Sitting on a chair with the laptop facing away, I wait for my song. My flatmates and I are playing a game – sing the song without the lyrics. We’ve been at it for hours and have deliriously started delegating songs that represent our countries. The Soldier’s Song for my Irish flatmate. Loch Lomond and Caledonia for my Scottish ones. They sing them loud and proud, hands on hearts patriotically.
When it’s my turn, I find myself hoping it won’t be God Save the King. I definitely don’t know the verses and never cared to learn. It feels inappropriate and weirdly colonial in front of my Celtic friends. I try to think of an alternative – something that proudly represents England in the same way – but nothing comes to mind. They laugh, and the opening drums start. Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran.
Unironically, I love this song and I sing it word for word with a joking grin. But afterwards, I can’t shake the feeling of embarrassment. The closest we’ve got to English pride is a pop song about Ed Sheeran’s childhood. And worse, I can’t think of anything better.
My parents were raised in the Cotswolds, an idyllically English countryside, experiencing a childhood not unlike Laurie Lee’s own in Cider with Rosie. As hippies, they made their own fun, before trading it for Brighton in the 90s, chasing illegal outdoor raves and the booming party scene. By the time I came along, we had settled in a countryside village just outside the city. I have always loved where I’m from – whether for the place itself or natural childhood sentiment. When I made the decision to go to university, however, the one thing I knew I wanted to do was leave the country.
What I didn’t know was that this move would make me want to never return.
I’ve always felt this strange pull towards Edinburgh. When I was ten, I visited my friends’ grandparents in Glasgow. Driving through the city to get there, I remember marvelling, wide-eyed, at the cobbled streets and medieval stone buildings, a city plucked straight from a fairytale. I came home and told my mum that one day I’d live there. I pictured myself, older, walking those same cobbled streets in high heels, wet with rain, umbrella in hand. So, when I made the decision to come to university, Edinburgh was an obvious contender. My dream course sealed it.
I was quick to notice the differences of life up here, one of the first being the Young Scot scheme that my new friend displayed on my first day. I immediately applied for one. I was even more amazed when it actually arrived, that just living there as a young person was enough of a reason to not have to pay for travel – unfathomable to my English mind. Later that year, on a trip to the dentist, I went to settle and the receptionist reminded me that I was all done because, of course, ‘dental care is free for under 25s’. Scotland, it seemed, was far less interested in extracting money from people who didn’t have it.
Over the next three years, I kept discovering more. The ‘Right to Roam’ scheme that allows and encourages people to wild camp legally and enjoy nature. Alcohol rules which aim to reduce violence and health problems (though admittedly inconvenient for my first-year lifestyle). Personal care is free for those over 65, free prescriptions, and, of course, tuition is free for all Scottish students.
Admittedly, I turn green with jealousy knowing I’ll graduate with at least £37,000 more debt than my Scottish peers. While Scottish students pay nothing, those elsewhere in the UK leave university with an average debt of around £44,000, with some owing more than £200,000.
I don’t believe university is for everyone, but I do believe everyone should have the option. In Scotland, free tuition protects that choice. In England, the cost alone can be enough to take it away. In a time when educated young minds are needed more than ever, why does it feel as though the UK government cares more about profit than giving everyone a fair chance at higher education?
I had been to Scotland many times prior to moving. I have family here; Scottish cousins and childhood friends. They’ve always spoken fondly of the country – how much better life is here. I didn’t quite get it before. Now I do. But the differences go beyond policy – they’re cultural, and personal too.
At football and rugby games, I cheer for Scotland with genuine enthusiasm, happy to support something I feel is truly worth backing (and, admittedly, I am terrified to cheer for England). It’s when I do this that I realise I have never truly felt proud of my own country. Scottish pride is tangible, unselfconscious, and shared – celebrated without irony. Living here, I’ve begun to feel part of that pride myself, even though it isn’t mine to claim. Crowds at concerts are louder, more electric; I beam when artists praise Glasgow audiences as ‘the best’, only to remind myself that technically, that doesn’t include me.
The national anthem is sung with genuine patriotism that isn’t controversial or royalist. Every party is a ceilidh – a true celebration of Scottish culture – and by default of having grown up in Scottish primary schools, everyone instinctively knows the steps. They move seamlessly into the Gay Gordons or the Dashing White Sergeant at the first note of the fiddle. Songs are sung with beaming smiles and real pride. Watching it both warms my heart and, yes, undeniably makes me a little envious.
While my love for Scotland is derived from these moments, my growing hatred towards my own country is largely political. England feels increasingly defined, at least publicly, by political division and movements that I don’t recognise myself in. It creates a distance between me and something that, technically, I still belong to. The embarrassingly ugly colonial history of my country is the elephant in the room in every political conversation I find myself in. I feel apologetic towards people I have personally never wronged. I find myself overcompensating, trying to prove my place as an exception to the rule and not one of those English people. Where Scotland has ceilidhs, haggis, community and bagpipes, England has Nigel Farage.
This is not to say I won’t move back to England; in fact, I’m sure I will. I feel a similar – less magnetic and more practical – pull to London. I now dream of drinking wine on Primrose Hill and the Heath in a sticky London summer, paying overpriced rent for a studio apartment. I know I shouldn’t feel ashamed of my heritage; I come from a longline of diligent English ancestors, who worked hard to put food on the tables of their children, right down to my own dad. I love my home and the people I know there. It can be beautiful too. There’s the North, the warmth of Geordies and Scousers, the Lake District and cities so large they dwarf Scotland entirely. There’s the Cotswolds, the Cornish coast, and my wonderful home city, full of creativity and diversity.
It doesn’t, however, change the way I feel for the country as a whole. There’s a lack of something, of culture and belonging, only recognisable to me from my position over here. Maybe it’s the shame, maybe it’s a feeling of exclusion from this great thing or maybe it’s simply being able to compare the two so distinctly, and longing for something I can’t ever be a part of.
No matter where I end up, I will remember my early days in Scotland as formative, warm and eye-opening to the beauty of a culture so openly celebrated and rightly so. I will carry a piece of Scotland with me forever, and everything I have learnt from it living in a country so widely and unapologetically worshipped. I suppose I will spend my whole life searching for that feeling.
Leaving England didn’t just change where I lived, but it changed how I identify with it too. It exposed its weaknesses – culturally, politically, and socially. Quite frankly, it has left with me a strong distaste for my country, boredom of my hometown and a slight dread to move back. Not because there’s nothing there, but because something feels missing. Something instinctive and shared. A song of pride.
