“You chose a good time to come back,” the Waitrose cashier said ironically when I told her this was my first week living in the U.K. since 1990. And that was before the Queen died and the pound collapsed to a record low.
Between the cost of living crisis, communal riots in Leicester and politically inspired market turmoil, it must seem from afar as though British society is coming apart at the seams. So I risk ridicule when I say that my initial impressions of life back in Britain are overwhelmingly positive.
It’s all about perspective. After the suffocating atmosphere of post-2020 Hong Kong, following its sharp turn away from liberal values and embrace of a miasma of restrictive COVID-19 social control policies, arrival in the U.K. has felt like one long exhalation. It is a relief to be once again in a place where daily life at least is, for want of a better word, normal.
