Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
Albert Camus, ‘The Plague’ (1947)
At the start of 2020, Britain officially exited from its membership of the European Union, into a 12-month limbo state known as the transition period. During this period, the newly-elected British government aimed to negotiate a free trade agreement with its former partner and therefore determine the path where the country’s future lay. While I was profoundly saddened that this cold, hard fact had finally come to pass, there was an inevitability about things in January. All the momentum was with the madness of Brexit and nothing I could do would change the direction of travel. It seemed, therefore, to present a particular moment for reflection that was worth recording for posterity.
Unusually, I happened to have in front of me the prospect of a handful of excursions around mainland Europe in the year ahead of me, mainly for work but hopefully with a trip or two for pleasure too. I decided to start a writing project that I would call ‘Travels in the Transition Zone’, toying even with offering it to a publication like The Guardian to see if I could get it a wider audience. This project would capture reflections and observations on Britain at this point in time, in and out of Europe, and would feature a host of the characters that I would meet along the way – continental European bit-players in my autobiographical jaunts.
The story was set to open in Amsterdam. Indeed, the project loomed large in my thoughts as I tramped those Dutch streets in February, and I managed to commit much to the cloud-based notebooks that I keep in my pockets, wherever I go. But by the end of March, a global event brought the aspirations of ‘Travels In The Transition Zone’ crashing down to Earth. My wife and daughter were marooned in Yokohama and I had to switch my attention to fire-fighting online whilst confined to the four walls of my own house.
The below notes are what remains of that writing project, little more than an opener to it in the end. In the final week of a year unlike any other, the transition period between Christmas and New Year, there is much looking back on what has come to pass in 2020. It seemed a shame to let these notes languish in the cloud, so I am publishing what I’ve got. Lightly edited for readability, of course, but largely as they were left from before the pandemic hit. So much has changed since the start of this year, and it is no exaggeration to say that life for most of us will never be the same again. This embryonic project reads therefore as a kind of time capsule that pointed to a road not taken, a future that wasn’t to be.
Enjoy.
Large geopolitical beasts can move as slowly and as encumbered as other large multicellular organisms do in the wider biosphere. Smaller geopolitical beasts, by their very nature, can move more nimbly and in more unencumbered ways than the larger beasts. The larger beasts nevertheless also provide protection and shelter from other geopolitical carnivores.
History sometimes echoes. It seems we could be moving towards something akin to the Great Game 2.0, only this time with America and China in the opening skirmishes of the battle for control over the next means of production – the 5G Internet – instead of the British and Russian Empires at loggerheads over Afghanistan. The two versions, Great Game 1.0 and 2.0, overlap in that America has retained an ample military footprint in ‘the graveyard of empires’. And Britain, once perhaps the Greece to America’s Rome in its own mind, now the former island bridge between Continental America and Continental Europe, has just done something rupturous on the global stage. Will we make as much of a mess of things as we did during the withdrawal from India (without, hopefully, the bodycount), or can this be a rare opportunity to look back on our own past and actually learn from it?
This log will serve as a record of a number of my travels around Europe in 2020, while Britain remains in the 12-month transition period that ends the Article 50 process – still subject to all the conditions of membership, but no longer a member of the European Union. Starts in Amsterdam. May also include Toulouse, Sofia, Brussels and Trondheim. More or less.
Written (mostly) on an iPhone 6S.
Sunday Feb 09, 2020
Am in Amsterdam, to give a workshop on holographic projection in higher education at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), ’the world’s largest Pro AV show’.
Backdrop: Several Chinese manufacturers have pulled out of the show, as have LG, as global responses to the spread of the coronavirus around the world. Storm Ciara is battering Northern Europe at hurricane force. My EasyJet flight out of Gatwick this morning was only delayed, but many other flights were grounded. It is *pissing* down outside.
It struck me that, as I appear to have a number of professional engagements on Continental Europe this year, it would be a useful thing to do to capture some reflections on my visits to these different countries as Britain has embarked on a rather historic moment in its national story, whether what comes next is for better or for worse.
We have now officially left the European Union, and are currently in a moment of geopolitical pause, as we wait till the next moment, when we are no longer subject to the conditions of membership.
What next? Who knows.
I have spent all my known adult life, as a European. From next year, I will no longer officially be one. Just a Briton, now. Although mentally, I still will be both, as I have long been. A few moments from the day, then, before I sleep.
Schiphol Airport. Union Jack sticker on the ‘EU + Swiss’ passport lane signs, to keep the movement of people flowing. For now.
Mobile roaming. And navigation app location hopping. ‘Shall I switch from London to Amsterdam?’ Why, yes please.
A conversation about Brexit without actually mentioning the word with a British guy living in Germany and an Italian member of the hotel staff. None of us really certain about what Britain and Europe have just embarked on. British guy = ‘hmm, I can see both sides of the argument’.
Battling back to the hotel in almost hurricane conditions after a meal, soaked to the skin and navigating back to my shelter via brand landmarks – the Bulldog Tavern, Amsterdam’s Apple Store, Gucci and Versace shopfronts, the Van Gogh museum.
Monday Feb 10, 2020
Today, Sinn Féin have claimed victory in the Irish election, meaning that they may be forming the next government there. As I understand it, this amounts to something like an earthquake for Irish politics. They say that the campaign was mainly run on domestic issues related to poverty and inequality, rather than Brexit. In my ignorance, I didn’t realise that they even fielded candidates in the Republic. Perhaps the Irish Civil War really is over.
When there’s a gale on, the wind in Amsterdam *really* blows through you!
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
A moment at Amsterdam RAI, this vast exhibition space, before the conference kicks off.
Spent a lot of yesterday walking around the city. I find you get to know a city so much better on foot than you do on public transport. Architecturally, Amsterdam is a city of another century, and I don’t mean the one that has just passed. Brick by brick, it gives the air of a major city that was built off the back of its imperial wealth. In and around the centre, it is quite a beautiful place to walk around in most parts – wide open boulevards, aesthetically-pleasing red brick façades, plenty of park spaces, and all intersected with its cobweb of canals, the merchant routes of another age. Amsterdam wears its trapping of the electrical age externally, with its criss-crossing tram lines, but manifestations of the digital age are much more subtle than they are in the likes of London or Tokyo.
I spent some time today chatting with Alex, the Italian hotelier, about big themes. We covered the British Empire, linguistic behaviour across different cultural groups in Europe, and much more. He told me of a kind of sneaking admiration for how Britain had retained its imperial hold by ‘confusing the politics’ of its colonies. I wasn’t really sure what he meant, so he told me about a line in the British National Anthem (or is it the English one?). I’d not heard of it before, so he went to his computer behind the reception and googled it. Sure enough, ‘God Save The Queen’ contains the line ‘confound their politics’ in reference to Britain’s ‘enemies’. And right there in an Amsterdam hotel, I learned another lesson about my own country. Must admit, I was only aware of the first verse, never mind the other five. Looking to the final verse, does England still look North of Hadrian’s Wall and see ‘rebellious Scots to crush’ or will Brexit finally undo the 1707 Acts of Union can were passed before ‘God Save The Queen’ was written?
Wednesday Feb 12, 2020
EasyJet flight back. Having missed a flight from the Greek island of Kos a few years back due to discrepancies between iOS calendar app time zone recognition, every subsequent flight caught is a triumph in its own right.
Once the full force of ISE hit and I joined up with the company of colleagues, there was no chance of grabbing some reflective moments to gather my thoughts. Some fragments from the trip, then, as I depart.
My session went well, thankfully – a workshop at scale on a subject that no-one else was talking about. ISE puts out a daily paper of highlights of the event, and it seems I made the news, with a review of the workshop. I was referred to as a lecturer at Imperial College, ironically, but the rest of the piece was a helpfully accurate record of what happened. Saved me having to try and take notes after the event.
In a way, Amsterdam reminded me a little of Tokyo, in that I felt very safe on the streets at night, and saw young women happily cycling alone after dark. Sure, both cities will have their darker sides, but a place where women generally feel safe alone is a place that generally feels safer overall. It’s a lot harder to imagine in the likes of London or big American cities. I felt a lot of warmth towards the Dutch that I encountered, a people who seem to be largely welcoming, socially liberal and pretty relaxed. Perhaps being a multilingual country ensures more open-mindedness towards other perspectives.
As I walked around the city, I pondered too on Netherlands as a post-imperial state. The Dutch Empire was one of the handful of European powers that made the modern world. When minds are cast back to the Dutch Empire, it’s easier to think more of things like the tulip mania asset bubble, rather than the more brutal or coercive practices of other European Imperial stories, such as the regicide that disrupted the French one, the Belgian pillage of the Congo, or the switch from seafaring traders to the puppeteering of the British Raj. The Dutch were the only European influence permitted in Japan, when the country was closed off to the rest of the world between 1633 and 1853, with trade happening between the Dutch and the Japanese in Nagasaki. Although the Netherlands was held under German occupation in the Second World War and Rotterdam was bombed, Amsterdam appears to have escaped the aerial destructions meted out to many European cities during the war, and still wears much of its pre-Twentieth Century facades in its brickwork.
I spent my last night in Amsterdam in the pay of a corporate hospitality account, dining on steaks and fine wine, and in the company of other delegates of the event sprawl that was ISE at the RAI. As I indulged, invited at another’s expense, I ruminated on the relations, experiences and events that Britons had taken advantage of for decades but that would now be restricted or cut off for the generations that follow us. A Last Supper sur le continent, perhaps?
Landing, back on the island, the signs that greeted me boldly stated in all caps that ‘BRITAIN IS GREAT’. It didn’t feel that way to me, just the needy proclamations of someone long past their prime that refuses to accept that it is better off in co-operation and collaboration with its friends than in trying to do everything alone.
Wednesday Mar 04, 2020
Attended a European Distance Education Network (EDEN) webinar on Open Education Technologies, hosted in Adobe Connect, and with participants from across the globe but primarily Europe. Less so from the UK. It was hosted by a Romanian academic, with presenters from Sweden, Australia (of European descent), Portugal, Romania, and Britain.
Germany has declared coronavirus a pandemic, but the WHO is holding off. Italy has closed all schools and universities, and the University of London has cancelled a graduation ceremony at the Barbican, around the corner from one of my offices. Am anticipating a big pivot to online at work, if the UK makes same move.
Is even commuting into London sensible at the moment? This health crisis raises big questions about human freedom of movement, never mind just for Britons and EU27s across the British border.
