I’m a gypsy. Born in one place, brought up in another by care-givers that weren’t my parents. Weekends spent in the refuge of friends to escape the silent remorse or gloating joy, depending on which ‘home’ destination I picked. I am a gypsy and that’s just the way I like it. Tethered to a section of this earth by the love of the people who inhabit it and not by a sense of nationality, and I remain through sheer and complete laziness. But on the 20th January 2009 suddenly I’m a vagabond no more, I have a destination; I realised what MLK meant, I think I see it, that promise land? Yep, if I squint, I can glimpse it, and if I could choose to be any nationality on earth, right now? I’d be as American as hamburger, yes siree! Ha! Who would have thought it?
America, America, God shine his grace on thee! And He certainly has, He has given you a “do over” And that grace, that ray exquisite is one Barack Hussein Obama. My luck in being in the US of A on this day of all days? Who knows. The feelings it evoked? Pride and Envy in equal measure. Pride, I am so proud of America! So proud at their ability to shake off in one fell swoop the stench of the past and turn their face toward the future so many have longed for but never thought to see – well done you! And envy? Please, please, please let me in! I too want to strut with back-slapping pride along Sunset Boulevard with a little smile that says “Look at what we did, man!” OK so, yes, Joe The Plumber may glance a little bit more appreciatively as I trek, not walk, trek, no one walks in LA, thanks to the spotlight Michelle Obama has shone on women who look like me. But I know that if I open my mouth and my English accent is unearth, the fraud would be discovered and the gig would be up. My friend’s Americanglish suddenly makes complete sense. I satisfy myself with just whispering my order to the wait staff of The Griddle and hope my wearing Ray-ban and a baseball cap indoors is enough of a disguise.
I refuse to let the staid tones of CNN or the doom and gloom frog-horn that is Fox News tarnish the glimmer of this moment. “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear….” I have a life-time to be sensible and cautious, right now I’m going to enjoy the “kumbaya” moment (as a Fox News interviewee sarcastically called it), I going to breath it in, I’m going to allow that breath to cleans away the last eight years and fill me up with renewed hope; with the sprit of unity and closeness which is what that song was originally associated with. In the words of the new President “What the cynics fail to understand is that the world has shifted beneath them.” It certainly has, and that shifting world has carried me straight to the door of the nearest American Embassy to apply for a visa.
