Whilst my friends and fam back home are consumed with lions, tigers and other jungle animals escaping, we are having our own media circus. Enter the gyspy travellers.
What is a gypsy? According to Google:
1. A member of a people that arrived in Europe in migrations from northern India around the 14th century, now also living in North America and Australia. Many Gypsy groups have preserved elements of their traditional culture, including an itinerant existence and the Romany language.
2. One inclined to a nomadic, unconventional way of life.
3. A person who moves from place to place as required for employment, especially, a part-time or temporary member of a college faculty or a member of the chorus line in a theater production.
These people definiately aren’t putting on a road show of The Sound of Music. Police have moved in to begin removing homes from the UK’s largest illegal travellers’ site, Dale Farm in Essex. I couldn’t get over the images in the news. In short, these gypsys were putting up a fight after they were refused permission to appeal against a ruling demanding they to clear the site.
You have the Wall Street protests, we have gypsy rioters. Not to be confused with homeless people, these gypsys are serious. I am starting to learn about the rights these travellers were fighting for, but at the end of the day to me they seem like glorified squatters. Officially culture shocked.
Across the Pond 