The other evening one of the neighbours announced to anyone in a hundred yard radius that he’s fifty five and thinking of moving in a couple of years. It would certainly make summers in the back garden rather quieter if he did. He tries to persuade anyone who will listen that GB News is the only reliable source of information about the world, turns up the volume to maximum when the English national anthem is played before a football match and is a man with strong views on everything from cleaning patios to migration.

He is crossing his fingers that Farage will win the next election and declared he will leave England if Reform are not the next government. Valencia is his preferred destination. He seems to think it is an island. Geography isn’t his strong point because he was trying to remember somewhere else that might welcome a long term unemployed former prisoner that seemed nice. “Albania or Bulgaria, somewhere like that, I think.”

You can see the paradox here. A proud English patriot, albeit one who hasn’t worked for several years, disgusted at whatever it is disgusts the GB News and Reform demographic wants to go and live abroad. I have been to Albania and the language is not easy. Bulgarian is probably slightly easier, but it would likely be quite a challenge to learn it in your late fifties if you are struggling to remember the name of the country.  

I am not entirely confident that he will need to discover that Valencia is a city on the Spanish mainland. Starmer seems determined to hand Farage the elections.

So, this leaves us with the day to day issue of how to rub along with someone with whom you have almost daily contact and whose views you consider to be reactionary, lumpen, petit-bourgeois, dangerous nonsense. I have not quite expressed my opinion to him in those terms and because he has a couple massive dogs and occasionally reminisces about “little bits of bother” I probably won’t.

In fact, on a few occasions I have even knocked on his door and borrowed some of his tools because he has more of them and they are better than the ones I have. Rather than use this as an opportunity to explain why Farage is the British expression of an international racist, bourgeois led, anti-working class political wave I generally just thank him and give him a bottle of beer. Unprincipled opportunism or the sort of shabby compromise you make to rub along in life?

Next year might be interesting. The intention is that I will run as a Green candidate in the council elections. There is probably no point asking him to sign the nomination paper.