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Searching for Self in the Coronation Crowd

/ Tracey Gemmell / Leave a comment

Having settled for ‘distant spectator’ to so many British royal occasions, I decided to experience the first coronation in seventy years in person. I’m finally settled back in England so won’t need to stagger around in the middle of the night watching it all happen from America. Maybe it’s spending half my life in a foreign country that leaves me searching for what puts ‘home’ in ‘homeland’. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I can’t quite identify what makes me inherently British that leads me to search for the core traditions and characteristics of my nation. I hope to discover something about myself and my ties to my birth country on a drizzly, historic day in London.

Arriving in town the day before the festivities, Sis and I stroll down The Mall, that iconic avenue leading to Buckingham Palace, in anticipation we’ll get nowhere close to it on the following day. As it turns out it was a good move. The sun shines beautifully, and Charles, William, and Catherine choose that moment to do a walkabout. We wave to them across the street. Kate is even taller and thinner than she looks on television, which is saying something. Anyway, it’s an unexpected treat, as is watching the TV cameras set up and various reporters from around the world conducting interviews with the red, white, and blue bedecked Super Fans lining The Mall, some for their third night. By now I’ve already discovered that my desire to take part in the festivities stretches only so far. Tents, sleeping on hard ground, and Porta Potties are not part of my British genetic makeup.

Coronation Day arrives, overcast and threatening rain. This is apparently traditional as both the late Queen Elizabeth II and her father were crowned in the rain. So far, so British. Security is watertight, certainly spectator-tight. Getting anywhere close to the parade route is out of the question as we chose to enjoy a leisurely hotel breakfast rather than bolt down The Strand at 5 am to join the hoards.

Huge barricades of solid metal block all streets, allowing no glimpse of what’s going on behind them. Security doesn’t seem to want huge crowds milling around. Luckily, Sis and I manage to cadge a spot in Trafalgar Square where we just glimpse the roof of the coach carrying King Charles and Queen Camilla through Admiralty Arch to Westminster Abbey. Thanks to the very tall man standing next to me, I come away with a better photo than my 5’4” stature allows. There is a distinct lack of waving flags in the crowds as compared to my TV memories of these scenes in days gone by. I realise it’s because we’re all holding our phone cameras in the air instead of flags. Times change.

One of the quintessentially British memories I’ll cherish is each time someone puts an umbrella up blocking views, the crowd chants, ‘Brolly down!’ until its owner cowers and lowers said brolly. The only holdout is a gentleman who obviously speaks no English. When his brolly remains aloft, the elderly Brolly Police behind him enact putting a brolly down. He finally complies but I’m pretty sure he has no idea why we all want to get wet. I’m not convinced he knows what’s happening anyway: an Accidental Coronation Tourist is my guess.

There are anti-royal protesters in Trafalgar Square. I think them brave, given their very small number surrounded by vast crowds of those feeling very differently about the day. When people around me mutter about them I remind them without protestors we’d still have an absolute monarchy. History tells us that was no fun at all. (There are many reasons to question the place of a monarchy in 2023 but I’m endeavouring to find my English heritage, warts and all, so we’ll stick to that.) The protestors are drowned out by the cheering crowds. ‘Not My King’ is met with ‘He’s My King’ and so the two teams merge into a cacophony of viewpoints, just as they should. We weren’t aware of any controversy with police until days later. All the officers we saw – and there were thousands – were jovial, helpful, and respectful.

Sis and I determine not to watch any TV coverage on our phones while the ceremony takes place at Westminster Abbey, enabling us to soak up the ambiance in situ. We wander the streets, enjoying the decorations and the spectators, listening to the joyous pealing of all the church bells at the moment Charles is crowned. When we guess the Golden State Coach is leaving Westminster Abbey, we try to return to Trafalgar Square but it’s a hopeless task. We end up watching the fly past from Waterloo Place, a street or so back from The Mall. It is a tearjerking moment for me; The Red Arrows a favourite with my late father and reminiscent of so many celebrations during my youth.  

With the red, white, and blue smoke trails dissipating in the sky, the rains begin in earnest. We work our way back to our hotel and collapse into a restaurant booth with a glass of wine. We wonder how the royals feel. Exhausted, I imagine. Relieved it’s all over. As are all the soldiers, planners, church leaders, security personnel and event construction crews. The logistics of a day like that must be mindbogglingly complex. Whatever your views of the monarchy, it’s impossible not to admire the Brits when they decide to throw a parade. They do it well.

So what did I discover about myself and what it is to be British? As I look back on the day, I don’t feel the intense emotion I experience when I watch footage of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. I wasn’t even born then but something about that ceremony felt otherworldly compared to this one. Maybe we just know too much about current royals. The mystique is gone and that’s no doubt a good thing. We get to see Kate wrestling to keep Prince Louis in line and Charles muttering about his kids being late to the church and all the drama of the non-working royals. It gives the whole sword and sceptre and over-the-top crowns a more theatrical feel than an ancient rite steeped in magic. But I respect Charles for what he has already endured and know he has much more criticism and negativity to face than his mother ever had. He probably just wanted to be a gardener. I don’t envy him and wish him good luck. I do think the architecture, music, and pomp of a British ceremony speaks to me still. It is something I can point to and say, ‘This is part of me, part of my story. To know me you need to see this.’ I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I can move forward, analysing my feelings towards home and all that entails with new data points.

Back on Exmoor, the annual rubber duck race down the river was held last weekend. Another fun tradition. Not so many marching bands or horses but still a good time. And a part of me. Wishing you many celebrations of importance to you and your homeland.  

Images: family photos

Pride Comes Before a Hole. Or a Virus

/ Tracey Gemmell / 6 Comments

Warning: the following blog contains scenes that some people eating dinner may find disturbing. Finish your pudding first.

I admit it. I got complacent. Conceited almost. I’m at the age where I watch my peers trudge off to hospitals to get hips and knees replaced, appear at lunches with various body parts encased in medical grade supports and everyone’s smelling of icy hot liniment. When the joints aren’t acting up, there’s always a new virus in town that takes them down. Ha! How I chuckle! (Internally of course. It would be rude otherwise.) ‘Look at me!’, I titter behind the get well soon card I’m writing. I’m still striding confidently up steep Exmoor combes, planning long-distance flights, and taking on the rejuvenation of a large garden. You don’t scare me, ivy-covered wall. I laugh at you, wicked brambles. No old root is too deep or too big for me. Gardening prowess aside, I’ve spent the last several years sighing sympathetically as another neighbour/friend/family member succumbs to a week in bed with COVID or flu or a nasty cold. Not me. I’m the only family member who hasn’t had COVID (that I know of) and I can’t remember the last time I even had a cold. Yes, I’ve had all my vaccines, but I’m naturally supercharged, I tell you! Invincible! Just like I used to be when flying off horses over fences on a regular basis as a twenty-year -old.

Anyway, you know what’s coming. Two weeks ago I’m standing knee deep in a hole I’m digging so I can transplant a large climbing rose. I’ve dug a million holes before. I know about bending knees, and not lifting and turning at the same time. I’m a pro. And invincible. Until there’s a twinge. Followed by an electrical charge running down both legs. And suddenly all my toes are on fire. Then begins the radiating pain into both hips. But do I stop digging? No. Of course not. Because the friends helping dig the rose up while I prepare the new hole can never, I repeat never, know I’m not invincible. As they appear round the corner, wrestling the thorny tangle of a ten-foot-tall rose between them, I’m sitting on the edge of the hole, a very Wallace-type fixed grin on my face. Teeth clenched, I’m using the shovel to try to lift myself out of the hole.

‘Anyone for tea?’ I totter to the kitchen while the friends plonk the rose in its new home and backfill the soil. In the kitchen, the kettle feels incredibly heavy and I ponder calling the fire department to get the teabags out of the cupboard. But bravely, invincibly, I manage to make three cups of tea and deliver them to the garden crew. We part company and I spend the next couple of days flat on the floor with ice packs and paracetamol as my new best friends and pillows wedged in various places, hopefully holding my skeleton in place. The thought of a car ride to Tesco is unimaginable, forget that trip to Japan we’re thinking about. Hubby, who has lived with backpain almost our entire marriage, looks like he may expect more sympathy next time.

But wait. There’s more. All that sighing sympathetically about friends with viruses that will never touch my Teflon system? Saturday morning, I limp gingerly to the kitchen to make breakfast feeling things are maybe getting better in the twinged back department. Which is good because that darn transplanted rose needs watering, seeing as there hasn’t been a drop of rain since we moved it. But no. Things are indeed not getting better. An hour after breakfast, I’m flat on the floor in the bathroom, back spasming, toes curling, as a vomiting flu bug hits. You know how your skin and hair hurts and the chills, fever and vomiting mean every muscle is fighting to make your insides your outsides? Yes, that kind of flu bug. It’s hard to know what to protect first, the bathroom floors or the spine. Hubby brings more blankets and the dog pants in my ear something about did I know he hasn’t been for a walk yet and is said walk not happening.

The vomiting part only lasts a few hours. It could have lasted days in which case I’d have needed a complete spine transplant. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful about the short duration but that few hours of pain will go down in history on a par with childbirth and pulling the packing (read large couch) out of my nostril after sinus surgery. Don’t talk to me about pain scales only going up to ten. Anyway, just moments after I thank the Vomit Gods for getting bored and moving on to someone else, the coughing starts. Is it possible to cough without using your back? Apparently not. Any progress made during the last couple of days of icing and lying flat disappears in an instant. The back screams ‘Lie flat!’ The lungs scream, ‘Sit upright. And we mean all night!’ It’s a battle royal for control of the pain scale and everyone’s losing.

So, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far, what is the moral of the story? Well, obviously, you should never smugly write get well cards. Assume every word will boomerang back to you at some point. Stop buying the cheap cards, okay? Also, take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. Are you as young as your invincible self thinks you are? Just because you did that thing twenty or even ten years ago doesn’t mean you should do it again without a great deal of prior planning. While searching the David Austin rose catalogue, search your medicine cabinet for gel ice packs.

Week two, and here I am. Unable to sit at a computer for long. Unable to lie down for long. Unable to stand for long. Coughing up a storm and reaching out to social media for suggestions for daytime TV viewing because reading makes my head hurt. Most importantly, I’m wondering. I’m wondering how I’ll respond the next time a friend says they’ve injured themselves completing some mundane task. Or how I’ll respond to the next cancelled get-together because of a virus making the rounds. Differently. That’s how I’ll respond. Differently. There’ll be a lot less invincibility and a lot more empathy in that ‘Take care’ signoff in a get-well card. There’ll be no more pride before a hole. Or a virus.

Stay healthy out there!

(No roses were hurt during the writing of this blog.)

Images:

Wikimedia Commons: Sciatica nerve

Rawpixel: Flu virus, Public Health Image Library, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Finding Myself Online. Or Not.

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

Mission: Identify twelve search keywords that would lead others to find you online. Go.

It’s okay, I’ll wait. Am waiting… Okay, two keywords. Can you come up with two?

I know, right? It’s really hard. But that’s what I have to do as part of a website redesign project I’m currently undertaking. If I want to be found online by those who don’t know my name (and there are a few of you), I must condense my online ramblings, posts, writing topics, and areas of specialized interest or expertise into a dozen keywords. These words can’t be too general like ‘traveller’ or ‘expat’ because I’ll never compete with Condé Nast Traveller Magazine or the billion other hits you’ll get under those search terms. They can’t include the vague term ‘writer’ because Poe, Rowling, Hemingway, and King seem to pip me to the post. I can’t be too specific either, like using the word ‘hiraeth’, because although hiraeth – meaning ‘intense longing for home with a sense of loss’- is ingrained in my very soul after so many years of geographical searching, it’s not a word many others know. Or can spell. Searches may be limited, therefore, to the one person on the planet who wakes up and says, ‘Today I’ll search the word “hiraeth” to see if anyone out there has written a novel about it. Oh, and let’s hope said novel also includes Exmoor ponies.’ A bit too niche, don’t you think? Another favourite word of mine is coddiwomple – ‘to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination’. It defines both my own life’s journey and the novels I write. But is it a good keyword? Hands up if you’ve ever searched coddiwomple. Anyone? I thought not.

What to do. What to do. I blog, pay dues for a website, and scroll endlessly through millions of other people’s social media posts, (forgetting to mention my books on my own accounts), but marketing guru, I am not. By the way, if you search ‘marketing guru’, Seth Godin pops up. He’s everywhere. Well done, Seth. Admittedly, I’m not on every social media platform. I stick to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram mainly because I’m not expected to dance on those. Or at least I don’t think I am. And I’m not expected to use a filter that turns my face into a rabbit or gives me horns or transforms my voice into that of a robot on helium. I mean, who the heck would look for me, humorous fiction writer of a ‘certain age’, on TikTok and what would I be doing there if they did? Jamming to Uptown Funk while making my morning porridge or filming myself typing ‘The End’ on my latest novel in slow motion while my dog plays the accordion in the background? I have a feeling that last bit just shows I have no idea what TikTok does or even is. Which would be true. I bet Seth’s on TikTok. But I digress…

I should have a better handle by now on Who I Am. Professionally that is. I’ve given up trying to answer that question on a personal level, much to my family’s relief. So let’s get back to who’s looking for me online. And why. (Between you and me, I’m a bit afraid to ask, because what if the only one looking for me is that guy serving two years for pirating copies of independent novels? Or that kid I rolled down a steep hill on a dustbin lid when I was eight? Oh, come on! He wasn’t even hurt and Mum made me apologize and that’s all in the past and can we just move on now, please? This approach works in politics. Until it doesn’t.)

Maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe the question isn’t, ‘Who’s looking for me?’. The question is, ‘Who’s NOT looking for me but will learn to love me if I can only identify the right keywords to get myself on their radar?’. Fear of discovery shouldn’t play a part in this. I love writing and I’m so grateful for the positive feedback I receive from readers. I need to put myself out there more and I’ve found a great professional design team to help with that.

I must march onwards in my search for search terms that improve my searchability in search engines. It’s like my perpetual search for home only without frequent flyer points or jetlag. I vow to spend the rest of the week soul-searching in order to produce my twelve terms that depict my core essence. This task will provide the perfect excuse for not getting back to editing my current work-in-progress. Procrastinator! That could be one of my search terms! I just know I’ll come up as number one in that. I’ll check it out. Later.

Happy googling to all of you reading this. Delighted you found me.

(PS Tim Urban’s funny TED Talk about procrastination comes up if you search that word. I’m not mentioned. At all. Which is good news. I think.)

Images: Alpha Stock Images

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

Remember to Smell the Exmoor Roses

/ Tracey Gemmell / 4 Comments

October 2022 may have been the most ‘normal’ month I’ve had in a long time. All that happened was the shortest UK prime ministership in history, a family run-in with COVID, and the arrival of our first guests from American since we moved back to England over two years ago. Bit of a snorer of a month really. Except I haven’t received the gift of a good snore in a long time. Hello Sleeplessness, my now constant companion. Sleepless on Exmoor; there’s a book title. When one of the better-known lines from my novel, Dunster’s Calling, states Exmoor is the place I ‘sleep the best and breathe the deepest’, this insomnia is, frankly, embarrassing. It’s also a nightmare (I remember those from back when I used to sleep) for productivity.

Why am I struggling like this? I suppose when I look back there are clues. Things were just settling down enough in our newly blended UK-US-Ukrainian-Exmoor household for me to open my laptop to write when BAM! – Hubby comes down with a nasty case of COVID. I locked the house down; no one in, no one out. I gloved and masked, disinfected everything without a pulse on the hour every hour, and climbed thousands of stairs delivering tea and steaming inhaler mugs to the patient. Fortunately, a brilliant idea penetrated the exhaustion: buy a second kettle and leave it in Hubby’s isolation chamber for him to use at will. Tracey:1 Covid: 0. Well, based on the acute pain Hubby was in and the 24/7 coughing for two weeks, maybe COVID scored slightly higher than that.

For all my efforts, Verdigris streaks now mar the paint work under the tarnished handles of every door from the constant spraying, my hands are raw from scrubbing, the dishwasher’s exhausted, as is the washing machine. But, by golly, no one else in the household caught this awful virus and for that I will claim the glory. I earned it. But… but sleep! When? Dear God, when?!

I’ve been thinking about stress and the impact it has on a body; well, my body anyway. The sleepless nights lead to non-productive days lead to sleepless nights worrying about how non-productive the days were. I have three writing projects whirling around in my mushy brain: a finished novel in need of post-edit editing, a half-complete cosy murder mystery I’m desperate to finish writing so I can find out who the darn murderer is, and a barely-formed idea on a scrap of paper that feels really quite promising as a novel. I just can’t get myself revved up enough to start the writer’s gruelling routine.

I’m not alone. So many of us are experiencing depleted energy levels from the last couple of years, even those who haven’t relocated 4000 miles or taken in a refugee family. We’ve all fought our own battles to make it this far through the 2020s. So many distractions. I try blocking all news of the energy crisis, while digging out ever thicker sweaters. I try to block images of all those families missing meals due to the food price crisis. I try not to think about whether the same Prime Minister will be in office at the end of dinner as at the beginning. War footage is no-go after breakfast. But it’s all still churning inside my head.

I’m not getting out in nature nearly as much as I need to for a good old recharge. This time of year is when I’m most grateful to be back in England. Perennials are just as perky as in late summer, roses bloom, grass seed germinates in the warm soil, and bulb planting and shrub acquisition is still in full swing. Back in the snowbelt of the USA, at this time of year the ground is frozen and temps are chilly enough to freeze solid the Halloween candy. I don’t miss that. At all. But I’m missing too much of autumn glories on Exmoor galloping around stamping out viruses and worrying about dirty bombs.

Enter the visitors from America. The delight of having dear friends staying at this time stems not only from their comforting presence but that they force me to get back out there. Sometimes you have to have your nose shoved into a bloom to smell the roses. Did I mention they’re still flowering here and will be until Christmas? Got to love that. And visitors mean you stroll around your beautiful garden for fun, without weeds in one hand and pruning tools in another. Friends mean in the last few days I’ve walked yellowy-orange wooded trails, eaten cream teas in Selworthy, smiled at Exmoor ponies backdropped by the Bristol Channel, visited Dunster Castle, swooned over the amazing truffle and parmesan chips at The Luttrell Arms, ridden the cliff railway at Lynton, and consumed Prosecco at lunchtime – that’s right, LUNCHTIME! – at the lovely Ship Inn at Porlock Weir. Sometimes you need much missed friends to remind you of the wonders in your own back garden and the joys beyond the news. Friends and Exmoor restore and rejuvenate. I just need to keep that momentum going long enough to write again.

Maybe I should make a habit of reading the David Austin Rose catalogue before bed. Fill my head with scents and petals and dream of arching boughs of colour to come in my Exmoor garden. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. And sleep will surely follow.

Images: author’s own and Rick Anderson

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.

Life in ‘What The Actual Heck?’ Territory

/ Tracey Gemmell / 2 Comments

June sees the United Kingdom coming down off the highs of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. No matter your views of the Monarchy, seventy years in a job means Queen Elizabeth deserves a street party or two, as far as I’m concerned. The country proudly showed the world spectacular pageantry and the beautiful backdrops of our capital city. Hubby and I shared our jovial Jubilee Garden Party with our new neighbourhood, and we stuffed ourselves full of wonderful British cuisine (read sausage rolls, cucumber sandwiches, trifle, and Pimm’s Cups). It was great fun. And the month was supposed to only get better. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned lately it’s that we all live in ‘What The Actual Heck?’ territory now.

June started out with exciting plans. After two whole years apart, my dear friends were due to arrive from the US on June 25th. This was our third attempt to get together. Covid had other plans in 2020 and 2021. Surely, we, and the rest of the planet, had earned smooth sailing for the third go around? Exmoor, The Cotswolds, and London look out! Here we come!

But what the actual heck? I spy on my news feed shortly before our guests’ expected arrival thousands of suitcases waiting at Heathrow to be reunited with owners who’d been wearing the same underwear for a week in Lisbon or Barcelona. That is, if their flight took off at all. Apparently, the UK can’t get background checks completed in a timely manner so airlines and airports can’t rehire enough employees to run a full schedule. And that only matters if you can actually get to the airport.

Those of you following the labour disputes in the UK will understand that Saturday, the day my friends were supposed to arrive, was the third day of the national train strike. What the actual heck, again? Roads would potentially be chaos from London to Exmoor as everyone tried to reach their Cornish beach holiday or Devonshire weekend home or Somerset cream tea. Tumbling off the red eye from Chicago, crumpled, bleary-eyed and stiff, is not exactly fun without the added joy of a possible five-hour traffic jam to deal with once here. But hey, at least we friends would be together at the overcrowded service station or in line for the ladies’ loo, and it would be entertaining to count overheated cars on the hard shoulder of the M5. Unless one of them was ours.

Assuming we survived the motorway tailbacks, we had tickets for The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. We had a delightful rental cottage in Bourton-on-the-Water waiting, and we had hiking and cream teas and pub lunches and long catchup chats waiting for us on Exmoor. (We decided not to pack the Pimm’s for hiking lunches. Some of our Exmoor coastal footpaths have a long and steep drop into the Bristol Channel.) Fish and chips was obviously on the menu for our friends. I’d even prepared an introductory booklet on why the jam goes on the scone before the clotted cream. As long as planes flew and roads eventually cleared and trains eventually ran and all the cream tea shops stayed open, this would be a trip to remember. We couldn’t wait. I’d spent a lot of time planning to show our friends the best England has to offer during this, their first visit to my homeland. We’d make them just as welcome as if they’d been visiting royalty. Even the full-sized cardboard cut-out of Queen Elizabeth still held court in the living room. She just needed a bit of a dusting after three weeks.

You may have sussed by now the trip didn’t happen. With only days to go before take-off, a ‘What the actual heck?’ freak tick bite rerouted our guests from Heathrow to a US hospital. And just like that, the world seemed to implode on us again. Instead of COVID, it was a different health scare that threw us off kilter. At the same time, the US Supreme Court, henceforth to be known as the ‘What the Actual Heck’ Supreme Court ruled everyone in America (or maybe it was only in New York, but at this point let’s just call it everyone in America as that’s the reality of life there) could carry a concealed weapon, no questions asked. The following day that same WTAH Supreme Court sided with those who deemed no one should be able to access appropriate healthcare. If you’re a woman, that is. If you’re a man, it’s written into the Constitution that Viagra may fall from the sky whenever you push a little blue button. To sum up the Supreme Court’s week, apparently no questions can be asked of anyone wanting a gun but a million questions can be asked of a pregnant woman. By people she has never met. By people who have no knowledge of her personal circumstances and care nothing for her life. Said strangers then get to make judgements and medical decision on her behalf, with no expertise or thought for her privacy. Got it?

Oh, and the Ukrainian war looks ready to expand. All nations are in ‘What The Actual Heck?’ territory now.

I know. This could be construed as a rant. And it is. But it’s also a warning. While we’re focusing on planes and trains and automobiles and where to get the best cream teas and how busy it is at the motorway service station loo, our minds are distracted from two much bigger issues:

  1. Nothing is more important than our health.
  2. Democracy is not inherent. It requires constant vigilance. We the Distracted People are all that stand between sanity and something that doesn’t look or feel anything like sanity. Or democracy.

(And breathe, Tracey. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. That’s it. Good. Repeat.)

Seriously, what the actual heck? I just want to write humorous fiction set in gorgeous locations. That all. But I can’t ignore what’s going on in the world or there will be no humour and no gorgeous locations left. I have to step up and speak out. So, what can I do? Well, I can vote in the US and I can virtually meet a Ukrainian family tomorrow to see if my Exmoor sanctuary can be a sanctuary for them too. I can do little things that hopefully lead to bigger things. I can’t just keep repeating ‘What the actual heck?’ over my morning cereal as I read the news.

The good news is our friend is recovering and the trip is rescheduled. I wish the fix for what ails us on both sides of the Atlantic was as simple as a fistful of antibiotics. It won’t be. But I hope to have the world fixed before my friends arrive later this year. One day at a time, Tracey. One action at a time.

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