Eleanor Tiernan: The English receptionist asked 'are you from the bit we own or the other bit?'

Being an Irish immigrant in the UK is tricky, writes Eleanor Tiernan 

Eleanor Tiernan: The life of an Irish immigrant in England is a game of ‘Can you make a difference in a culture without ever being seen to utter a positive word about it?’

Any other country would be fine. I could say, “American people are the best”, and I wouldn’t feel the bile coming up in my throat. I could say, “The French can make even orthotic footwear sexy”, and get on with my day. I could say, “I love how the Germans are so practical”, and it wouldn’t cost me a thought. But express any positivity about England and a big part of me wants to slap myself across the face and drag myself back to Kilmainham Jail for a ‘See what those bullies did to those young boys’ history lesson.

It wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that I, along with 400,000 other Irish people, live here. And that it’s normal to say nice things about the country you moved to.

People from Australia and America don’t care who hears them wax lyrical about how great England is. However, as an Irish person, all you want is a fellow countryman to exchange glances with and silently say, “Don’t be encouraging them. If they hear you, they’ll start getting confident again and we all know where that ends”.

So we maintain a stolid silence. The life of an Irish immigrant in England is a game of ‘Can you make a difference in a culture without ever being seen to utter a positive word about it?’ And it’s a game Irish people are good at. Masters of the non-committal, “Ah sure you know yourself”, we skirt around conversations like a Strictly dancer whose feet barely touch the ground and if the English folk in our lives wonder why we never vocalise a passion for our adopted home, then they are too polite to ask.

But then again, England has been such a basket case lately that restricting praise is a piece of piss. Little danger of saying something positive when there’s so little to celebrate. There was, of course, Brexit and then the catastrophic pandemic death toll, and a cost of living crisis is now well underway. And then there’s the royal family. 

Many people here take pride in defining themselves as subjects to the elite. 

They love that there’s a special family that they pay for, to live in the lap of luxury without earning it.

And we all know that given half a chance, they’d absolutely set up the empire again. One only has to look at recent events in the British Virgin Islands. The former colony had a failure of leadership that led to the arrest of the premier on drugs charges, not a good look, even in this day and age. How is Britain reacting to the challenge facing its former colony? They’ve suggested they could step back in and start running the place again. As if to say, “Awwww did you try democracy and it didn’t work out? Ah well never mind. That’s for grown-up countries anyway. Maybe you guys just aren’t cut out for it.”

Occasionally you wonder what it would be like not to play the zero-sum game. To not be defined in opposition to something. To ask if both England AND Ireland could be good? Then you might not have to maintain this double identity and could say what’s in your heart.

Not long after I first arrived in England, I had occasion to go to the doctor. My ears needed syringing, not the most urgent or sexy of medical emergencies but anyone who has tried to go about their business with not one but two blocked up ears can attest to the frustration. However, I was not yet in the NHS system and so just rocked up to my local medical centre in hope.

The receptionist, eager to help, sought details. 

“I’m from Ireland” I said. 

“Yes but are you from the bit we own or the other bit?” she said.

At first, I thought I heard wrong. It must be the ears. She can’t really have said that. But on repeating herself, it turned out she had said exactly that: she had asked if she was my landlord.

To her, Northern Ireland was a bit of overseas property owned by ordinary British people, a place in which to ‘summer’ when time allowed. And if I was from somewhere she ‘owned’, then she must think of Northern Irish folk as lucky people she allows to reside in England without paying her rent. How generous of her.

I wanted to set her straight. I wanted to tell her the notion she views herself as a citizen of a country that once owned holiday homes across the world is blinding her to a fair bit of that same country’s dysfunctionality.

I wanted to say that really she had more in common with me than those at the top in whose reflected glory she was basking. It is her, the ordinary English working-class person who has been sold a lie as much as anyone.

But you don’t, of course. It’s just too big to take on. Instead, you navigate these moments by nodding and reading ‘The Brits Are At It Again’ memes online, simultaneously vague but understood across the world. If necessary you blast a bit of U2 in the car. One day it might be different. The 400,000 Irish living in the UK live in hope.