Like everything I suppose, it happened gradually, and then suddenly. The exact moment I realised was when everyone was asked to get off the bus after we arrived in Dover from Calais, get their bags and stand in line for a dog to sniff everything. Something had prepared me for this moment, about two hours prior in Calais, though at the time it seemed like nothing.
We arrived at the border control point for France/England at the ferry terminal in Calais, and went into what looked like a demountable school room. Some French guys were standing there in smart uniforms, and it seemed maintaining a stern facial expression was the hardest part of their job. One of the French men looked at my small red book, said “Thank you”, and waved as a beckoning for me to walk past him to the door at the back of the little demountable building.
They had a kind of sheep run which led into another little demountable building. After standing in line for a few minutes I was waved forward by an English woman in a different smart uniform who also wanted to look at the small red book. I said “Hi”, she replied “Hi”, then after a moment she said “Thank you” and did the same kind of wave the Frenchman had a few minutes earlier.
I had a cigarette outside the little building while waiting for Soph to get someone to put a stamp in her small book. She needed a stamp in her book because it’s a different colour. I was thinking about the English woman who waved me forward, and how she seemed to be doing her best to have a stern facial expression, and I couldn’t work out why this is so important. I still can’t to be perfectly honest. I could think of reasons, but no good reasons. There was also a sign which read “IMPORTANT PETS MUST BE DECLARED” and I wondered what happened with the unimportant pets. I settled on an idea for a rewrite of the sign – “IMPORTANT: PETS MUST BE DECLARED TO QUARANTINE”.
So, standing in a line in an arrivals hall in Dover with my bag over my shoulder and holding my pack in my arms in front of me, two things truly dawned on me. Number one, all my “valuable” possessions were within 500mm of my body. Of those, the possessions in my arms were easily replaceable, though doing so may be annoying. At that moment I had a new response to this. Not long after Soph and I arrived in this hemisphere, I was very aware that all I owned was with me in bags, and I was also very concerned I would lose some things from the pack, or the pack itself might be lost or stolen. When I was standing there in line, holding the bag and waiting to be sniffed, I had a sudden sense of freedom.
I’ve been thinking about this freedom, much the same as I was thinking about the “Leaving Melbourne/Coming to Europe”. I felt an overwhelming sense of “Freedom To” as opposed to “Freedom From”. I’d made choices about how to spend my time in Melbourne, and which things I would have and would keep. I am (and was then) comfortable with those decisions fitting the time the decisions were made. I never felt a need to have “Freedom From” as there weren’t really any situations I wanted to be free from. I was feeling a need to have “Freedom To”.
While waiting in line to be sniffed I felt an acute sense that I have the freedom to engage culturally with any people I choose, in any place and at any time. I was free to engage with people in a way I chose, which was a “Freedom To” I didn’t feel I had in Melbourne, and ultimately, it is the reason I’m here. While I may have had the ability, I didn’t feel I had the freedom to, and I was (and am) largely innocent of cultural alternatives. Standing in that line I thought I have an amazing chance to see cultural alternatives – to see some of the many ways people meaningfully interact – and learn from these. To see value in a form I wouldn’t otherwise be able to recognise, used in a way I didn’t know to find it – and I had no possessions to distract me from this.
Since then, I know my freedom – to move from place to place, see what I like, immerse myself, watch and learn – is something in itself that I can’t value highly enough. And I can’t waste. The second thing to occur to me while standing there was “what a total and utter load of shit this border control is”. We had already been checked by English people on the way onto the ferry, and the English people on the other side – showing probably the correct amount of respect the work of passport control is due – decided not to trust the first English passport control, and check people again. Not that either group of people actually did anything other than maintain stern facial expressions.
I have a small red book, and because of this, I must be permitted entry. Soph has been out of Australia more times than I, but regardless, because Soph’s small book is a different colour she must write more things on some more pieces of paper – to be given entry. Which she did, so they give her entry. Paperwork is the key – not “passport control”. The people with stern expressions are (in my view) a vaguely comical yet totally unnecessary pretend Police force. They are there to check the correctness of paperwork. It’s a clerk’s job, and they’re clerks. So why is the clerk looking so stern? And secondly, shouldn’t any government clerk, when provided with correct paperwork, simply yield? I have the feeling we have many clerks (with stern expressions) under the false impression there is power at their disposal which they are free to exercise at will.
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