Sunday, July 02, 2006
(Written on the plane)
37,000 feet in the air, across the ocean that divides the two sides of my world. I can already feel the transition taking place.
Behind me, my new world – Texas, USA, filled with a mix of consumer-driven cultures and a friendliness I’ve never experienced before. Ahead of me, the reserved, suspicious, formal nature of the UK, that also feels so homely and essential to whom I am.
There’s something very reassuring about being supplied with a meal that includes Cadburys chocolate, and being offered a cup of tea after it. There’s also something very familiar about the way the gent next to me (Scottish, let’s not mention the world cup) is as happy to sit in silence for the eight hours as I am. We put our headphones on and remain separate.
Six months is a long time. That’s when I was last in the UK. Of course, I’ve spoken to friends and family, and entertained those who have been able to visit. I watch BBC America, I listen to The Archers, I observe the professional happenings back home, I even write a monthly column for a UK radio newsletter, and appear each day on UK radio talking about world showbiz events.
Yet I feel strangely different. And I think it’s an acceptance that I quite like the new life, or at least elements of it. I am continually stunned by the outgoing nature of the Texans, and I think that is making me more outgoing. Every morning when I wake up and it’s stunningly warm, every evening when you can have a pint outside at midnight and the air is still lovely, every time I end up in conversation with a shop worker, or a stranger in the gas station, or a friend of a friend’s friend.
Yeah, I like all that.
However, I can’t wait to be home. And defining home isn’t as simple as it was. It was originally Chester, then Sunderland, and through other places until it was London. But travelling back now, I don’t think any of those are home any more. I don’t have a home in England right now.
Yet all of England feels so homely, there’s such a pull to be there.
Over the next two weeks, I shall be staying with friends and family in London, Cambridge, Cardiff, Chester, Northampton and no doubt other places. I think it’s the people I’ll be staying with, and the familiarity of the country that makes it home.
Time will tell. And I for one, can’t wait to discover.
Perhaps the next couple of weeks will help define who I am, and where I should be.
Or maybe they’ll just confuse things further.
But I know, I can’t wait to be home.
37,000 feet in the air, across the ocean that divides the two sides of my world. I can already feel the transition taking place.
Behind me, my new world – Texas, USA, filled with a mix of consumer-driven cultures and a friendliness I’ve never experienced before. Ahead of me, the reserved, suspicious, formal nature of the UK, that also feels so homely and essential to whom I am.
There’s something very reassuring about being supplied with a meal that includes Cadburys chocolate, and being offered a cup of tea after it. There’s also something very familiar about the way the gent next to me (Scottish, let’s not mention the world cup) is as happy to sit in silence for the eight hours as I am. We put our headphones on and remain separate.
Six months is a long time. That’s when I was last in the UK. Of course, I’ve spoken to friends and family, and entertained those who have been able to visit. I watch BBC America, I listen to The Archers, I observe the professional happenings back home, I even write a monthly column for a UK radio newsletter, and appear each day on UK radio talking about world showbiz events.
Yet I feel strangely different. And I think it’s an acceptance that I quite like the new life, or at least elements of it. I am continually stunned by the outgoing nature of the Texans, and I think that is making me more outgoing. Every morning when I wake up and it’s stunningly warm, every evening when you can have a pint outside at midnight and the air is still lovely, every time I end up in conversation with a shop worker, or a stranger in the gas station, or a friend of a friend’s friend.
Yeah, I like all that.
However, I can’t wait to be home. And defining home isn’t as simple as it was. It was originally Chester, then Sunderland, and through other places until it was London. But travelling back now, I don’t think any of those are home any more. I don’t have a home in England right now.
Yet all of England feels so homely, there’s such a pull to be there.
Over the next two weeks, I shall be staying with friends and family in London, Cambridge, Cardiff, Chester, Northampton and no doubt other places. I think it’s the people I’ll be staying with, and the familiarity of the country that makes it home.
Time will tell. And I for one, can’t wait to discover.
Perhaps the next couple of weeks will help define who I am, and where I should be.
Or maybe they’ll just confuse things further.
But I know, I can’t wait to be home.
