The trip is on!

“For a long while- for many years, in fact- he had not thought of how it was before he came to the farm. His memory of those times was like a house where no one lives and where the furniture has rotted away. But tonight it was as if lamps had been lighted through all the gloomy dead rooms. It had begun to happen when he saw Tico Feo coming through the dusk with his splendid guitar. Until that moment he had not been lonesome. Now, recognizing his loneliness, he felt alive. He had not wanted to be alive. To be alive was to remember brown rivers where the fish run, and sunlight on a lady's hair.”  

― Truman Capote, A Diamond Guitar 

After a particularly challenging period in my personal life, I have decided to embark upon a major trip at the end of November. There may well be a few more legs to the experience but currently only the first two are planned. 

On the first leg, I am going to spend a week in the New York area. I am going to meet up with old friends on Long Island and do a couple of poetry readings, as well as see some sights in Manhattan (I've been there before but there is always lots more to do!). I am looking forward to it. 

I am flying up there. I did seriously consider renting a car and driving up to New York. It would have been great to visit friends in North Carolina and Pennsylvania en route, but in the end I decided that the expense and hassle were a little too much for my budget - part of the problem being making the journey during the Thanksgiving period (I've still not got fully used to the American calendar). 

The second leg of the journey will be an Atlantic flight from JFK over to Blighty (that's an affectionate name for England/Britain, if you're not familiar with it!). 

I'm going to spend some time with my family in the English Lake District, hopefully scale at least one mountain (maybe England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike this time? Although that might be a little optimistic in the middle of Winter, I don't know?). 

 I also want to spend time with my brother and his family down on the south coast of England in the Brighton area. It would be great to visit others too, and maybe even go over to continental Europe if my finances allow. 

 I will be heading back to the USA at some point in the new year. 

Things that I have missed about the UK 

 • Friends and family, of course. 

 • Fish and chips with mushy peas. 

• World class Indian food at very low prices. 

• Cheese and onion pasties. 

 • A creamy, foamy pint of real ale in a centuries old pub. 

• The sweeping hills, mountains, lakes, and dales of Cumbria and Yorkshire. 

 • The dry English sense of humour. It sometimes feels like every other person you meet is a quality comedian in the UK, and the perception that life is more than a little absurd is common. Americans in general take life more seriously and the humour can be less subtle. 

Things I will miss about Florida/the USA 

• All my friends here, who have become as important to me as my old friends back in England. 

• The openness, warmth and friendliness of Americans generally. The English, as we all know, are more reserved. 

• The Florida sunshine and beaches. 

 • The exotic wildlife. 

• My tennis exploits and my tennis comrades. 

 • The space. Lots of space in the US. Everything can seem a little cramped in Europe when you return. Driving is a completely different experience, not so much because of the driving on the left hand side thing in the UK, more that everything feels more pushed in, busier, and narrower. 

• Last but not least, the cafe bar at Lucky's Market, my peaceful little port in a stormy world.

Sense of Direction

I’ll be straight with you.  A sense of direction is something that I’ve never had.  My intuitive notion of North and South and where landmarks are in relation to each other has always been very bad.  I can get lost in relatively familiar places back in Blighty, so transplant me to a different country with a different set up and I’m bound to struggle, even with the simple stuff.

Most US towns and cities follow a grid layout, which is all very simple and rational, so it should be easy, except that I still manage to get confused – mainly because I over-complicate matters. 

Gainesville - Straight lines and 90 degree corners

Back in England road networks in towns can follow almost any pattern.  In a large town or city, the roads will usually extend out like the spokes of a wheel, but then there are other roads connecting the spokes in an essentially random fashion, so the overall effect is often something resembling a drunken spider’s web. 

Over the years I gradually developed my own idiosyncratic methods of finding my way around English towns and cities.  The trick is generally to link together landmarks and road names and gradually build up a kind of mental map.  Because I like a drink or two, I often picked pubs as my landmarks.  British pubs are unique institutions, different to bars, they traditionally function as social and community centres, as well as drinking holes, and you will find at least one in pretty much every city suburb, town neighbourhood, or village, so they make effective markers.* 

But orientating yourself via pubs is completely useless as a navigation method in the US.  For one thing, there is no real equivalent of a pub here in Florida (although some of the Irish bars make an attempt).

Leeds - Drunken Spider's Web

 Grid systems have numbered, rather than named streets like you get in Britain.  Numbers are definitely easier for travelling in that you can work out which direction you are heading by whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing in size, but I can also find specific numbers easy to forget.  Somehow names are always more memorable.  Back in my home town there are streets with names like “The Shambles”, “Captain French Lane”, and “Gillingate”, all of which conjure up mental images of one sort or another, just through the sound of them.  A number is just a number.  If someone says they live on “Serpentine Road”, I have more chance of remembering it than, “27^th Avenue”.  (Having said that, I will, of course, have a good idea where 27^th Avenue is on the grid, whereas I would have absolutely zero notion of the location of Serpentine Road, unless I’ve been there before!)

The Auld Grey Town where I grew up

Florida is also very flat and the buildings are generally all single storey (apart from the very biggest cities where they do have high rises).  The North of England is very hilly and so you will often find yourself at a vantage point, able to gain a panoramic view from a high spot.  In Cumbria, or much of Yorkshire, you can navigate quite easily by your relative position to a hill, as many towns are built in valleys.  It’s a similar situation with tall buildings, I almost always knew where I was in Leeds relative to the city centre, because you can see the office towers and university buildings from miles away.

Basically, I’ve had to learn to drop all the idiosyncratic methods for locating myself, and just read the street numbers, which is what I’ve done, but I do sometimes miss the eccentricities of travel in England.

*Sadly, the traditional British pub has been in decline for the past ten years or more.  They are closing down at an alarming rate. 

Those Long Winter Nights

The main thing that I don’t miss about an English Winter is not so much the weather, but actually the long nights.  I can take the cold and I actually like snow (as long as it’s fresh and not slushy), but the extended periods of darkness can just be plain depressing.

The problem is that if the daytimes are overcast in England, you can actually spend a week or more when it never seems to get light.  You get up in darkness, go to work in darkness, spend the day indoors looking out at the greyness and then return home in the dark.  The experience of being stuck inside can also be exaggerated by an element of claustrophobia in many cases, given that the size of rooms and houses are generally more modest in England, compared with the USA.

I have long speculated that the darkness contributes to the melancholic streak in the English character.  Just as the US is 2 notches to the right on the political scale, Blighty is 2 notches towards miserableness on the chirpiness meter.

Not everyone in the US lives in Florida, of course.  Some of the northern states have winters much harsher than Northern England, or even Highland Scotland, for that matter.  Some US Northerners, nicknamed ‘Snowbirds’ travel down to Florida for the Winter months in order to avoid the worst of it. 

December in St Augustine, Florida

I do miss having four distinct seasons, though.  In Florida it is (almost too) hot and humid from May to September; sunny and comfortable for Spring (March to April) and Autumn (October to November); with the Winter months being more like October in the UK: cold, but only occasionally freezing.  Actually, that’s not true, the Florida nights can be cold, but the daytimes are often sunnier and warmer than a typical Summer’s day in England.  

Ironically, because the Winter can be so dark and miserable in England, Spring can be a truly joyous time - when, much to everyone’s relief, Nature literally seems to ‘spring’ back to life after lying dormant for what seems like an age.  You don’t get that in Florida.  It just gets gradually hotter (and stickier) from February onwards.

Snow in Headingley, Leeds

I am certainly not moaning.  I can play tennis here all year round here, which is pretty amazing.  The Winter in Florida, if anything, can be better for outdoor sports.  I still remember the singles match I played at the height of Summer, when it was over a 100 degrees F and even the spectators in the shade were dripping with perspiration – it was more like a war of attrition than a sporting contest!

It is also true to say that human cultures always tend to adapt to their situation and make the most of it.  The ‘indoor culture’ in England has no doubt contributed to its wealth of literature, music, and numerous hobbies and pastimes.  There is also no real equivalent in Florida of stumbling up a snow covered hill, entering a pub with a real fire, and supping a foamy pint of warm ale whilst you thaw out.

English Winters can still be depressing though…  



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Things that I do and don’t miss about the UK

Every British expat blogger at some point has to write the what-I-miss-since-I-moved-away-from-Blighty list.  It is obligatory.  So here is mine.

Do Miss

Hot cheese and onion pasties (especially on a cold, rainy day).  Hot pasties don’t feature a great deal in sub-tropical Florida.  I have yet to find a branch of Gregg’s.

Affordable dental treatment.  My dentist warned me in sombre tones about the US being absurdly expensive for dental treatment and the standards of treatment being very variable.  I didn’t believe him until I got here.  Some treatment is well over ten times what I paid on the NHS in the UK!  Crazy.

Walking places and catching a train.  I’m completely car dependent where I am living, which is a far more common situation in the US generally, as the towns and cities are often spread out thinly.  I really miss being able to walk to the shops, or back from the pub, and being able to choose to go on a train somewhere.

Hills and mountains.  It’s very flat in Florida.  Climbing up at Otley Chevin or gazing out over the mountains of Cumbria does have a big appeal, although I do enjoy the swampiness here too, but in a different way.

Beans on toast.  Although you can actually buy Heinz beans in the English Section at one of the local supermarkets, so maybe I should do that!  I love it that they have English food section sandwiched in the “ethnic” area between Indian and Chinese, like we are somehow exotic!  Much of it’s the crap food British people ate back in the 1980s, though, stuff like tinned treacle puddings, but I guess the older Brits must buy it?  Or maybe I am just a snob about food?  Both are probably true!

British politics.  American politics is just screwed: playground arguments that pass for a debate, a divided political class who hate each other, a stagnant and archaic political structure founded 200 years ago that can’t cope with the modern world and makes the British system look almost modern… Okay, maybe not quite, but the situation isn’t good!

Don’t miss

The British weather.  Although the sun in Summer can be oppressive here in Florida, I hate those weeks in Britain when it never gets light and just keeps on raining…

Rude store staff.  I hate it when you are stood at the checkout and the person who is running your stuff through the till is talking to one of their mates and ignoring you.  That doesn’t happen so much in the US.  I find it embarrassing to be British sometimes, when I see how rude some of my fellow countrymen can be.

Tea drinking culture.   Tea and the rituals of making and drinking it are revered in the UK, but I’ve never cared for the stuff, so I don’t miss it.  Give me a mug of coffee and I am happy.  Or better still, a beer!  Not all American beer is crap either.  Only about 2/3 of it.  There are actually some great American breweries and failing that, there is plenty of Continental European stuff to buy too – although  the Americans do insist on selling European beer in small bottles, for some strange reason.

Marmite (yuck yuck yuck!)  Why do British expats go on about Marmite? 

The British royal family  I have never been a big fan of the Royal Family, although I did have fun watching the Will and Kate wedding, I admit.  Actually, when I think about it, there’s actually probably *more* coverage of the Royal Family over here than there is in Britain!

British Celebs that I really can’t stand, but they also moved over here, so it feels like I can’t escape from them!

Russell Brand

The Beckhams

Piers Morgan