Living abroad

USA Football Fans on Exmoor? Well, I Never.

/ Tracey Gemmell / 6 Comments

Breaking News: my loved ones are American!

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.

Image: Flickr

Our Very Tuscan British Exmoor Funeral

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

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.

Images: author’s own

Writing Home Takes on New Meaning Every Day

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

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.

Queens, Jubilees and Bunting: The Joys of Home

/ Tracey Gemmell / 4 Comments

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.

Images: Pixabay, Wikimedia, pxhere

Crazy Elections, Buzzwords, and Finding Me

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

No one said reacclimatizing to a new life in my old country after decades away would be easy – and that was before factoring in pandemics and wars. But here I am, twenty-three months into my Exmoor adventure and for the most part, things are settling down and taking shape. However, there’s always something coming down the pike that throws me for a loop. Here’s my latest battle.

May means local elections. Like many, I’m sure, the thought of voting fills me with a breathy ‘ugh’ along with stomach-churning dread. It seems, wherever we live, leadership and those that represent ‘us’ are failing in their mission to, well, lead and represent. ‘What’s the point?’ is the voting battle cry of the moment, at a time when ‘What’s the point?’ glares at us down the barrel of a gun in Ukraine, down the massive fire hoses spitting at climate change-induced wildfires, and down the lines of people queuing outside food pantries due to cost-of-living increases gone ballistic. ‘What’s the point?’ The point seems to be the very existence of the planet. Ugh, indeed.

The good news about being back in England is that ‘election season’ only lasts weeks here, not years as it does in the United States. Wall-to-wall television attack ads don’t interrupt everything from Christmas specials to Fourth July concerts to Thanksgiving movies. That’s the good news. The bad news is I’ve been gone for so long I need to put a great deal of time and effort into finding out where I belong on the political spectrum at this point in my life. I haven’t voted in my home country in decades. I lost the right to vote once I’d lived outside the country for fifteen years. I didn’t have the right to vote in the US for most of my thirty years there as I wasn’t a US citizen until 2019. My guilt at not stopping what happened in 2016 pushed me to intervening in 2020. But I’m a rusty participant in UK politics. Though I’ve kept an eye on the goings on from afar, I don’t have in-depth knowledge of the nuances anymore. Much has changed since John Major and Neil Kinnock were party leaders back in the 90s. I know more about what I don’t want than what I want, but I can’t complain if I don’t step up and research my options.

At my US citizenship swearing in ceremony in Wisconsin, the eloquent and impressive Judge Nancy Joseph said the US wasn’t a perfect country. (Same can be said of any country. Certainly, the post-Brexit UK I’ve returned to is less than perfect. Teasing apart what’s due to Brexit, what to Covid and what to war – the unholy Trinity of the 2020s – will take more brainpower than I possess.) But Judge Joseph said it was now our duty as newly naturalised citizens to leave the US in better shape than we found it. I promised Judge Joseph I would do that, then decided America would never be home for me and left. So now Judge Joseph echoes in my head about improving the UK. I must leave my birth country in in better shape than I found it on my return. But how?

With an open bag of chocolate Minstrels sitting unashamedly on my lap, I begin the task of identifying my place in the UK political system. I open a tab for each UK party manifesto. Well, that’s all very confusing. I need to take a step back and begin at the beginning by asking myself: ‘What am I politically?’ I write a list:

TIRED. Which party represents the tired? Can’t see it in any of the manifestos on the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrats, or Green Party websites. Guessing that can’t be my defining political quality, then.

DECENT. Whatever that means.

CONFUSED. Who isn’t?

INCLUSIVE. A buzzword every party spouts while excluding someone.

FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE. Again, buzzed, spouted, then trampled upon by Every. Single. Party.

ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS. Buuuuuzzzzzzzzzzzz! It’s like sitting inside a beehive during a honey rave complete with black and yellow-striped DJ and speakers set to dynamite level. So much buzz. So little action. From anyone.

How the heck am I to vote?

I try looking at the character of individuals to see if I can build a framework for a party and my place in it based on its chosen leaders. Leaders need a basic moral spine, a set of principles that guide their judgement based on world knowledge, human compassion, rationality … And here words fail me. One look at what dominates the headlines on both sides of The Pond strongly hints (foghorn blasts!) the possibility the basics must be completely lacking in order to win elections. My father always said about politicians that the attributes necessary to get the job should preclude you from the job; his rationale for never voting. But surely when we give up fighting for better we give up on ever injecting some of ourselves into the process, allowing these nonrepresentative ‘others’ to lead us further and further away from the world we want. (Again, my guilt at not being able to vote for so long weighs me down here.) While local election candidates don’t seem to reach the level of national figures in this regard, local elections are a springboard, so we need to be careful who we set upon the first rungs of the ladder, right?

I recently participated in an interview on BBC Radio Devon and was asked to choose four songs that represented my life. (Try it yourself. Tougher than you think.) But one of the songs I chose was Seal’s ‘Crazy’. Originally written about the chaotic times around the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square and all the promise of world-change, it also heralded the beginning of my own world change as I married and moved to America. Within months of me moving back to England thirty years later, that world shift is happening again: Ukraine, climate crisis, millions more moving into poverty, pulling up the drawbridges against marauders from global refugee camps without addressing root causes. Crazy. Seal suggests we get a little crazy if we want to survive. And I do. Want to survive.

CRAZY. I add it to the list. Who represents the crazy?

It hits me. Crazy world leaders do in fact represent us all. We’re all crazy, either in what we believe or in what we tolerate or in what we expect. After exhaustive research, I conclude any party can represent the crazy; but I still must decide which level of crazy I’m going to vote for. I scroll slowly through all the open tabs for political parties in the UK. I wish I’d never asked the ‘What am I politically?’ question, because confused is definitely at the top of the list.

Image: Pixabay

I’ve Had Enough February, Both On and Off Exmoor

/ Tracey Gemmell / Leave a comment

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.

FINDING MY ZEN IN GLITTERY CARDBOARD

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

It’s November 29th and I’ve just posted all my international Christmas cards. You heard me. For the first time EVER, I’ve posted greeting cards in November. Why you ask? I’ll tell you why. ‘Tis the year 2021. That’s why.

Now, you may accuse me of a panic response to the latest breaking updates about a new COVID variant. I agree, I’ve always been a bit of an alarmist. Just ask my kids. Growing up, I provided a constant stream of advice each time they left the house about choosing clothing to save their lives during a blizzard (a tougher sell in June, but you never know), secret phone codes to identify themselves during a hostage situation (‘Mum, it’s the Fourth of July parade. I’m literally marching in front of the town police force.’) and what to do if a 747 Jumbo jet lands on the freeway in front of them (‘Mum, my friend lives on a farm down a single lane dirt track.’). Stampeding cows, then. Be on the lookout, kiddo. You’ll thank me.

For some reason, I’ve found it hard to instil in others a sense of urgency in many situations. Luckily, I’ve taught myself to stay awake all night and worry alone if necessary while others enjoy themselves. It’s a hard-earned skill. Anyway, this latest game-changing variant (how many is it now?) tickertaped across news broadcast feeds less than twenty-four hours before my husband flew out on his first business trip to the US in over a year. Yep. Only hours to disseminate the repercussions of staying versus going, of whether it’s the antigen test or the PCR test or both that should be booked at Heathrow on his return, or whether he should unpack the dressier clothing for the now unsure-it-will-happen business dinner at a nice New York restaurant. Those of you following along on the Gemmell relocation saga will remember Hubby spent 139 days in a hotel on his own after the visa offices shut down in the US and UK, making it impossible for him to enter the UK with me last year. Visions of more isolating months earning billions of Hilton points we can’t use due to everlasting travel bans flash through our heads. He didn’t even get the free breakfast during his last extended stay as they closed the hotel kitchens. I mean, no cinnamon pastry and sausage? What’s the point?

Long story short, he got on the plane last night with minutes to spare when the British Airways app locked him out and he couldn’t report the negative test he’d just taken to get on the flight. Stressed? Bet he wishes he’d learned to stay awake all night now. Wait, he did. Let’s hope he sleeps on the plane to New York, wrapped in plastic and breathing though the dive tank mask I made him take with him. You’re welcome, luvvie.

After a few deep breaths, I sat alone last night, mostly in the dark as the power went out due to the latest climate change-induced storm to hit the UK. By candlelight, (I always have plenty in stock for emergencies) I took control of the only thing I could control. I folded my Christmas letters as neatly as frozen fingers could and stuffed them in envelopes. I sent encouraging messages of love and support to family and friends I haven’t seen in almost two years due to travel restrictions. And I planned the Christmas Eve menu for eleven people in the hopes I’m not eating the whole lot by myself in holiday lockdown while video calling Hubby in his New York hotel because he can’t fly home. I picture him wearing the same shirt he’ll have been wearing for a month. Should have made him pack the Christmas sweater. Too late now.

I can think of all that can still go wrong in 2021 (none of which I can control), or I can just focus on the few things I can control. I can control the timing of sending my Christmas cards. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll find my zen in the glittery cardboard.

(If your card arrives tomorrow, just put it on the mantlepiece, unopened, until Christmas. Or at least until December. Thank you.)

View From The Bathroom

/ Tracey Gemmell / 6 Comments

View from the bathroom: Title of a book? Podcast? Punk band tour? Horror film? Maybe not. Hardly catchy or warm and fuzzy or exciting. But this week, now all the boxes have been moved into my new home, ‘view from the bathroom’ is my favourite phrase. I had to make it the title of something.

‘Just going to check the view from the bathroom.’

‘Have you seen the view from the bathroom?’

‘Let’s take our drinks and look at the view from the bathroom again.’ And again.

Weird, right? You’ll have to forgive my excitement. My new home boasts a view of the Bristol Channel, but only from my bathroom window. It’s only a thin strip of water on the horizon, but enough to see the aquamarine or green or grey waters, the purple bruise of stormy skies whipping up the whitecaps, the chalky cliffs and intermittent sweeping glints from a Welsh lighthouse, guarding entry to the green hills. On a clear day I can see the mountains in Wales, too. It’s a delightful sight.

I’ve never had a view of water from my own home before. Oh, I’ve spent many lovely holidays by water, typically after many long hours flying over vast oceans. Bora Bora saw me living over the water in one of those huts on stilts. From California to New Zealand, from Scotland to Nicaragua and The Bahamas, I’ve spent plenty of time by the ocean, even working on luxury yachts many moons ago. But now, I stare, mesmerized, at the changing colours, the white caps in a stiff breeze, the flapping of sails and the wallowing progression of a ferry heading for Bristol, all from the bathroom window.

It’s a lifelong dream to be in my own home and see the water. Now, I hear you all saying, ‘view from the bathroom? Not exactly a Malibu mansion, is it, and wouldn’t that be weird, taking people up to the bathroom to see the view?’ Now you mention it, it is a bit weird but so far only a few family members and close friends have visited Bathtub Observation Point. They understand my excitement and have no problem standing shoulder to shoulder, leaning over the sink and kicking the bathmat out of the way to see the water over the Exmoor roof tops. I admit, it will be ‘socially tricky’ to show acquaintances the view. I mean, the new neighbours who’ve been so welcoming, do I invite them upstairs on their first visit? What about the gracious chimneysweep who taught me about the five vents in our new fireplace, or the lovely chaps who built the picket fence required to make the property fully Watson escape-proof? The delivery lady? Nah, probably not appropriate. But they’re missing out.

It’s a beautiful view. Would it be better from the kitchen or the sitting room or the patio? Of course, it would. But I have long, sweeping views up the wooded combes from those rooms and garden areas, and equally stunning they are. Autumn colours sweep towards me, rolling and waving in the stiff breezes like waters themselves. I love every inch of those combe views dearly. It’s just water. I crave water. So, if I must chat over prosecco in the shower stall while watching birds scuttle over the Bristol Channel, that’s what I’ll do. I just have to invite the right people to join me; those who understand what a long transatlantic journey of hiraeth it’s been to earn my view from the bathroom.

A Couchful of Hiraeth

/ Tracey Gemmell / 10 Comments
Wrinkles add character to our old friend

This couch may not look like much now. It’s grubby and wrinkled and sunken in the middle. The cream colour is hardly reminiscent of anything you’d pour over your crumble. Even the dog struggles to clamber in and out. It’s like crawling into a very low-slung hammock after three decades of Gemmell duty. But in its day, oh, how proud we were of it. Today, we make the difficult decision to send it off to the recycling centre in the sky, and we don’t make that choice lightly. No man, child, dog or couch left behind was our mantra last year as we struggled to get all our lives on the ‘right’ side of the pond. But times change. Couches sag more and more. New rooms await with different styles and sizes. Some of us just no longer fit in the way we once did. But it still stings to say goodbye.

California, circa 1990. I remember meeting this couch next to its three-seater sibling, all shiny and pristine, in a Los Angeles showroom. Hubby and I had been married about a year and we’d just bought our first house in the Mojave desert. Yes, you heard me. We left the seafaring life we’d lead on the East Coast for the driest, hottest place I’d ever been. Or even heard of. What was I thinking? Goodness only knows, because the great adventure in the cactus strewn, tumbleweed blowin’, parched, sand-in-your-curtains Southwestern USA turned out to be … let’s just say, not my cup of tea. But the thought of those gleaming couches, nestled against the baby blue carpets in our brand-new Spanish-style home cleared the desert weed allergy-induced tears right out of my eyes. No kids, no dog, so no thought of how on earth you kept cream leather clean, and no other furniture in the house yet (except for a couple of wooden crates used for bedside tables and a futon mattress in one bedroom). Those couches arrived like manna from heaven, because, let’s face it, we should have gone for something cheaper. The credit cards groaned along with the backs of the delivery men.

New-born couches and babies

Our new-born son had his first photos taken with the couch. Four years later, with another child on the way, those two slightly less cream and slightly more wrinkled couches hopped in a moving van to the East Coast. They landed in a colonial house near Long Island Sound in the middle of a forest, the antithesis of their previous abode. Though stationed in the ‘best parlour’ away from the worst of the kid wetting and dog scraping and popcorn spilling and sibling wrestling, it still bore the brunt of various birthday parties and Christmas wine spillages. Uncomplaining and still the apple of its mother’s eye.

Eleven years later, it’s back on the van to snowy Wisconsin, where we discovered leather is quite chilly when you first sit on it and blankets slide off the back of it constantly which means the kids trample all over the wool and the dogs sleep on them, refusing to move as you try to pull the blanket over your freezing legs. But fourteen more years of films and Super Bowl parties and teary teenage breakups (and possibly makeups but I don’t like to think about that) pass with the now way past sell-by date cream couch. The wrinkles had turned to deep crevices full of life’s debris. It’s time for new. A functional brown sectional appeared like a grumpy aunt to take pride of place in front of the television. The three-seater sibling was trundled off to who knows where and the two-seater was relegated to fulltime dog bed, which thrilled the dogs, but may have hurt the couch’s feelings.

Birthday parties, all part of the couch service

And there the story should end. Who, in their right mind, would drag that murky old spoilt cream couch across the Atlantic? There are better ones sitting on most porches outside college campus housing. But you see, our huge new sectionals were never going to fit in our English home. It was the height of the Covid pandemic, so no furniture shops were open to buy new and no recycling centres were open to take the old, and well, we needed something smaller to sit on in our rental property until we found a new home. So there we were, wrapping the dingy grey with spots of intermittent cream couch for a voyage to where no Californian couch thought it would ever go: Exmoor.

Welcome to Exmoor!

The dog makes his own epic journey across the water only to discover his couch is no longer a dog bed. Possession now involves fights with grandma, aunties and friends. When the film starts, all pile over the back of the couch, fighting for pillow space and elbowing others for the only six-inch sweet spot that isn’t so collapsed it breaks your back as you sit skewwhiff.

Those new-borns now snuggle my grand puppies on the couch.

And yet, the couch, uncomplaining as ever, stoically accepts its role in the Gemmell family, doing its best to accommodate needs and provide comfort. It doesn’t know that in two weeks’ time, when the Gemmells head down the road to their forever home, it will trundle off in a different van, to be eco-recycled: leather to one place, springs to another, metal frame to another, stuffing to another. Its spare parts may help other sickly couches back to health and for that I’m so proud of it. There may not be a dry eye in the house as this thirty-two-year relationship ends.

We’re going to need a bigger couch

The new couches ordered are neither leather nor cream, and they have big shoes to fill. Our old, curdled cream friend will never be forgotten, though hopefully the backache it induces will be. From smog-blanketed Los Angeles to heather-carpeted Exmoor, it has truly been an important part of our amazing transatlantic lives. So many memories – and so many loved ones no longer with us – are embedded in that couch. I’m feeling hiraeth for it. But onwards to new couches and new adventures we go.

From Wanderluster to Upcycling Homebody and Dove Whisperer

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

And just like that, the end of summer speeds at us like a tourist heading for the last table at an inundated cream tea shop. It’s been a weird old summer, hasn’t it: part supposedly post-pandemic, part not sure, part ‘no, we’re definitely not out of the woods yet’. I’m tilting towards the later so have stayed pretty close to home. A few restaurant visits, a few outdoor cream teas, one short trip to Suffolk, and a lot of hiking in the glorious isolation that is Exmoor (if you know where to go to avoid the visitors). My default setting of wanderlust mixed with a smidgin of hiraeth appears usurped by homebody vibes, which suggests I’m in the right place.

I’ve been home for long enough to have experienced all the seasons now and am enjoying the second go-around; the return of the blackberries along the Exmoor trails and the seep of vivid green to sage to yellow in the fern leaves. The Rowan trees are once more startling in their red jewellery, so bright you can see the berries from a significant distance.

There’s a delightful familiarity to local events, tentative though it all seems: the return of live music and village shows, all cancelled last year, some creeping back this year with all precautions in place – though the number of UK covid cases suggests ‘all precautions’ are proving somewhat inadequate. Delta was just a river mouth this time last year, it’s now the scourge of many a planning committee, from dog show to NHS budget conference. But this year I’m vaccinated, as are my husband, mother, sisters, and children. It’s a relief I couldn’t have imagined last year.

Onwards and upwards. Our move to our new home will happen in October so we’re busy searching for furniture. ‘Wait’, I hear you say. ‘Didn’t you have a container of goods shipped over?’ Why, yes we did. But we sold or donated all our larger furniture pieces before leaving the US. We thought we knew the house we were going to and the rooms weren’t big enough for most of our pieces. We all know how that plan turned out. Now we find ourselves the joyous owners of a home with larger rooms, we wish we’d kept those pieces. (Hindsight is such a pain.) So over the past weeks I’ve been masking up and scurrying through huge furniture warehouses, only to find I don’t connect with much modern furniture. Plan B finds me scrolling through buy and sell sites, looking for older, chunkier sideboards, tables, couches and dressers others have upcycled, or projects I can upcycle myself. Seriously, there are some very talented furniture restorers and decorators out there! And I, thanks to copious YouTube videos, now know how to use wood hardener and wood putty to reshape outdoor chairs full of rot. Just waiting for the topcoat seagrass-coloured paint to arrive and I’ll have four lovely excuses to sit longer outside in our garden.

Speaking of which, if you can’t find me, I’ll be weeding in our new garden. The beauty and tranquillity of that spot, the unexpected, delightful discovery of a new shrub wrestling towards sunlight through layers of ivy or clouds of geranium-gone-rogue, well, it leaves me speechless with gratitude at times. (And in need of a hot soak in Epsom salts at others.) I’m getting to know the locals, namely a pheasant who bolts from the undergrowth with a screech fit to wake the dead when you get too close. My favourite locals to date – apologies to all the human neighbours we’ve meet; you’re okay too just not as entertaining. Yet. – are the pair of mourning doves who ‘own’ the garden and have no problem making that clear. (They could be pigeons but a good definition of the differences is hard to find so I’m going with the more literary name.) Mr and Mrs Bobblenecker follow me around, perch on walls, trees and benches, bobbing their heads, preening and gossiping as I sweat over another bramble root. ‘What’s she doing?’, ‘Is she coming back?’, ‘Why would she cut that back or dig that up or fall over that?’ ‘Do you think she’s planning to stay because that’s where we usually sit in the afternoon?’ On and on they coo-cooooo, coo. I answer when I can, though they just laugh at my accent and poor dove grammar. The only phrase I really need to know in Dove is ‘Please stop dropping buddleia and thistle seeds everywhere.’ We’re set for a discussion about the removal of the birdfeeders if they don’t listen. Coo-coooo, coo that, Bobbleneckers!

And so, the world turns. New friends, old pandemic worries, upcycling projects, bulging garages full of stuff waiting for a permanent home. And me. A writer doing anything and everything but write most of the time, even though my editor is expecting a third novel by February. Another season into my epic journey and I’m just trying to be kind to myself. The stories will flow again, and I’ll be ready when they do. Covered in paint, mud and dove droppings, probably, but I’ll be ready. Hiraeth and wanderlust don’t remain dormant for long.