Why we moved, and why we haven't moved back yet.

This is the original piece I wrote for HerFamily, their article from this can be viewed here.

Our Wedding Day
12th July 2012

The first thing we always get asked by people here, is ‘Why on earth did you move to Nuneaton?’ Well, honestly it wasn’t top of your list, the original plan was to move to the west coast of Australia, I had a job lined up, Shane didn’t. (The whole point of us leaving Ireland was so that he could find work). Then two weeks before we got married, he got a phone call from Jaguar Land Rover, offering him a position. This was way too good an opportunity to turn down. So we packed our lives up and got on the boat the day after we landed back from Honeymoon.

Not knowing anything about the geography of England, let alone the midlands, we drew a 20 mile radius around where Shane was working and I spent a month traveling to all these different towns, (on a bus mind, as I had been driving on a provisional license in Ireland, and that's apparently a big no no here!) until we settled on Nuneaton.

Nuneaton can be beautiful to be fair

Although we’d like to think this is a temporary move, once children are involved everything looks a little bit more permanent. We’ve bought a house, and with Daithí being born 8 weeks ago, the chances of us sticking to the original plan of moving home before the kids start school looks less and less likely. I’d like to think we will move back to Dublin at some stage, but as each year passes by here, it feels more and more like home and there are more and more people we’d miss.

In Ireland we speak the same language, watch the same TV shows and wear the same clothes as the UK, but it’s amazing the cultural differences between the two countries. The NHS is one of the biggies, but I’ll come to that later. Another is people don’t talk to each other! This is something I seriously struggled with, I’m used to saying hello to whoever I pass on the street, and knowing all of my neighbors (and their kids/grandkids/dog). That hasn’t been the case here though. I’ve tried making small talk with Mammies in the playground, or with other women in gym classes etc. but they tend to look at me like I have ten heads!! People are very polite, but like keeping themselves to themselves. It took us almost a year to learn the names of our next-door neighbors when we bought our house. I think once people realise we’re Irish they make allowances for our crazy need to talk to people.

The cost of living is a lot lower here, once I stopped comparing the £ to the €. We’re earning in pounds, and spending in pounds, so I had to stop drawing the irrelevant comparisons. Groceries, dinners out, running a car etc. all take up a smaller percentage of our weekly budget than they did when we we’re living in Dublin. Granted Nuneaton isn’t a capital city, but still, we could afford to buy a family home without having to sign our lives away.

The National Health Service goes a long way to helping lower the cost of living, especially with the inevitable/ crazy Mammy trips to the doctor you tend to make with a new born and a toddler. GPs are free, as are prescriptions (including contraceptives). A&E visits, ambulances, specialists, consultants, all free!! I felt like I was stealing the first time I left a GP’s practice and chemist without putting my hand in my purse. Out of hours appointments are easily available, and the maternity care I have received has been faultless. I was able to book midwife appointments on a Sunday, and all visits are at the local childrens’ centre, meaning less visits to the hospital. Honestly, it may be an unpopular opinion to read, but I feel a lot safer in the hands of the NHS when it comes to antenatal care. I know my life is the priority, and I have the final say over my body. I know, so long as everything is fine it doesn’t really matter where you have your baby, but everything I have experienced here, especially the screenings offered before the baby is born, has made me feel so much more at ease about having the rest of my children here. I had an awful time while pregnant on Daithí (I'll write about it soon) but I am so glad I was being looked after by the NHS for the while ordeal.

I’ve found the attitude to breastfeeding refreshing too. I was lucky, especially with my maternity hospital, it has won country wide awards for their breastfeeding support, but even in the wider community. There is an initiative called ‘Warwickshire Welcomes Breastfeeding’, and all of the cafes and restaurants around the county have little stickers with the logo in their window. It’s just something small, but it has definitely made me and other mothers feel a lot more at ease about feeding in public. Quite a lot of places have quiet corners, with comfy chairs if you want more privacy, and every shopping centre/ supermarket etc has a feeding room. I fed Fionn until he was 1, and I never received a negative remark. There was also excellent support in the childrens’ centre, all of the baby groups and clinics had a specialist nurse who was on hand to answer any questions, or just to chat about the ups and downs. There seems to be a baby boom in Nuneaton lately, so it’s a common sight to see a group of Mammies sitting around a cafe all feeding.

Easy access to non-­religious education is something that seriously appeals to us too. We had discussed what we would do about schools if we had had kids in Ireland, and had prepared ourselves for a battle to get them into schools without being christened, but luckily that isn’t an issue for us any more. All school admittance is based on a catchment area, depending on your post code, and the options of schools range from a number of secular and non religious schools, to Church of England and multi denominational, and Catholic schools.

Roger Casements Ladies Team
County Champions 2014

We’ve built a great surrogate Irish family over here, a lot of that came from joining the local(ish) GAA club Roger Casements in Coventry, a city with a huge Irish population. (Not that I ever played before in Dublin, but they were more than welcoming of new faces.)

It’s still tough not having family here, but we Skype with my Mam and sisters every few days, Fionn will carry the laptop to me so he can see them, he’s so used to seeing Granny in the screen, that he runs his fingers through her hair when he does see her in person to make sure she’s real. It’s hard for the grandparents missing out on their developments, but they’re all just relieved were only a 40 minute flight away and not half way round the world.

All in all we’re very happy here and settling more and more as each year passes, but if money weren’t an issue, we’d be back home in Dublin in a heartbeat.