As an ordinary guy, “bloke”, could say after me British experience, the U.K. was an unfamiliar term, the U.S. was more a common and familiar one. I was keener to the American way since my family and I lived “next” to the American Border, Tijuana or Nogales, therefore, always tried to get or jump onto the American novelties.

When luckily got me a grant from the British Council, never thought it was going to be my pass to know and live the “love of the common people”…. remember that song played by Paul Young which was an appealing way to get to know how ordinary British families lived…?? Suddenly, Dr. Marteens Shoes were not part of a fashion but the real life, “you know what I am saying…?” (Have you got the “accent”… still…??)

Those who are “young at heart” but old in age, just like me, are going to evocate and eventually recapture the essence of those 83/84 years with the help of that music played by the scarce radio channels on the air in the U.K., or seen at “Top of the Pops” on the telly when TV areas were luckily available at the dorms, since Bangladeshis and some other ethnics groups including Latinos were catching up with the English language using the T.V. News.

Those people never understood that Coronation Street and stuff like that was good enough to solve the mystery of Welsh accent…!!

“2000 thousand miles” by Pretenders was in the charts and that or even more, was the distance between our new home and the real one and certainly we were anxious to see the snow but not ready to feel the loneliness in it. Took me a couple of years to understand how good the education received was but I certainly realize that is more important the experience of being British at least for a while.

Bangor was the location assigned by my tutors and I still recall staring at that little cartoon on the Student’s Union wall saying: Here I am as a new student, thinking what others had thought before me about choosing Bangor….If only I have had better grades…. Certainly that was a joke but it made me shiver, was I going to live in that “world distant to London” village…?

Well, fortunately, I did. Bangor was the perfect town, the people and the place were exactly what I did not know and expected.

Took me a while to understand the difference between England and Wales and what the UK really was; I certainly knew the geo-political difference but not the historical one…!

Immediately I was part of the town, became a regular attendant at local pubs, the White Lyon, the Menai Arms, and the King’s Head, arm in arm with the milkman, the postman, and the rest of the UB40 fans; it is then when I happened to know that UB40 was more than a reggae group but a criticism against that almost perfect establishment perceived by me.

For those who never knew, there was a Government’s form to be filled in order to apply for an unemployment benefit when on the dole, namely the Unemployment Benefit form 40, therefore, the mmediate acceptance of the musical group for those without a quid for a pint.

Had the chance to return once, took me wife and the kids, the eldest was surprised of how “big” my room was but he loved what he saw and now we all expect he is big enough to return to that special and unique home