems, at least in theory, safer.

And yet, when I let my mind drift that far, I always find myself pulled back by the tide.  Back to the sea—not some abstract coast, but my sea.  The grey-blue stretch of the Channel, of the East Sussex beach, near where I grew up.  The salt sting in the air.  The seaweed.  The shingle.  The seagulls’ cries cutting through the quiet.  These aren’t just memories—they’re anchors.  I think of the miles I’ve ridden along quiet countryside roads through rolling hills.  I know some of these bends by feel, by breath, by muscle memory.  The sea and those hills… these aren’t just things I look at.  They’re ties that bind.

This island is complicated.  But it’s also the place where I tasted blackberry jam made from berries I picked.  Where I learned the shape of kindness in a muddy Scout tent.  Where I broke my nose in the middle of a rugby game and my mum looked at me and said, “get back on the pitch, you wuss”.  Where even the rough edges felt like home.

There is a kind of patriotism in refusing to abandon what is mine.

I don’t romanticise it.  I know what this country has done, is doing, will likely continue to do.  But I also know what it could be.  I know the joy that still lives here—in multilingual conversations, in queer punk gigs in a Brighton Nightclub basement, in a slab of chocolate brownie at the Woods Cyclery, halfway through a hard ride.

I’m not ready to give up on this island, or its people.  I don’t say that with pride or defiance or naivety. I say it with love—not a blind one, but a stubborn one.

This is my home—not in spite of everything, but because of it.