A Walk on the Wild Side
Paddling in the Troubled British Wash: An Interview with Eloise Jones.
By Miguel Roca, September 2020
“One thing I’ve realised recently is that hopes and dreams don’t always have to be career aspirations… All I want to do is travel.”
Travelling broadens horizons. Venturing into new realms can illuminate our imagination, feed the seeds of ambition to see more of the world, and even clarify our sense of direction and purpose in life. Stepping into the unknown can also serve up the unexpectedly exotic delicacy of cultural and political enlightenment. Multimedia journalist Eloise Jones, 21, from Birmingham, reveals how eye-opening trips to Belfast and Canada did all of the above and more whilst fuelling her aspirations to become a travel journalist.
Miguel: I read your piece about a solo trip to Belfast which was really interesting for me as I am half Irish. Can I ask what made you choose that particular city?
Eloise: “It was a bit of a weird situation to be honest. I was looking through Expedia and one of the first places that came up was Dublin. I was thinking: Dublin looks like somewhere I’d love to go, but because it seemed so lively you want to do it with someone. So I was like: Okay, I’ll just go to Belfast instead. Literally two weeks later I was on the plane.”
Miguel: Did the trip spark your imagination as a journalist?
Eloise: “100%. So I went on a walking tour of Belfast and, when you think about the troubles, I had no idea how bad the scale of that devastation was. When you hear about it here and you’re taught about it, I think it’s so… ‘British washed’. We underpin it so much and we don’t really talk about what happened, and going there and seeing the things that happened was crazy. The tour guide was explaining to me how he thinks Brexit and the Irish backstop are going to spark something else like the troubles. Listening to him say it was like: Someone needs to write about this, someone needs to talk about this, it’s so important.”
Mind the Knowledge Gap
Eloise is not alone in feeling surprised by how little of the complex history between Britain and Ireland, to say nothing of the troubles, has been communicated to the general public following the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. As documented by Naomi O’Leary and Tim McInerney in the Irish Passport Podcast, ever since the 2016 Brexit referendum an apparent “knowledge gap” at least as wide as the Irish sea has become the increasingly perilous historical and political chasm over which British people must leap in order to have even a basic understanding of Irish history. Small wonder that borders and backstops have become such a common feature of public parlance in the aftermath of the contentious leave victory vote.
As The Irish Passport investigation uncovered, what Eloise described as a “British-washed” version of the shared history of these islands has seemingly left generations of UK citizens bereft of an informed, detailed, nuanced, impartial, and balanced perspective on Britain’s relationship with the Emerald Isle. The visceral reality of the troubles, and the suffering of the people who call the six counties in the North their home, has formed just one of the darker chapters in this constantly evolving, serpentine narrative. Rapid remedies are surely required to rectify the relative paucity of knowledge which Eloise noticed, assuming that British people want to better understand their Irish neighbours.
Staring into the Abyss
As Eloise realised upon her visit to Belfast, those who fail to learn the harsh lessons of history risk plummeting in the unknown abyss currently dominated by the sheer gravity of the Irish border question. The spectre of sectarian tensions and violence still haunt a land brutally scarred by the shrapnel of internecine conflict and incendiary bloodshed. Yet blended in with these sobering, ominous shadows lurking in the background of her short meander through Belfast’s gritty urban glory, Eloise’s journalistic instincts sparkled like a freshly uncorked champagne bottle as she recalled her brief anecdote. The timbre of her voice lifted to match her assertions about the urgent priority and ongoing importance of consistent media coverage in the region.
Perhaps in an ideal world this would be driven by non-partisan, apolitical, community focused, thermostat-like hyper-local reporting which could help to enable an often confused, distracted, misinformed, and oblivious UK audience to gauge the temperature of the Irish border debate. Bringing such a rounded narrative to the forefront of public discourse in Britain has rarely seemed more timeous in the context of recent political developments in Westminster. Despite this serious subject matter, Eloise came away from her trip brimming with confidence in her capacity to fly solo. As she put it in our interview, and elsewhere in her own feature article about her journey:
Eloise: “I had the best time ever…taking a trip on my own has taught me that the world isn’t out of reach just because I’m companionless.”
A Very British, Canadian Culture Shock
Eloise has also been enriched by voyaging significantly further afield than Ireland too. In the second half of our interview she explains how she encountered some of the more positive aspects of culture shock, when she realised that it sometimes takes a trip across the Atlantic ocean to notice how British ambivalence and ignorance doesn’t just manifest itself in the subtle, historical, and cultural knowledge gap between Britain and Ireland. It can also leak into everyday life:
Miguel: Do you have any personal hopes, dreams, or life ambitions that you’d be comfortable sharing?
Eloise: “So, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because I’ve got a lot of friends who have got such a clear direction in their lives. One of my friends is going to join the Army in a couple of weeks, and looking at that is so like: What am I doing? It’s quite scary actually, but one thing I’ve realised recently is that hopes and dreams don’t always have to be career aspirations and the fact that I don’t know where I’m going yet isn’t such a bad thing. But the one thing that I really realised I want to do is that I want to travel. All I want to do is travel.
So, pre-Covid I’d planned this massive two month interrail trip around Europe and that was meant to start today! Heartbreaking! So that’s obviously rescheduled now. I lived in Canada for three months before. It’s just those things, wanting to just see more of everything. I think sitting here in little Birmingham, there’s so much more to see and I think that’s my main aspiration.”
Miguel: You spent three months in Canada! What did you take away from that in terms of the differences between somewhere like the UK and Canada?
Eloise: “So I did a study abroad semester there in my second year of uni. It wasn’t just the travelling. It was literally like immersing yourself in a Canadian life, living as a Canadian would. The cultural differences were just crazy. People would just walk down the street and say hello to you. I know that’s such a small thing, but that doesn’t really happen very often here. I love it. Okay people smile at you or whatever, but nine times out of ten you get ignored [in the UK]. I remember I lived with a lady and I couldn’t get over how willing she was to just welcome me into her home, and let me sleep at her house with her kids. I think the main thing I took from it was that there are so many more places where I could have the same experience.”
Miguel: I was going to ask you if you have any specific career hopes and dreams, but if you’re not sure about those then I’m not expecting you to manufacture that.
Eloise: “I think in a broad sense, my biggest career aspiration would be to get into some kind of travel journalism. So like for National Geographic or Lonely Planet or something like that. That’d be the dream.”
Wrapping Up
As the sign I keep in my kitchen keeps reminding me to tell Eloise: If you plant dreams, you might just grow miracles.
Miguel Roca
