It’s been brought to my attention that my husband of thirty-three years and my adult children may in fact be … American. I suppose I should thank the World Cup for opening my eyes to this but at the moment I’m still in shock about the whole thing. Who knew a simple dinner reservation could shine a spotlight on such a troublesome issue?
When I made a Friday night dinner reservation at the Top Ship in Porlock, an olde worlde thatched pub that predates football itself by, oh, several hundred years, I had no idea England was playing the USA in the World Cup that night. Full disclosure: I haven’t watched a football match since Bobby Charlton, George Best and Gordon Banks played, which means my spectator days peaked in the 1970s and faded rapidly. But I’m a huge fan of Marcus Rashford, awarded an MBE for his push to get free lunches for low-income children during the COVID outbreak. That man’s a hero. Anyway, apparently, he plays football too. But I digress…
The Top Ship calls the morning of our dinner reservation to advise us the game will be shown while we’re eating and would we like to move from the pub to the restaurant so as not to see the television. Why would we do that? It’s not like watching the game will cause any kind of discord. We’re all on the same team in my family. My American hubby agreed to move to England. My daughter, born and raised in the USA but now living in England, made a choice to focus on her UK heritage a few years ago. Her US friend, also now living in London, prefers the British lifestyle. We’ll be cheering for England then. No need to move us out of TV range, thanks. Game on.
My first inkling of discord comes as I prepare to head out for dinner. A Stars and Stripes flag, previously hidden in a rarely used drawer, mysteriously appears on the kitchen counter. Why is this here? Where is it going? Surely not with us to the pub? I ask my fellow family members/dinner guests about it: Hubby shrugs, daughter checks her phone, her friend freezes, seemingly wishing to goodness she’d turned down the invitation to spend Thanksgiving in Porlock. The dog, sensing tension, parks himself in front of the door so no one can escape. (He’s half French/half German if the DNA panel is accurate so maybe we should leave him out of this.) No one confesses to planning to take the US flag to dinner but there’s muttering in the hallway as people pull coats on. An uneasy feeling seeps into my gut as it’s suggested the flag remain on the counter, ‘available for after dinner’.
We arrive at the Top Ship just as the British national anthem is playing. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ I smile at my party while admiring the roaring fire, light bouncing off the horse brasses and the beer glasses. I join in the last line of the anthem, focusing so hard on singing ‘King’ rather than the lifelong ‘Queen’ I’m used to I almost don’t catch Hubby’s, ‘Did we miss the US anthem?’.
Kick off complete, drinks ordered, menu perused, we settle in to watch a game we didn’t know was happening just hours ago. Now it seems to mean something to us all. The other tables are definitely invested in the outcome and it’s pretty obvious that on Exmoor England is favoured to win. Except at our table. I seem to be in the minority when it comes to England fans. It starts with rumblings, a daughter’s flinch when England shoots at goal, a husband’s clenched fist when the Americans run the ball down the field. What’s this? Mutiny? An American on Exmoor? Where’s the cheer when the cameras show the England fans? Where’s the boo when the USA player trips an English player?
Oh. My. Good. God. I’m at a table full of USA fans!!
How could this be? My husband? Didn’t he swear allegiance to the flag during our marriage vows? (Remind me to check the videotape.) My children? Surely, having a British mother ensures loyalty to the English team? (Remind me to check the small print on their birth certificates.) Seriously, a life lived in the USA has to get overruled by that half of your DNA that is English once you hit English soil, doesn’t it? Though now I think of it, I never felt American after decades on American soil. Is it even possible my family doesn’t feel fully English on English soil? Apparently, it is. Halfway through the fish and chips and Exmoor Ale pie, things are getting more heated. No not on the football field, as even to my inexperienced eye, this is a tedious game at best. No, it’s become clear as day this game is pulling my family back to their roots in the USA, just as I spent thirty-odd years in America being pulled back to mine in England.
Okay. This is getting ridiculous. There are open whoops when the Americans have the ball. Obvious sighs when the English goalkeeper stops an attack on goal. Over pudding and custard, the truth comes out. The three other guests at my table openly admit they’re pulling for the USA. I shush them and glance uneasily around the pub at all the England supporters. ‘We live here,’ I hiss. ‘Keep your voices down.’ But it’s too late. The owners and managers and wait staff know us. They know our background. They smile just as usual, but I have to wonder if the chef spat in our gravy tonight of all nights.
The game ends and, thank goodness, it’s a zero-zero draw. Our family lives to watch another game. I can only hope it’s not an England versus USA World Cup final. If it is, we may have to stay home to watch. I couldn’t take the humiliation of a USA victory in the pub or the gloating of my traitorous family. But I’ve learned something: A simple game of football can provide an eye-opening view of international family dynamics.
It’s been two and a half years since I’ve been on a plane. That’s the longest I’ve spent with both feet on the ground since I was a teenager. Just when I’m wondering if I’ll ever again experience the joy of a good ol’ kneecapping from someone else’s wheeled suitcase on a jetway, my sister calls with a plan. (She’s been known to suggest things like tying a childhood friend to a dustbin lid and sending him down a steep hill. The trouble that caused. One shouldn’t agree to her plans willy nilly.) But this plan includes Tuscan pasta dishes with porcini mushrooms. It involves a swimming pool with views over a beautiful valley framed by towering mountains. It’s a chance to see Cinque Terre, a bucket list destination for me. I wait for the other shoe to drop, like Sis saying, ‘Oh, before we go, we need to dig up my entire back garden using a spoon. Then returf it.’ That shoe doesn’t drop. I’m going on holiday!
Just a couple of flies in the ointment: Two weeks before we’re due to fly out, a Ukrainian refugee family arrives at our house on Exmoor. No one had invaded anyone back when we booked the holiday. No one had suggested Hubby and I empty out all the closets in our three-bedroom house and stack our clothes into dangerously high piles on the floor in one bedroom. No one mentioned anything about completing more dangerous piles of paperwork regarding refugee visas and school applications and insurance and new bank accounts and downloading translation apps. No one suggested I wouldn’t have time to pack or time to plan holiday excursions or …
I know, I know. Even I realise that comes across a little, well, selfish. Lives are at stake here. Civilization itself is at stake here based on current events, and I’m focused on pasta. Of course, Hubby and I will make this work. Of course, we’ll get everything set up before we leave. We’ll give this family of three some breathing room to regroup from their ordeal and relax into Exmoor life. It will all be fine. Our new family members are delightful and certainly worth any extra effort on our part.
Then the second fly crash lands in the Commonwealth ointment, splattering chaos and grief everywhere. The day before we leave for Heathrow, worrying news seeps out of Buckingham Palace: Queen Elizabeth’s health is ’cause for concern’. Before we’ve had time to wish her well, she’s gone. And I’m bereft.
‘Why,’ you ask? ‘Did you meet her?’ No, but I saw her up close during a tour of Windsor Castle once. I looked out of one of the stateroom windows to see the entire Royal Family getting into cars heading to Royal Ascot. It was a thrill, seeing an icon in the flesh. She’d been part of my British collective consciousness my entire life. She provided a rallying cry during my decades in America, that call to defend your country, not from war in this case but from any mention of ‘also ran’. Nobody does pomp or puts on a parade like the United Kingdom. London’s buildings and vistas always impress and the Queen’s appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace stirs something inside me. So much history – some of it questionable looking back with today’s perspective, I get that – condensed into one lady under a pastel-coloured hat. All I can say is for me, personally, Queen Elizabeth provided the thread that tethered me ‘home’ during my hiraeth years.
I’d worried about not being resident back in England for her funeral during my years abroad. I thought I’d made it in time. I intended to go to London and pay my respects when the time came. But no. I’m booked on a flight to Tuscany within a day of her passing. I can barely pack, and I’m still trying to complete paperwork for my new Ukrainian family as the bells toll in the village church and the television pounds the sad news, over and over again, into my heart. The Queen is dead. Long live the King. The Jubilee bed in my garden tells the story; a sad transition from June to September.
I frantically hurl hand lotion bottles out of bathroom drawers trying to find a little plastic bag to fit my toiletries in because I’d forgotten you still have to do that on a plane. My eyes well up at the billboards along the motorway: a black background with The Queen’s portrait in the middle. Heathrow is full of shop windows expressing condolences to the Royal Family. Sis and I start planning our day of Tuscan mourning on the plane. We’ll be watching the entire funeral, though our partners plan to hike that day. They don’t get it. Well, one of them is American, after all.
Tuscan villages are decked out in Ukrainian flags, reminding us we’ve left our house in the hands of complete strangers. We WhatsApp several times a day to smooth any bumpy issues and our village does a wonderful job of wrapping our guests in warmth and kindness. This gives Sis and me time to buy family-sized bags of Italian chocolate, M&M’s and liquorice because this is how you deal with death in our family.
We sit down in our Tuscan villa at 10am GMT on Monday September 19th and don’t move again for eight hours. We feel sick from all the chocolate but, oh, what a wonderful send off. I take comfort in the fact I made it home for The Queen’s 70th anniversary, just three short months ago. I threw a party and shared Pimms and planted my garden in red, white, and blue, and somehow felt closer to my heritage. But today, scenes appear on the little Italian television that bring me back to the heart wrenching gut check of Emma, the Queen’s pony, standing silently as her owner’s casket passes. The Royal Corgis sit desolately at the feet of carers as those amazing pall bearers make everyone proud. The crown is removed from the top of the casket and my heart bleeds for the next-in-line, Charles III. He has a tough road ahead and big shoes to fill. He will be criticized daily for doing his job and the only thing he’ll be more criticized for is not doing his job. Poor fella.
In the days after the funeral, we eat pasta and stroll cobbled streets and travel to the coast. We decide Cinque Terre isn’t what we thought it would be, though it could be just our attitudes aren’t what they should be. That said, the photos on all the jigsaw puzzles I’ve completed over the years of these coastal villages are much cleaner, brighter and less crowded than the reality. Portofino proves impressive though.
Before we know it, we’re on the way home, thinking September was a bit of a washout. Until … we walk through our Exmoor door and there waiting for us is an amazing gingerbread replica of our home, made with love and incredible skill by our Ukrainian guests. We are speechless. Such talent and generosity shared in a time of great stress for them. Later, I post a photo of the house on Twitter, which the BBC picks up and before we know it, we’re interviewed on BBC Radio Somerset and there’s an article on the BBC website and another journalist calls for an interview and suddenly we’re all connected in this big old crazy world by cake. That sweet, comforting token denotes grief and celebration and peace and family. We’re all looking for a good news story; something to remind us that everything will be alright if we’re just kind to each other. Baking binds us together.
If Queen Elizabeth II did one thing right, it was instilling in so many a sense of duty, compassion and a work ethic of ‘just get on with it’. I’ll stop wallowing in pity and get on with providing a home for those who sorely need it. And I’ll eat gingerbread until I feel better.
I’ve experienced the concept of ‘home’ in so many varied ways recently I’m starting to think my ‘Write Home’ brand may be taking over my life. Not in the ‘writing a new novel every six months’ kind of way; more in the ‘Will I ever finish a novel again because, well, life’ kind of way. I blame three major August events…
Domestic home front: My mother turned ninety at the beginning of the month. This deserved a family holiday in Cornwall so Mum, three of her daughters and two long-suffering partners set off for a week under one roof. This has never happened before. Someone was always in a different country, on a different shift, unavailable. Out of sync. To have us all together, with nothing to do but chat and reacquaint ourselves with who took which kind of milk in tea, who remembered that time our childhood pony bolted down the high street, or who got the most ‘O’ Levels (ahem… not me), felt strange yet comforting. This family time was, after all, much of the reason I returned to England after so long away. How many major events have I missed over the expat decades? Too many to count, so being able to participate in this milestone will remain a treasured memory. It will also serve as a reminder not to book trips during the school summer holidays. Cornwall is jamming y’all!
International home front: ‘Home’ hit me again as I waved goodbye to my son and daughter-in-law. They’re returning to the USA for a couple of years to pursue graduate degrees. (I’m fine. No, really, I’m fine. Well, not fine but I’m told at the age of thirty our kids get to make their own decisions. Mothers be damned.) My son grew up in the US and his wife is American but when they moved over to the UK a year before I came back, I thought I had them locked in here. Because … well, because I’m gratefully locked in here. During the countdown to them returning to Seattle, I kept thinking England is home to me so surely it’s home to my children too. Why on earth would they choose to go anywhere else? They say they’ll be back, but will they? I only left England for a six-month trip. It turned into thirty-six years. Will the same happen to the next generation? Where is home for them? Do they know yet? Will they spend as much time searching as I did or will it fall into place quicker for them? Their leaving was more of a wrench than I even imagined it would be – and I imagined a lot. But really, I’m fine, though my chocolate consumption may have increased. Unrelated, I’m sure.
Refugee home front: Our Ukrainian refugee family arrived on Exmoor a few days ago. After driving for five days and crossing territory they never dreamed they’d see, heading to a place they never imagined they’d have to consider ‘home’, here they are. Exhausted, stressed, emotional yet so kind and funny and giving. Every inch of their car needed to carry as much of their lives as it possibly could. As they unpacked baking tins, a sewing machine, a skateboard, a ukulele, and a large stack of books, all indicating the life they hoped to rekindle here, I was so touched when they handed me four bars of Ukrainian chocolate. They made room for kindness and they have already turned my orchard apples into apple cake, warming my kitchen and my heart. How do you translate all these emotions? I don’t care how good your language app is, there are words not yet invented and sentence structures not yet complex enough, to convey what it is to lose a home, offer a home, reinvent a home. We will muddle through with hugs and smiles and hope that this new ‘home’ keeps us safe and strong. Together.
Constantly experiencing my ‘Write Home’ brand up close and personal hasn’t quite translated into written pages yet. Once again, the writing has been relegated to the back burner, or more like, a tiny camping stove spluttering out the last drop of gas on a windy mountain top. It’s been so long since my third novel returned from the editor, that drawer writers are supposed to hide the manuscript in for a few months to ‘marinate’ may now be rusted shut. However, the other day, while thinking about how tough it must be to leave everything you know behind, pack only the essentials in your car, and drive off into an uncertain future, that manuscript began whispering to me again. It was fully formed before COVID and before war, but its universal themes of hiraeth and starting over when life feels completely at the whim of others still feels timely. The half-written fourth novel also tiptoed out of the past to tap me on the shoulder with a ‘Hey! Remember me?’. And I did remember it. I mentally fixed a plot hole and experienced the flicker in the belly that signals the writing game is afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say. Maybe it’s time to break the lock on the manuscript drawer.
I’m not going to lie, experiencing once-in-a-lifetime events almost daily is tiring. The thought of writing again is tiring. The adrenaline keeps me upright but maybe I should be switching to an alternative source of power. That said, adrenaline may be the cheapest energy in England during this fuel crisis – and crisis it is – so I should probably stick with it. I don’t have an adrenaline metre but I’m pretty sure the tank needs topping up. As luck would have it, a trip to Tuscany is just around the corner, planned long before war sent a new family our way. We’ll go anyway. Can’t let the Powers that Be mess up every single part of our lives. As fun as the trip will be, I know returning home will be the icing on the cake.
I hope the birthday celebrations, the family partings, and the arrival of new friends see you all through the tough months ahead. As Sam in ‘Dunster’s Calling’ says, may we all find the place we sleep the best and breathe the deepest’; whether it’s Cornwall, Seattle, Exmoor or anywhere free of bombs and bullets.
Today is the second anniversary of my leaving the United States for the last time to return home to England. I’ll be spending the day, in fact the whole week, excitedly preparing for my neighbourhood Jubilee party. For those of you living under a rock, the British Commonwealth is celebrating the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s reign with a four-day special holiday. I’m hosting a garden party on Saturday, which some find odd seeing as my household contains one of the only Americans living in my village. Hubby isn’t known for his monarchist sensibilities. How could he be, given the rigmarole his forebearers went through to get rid of King George III? But here Hubby is, unpacking boxes of bunting, streamers, balloons and flags and wondering why on earth his typically non-baking wife has ordered 180 Union Jack cupcake cases. He’s being a good sport about it. So far. (Wait until he finds out about the full-sized replica of Her Majesty he needs to put together so she can stand at the gate to welcome more than forty guests.) Luckily, Hubby finds it possible to question the place of a monarchy in this century and still have tremendous admiration for someone who has navigated the royal waters for 70 years with aplomb. He agrees with me that anyone who’s kept a job for 70 years deserves respect.
I’ve always loved the pomp and pageantry of the British monarchy. I’ve watched Trooping of the Colour in person and followed the Household Cavalry parade down The Mall. I love the bands and the way crowds of people (who’ve complained all year about everything British from the weather to the price of petrol to the latest football loss to the VAT on biscuits) appear for the Queen’s official birthday celebration decked out in red, white and blue sunglasses and Union Jack capes singing ‘Rule Britannia’ – or some slightly drunken version of it. As a figurehead, Queen Elizabeth still works, thought the intent behind ‘Rule Britannia’ may not.
Hubby and I watched Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen on the BBC. It contained never-before-seen footage of Queen Elizabeth’s life from birth up to scenes from her coronation when she was twenty-five. Twenty-five??!! At twenty-five I doubt I could have been consistently responsible for a goldfish let alone greeting dignitaries from around the world without causing an international incident. Could I have demonstrated such interest in teapot making, or four-year-olds drawing stick queen figures, or a demonstration of the latest battery technology without stifling a yawn or cutting short the official visit to attend a Eurythmics concert instead? Doubtful. Maybe the Queen would have preferred a concert too. It’s not like she was asked if she wanted to take on her royal role. Her Uncle, the abdicating King Edward VIII, made it impossible for her to say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ to it all. To remain so poised and filtered, when she wasn’t born to be queen, takes great discipline, determination, and dedication. That can be admired, even by an American.
Having spent thirty years or so in the USA, hiraeth (a longing for home overlaid with sadness that home may not exist anymore, or perhaps never did) was a constant during my American life. I decided to return to my birthplace for many reasons but one hope was to return while Queen Elizabeth was still on the throne. Her presence has been a stabilizing factor throughout my life; a reminder of my British-ness. Maybe you must spend a long time away from familiar rituals and traditions in order to appreciate them. Once they disappear from your daily life, and no mention is made of them in your adopted homeland, there’s a hole. No Superbowl, no presidential inauguration (certainly not the last few!), no Fourth of July or Thanksgiving can fill that hole. When you’re required to explain your traditions to others, you begin to clarify what they mean to you personally, as opposed to them just ‘being there’. I ask myself why I cry every time I hear Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’, the coronation anthem. What does that magnificent piece of music about a biblical figure, played during the religious anointing of a British king or queen, stir in me? I wasn’t exactly raised in the church. But the moment I hear that music and they place that crown on Elizabeth’s head, I tear up. I tear up when those around her curtsey. I sniffle when I watch her young face in that golden coach stare out at the crowds of subjects, who, for a moment, come together in unity and pride at something so quintessentially British. This is patriotism I suppose. That feeling, however brief, that you are on top of the world. The only ones who can do this particular thing well. And we Brits certainly do a parade well, don’t we?
So here’s to another string of bunting across the swing seat. To another batch of cupcakes with Jubilee toppers. Here’s to keeping the cardboard cut-out of Queen Elizabeth dry from the forecasted rain showers and making sure only respectful photos are taken of her. Here’s to being back home in England during this never-before-achieved milestone event. And most especially, here’s to Queen Elizabeth II. Job well done, Ma’am.
One last thing: here’s to Hubby not mentioning Boston Harbor or Paul Revere. At least for this weekend.
I’ve had enough of February, 2022; mostly my own fault. I didn’t have to put the powerlines to my Exmoor house underground; it was just a nice-to-do to improve the view. The process required digging up the driveway, dismantling stone walls and excavating across the entire front garden to lay the cables underground. Unfortunately, once the trenches were dug, Storm Eunice hit and all the power company contractors diverted to other more important tasks, leaving us with an almighty mess. I didn’t have to write a novel but I did, and February was also the deadline for getting it to the editor. More self-induced stress but I managed it by the skin of my teeth and will now try to forget all about it. The fear of letting someone else look at your work is intense. Moving inside the house, I didn’t have to replace floors and curtains, it was just a nice-to-do. But I did do it and the nice got knocked out of the project quickly, leaving just the to-do list; like needing to paint all the walls before the new floors go down.
The hardest bit about painting is choosing the paint, I always think. I’m not good with colour at the best of times but it’s one thing to have your socks clash with your jumper and quite another to paint an acre of wall in the main areas of your house only to find it looks naff with the curtains and makes the flooring look peachy-pink instead of the rough-sawn cypress you hoped for. I’ve repainted many a room in my time due to ‘choice error’.
Emersed in the complex, stress-inducing world of colour, I spread out on the floor in the paint shop with my floorboard sample and my curtain fabric sample. I’m overwhelmed by the time I reach paint sample number two and there’s 50,000 of them. Three weeks into this, I still haven’t picked a colour. I mean, why so many? Do we need a million shades of white? A plain and simple neutral? Forget anything called ‘beige’. There is no beige. Instead, the paint swatch sheet opens like the Dead Sea Scrolls and never stops unscrolling. There is Matchstick and Elephant’s Breath and Rum Camel (I ask you, who names paints?) and thousands of others which, depending on the light, look either grey or brown to me. Even a passing cloud can move the sample from the ‘this may work’ pile to the ‘yuck, that’s awful’ pile, which becomes the ‘this may work’ pile when the cloud scurries past and sunshine hits the fan of samples.
Did I mention there’s a time limit as the painting needs to be finished by March 1st when the flooring goes in? Darn this short month of February! Could you not at least be a leap year to help a decorator out? No? Matchstick, it is then.
With four days to deadline, I hump ladders and buckets of paint around and pick a million strands of dog hair off the paintbrush and make gallons of tea for the wall-building construction crew working outside. I remind myself to look up and enjoy the fact the UK lifted all remaining COVID restrictions. This should be something to celebrate after two years, right? Instead, there’s conflicting information on whether we’re too early and will we go back to hospital tents in car parks. However, I choose to celebrate the sentiment of lifted restrictions while still wearing my mask at Tesco’s as I pick up more industrial-sized sacks of teabags for all the workers.
I paint. And I paint. And I paint. The walls keep growing longer, the roller brush extension pole keeps getting heavier and don’t get me started on trying to reach all the nooks and crannies behind the toilet. I worry about the bird of paradise plant that came with the house. Will it survive in the elements outside the front door while I paint the indoor porch; the only home it’s ever known? It’s not exactly native to Exmoor. Fingers crossed the hurricane force winds of last week don’t return until BoP is back inside.
Anyway, there’s all this chaos around my not-so-nice-to-do list and just when my wrists decide to painfully spasm with each brush stroke and it all gets a bit much, Russia invades Ukraine. Now most of my disgust with February involves other people’s nice-to-do list. You know who you are, Vlad. You didn’t have to do this, either, but poof! just like that the world changes. Paint? What paint? Construction site mud? Gone from human consciousness. Now it’s all about the poor Ukrainians: frantic parents, crying children, bombed civilian apartment blocks, columns of cars stuck at borders, certain countries refusing Ukrainians visas (BORIS, for the love of Pete!!) while others (POLAND, bravo!!) allow even pets without passports to escape the hell that is Kyiv, a place that just last week was simply focused on what colour to paint its own walls.
I try to push the flooring company back a week but no can do. I have to keep painting, but my heart is elsewhere. Missed a bit? Don’t care. Second gloss coat on the cloakroom skirting board? Not happening. How to help Ukraine? No idea, but I offer my two guest rooms to any family that can get to the UK. Twitter and Facebook posts seem pathetic in the face of such enormous need, but what can I do? Once more, silly men with fragile egos and ridiculous bucket lists cast pain and suffering out into the world like most of us casts seeds into flower beds. A former clownish comedian shows true statesmanship while supposedly experienced ‘statesmen’ look clownish. You can’t make this stuff up.
I just want to write funny novels about average people searching for home and their humorous travel adventures along the way. Oh, and choose a paint to match the curtains. That’s it. Instead, I’ll spend my post-painting time trying to find out who to contact about offering a temporary home to yet more refugees running from yet another country destroyed for no other reason than to add a trophy to the wall of a bored multi-multi-billionaire. Why can’t they just find a wall to paint and spend all their time and resources choosing the perfect colour? February, I’m done with you.
Sending hugs to Ukraine. Your room is ready here, painted, if you need it.
Everyone’s talking about staycations during this never-ending pandemic. ‘Where are you going for your holidays this year?’ ‘Oh, I’m staycationing this year. Just heading up to the Lake District.’ Well, correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t leaving your house mean you’re NOT staycationing? Doesn’t taking a staycation mean a deck chair in the garden with a cup of tea out of your own teapot and possibly a curry delivered to your own front door followed by a Netflix binge? According to Wikipedia, a ‘staycation’ means you stay home or within day trip distance of home without overnight accommodation. But in 2021, that definition seems to have morphed. Apparently, now ‘staycation’ means much more than a potter around your garden with a Scotch egg in one hand repeatedly throwing the next door kids’ ball back with the other. Apparently, it now means you only pack one suitcase and you don’t need your passport, antidiarrhea meds, or proof of yellow fever vaccination. Oops. Now I’ve done it; opened the ‘vaccination passport’ debate. I’ve been carrying a ‘vaccination passport’ for years and just don’t get the hoo-ha about adding a new jab to the list. But I digress …
Staycations. Yes, I’m trying to work out if I’m going on one next week. I thought I wasn’t, seeing as I’m leaving not only my house, but the delightful county of Somerset. Surely that means I’m going on holiday, not taking a staycation? But as soon as I tell people I’m remaining solidly on English soil they mention a staycation. As one privileged enough to find it strange not to have travelled by air, sea or even bus yet this year, I fully understand this first world problem of defining ‘staycation’ may reek of triviality. It does. But this is my blog. I get to decide what’s important here.
This thirteen-month long pandemic ‘original definition’ staycation is the longest I’ve spent in one place for … well, I don’t even know how long. Luckily, I now live on Exmoor, with all the space and beauty and novelty of a divine vacation spot just outside my door. I have to admit, though, I’d like to experience a different view once in a while, if only to remind myself how lucky I am to live where I do. Hiraeth brought me back home but wanderlust never died.
I’ve always taken more international flights than domestic ones, wherever I’ve lived, so once upon a time, a trip to Suffolk wouldn’t have counted as a ‘real’ holiday for me. Fast forward to 2021 and I’m hopping from foot to foot excited about a trip along the M5 and the M4 … and after that I’m not sure what roads as I’ve never been to Suffolk. It’s east of here, I’m pretty certain. Why Suffolk, you ask, when I obviously know nothing about it? Well, back in March when we started thinking about holidays, Hubby and I were certain the pandemic would be over by now. We also assumed foreign travel would be a nightmare. The pressure of pent up vacationers hitting the airports and beaches of exotic locales like corks from a bottle of champagne at a NASCA rally wasn’t something we wanted to deal with. ‘Let’s explore England’, we said. After all, I’ve been away a long time and there are huge swaths of this green and pleasant land I know nothing about. I could direct you to the airport in Bora Bora more easily than to Canterbury Cathedral, for example. So we started looking in all the usual places: Lake District, Cornwall, Isle of Wight, figuring everyone would be somewhere requiring a flight.
Not so fast. Apparently, many others knew back in March airports wouldn’t be the happiest place on earth. We couldn’t find a hotel room in England for love nor money. Plenty of money, I hasten to add, as the price of hotels and B&Bs skyrocketed. No room at the inn: Devon-cation? Out. Derby-cation? Out. East, West, South Yorkshire-cation? Out, out and out. What the heck? Where’s left? I grab a map of England and start sticking pins anywhere that looks like dry land. Hey, Suffolk! ‘How do we feel about Suffolk, Hubby?’ ‘I feel great about Suffolk,’ he says, not knowing whether I’m talking about a dance step or a type of vegan pasty. Several clicks later, we have the last room at a hotel in Woodbridge. No idea where or what Woodbridge is but it has a hotel room and that’s good enough for us. Others tell us it’s a wonderful spot. So off we’ll trot on our ‘current era definition’ of staycation, that in any other time in history wouldn’t technically be a staycation.
Suffolk. Land of the I have no idea what, home of the I have no idea what. But I’m excited about it. All I have to do now is remember where I put the suitcases. They’ve never been stored away this long.
Here we come, Suffolk-ation! Wait, whaaaa? That’s doesn’t sound nearly as pleasant as I’d hoped. Of all the counties …
I’m archaic enough to still find the ability to communicate simultaneously and instantaneously with people on every continent somewhat of a miracle. When someone in Australia or Bangladesh comments on my social media post five seconds after I posted it, it still jolts me. How on earth does it all work? How can I be sitting in my little Exmoor village, calling the world? I’ll never understand but in a way I’m glad I still find it magical.
Anyway, non-techie, non-geek that I am, last week I used all my skills to host the @WeAreXpats Twitter feed. It’s a rotation curation (RoCur) page, meaning the curator changes each week to share insight on a topic. The Expatriate Archive Centre, which runs the initiative out of The Netherlands, kindly branched out and included me as a repat – a returning expat. (Last year I returned to England after thirty years in the USA.) I’m pretty sure I discovered as much about myself and my relocation as those reading my tweets. Condensing complex emotions and logistics into short messages clarifies thought. Picking a photo from hundreds – or if we’re talking cream tea photos, thousands – to epitomise that phase of your life or journey can be daunting. My novels will benefit from this clarifying experience.
The assignment provided an opportunity for me to analyse several aspects of my need to return home. Like, why now? (The 2016-2020 US administration, gun violence, missing British family as we all get older.) I identified what instantly felt like home, even after decades away: the monarchy (got some push-back on that one!), the antiquity of buildings and communities, familiar food brands, almost forgotten and now staple supplies (Birds custard, anyone?).
And then there’s the stuff that makes me feel I’ve landed on a foreign planet all over again: weight and measures in metric and who knows whether or not to take a coat when temperature is given in Celsius? I struggle to apply ‘worth’ to goods and services because I no longer know what’s normal in the UK, I’m relearning vocabulary like ‘lorry’ and remembering to pronounce ‘schedule’ like a Brit. It’s harder for me than my US-born husband on the language score. People cut him slack due to his accent. They smile at Hubby and think he’s unique and interesting. Me? I ask for ground beef at the butchers and get a confused stare and a ‘You mean minced beef?’ Apparently, I sound like I should know better. But I’m catching up. I can now ask for the toilet instead of the bathroom. This has reduced the ‘We don’t provide guest baths in this restaurant’ discussion.
Curating also provided an excuse to do a little research. With regards to expats:
44% relocated for work and 62% vow never to return. (deVere Group poll, May 2020).
30% of those who retire overseas return within three years. (PropertyInvestorToday.co.uk, August 2020, though that number is expected to rise due to Brexit)
In my own (very unscientific) poll of an expat Facebook group, 91 said they would return if money were no object, 41 said they would never return (45%).
A Knight Frank survey gives the four main reasons for returning home as better education opportunities, a better healthcare system, a new job offer, and being closer to family. (Article in The Financial Times by Liz Rowlinson, October 2020)
Do these four reasons explain why I came home? Not really. I already have a master’s degree, having spent way more time than I intended on my formal education. I had good healthcare insurance in the US. I’m self-employed as a novelist (not to be confused with making money as a novelist) and well, if you’d met my family you’d understand why I left England in the first place. (They receive this blog. Please read that bit quietly so they can’t hear you.) With the four main reasons for returning negated in my case, I’m back once again to I just wanted to come ‘home’. Home, that elusive concept; the not only where but when and why of home. The place I ‘sleep the best and breathe the deepest’, (oh, the arrogance of quoting my own work, this one from ‘Dunster’s Calling’). But it’s true. You can’t quantify ‘home’. No one else will have the same rationale for deciding where it is, how long to be away, when to come back. No one else’s pros and cons list will include the same criteria as yours. It’s incredibly personal and not at all governed by facts and figures and what’s reasonable and predictable. I’m sure those reading my tweets last week were split between jealousy at my return home and thinking I’d lost my mind for returning home. It’s personal. All I can say is when I introduce people to the Celtic word, hiraeth, meaning an intense yearning for home, tinged with sadness that home may no longer exist, they understand the sentiment. Whether they want to return or not, they’ve pondered the new meaning of home. That comes with the territory (no pun intended) of living somewhere else.
My time curating the @WeAreXpats feed allowed me to add my stories to those of thousands of others searching for a place to call home, permanently or temporarily. Those stories shine a light on everything expats are: a collection of individual stories combining to make communities combining to make history. Many thanks to the Expatriate Archive Centre for including me in this project. It was an honour to share my corner of England with the world.
To find out more about the Expatriate Archive Centre, head to their website at https://xpatarchive.com/ or follow them on Twitter @WeAreXpats
Yes, there have been silver linings to this – what’s the word? – execrable? frightful? odious? insalubrious? (trying to avoid the ‘sh*#!’ word here. Help me out!) year. Some of those linings I dug deep to find (the Hilton points accrued during Hubby’s 139 days in a hotel waiting for a visa came at high cost), some seemed more superficial (first name terms with all the delivery people). But one that started as superficial turned out to be somewhat more momentous. My hair colour. That front-and-centre, in your face (around your face?) crowning definition of age and status morphed from accessory to my own personal meme to 2020.
I’ve been a dark brunette for decades. The first few of those, I served at the whim of nature. The last few, well, I served at the whim of beauty salon schedules and vanity combined with societal dictates as the tinsel on my head overwhelmed the natural tree, so to speak. But 2020 saw long months with no access to a hairdresser, first on the US side of my relocation and later on the UK side. I’ve never attempted the DIY bottled colours. I can barely operate a hair dryer. And me with even a simple mascara wand is recipe for disaster. (Think Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice.) A vat of dye? Not happening. I just don’t do hair and makeup. So pandemic dilemmas included whether to override my natural inability to embellish myself or override my intense fear of letting the world know I hadn’t been a brunette in a long time. There was only one option. I bit the silver bullet.
Luckily, the stars aligned for the Great COVID Grow Out. Millions of others were in the same boat. From Paul McCartney to several neighbours, we all took the plunge. Even Mona Lisa was photographed with that white skunk stripe down the centre of her head. I joined a Facebook group dedicated to the newly silver sisterhood. Its membership increased manyfold over the course of 2020. Countless of us felt forced to make a transition we weren’t ready for, hadn’t even considered before lockdown. It terrified us. What would people think? Co-workers? Family? Even our kids? Societies worldwide – and more importantly ourselves – judged us harshly for our pigment deficits. Entire industries profited from our desire to maintain membership in a world painted using the 20-something colour palette. It took the shock of a COVID world that no longer looked, felt, acted like the status quo to make us realise we didn’t need conformity either.
We of the Skunk Stripe Tribe became each other’s ‘call a friend’ when that siren call of the Clairol root touch up aisle threatened progress. We supported and lamented as we pondered whether to cut short, add lowlights/highlights, listen to loved ones, ignore loved ones, change our minds altogether and run back to the familiar comfort of the Redken bottle. There was no right or wrong answer. We had our careers and families and histories and people who loved us, no matter the colour of our hair. We focused on the upsides as the roots continued their downslide: we saved a fortune on colour treatments, and newly considered our impact on both the environment and our own health. We noted that rather than washing us out, the silver, in many cases, matched our views of ourselves better than the false narrative we’d been perpetuating.
I, personally, was grateful for the fortuitous coincidence of the grey hair trend that seemed to spring up last year. Youngsters were getting their blond/brown/black hair either streaked with grey or entirely greyed. As I walked past a teenager with her long, silver stream rippling in the breeze, I couldn’t help but think she’d look back at photos in a decade or two and realise she was now colouring to hide the grey she’d coveted back in 2020. Or maybe not. No matter. I smiled at her and wondered if she worried that the old lady in the street may have mistaken her for an Aging Ally rather than what she was going for: Instagram Influencer.
Anyway, the Great COVID Grow Out has been a challenge. Walking past a mirror and wondering when exactly grandma arrived, proved excruciating. Watching that silver parting become a silver sidewalk, then a blindingly white silver highway was jaw-droppingly disconcerting. Hats, headbands, scarves, not typically my thing, became the biggest fashion decisions of my day, beating which sweatpants to wear to greet the postman (from a distance) as lockdown dragged on. During a brief respite, when US salons opened in May, I succumbed to a few highlights to blur the stark rigid line between silver and brunette. It helped. A little. Well, not much, truth be told. The temptation to colour again intensified, the addiction strengthened. But I knew access to salon colour could disappear again anytime. I was on a plane to the UK in a few days. I’d be in quarantine, unable to see friends, meet new people, promote my books or attend functions. Didn’t that make this the perfect time to revert to nature? To appreciate what was important in self-care (handwashing, mask-wearing, self-isolation) and what wasn’t (camouflaging the aging process when so many were losing lives way too young)? I dug deep and vowed to keep growing. I’d come so far and would have to start all over again at some point if I gave up now. The good news: the transatlantic flight was nearly empty. The bad news: not a silver stripe to be seen on any of the flight attendants.
Arriving in England, I discovered the silver wave had carried like a tsunami across the Atlantic with me. The white caps breaking on the heads of many others was of some comfort. Make that a tiny bit of comfort. Awareness of silver regrowth is not the same as gnawing awareness you’re a generation older than when you started colouring your hair back in the nineties. I was lucky. I didn’t get pushback from family during Zoom calls as some making the transition did. My mother’s ‘It doesn’t look as bad a I thought it would’ raised a smile rather than heckles. Encouraging comments from my adult children were gratifying. Which brings me to my brightest, shiniest, tinseliest silver lining of the year 2020 …
… the opportunity to spend extended time with my adult children.
My son and daughter were eighteen years old the last time I spent prolonged periods around them. They headed off to college, one ten years ago, the other six years ago. They transitioned to fully-fledged adults during brief summer holidays and phone calls. Upon graduation, they moved away. One married. Hubby and I assumed our time with them would be short and infrequent as we all bopped around the world and followed our own paths. Then … COVID. My son and daughter-in-law were already living in London when I relocated back to England in May. My daughter decided to move over here a few months after I arrived. Between furloughs, unemployment and work-from-home restrictions, we decided to form one household for the foreseeable future. While I hate the reason we had to do this, I marvel at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it affords me.
The kids brought their boutique coffee brands and brewing equipment with them, which clutter the counters and make digging out my store brand teabags harder. They have favourite Malbecs and Cabs and even champagnes. Champagnes? My Christmas Prosecco sits in the garage, untouched. Here I am, telling my kids back in the day we drank BabyCham and thought ourselves sophisticated. Books by authors I’ve never heard of on subjects I’ve never considered cover the coffee table. New documentaries, series, and stand-up comedians beam into the house via the Amazon Prime membership they bring with them. (I never signed up.) A whole new world.
I’m learning about the adults they’ve become while they learn about our new role as parents of adults; the role that no longer includes doing their laundry, cleaning their hair out of the shower drain, shoving coasters under their drinks or changing the toilet roll. (I hope they’re reading this.) My daughter pulls me out of the road to avoid a car and cooks exotic meals and tells me why I should be listening to such and such a politician because she’s got great ideas about such and such. The last time we lived together she was watching the Kardashians (I refuse to take the blame for this epic parenting fail) and wearing all the boys’ high school football jerseys. I listen to my son on the phone with bosses, co-workers, vendors while he gives presentations and justifies enormous budgets. He moves things, creates things, solves things at lightning speed. He used to take a whole day to empty the dishwasher. My daughter-in-law pushes her company to advocate harder for transition-to-work opportunities for prison populations. Together, these new (to me) adults research apartments and interview for jobs and discuss credit card bills and politics and have oh such strong opinions on subjects I’ve never considered in places I’ve never heard of and it astounds me. These are the joys of months spent with your adult children. You learn a whole new culture through eyes you created but that you lost the ability to see through years ago.
The switch came while I was colouring my hair.
How can I remain preoccupied with pigment when I earned every grey hair creating and raising these amazing human beings? If ‘non-brunette’ is the price I pay, so be it. Here, under this single roof, in a new beginning for us all, I marvel at what we’ve all become. COVID gave me that. 2020 won’t have been a complete loss. In fact, it may go down as one of the greatest family years yet, if we all stay healthy, that is. Let’s face it, nothing matters but that. No silver roots. No aging a generation in ten months. No nothing.
As the vaccine approaches and the light at the end of the tunnel moves from a tiny star-like dot to streetlight-sized orb and finally to a full-fledged beacon of relief, I’ll take these silver linings with me into 2021. I may arrive at midnight a generation older and with a lot of stress hormones under my belt, but I’ll arrive there grateful for good health, my family all together in my homeland, and a renewed impulse to tell stories full of silver linings.
Wishing you health, happiness and your own silver linings from this day forth. By the way, I love your hair. No matter the colour.
Remember, remember the fifth of November, Gunpower treason and plot. We see no reason, Why gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot.
The Fifth of November, aka Guy Fawkes Night, was one of my favourite childhood celebrations, if ‘celebration’ is the right word for remembering an attempt at mass murder of government officials. Slightly disturbing history aside, I loved eating baked potatoes, cooked in the bonfire in the back garden while Dad nailed Catherine wheels to a pole and let off rockets at steady intervals within feet of small children. All the neighbours came over for cocoa and bonfire toffee. The kids ran around with sparklers that imprinted swirly shapes on the retina for hours afterwards. Good times. I was looking forward to this November, my first year back after decades away from my homeland. My family and I would find a community firework display and I’d explain what this quirky British tradition all meant. If I had only known what this November 5th would entail …
Guy Fawkes Night 2020 will go down in infamy as a race against the clock. A holding of breath, an ‘If-this-fails-I-have-no-idea-what-we’ll-do’ sleepless night of tossing and turning. A foreboding sense that we had to get our daughter out of the US before election results, due to the incendiary rhetoric coming out of ‘leadership’ positions. It’s been like watching a Third World country go to the polls and wondering where the UN Peacekeepers are. And our daughter, though a young adult, was in the US alone. Well, not completely alone. Watson, our faithful family dog, was with her. Thank goodness. Maybe all those non-returned calls from pet shipping airlines earlier in the year were for the best. At least my child would have canine protection when the fighting started.
But as a mother, that wasn’t nearly enough consolation. Maybe I was being paranoid. This was America, for goodness sake! America protected democracy around the world, for goodness sake! How could anyone buy into the claims spouted off by one unstable family? How could experienced senators and knowledgeable US citizens allow this to happen? But the reality was, major US cities were boarding up store fronts and some citizens were answering the call to form ‘militias’ to protect (read intimidate) voters. November 3rd was shaping up to be like no other election day in US history. But I can’t worry about that. I focus on getting my dog and my daughter out of harm’s way. It’s no bed of roses in the UK right now either but at least there’s no imminent threat of insurgency to add to the pandemic woes. And at least in the UK we’d all be together as a family.
When I relocated back to the United Kingdom in May, Kerry wasn’t sure she was relocating too. And there were no options for flying Watson. We’d started the process in February, with new microchips and rabies shots, detailed timelines for when each vet check, wormer and certification needed to be complete. Then nothing. Shipping companies stopped calling us back. Airlines weren’t flying pets. If a window opened up, the flight was cancelled last minute. Months and months of fighting ensued to get our dog, and subsequently our daughter, over to the UK. (Because she can’t fly until our dog can or who will play him spa music and massage his temples during the Fourth of July fireworks – which he hates! – and generally spoil him rotten until he can join us?) After much effort, in early November, we think we have Watson’s journey finalised. Until Frankfurt shuts down for pet cargo. Watson is supposed to fly through Frankfurt on his way to Heathrow. His travel date is moved back two weeks, then three, then no one is sure. But the US election is bearing down on us and we want our family out. Like, NOW.
A phone call and a glimmer of hope. Would we consider a flight to Amsterdam, then a pet transport service driving Watson over to England? Initially we’d said we’d only fly Watson if we were on the same flight and it had to be non-stop to Heathrow to reduce his stress levels. Now, we’re about to commit to a flight, a train ride through the Channel Tunnel and a van driven by strangers! Poor, poor Watson! But what are our choices? None. We grab the November 6th flight, just four days ahead and confirm our daughter’s flight for the day after. She’ll fly once we know Watson’s in the air. We can’t risk having him left alone in the event of another cancellation.
For the next few days we live in hope. We fluff up the dog bed that’s been in storage and fluff up the pillows in our daughter’s room. But COVID isn’t done with us yet. The UK government announces a national lockdown, starting November 5th. Panic again. Will a driver be allowed to travel to Amsterdam to pick up Watson? We’re assured commercial transport will continue, but details are sketchy. Watson’s exact arrival time and pickup point isn’t confirmed and we’ll only have a few hours’ notice. We live a 3.5-hour drive from Heathrow. Can we get a hotel near the airport? Few hotels take large dogs. We finally find one (though Watson’s weight has to decrease significantly on the phone). We’re interrogated by the receptionist as to whether or not our travel is essential. They’re only accepting business travellers. Hubby and I feel like Mary and Joseph knocking on doors, only with Guy Fawkes trailing behind, threatening to blow all our best laid plans to bits.
The election is looming. The current administration continues to incite discord, with threats of violence in pre-emptive strikes against the democratic process. Plans for civil unrest are in the works. My daughter lives in a major city in a swing state. The same state where COVID-19 numbers are out of control and the courts are upholding challenges against measures to control said numbers. The US seems to have abandoned all rationality at a time calm heads, science, and community are needed more than ever. My heart pounds in my chest with every news report. It’s hard to believe it’s come to this. The America I thought I knew is fading into the mist, but my daughter and my dog are the only things I care about right now. Each day of waiting is torture.
Election Day comes and goes, with all the chaos promised us. But it turns out, a non-concession, no matter how absurd, helps us. There’s no rioting in the streets, just turmoil on our TV screens. The hours creep by until November 5th, the day Watson is to fly. We check the KLM flight schedule every hour. All airlines are cancelling flights with little notice. At last, a positive sign: a text from our daughter to say Watson has just been picked up from her apartment for the drive to Chicago O’Hare Airport. Then, a few photos arrive in my inbox, showing Watson on a walk around the tarmac before boarding the night flight. At last! Wheels up! He’s in the air! My euphoria is quickly replaced by gut-wrenching guilt that he’s going through this alone. I had promised him I’d be on the same flight. He remembers these things. He bears a grudge. He’s like a cat in that regard.
We won’t hear more of Watson’s progress until he lands in Amsterdam during the early morning hours on Friday 6th November. I focus on the next step. Kerry is on the way to the airport herself now. Step by step, we’re moving forward. But it’s 2020. How tightly, and for how long, can one’s fingers remain crossed?
Somehow I manage to sleep while Watson swoops over the Atlantic. We wake to the news he’s landed safe and sound. At least he’s only hours away now. But the thought of him on his own, going through customs and vet checks and wondering where his family is, well, it’s a lot to ask of your canine bestie, isn’t it? The shipping company does a great job of keeping us up to date. He’s cleared customs, he’s on his way to Calais with his driver. He’s having a nice walk and a stretch while waiting for the train to whisk him under the English Channel.
As we set off from Exmoor to the hotel, we check Kerry’s flight. It’s still reporting on-time departure Friday night. We relax, we almost swagger to the car with the dog’s bed and treats. We got this whole transatlantic relocation during a pandemic thing! No probs, peeps!
Five hundred yards down the road from our house, there’s a loud pop and a wobble. Pulling into a gateway, Hubby leaps out of the passenger seat, leaps back in: ‘Drive home! NOW!’ What? ‘Punctured tyre! Quick, before it completely deflates!’ No swagger now. We only purchased this car a couple of days ago. Like most new cars these days, it has no spare tyre, just a weird inflation contraption that was never designed to deal with a slashed tyre. We skid into our driveway, just as the last air gasps out. It’s been about thirty years since I’ve had a flat tyre. Why now?! Oh, right. 2020. We fling our gear into Hubby’s company car (not supposed to be full of dog hair when meeting customers) and creep past the spot of the flat, never seeing anything that could have caused so much damage. But we’re on our way. Barely! Hanging by a thread to our sanity. But on our way.
The UK is in national lockdown. We prepare our speech in case the police pull us over. ‘Essential travel. Dog needs us. He’s gonna be mad if we’re late. You don’t want to make him mad. He pouts. Refuses to eat. Sheds shaggy hair at a rate you must see to believe. And we’re in the company car. No dog hair allowed. You understand, officer?’ Luckily, we don’t need the speech.
At a service station, somewhere on the M4, we get word: Watson’s in England! He’s on his way to a farm near Heathrow Airport. We can pick him up around 8:30 tonight. Hallelujah! We find our hotel but every local eating option is closed due to lockdown. Back in the car. Back on the motorway, then winding through dark lanes, knowing Watson’s only minutes away. We spot the van parked on the side of the road and pull in behind it. The doors open and there’s Watson, tail wagging so hard he can barely stand up in his crate! I can’t stop telling him how brave he is and how proud I am of him. I’m not crying. You’re crying.
At that moment, the only fireworks we’d seen all night kick off. Watson’s terrified of them. Poor chap, sees the door of his crate open, sees his Mum for the first time in five months, and BOOM, CRASH, FLARE! He must think he’s landed in a war zone. ‘Green and pleasant land, my foot!’, he mutters. He’s scooped into yet another car, at least this time with room to stretch out, his Mum scratching his ears and telling him he’s the bravest dog in the history of pandemic doggie travel. She tries to explain the whole Guy Fawkes thing but Watson’s having none of it. He’s bundled from the car into the hotel room between star-bursting rockets, (via an elevator which doesn’t exactly endear the whole evening to him) where we all collapse in a heap of tangled nerves.
No time to rest. We check our phones every five seconds. Is our daughter boarding her flight yet? Will it be cancelled last minute? Will a delay allow time for the US or the UK to impose tighter sanctions on travel and our window close to get her out? Will the US election be called for Joe Biden (which, let’s face it, in any other year would have happened days ago) and kick off the expected aftermath? Where’s that plane?!
We’re exhausted. But we can’t let our guard down because Watson’s decided the hotel couch is where he needs to be and that’s not allowed and we can’t afford to get thrown out of the only hotel in the area allowing pets. He grumbles and gives us the steely-eye of distain as we drag him off the couch. Again. Where’s Kerry’s plane?!
More heart-pounding as the British Airways flight just before Kerry’s is cancelled. Tick tock. Tick tock. Shouts and hugs! She’s boarded her plane! Doors closed and cross-checked! She’s in the air, arriving tomorrow morning! Watson’s about had it and leaps on the couch during the happy dance, only to be thrown off again. We finally get to eat the sandwiches we bought at the motorway service station. We get ready for bed and I come to the conclusion the only option is for me to sleep on the couch to keep Watson off it. He’s decided he hates England, with all its fireworks and hotel rules and even the water tastes funny. He curls his nose at it. He decides at 3:30am he needs to pee. Because jetlag and time zones and Mum won’t let me sleep on the couch so she’s not sleeping on it either.
An early start to Heathrow the next morning but of course there are road works on the M4 so we’re almost late to meet Kerry’s flight. She reports via WhatsApp there’s no one at immigration and no one at customs and before we know it, she and her luggage trolley are sailing towards us. It’s a joyful reunion with Watson who seems to have forgiven her for bundling him into a crate so many hours and adventures ago. The clan is back together and heading down the motorway to Exmoor. It’s a dream after a long, long nightmare.
In your face, 2020! (Only not really because it’s 2020, there’s over a month to go, and all rational bets are off.) We’ll take nothing for granted, ever again. Especially not a sleeping dog on a mat by the fire. Or the chance to spend extended time with an adult daughter while she settles into her new life in a country she’s part of genetically as a UK citizen, but new to experientially. We settle into a 14-day quarantine. We hope for peace and the democratic process in the US. We hope for peace and health in the UK. We have much to be thankful for. Most of all, family; two-legged and four. And sleep. Definitely, sleep.
Bubbles used to be fun, didn’t they? My dog, Basil, certainly thought so. He’d leap around the garden, snapping at them as they bobbed on the breeze. He’d look through crossed eyes in shock when they popped on his nose, like it had never happened before. He’d stamp on the ones he couldn’t eat, then spin around and laser-focus on the wand in my hand, begging for the next batch. I’m guessing Doggy Heaven has a 24/7 bubble machine at the end of Basil’s bed. (Which is placed right next to a mud bath full of frolicking squirrels who also blow bubbles as they run.)
During my days as a speech-language pathologist, working with young children, I may have used bubbles as much for my benefit as the child’s. The simplicity, rainbow reflections, effortless flight and spontaneous, spectacular pop never got old. The joy in a child’s face, maybe a vocalization from a little one with language delays, well, it just convinced me bubbles were indeed magic. Who among us has not imagined taking flight in one, nose pushed against the transparent porthole on the world?
And just putting this here for anyone who needs it today: Prosecco bubbles. *sigh*
But here we are, 2020. Bubbles have taken on new meaning in COVID World. They conjure up less free-spirited flight and more prison-like restrictions. Though possibly containing some loved ones, they also lock out other cherished family and friends, forcing uncomforting choices. They clunk along rather than float, changing shape and size on a governmental whim or the flip of a statistical coin. They seal closed rather than burst open.
I managed to make it over the Atlantic back in May to my Exmoor home and a new bubble. But half my family is still locked out of my personal bubble by thousands of transatlantic miles and enough red tape to ground a Zeppelin-sized balloon, I’m not even sure where my bubble begins and ends anymore. Even those family members within the UK are at a loss as to whether we can see each other. A cousin allowed to visit here; a son not allowed to visit there. A discounted restaurant voucher this week, verboten behaviour next week. The flight path of my bubble echoes a cartoon balloon, popped by Wile E. Coyote with a needle, now zipping erratically across the sky. Will it ever land on solid ground?
This bubble-wrangling’s exhausting. But raise that glass of Prosecco! May our bubbles become a symbol of free spiritedness soon. May we see them as protective, fortifying, miniature globes again. May they hold the promise of floating away to unexplored, exotic places. Cherish your bubble. Protect your bubble. Wait for the pop with a sparkle of stars. Be ready to float in happy suspension at a moment’s notice. We’ve got this. Stay strong, Bubble Blowers of the World!
Tracey Gemmell Author 