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What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
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 ADIOS HOLA! "Goodbye hello!”…reminds me of an old Beatles song, but the website hola.org is something much more insidious than anything we knew when we used to go round singing “I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello”.
A friend recommended it as a useful site that would enable me to watch programmes on the BBC iPlayer, which is generally not available outside the UK, as well as any other websites that are generally blocked in the land where I live—Thailand. Being a sucker for anything that makes life a bit easier or more fun, I downloaded it and for a couple of weeks enjoyed my new-found freedom—watching the final of Wimbledon tennis and a few insightful documentaries—but then the trouble began.
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‘Tis a strange island, shaped like a pregnant woman dipping her toes in the sea, where I happened to be born. It seems especially strange to me, having lived in voluntary exile abroad for nearly 40 years, and only popping back for short visits to see family and friends every few years. I always leave bemused by recent developments and wondering where this country is headed.  Maidenhead High Street on a sunny Saturday evening—not a soul in sight. This visit is no exception. Though the climate and countryside is familiar enough, the towns and people wandering the streets are oddly alien. The high street of Maidenhead, my home town, is a commercial wasteland, a windy corridor bordered by charity shops and empty premises, which are now brightly decorated with artwork extolling the town’s merits, compared with white-washed windows on my last visit. Meanwhile the people I pass are speaking Polish, Romanian, Urdu, Hungarian, Russian or Chinese—anything, it seems, but English.
As the world waits anxiously for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 years on the throne, our budding blogger reveals a crack in the psyche of the so-called United Kingdom. It’s called THE BRITISH MONARCHY SCHIZOID SYNDROME  For the pageant, up to 1000 boats will muster on the River Thames... We Brits are an odd bunch when it comes to our views on the Royal Family. On the one hand, it’s not unusual to hear us ranting in pubs or at parties about the preposterous privileges that they enjoy, or how they should know what it’s like to do a hard day’s work or to do their shopping at Sainsbury’s. On the other hand, when a Royal Wedding or Jubilee comes around, we go all gooey and gaga, saying silly stuff like “Isn’t she sweet? Doesn’t she look lovely?” No doubt the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, from 2-5 June 2012, will be another such occasion, when we all bury the hatchet for a few days, smile at our neighbours and act like life’s one big party.
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Ron Emmonsis a British writer and photographer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Categories
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May 2025
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