About us

Hi everyone – Ange here (Tim's ramble follows below mine)

I’m typically a very calm and measured person – in fact some describe me as too contained.

But when I’m faced with a clear injustice the rage I feel is, I suspect, akin to that which most committed Remainers feel at the moment.

In my day-to-day work I show people how to take on the NHS when it refuses to cover the cost of long term care, and I’ve learned to channel my anger at this particular injustice into something constructive: Care To Be Different.  I’m a writer and my books about care funding have helped hundreds of families, and that gives me a good feeling in an arena where there aren’t many good feelings to be had.

Brexit leaves me seething and sometimes powerless. However, taking the step to leave the UK and find home in a more progressive place is something that Tim and I are looking at positively.

I remember the day of the EU referendum result. I felt like my country had died. I felt betrayed, not only by the UK government and the cynical and nasty campaign by right wing politicians and press, but also by people I know (knew), who casually threw away myriad opportunities for everyone, not to mention decades of progress in race relations and religious inclusion.

Growing up in a leafy Kent in the 70s and 80s was a world away from the dynamic and inclusive multi-coloured, multi-cultural places I’ve lived in since. I love travelling and I revel in the new – and sometimes humbling – perspectives that travel brings. My work is mostly online and so I spend the majority of my time working from different countries. Have wifi, will travel!

I love how travel breaks down barriers between people, and facilitates connections across borders.

I do a lot of housesitting and catsitting. It’s not my work – it’s simply a great way to travel and a wonderful away to make new friends across the world. Give it a go! I’ve met some fantastic people that way.

And on that note, watch out for my new business, Outwardist – launching soon. ☺

I’m vegan (about 80% raw – love it) and I weep at the plight of millions of animals at the hands of humans. I aim to tread lightly on the earth for a greener, cleaner world. How terribly liberal elite of me - except that I’m on the side of the underdog, the down trodden, those whose rights are being trampled on – and they are often those who can least afford to have their rights taken away.

My favourite environments are forests and mountains, followed by ocean. My favourite foods are bananas, raw vegan chocolate and coconut. Oh – and anything Thai. OMG yes.

My favourite music is sultry blues or a classy jazz standard. My three favourite places in the whole world are Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, British Columbia in Canada and anywhere with Tim.

And one of my favourite quotes is from the recent Ben Stiller movie, 'The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty':

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” 

Ange
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Hi all, Tim here. Read if bored, because I really bang on.

Besides being mad about Brexit, I’m Ange’s partner of ooooo…. nine years now and I play drums for The Little Unsaid for a living.



I think of myself as the Milton Keynes Idris Elba but I’m aware this may be from an alternate reality or something (accidentally) imbibed at Glastonbury this year.

Actually, mentioning my alternate reality here may offer a clue about me; recently I’ve been experiencing dreams about Tony Blair and I. In one such dream, he and I sailed through a Teletubbies landscape in a pea green boat; each time the boat drifted into a bank made of green felt, he would wrestle with a return to political life.
Then he invited me on a TV show he was fronting because he liked my passionate anti-Brexit views. But although selected from the live TV audience which also comprised Alistair Campbell and Nelly Furtado (??), he made me snuggle next to him in an old leather arm chair and wear a bobble hat. While he cuddled me. What. The. Hell.

I have had some pretty life-changing stuff go on, but haven’t we all? Problems as teachers.  As said, I play drums for London-based The Little Unsaid and we make records and tour (although Brexit risks creating some major bumps in the road) and little films. And repeat. We have very lovely and loyal fans that support all this and make it possible. And I love it all and feel blessed to have found a way to live my truth, maaaaaaan.

I love: Ange, because she’s smart, independent in thought and action, tough and gorgeous in equal measure, and being in her orbit helps define me. I love Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Radiohead, but not quite for the same reasons.  I loved reading ‘Devotion’ by Patti Smith, and I love the way Naomi Klein forensically dissects idiots that try and pull this world apart.

I hold the films of Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson and Krzysztof Kieślowski as equal to Marvel/Star Wars/Trek re-boots and I’m comfy with that.

I also think ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’ by Bowie to be one of the most moving things of all time. He was the glue that held universe together and now he’s gone we get fecking Brexit. I’m sure that’s the reason.

Brexit and me
Oh, I went there, didn’t I? So, yes – the ‘B’ word and my take on it; I won’t repeat the endless litany of lies, damage and offence we’ve seen and heard daily. Except we know it’s pure BS from top to bottom – and the idea of basing a nation’s future on lies, misinformation and xenophobia should be appalling to anyone – but no – it’s endorsed by a government.
 “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, just because it’s accepted by a majority” said someone,  and they were spot-on.

There is a host of rubbish things about Brexit that have caused Ange and I to start to look for a home elsewhere; the straw breaking this particular camel’s back being the UK government’s disgusting treatment of EU nationals living in the UK, while similarly (and conveniently disregarding the fate of UK nationals elsewhere in the EU). But, god, it’s endless, isn’t it?

But it’s also very, very personal to me in terms of what it represents. I see it this way: being partly of Indian/Pakistani heritage, British Imperialism and arrogance has turned my family over and messed with my future three times. (Oddly enough, my family tree shows German, Dutch, French and Portugese heritage on both sides. Go figure. So extra meaning in all this Brexshitballs for me right now).

India’s partitioning in 1947 saw an arbitrary line drawn in a hurry on a map by a British jobsworth administrator, causing my family to be flung to the winds on two sides of a bloody border.
My mum and dad were Christians and suffered sectarian abuse and prejudice in Pakistan. Dad flew fighters for the British-trained Royal Pakistan Air Force and he was promised a commission in the RAF if he relocated to the UK.
He and my mum did. He didn’t get the commission because the colour of his skin apparently made him unsuitable to fly jets for the RAF.
You can guess the rest…signs in East London windows saying ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ – yep, they saw those. But, typical of their generation dug in for the long haul nonetheless.

Fast forward to late 70s Britain. The National Front, BNP et al. I was a pretty happy, dreamy kid growing up in multicultural North London, until dad’s (by then desk) job moved to Milton Keynes – then possibly the whitest place on god’s earth – and dumped in a rural school. First kid of colour there. Awful from day one and the end of my academic career, as I lost interest in study and found interest in shielding my head from being kicked in. And punk music – in 1978 - my saviour.

After that – things got better for a while for us Johnny Foreigners I think. More black faces on Eastenders, Jim Davison-type comedians gave way to the Ben Eltons, and mucky jobs got done so Brits didn’t have to do them as much.
And we all held hands through the Love Actually re-enactment of the Blair years.

And now Brexit. The seething “bitter concealed, now revealed”.  It’s all happening again. The toffs and right wing media barons set to screw everyone over to return us to the 1800s and create a tax haven; the Brexiter pitchfork and torch brigade conned into thinking they can have an empire free of foreigners – clearly the cause of their woes; while in the middle the Bake Off drones just want it all to go away. I think it may be the latter I currently have the biggest issue with – the sheer apathy towards their own neighbours; let’s see how their attitude towards Brexit changes when Waitrose stops selling artisan bread (or possibly any bread except Warburtons) and they can’t afford their Sky packages anymore.

I think away from the economic catastrophe of Brexit and the continuing destruction of public services partly as a consequence of same, my greatest fear about it all is that I also see the current racist values pushed on news-stands at every garage forecourt becoming normalised in the way anti-semitism was normalised for a sleepwalking population during the birth of national socialism nearly 80 years ago. Almost unimaginably, this is not conspiracy theory. It’s very, very real.

So yes, I need to leave the UK as it doesn’t represent my values; perhaps nowhere will in totality, but I’d rather have my rights protected as an EU citizen, thanks very much.

Although Ange and I will continue to fight Brexit, (it doesn’t matter where we do that from), we’re off to try and find better things and be among people who want a tolerant, brighter future for all.

“Everybody wins, or nobody wins.” Bruce Springsteen said that, and he knows stuff.