Beijing for Beginners

Time for another travel review....

Daughter No 1 has been working in China for the last six months and we felt she was due for a parental visit.

‘Just be prepared for culture shock,’ she warned. Culture shock? I’d spent three years living in LA. I thought I was pretty well prepared for anything.

Our journey into the unknown began on the Express Way from the airport. We expected to be greeted by the fug of hazy sunshine – who hasn’t heard all about China’s pollution problem – but not the blizzard of ethereal white blossom that fell from every available tree.  The husband’s nostrils began to twitch rather ominously as this cloud of kapok infiltrated in through the open car window.

A visit to China is an attack on all senses. We stayed near the Wangfujing, one of Beijing’s major shopping streets, where the rancid aroma of steamed tentacles from the food market hits you as you browse western style malls. 

Deep fried scorpion, silk worm cocoon and star fish on a stick are all available within spitting distance of the latest Prada handbag. And I mean spitting distance.  That’s another Chinese habit which sends shivers down every western visitor's spine. The sound of en masse guttural clearing of the throats and depositing of phlegm is as synonymous to the city as beeping car horns.

(Closed toe shoes are a must. Apart from the fact that you will be spat upon and trampled upon, according to our daughter nappies are also apparently a privilege of the rich. When that toddler suddenly squats down in front of you, move out of the way.)

The locals queue up to view Chairman Mao’s mummified remains on public display in a crystal casket in a huge mausoleum adjacent to Tiananmen Square.  

‘Surely he would be turning in his grave at the sight of all this capitalism,’ I remarked to the husband as we passed yet another Starbucks. He no longer cared, his sinuses were so blocked up.  

Elbows at the ready we battled our way through the throng to all the tourist hot-spots – the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Lake Houhai, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall. We took our life into our hands crossing Beijing's busy, congested roads - an adventure in itself. (Don’t be fooled by that green man.  If the taxi doesn’t run you down on the zebra crossing, the moped rider will.) 

Despite Beijing’s cosmopolitan veneer, Chinese families asked if they could pose with us – celebrity style – for a photograph. Others strategically placed grannie or granddad close by for a surreptitious snap of a trio of ‘waigouren’. Fair-skinned foreigners are still a novelty to those visiting the city from the outlying countryside.

Beijing is a city of contrasts. It is impossible to ignore the growing gap between the young and wealthy who embrace the western influences, and the poor and elderly, who appear to have been left behind. 

China has a fascinating history and I'm glad I've visited.  To stand on the Great Wall was an amazing, uplifting experience and so was the visit to  our daughter's neighbourhood spa. This is where a little local knowledge goes a long way.  £12 for a full sixty minute body massage.  Every taut, tense muscle pummelled, pinched and pulled into submission. It wasn’t my heart I lost in Beijing, but my back ache.

Starting Over...(again)

I woke up this morning and decided to start blogging again.

I’m not quite sure why it fell by the wayside. I’ve hardly been busy – but perhaps that was the problem. Not enough to write about.

It’s all right harping on about the challenges of being an ex-ex-pat but eighteen months on and it's as if I’d never been away.  There's nothing surreal about shopping in Tesco and bumping into people I’d known at secondary school.

My creative writing tutor says we all need a ‘writers’ platform, where we can boast about our successes and promote our work.  We need to blog, tweet, and brag about ourselves on Facebook. I’m self-effacing so that type of thing doesn’t sit comfortably with me, but having finally had a short story ‘accepted’ by a magazine - albeit it a local free one (and the story is on hold until later in the year) – I probably do need to start getting myself out there again.  

So, six months on from my last post, where I am? Adjusting.  The husband has returned home so we’ve progressed from me, the cat and a teenager, to a household of four. It’s amazing the additional amount of housework one extra creates -  and a routine again as well. He wants proper meals – none of that oh we’ll have scrambled egg on toast tonight in front of the TV I could get away before.

The teenager is also now 18, a fully qualified driver and less teenager and more young adult – although one look in her room confirms the teenage status. Keep the door shut on it all the parenting books tell you, so I do.

Daughter No 1 graduated and is working abroad.  We’ve obviously given her the taste for the travel bug.  She is also a blogger – probably another incentive to take it up again (a little competition is always a good thing).  She has moved to Asia, where she is embracing a celebrity lifestyle as something of a novelty – a blonde in Beijing.

 I hit the half century – a depressing day brightened considerably by an early morning flight to Rome and a wonderful week’s holiday in Italy – which I could have written numerous travel blogs about, and probably should have done, although it’s a bit late now.

The weight gained from seven solid days of pasta has refused to come off, despite lengthy walks – currently in waders and wellingtons along the river.  I had hoped this weight increase could be blamed on muscle from increased sessions at the gym, but a diagnosis of high cholesterol at my over 50’s health check put paid to that. Too much cheese, wine and yoghurt apparently (I thought yoghurt was good for you?)

Anyway, life isn’t so bad on the downhill slope.  I’ve decided not to hurtle, but to gently slalom. I can’t put off the ageing process so I might as well enjoy it. At least I can finally put my ‘senior moments’ down to just that.

One picture of Italy - more may follow 

A Weekend in Bath

I’ve just spend a great weekend catching up with some old friends and enjoying an afternoon at the thermae spa in Bath.

Bath is a great city to visit with or without the relatively new addition of the modern Thermae Spa,  and of course people have been coming to Bath to ‘take the waters’ since Roman times.

It’s a relatively compact, slightly hilly city, easy to walk round, and of course a complete tourist trap.  Even my friends in the US had heard of Bath. The city centre is full of  bustling speciality shops and boutiques as well as the usual high street department stores, a multitude of cafes, tea rooms, bars and restaurants.  It is one of those quintessentially British places, eclectic, bohemian and rather posh.  

I was meeting up with old friends from the Tech college I had attended over 30 years ago, two of whom I hadn’t seen for 20 odd years. We had a lot of catching up to do.

The Thermae Spa was a real treat.  Two hours sat in bubbling hot water in a roof top pool overlooking Bath’s glorious Georgian  rooftops and the surrounding countryside. So what if it was raining, we were wet anyway.

There are two large spa pools and four differently aromatic steam rooms available on a two hour ‘open’ ticket at the  Spa.  As all we wanted to do was sit and talk, it was great.  It was only the fact that we were turning (more) wrinkly that made us want to get out.

When I first met these friends, I was a teenager, just like the one I have at home now. Partying, drinking, and desperately trying to squeeze college work into a busy social life.  We all got married within a few years of each other and all have children approximately the same age. Obviously there have been some major life changes and everyone has had their ups and downs, but it was a great reunion, reminiscing about college days and discovering what we’d all been up to in the last thirty  years.  

In my head I’m nowhere near as old as my birth certificate insists, and by the end of the weekend  it really did feel like we had only walked out of that college refectory twenty minutes or so ago.  The wonders of modern technology make it so much easier to keep in touch - the odd like or comment on facebook really does a go a long way to preserve or re-new a friendship.

Naturally after a night of heavy drinking, and a weekend climbing up and down three flights of stairs to our attic room in a B&B, the soothing effects of the Thermae Spa had totally worn off. My body was definitely telling me I was nearer that birth certificate age than I would ever care to admit, but if I have to grow old, at least I'm going to do it disgracefully in a very posh place.

.  

The Saudi Experience Part 2

So what exactly does an ex-pat wife get up to in Saudi? The bus goes daily to the nearest supermarket and Mall, and if venturing anywhere else, a car and a driver are supplied.  An abaya – any shade of black will do – has to be worn outside the compound at all times, although western women can get away without covering their heads.

Saudi Arabia has little or no agriculture of its own and most food supplies are imported.  The quality of fruit and veg available in the supermarket was poor, but I’d been shopping in Ralphs in California for the last three years, I was used to a cucumber well past its best. 

My ex-pat friends explained the continuity of food supplies was erratic, hence the need to grab several packets of Maltesers  in one go. It also explained why I’d found several the boxes of Rice Krispies stashed in the kitchen cupboard. Buy it whilst you can, appears to be the western shopper’s motto, when it’s gone it’s well and truly gone and you have no idea when, if ever, it will be back.

After we had stocked up on food, we headed for the Mall, where I was surprised to discover a New Look – staffed entirely, of course, by men. A lingerie shop  clearly signed ‘Families Only’ had its wares on public display, and was one of the very few places with female staff (the Body Shop was another) yet images of scantily clad women on the packaging for pop-up swimming pools had been blacked out in another store (although in many cases the stickers had been subsequently scratched off ).

There were designated places in the Mall where women could sit and take a coffee, but I was told dining out was fraught with difficulty.  Not only did you have to time your arrival not to coincide with prayer time – if it did you simply wouldn’t get served – but women were confined to ‘family areas’, separate booths behind curtains. That’s really not my idea of a fun night out.

So despite the presence of MacDonalds, Pizza Hut and the American ice cream chain Baskin’ Robbins, I decided I would prefer to dine in.

I was told I had chosen the busiest week of the year to visit the compound; social life was rife.  There was the project team dinner, a birthday BBQ and the annual ‘fun run’ – as many times around the perimeter fence as you can in 45 minutes  (the winner managed 7, I managed 3).  

I did catch sight of the souks and markets, but forget those colourful holiday images of bustling spice stalls in  Morroco or Tunisia, Yanbu market was a shabby selection of vans and tents, elderly Arabs sheltering from the heat selling goods from the backs of their cars.  Down town Yanbu is grubby, dusty and dirty. Men gather on  corners, the buildings  are old, uncared for and decrepit.  Apart from in the Mall, Saudi women were noticeably absent on the street. Did I feel safe? No. Did I want to get out of the car? Only to  scurry into one shop and then back into the Range Rover to be driven to another.

It was great catching up with my old friends from California and I have every admiration for those wives who had committed to accompanying their husband to Saudi, but I knew it wasn't the lifestyle for me.  Days filled with gym sessions, coffee mornings, lunches, lengthy games of cards and presumably extreme jigsaw puzzling do not appeal.  I like my freedom. A nursery is provided on the compound, but children of school age have to be bussed to the International School half an hour away in town. The constant sunshine sounds idyllic, but even in March, an hour in the intense heat was about the most I could take.  In high summer the water in the pools is apparently as hot as a bath.

Although I was sad to say goodbye at the end of the week, I wasn’t sad to be leaving Yanbu.

On the long drive back to Jeddah we passed hundreds of camels, Bedouins herding goats and families sat by the side of the road, stopping for what at first I thought was a rather inappropriate picnic, until I realised it was prayer time.

We westerners believe Saudi women must be totally repressed, desperate to escape the strict  regime, yet at the airport, sitting in my abaya with my head uncovered, a heavily veiled  young Saudi girl gave me a look of pure venom. I had feared the hostility of the native men, I had been prepared for the disapproval of the the mutawa, the religious police, but I had never expected to receive a look like that from the sisterhood!  So sad that we have so little understanding of each other’s culture, and no opportunity to integrate. As long as she hides behind her veil and we are confined to our compound, never the twain shall meet.

The Saudi Experience Part I

 A dose of winter sunshine is good for the soul, although I have to admit Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have been my first choice for a holiday.  300 km north of Jeddah, the town of Yanbu sits on the  Red Sea, and is temporary home to a vast number of western oil and construction workers, including my other half.

The abaya had been purchased; the teenager’s ready meals  placed in the fridge, and her instructions for the week pinned to the door (NO PARTYING was top of the list). After a three month wait for a visa, I was finally off on a trip to the Middle East.

It would have been nice to have sprinkled this post with exotic holiday snaps  but alas, photography is not encouraged in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and within minutes of leaving the airport, I could see why. Quite frankly the place was a mess. If this was my kingdom, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone hanging around taking pictures of it.

I had been warned. Yes, he assured me, I would see camels, but I would also see lots of litter – the plastic bag is commonly known as the Saudi desert flower, I would seen the abandoned wrecks of car crashes on the road side, and empty buildings left to crumble into ruin and decay. The standard of driving, he told me, was worse than LA. No! How could it be?!!

Well it was. Two armed Check Point Charlies and three hours later, I was relieved to see the desert skyline becoming dominated by a succession of oils refineries, chemical plants and power stations. We had reached my holiday destination – the industrial oasis of Yanbu.

A massive modern construction programme has resulted in an influx of foreign workers into Saudi. Fortunately for me, I would be accommodated in a secure, luxurious western style compound. If my husband was one of the many Indian, Pakistani or Filipino workers, he’d have been confined to barracks, with his passport confiscated and a trip home planned once every two years.

Another Check Point Charlie and we faced the 10 ft high perimeter concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Sliding  gates drew back to reveal a holiday style village; attractive villa’s and apartments set around courtyards with pools, amongst neatly tendered gardens bursting with exotic bougainvillea and tidy lawns of well watered green grass.

Wow, I thought, slipping out of my abaya and into my bikini, this isn’t so bad. I took a welcome dip in the pool and reclined on a sunlounger whilst my poor hubby hurried off back to work.  I flicked through a couple of pages of a magazine. If I ignored the barbed wire, and the fact that I couldn’t leave the compound under my own steam or without being garbed from head to foot in black, perhaps I could get used to this.

A friend from California arrived to take me on a quick tour. Ten minutes later I had seen the gym, the library, the shop, the restaurant. I passed the nursery, the play areas, the football pitch and tennis court.  What next? We called on another friend for a cup of tea.

Tomorrow,  they promised, we could book a driver and go on a trip. Perhaps, I hoped, I would get to see some of the real Saudi, those colourful market places and exotic souks.  Welcome to ex-pat life, Yanbu style. 'We'll do the Mall and the supermarket,' they told me. Even that, I assured them gratefully, would be a treat.  

Week 5

February already! January disappeared under a blanket of grey and a foot of snow. The teenager has sat the first part of her AS levels and life has returned to normal.

I have started walking again – not quite those sunny early morning power walks of Southern California but a chilly, brisk, just get on with it hike through slush and mud.   I have exchanged the potential hazards of mountain lions, bears, coyotes and a posse of Mexican gardeners for puddles and potential flooding – my regular route along the river has to be timed to match the tide tables. I’m lucky, we have settled in a rather picturesque village and if it is too wet then I head uphill and inland past chocolate box cottages and homes concealed behind automatic gates and hidden away at the end of very long drives. The most hazardous part of this route is avoiding being run down by a speeding Maserati.

Another high or low of this week’s endeavour to explore was a trip into Southampton and its relatively new Sea City Museum. I’ve always felt that my home town doesn’t really make the most of itself and its sea faring heritage, nor put a great deal of effort into promoting its historic buildings or its waterfront. The Sea City museum is housed in the rather bland Civic Centre – well away from the sea –  and has dedicated a large proportion of its exhibition to the ill-fated journey of the Titanic which set sail from Southampton in April 1912.  The exhibition concentrates on the lives of the Titanic crew (what no Kate and Leo?)  the majority of whom were from Southampton and the majority of whom, quite naturally, didn’t survive.  Whilst it’s an informative and educational experience, with an extensive selection of artefacts and rather (too) realistic sound effects, it’s hardly uplifting.

When we  arrived in California and I told people we came from Southampton I was surprised that very few Americans had ever heard of the place. It’s a major international port.  I mentioned the Titanic and the Mayflower which also set off from Southampton and carried the Pilgrim Fathers off to Massachusetts, I mentioned cruise liners and the Queen Mary, now resting in Long Beach, but it provoked little reaction.  Of course, now I’m older and great deal wiser, this doesn’t surprise me,  Americans do rather struggle with the concept of world geography. Eventually gave up explaining about Southampton and told everyone I came from south (of) London – it seemed to work much better.   (The teenager recently received a message from a former US school friend asking how she was settling in back in London, and when she replied she wasn’t in London, he replied, oh yeh – how close to London is England?)

And talking of the Mayflower and the Queen Mary,  a full size replica of one and the original of the other were both encountered on our travels in America, and  are major tourist attractions. Perhaps Southampton would draw more visitors if a life size model of the Titanic was moored up on its quayside, although perhaps not...

I think I’ve changed my mind about booking that cruise.

Week 3

Another surprisingly eventful week!

Our Christmas present from daughter number 1 was a reservation for afternoon tea at the Swan at The Globe in London.

The Globe Theatre sits rather out of sync on the Thames, surrounded by the 1970's architectural concrete ugliness of the South Bank Centre and swamped by its near neighbours,  the Tate Modern and the London Eye. Here in the centre of London is a little piece of olde England, and next to the Globe is the Swan, Will Shakespeare’s favourite watering hole.

The Globe was resurrected by the American actor and director Sam Wannamaker who was determined to recreate Shakespeare’s original theatre in an authentic state and setting.   Constructed of English Oak and with the only permitted thatched roof in London since the Great Fire of 1666, The Globe’s one concession to modern design, apart from a concrete floor, is the inclusion of fire sprinklers!  The stage and the auditorium are exactly as they would have been in Shakespeare’s day.

On the guided tour you find yourself hearing the answers to all those unasked questions; where did the audience go to toilet - they didn’t (a ditch in front of the stage was multi-purpose); what did the place smell like – absolutely awful, and why did most of Shakespeare’s characters repeat their lines three times – once for the plebs at the front, secondly, and more eloquently, for the middle-classes in the seats beyond, and thirdly, highly refined, for the aristocrats sat at the back of the stage heckling the actors.

Next door, in elegant, decidedly un-Elizabethan surroundings of an upstairs dining room at the Swan we were presented with a platter of bite sized cakes and pastries, delicate finger rolls of smoked salmon and cucumber, and for the male of the species, a Gentleman’s Tea complete with English bangers, macaroni cheese and that other great British tradition, a fish finger sandwich.

Now I know where Will got his inspiration from!

Following our tea we met up with daughter no 1 (who conveniently forgot to handover the cash for said Christmas present) before we headed back to our hotel for the night. In our continued efforts to see as much of the UK as we can, we’d decided to stay out of London  on Richmond Hill, where on a winter-wonderland special offer we had been upgraded to a superior room  and a loo with a view! 

The Thames as seen from bathroom window

Then it was back home to the trauma of AS level exams, snow and travel chaos.

Belgium Day II

Our second day in Bruges dawned clear and sunny. Wrapping up against the cold we headed out for a canal cruise. Tourism is the mainstay of Bruges’s economy; it’s an attractive city, full of historical squares surrounded by shops selling Belgian lace, chocolates, waffles and beer. It’s a positive calorie fest with an overriding sense of dental decay.

After our canal cruise, we headed for the town’s one remaining brewery for a guided tour, and a free glass of beer.  Following the beer, and a long walk around the town, admiring the architecture and a spot of shopping, we headed back to our hotel to take advantage of its wellness centre. Hidden in the vaults was a spa with a small steam room and sauna, the opportunity to relax and take the weight off our feet.

Did I fancy a steam? Yes of course but not with the naked elderly European man who, despite wearing his swimming trunks into the relaxation room promptly took them off. Why? Nobody else did. We retreated instead to the Sauna, to be joined by a costume clad German couple nursing their baby monitor. We relaxed to the contented gurgling of the baby.

We noticed the young couple the next day at breakfast, still nursing their baby monitor as opposed to the baby. Fortunately there was no embarrassing encounter with the naked steamer, although of course, would we have recognised him anyway with his clothes on?

Remaining slightly paranoid about our lack of flourescent clothing, I insisted we keep to small side roads as we headed for the coastal town of Blankenberg, one of Belgium’s premier sea side resorts.  Wrapped up against the biting cold of the foggy North Sea we took a stroll along the pier, where with a grimace and a squint, it was just possible to imagine ourselves back in Santa Monica on a bad marine layer day.  On our return we found ourselves facing an entire photography class capturing the grey mood through a telescopic lens – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we don’t end up in someone’s portfolio in an arty little shot entitled Grim Couple on Bleak Pier or something depressingly similar.

 The Belgians might well have a reputation for being rather dour and a little dull, but they are definitely not lacking in a sense of humour.  Three large babies, part of a set of 15 created by the Czech sculptor David Cerny and originally placed along the sea wall to represent the town’s child friendliness, now adorn the wall of Blankenberg’s one casino, perched quite precariously at great height, and doing very little to reassure anyone about the town’s pledge to child safety.  

Blankenberg was definitely one of those places that would look better in the sunshine, but as for Bruges, I couldn’t fault it. The ideal spot for a romantic getaway – and talking of getaways, yes we did make it safely back to the UK without receiving a penalty for any traffic violations...

Under the Sea to Bruges

Extremely doubting the wisdom of leaving the teenager in charge following the Halloween debacle, it was with great trepidation that we set off for a romantic weekend in Bruges.

When our girls were little we holidayed in France nearly every year, usually heading to Brittany or the Vendee, an easy drive from the western ferry ports. The crossing used to be part of the fun.  Our holidays were planned with military like precision, routes researched, the car packed with hundreds of euro's and supplies for every eventuality; those continental motoring necessities of headlight converters, first aid kits and warning triangles safely stashed on board.

Now, when he's home on R&R and it’s just the two of us, we can be spontaneous, just hop in the car and go. We had decided to take the Channel Tunnel. Despite the fact that there is something slightly unnerving about travelling in an enclosed confined space under the sea, half an hour as a submariner in November seemed a preferable option to risking a choppy cross channel ferry. 

To pass the time on our short train journey, we munched on a sandwich and studied the RAC European motoring guide, where the words fluorescent jacket jumped out at us – a new legal driving requirement in both Belgium and France. Did we have one? No! Failure to possess a jacket, which has to be clearly visible in the back of your car, apparently carries an on the spot fine.

Before you could say moules and frites we were driving off the train in Calais and heading in a Bonnie and Clyde style of lawlessness towards the Belgium border. What if we were stopped by the police?  

Let’s just get to the hotel and all would be okay, I urged.  In an uncharacteristic stroke of forward planning Mr Romantic had phoned ahead and booked an underground parking space – our car, and its lack of jacket, would be safely hidden away, out of sight. That was when we discovered that not only did we not have our jacket, but we didn’t have directions to our hotel either. It was fine, he assured me, he’d stayed at the hotel before, he could remember his way through Bruges many tiny cobbled Medieval one way streets...

Circling the city twice, more through luck than judgement, we arrived. The car was deposited in the elevator to the garage, we were safely installed our luxurious room overlooking the canal.   He had redeemed himself, until he checked the website of the restaurant where we planned to spend the evening indulging in an expensive gastronomic delight, to discover it was cash only on Saturday nights. We headed out into the pouring rain to find an ATM.  So much for spontaneity....

Hengistbury Head

When we lived in LA we explored.  We wanted to experience and see as much of America as we could – of course it’s a vast country and in reality we saw very little. Los Angeles is relatively isolated on the west coast and when you realise if you want to see somewhere else you are looking at a 3 or 4 hour flight, the urge to travel rapidly loses its appeal.

But we did do out best to explore Southern California, piling into the car and setting off on numerous road trips. The new adventurous me is committed to seeing as much of the UK as possible with the same sense of intrepid awe.

Home for a week from Saudi, the husband and I set off for a romantic tryst down to a luxurious hotel near the Dorset beauty spot of Hengistbury Head – it’s a mere hour’s drive from where we now live. Back in the US we’d have gone for breakfast and been home for lunch – in the UK we went for the whole weekend.

Hengistbury Head is an area of geological interest and natural beauty at the entrance to Christchurch Harbour.  At the tip of the headland is a spit of sand that stretches across the harbour entrance – on this sandbank sits a straddle of brightly coloured beach-huts that exchange hands for many  thousands of pounds a piece – no running water, no electricity. Not really my idea of a holiday home but we’re talking total exclusivity. You can tell by the accents of of the teenagers sat swigging beer on the  verandas that you have to be posh and privileged to afford a beach hut here.

Of course, when you’re staying in a beach hut on a sandbar, you need sunshine. Sadly that weekend it was in short supply. In fact it was chucking it down for most of the first day – horizontal rain and a howling gale. This wasn’t umbrella weather – it was wellies, full-length waterproofs and a sou’wester weather. It was awful. Hengistbury’s one waterfront cafe was doing a roaring trade – in fact I think some people were probably planning to stay there all day.

There was a break in the clouds so we ran  - setting off on a speedy hike over the headland with its views that stretch all the way along the south coast from Keyhaven in the East, the Isle of Wight and the Needles in the South, and Bournemouth and Poole in the West.  

Typical of the British weather, by evening the sun had come out in force and there was time for a  stroll around Mudeford Quay on the opposite side of the Christchurch harbour before our three course dinner at our boutiquey style hotel.  Only an hour’s wait for the main course – I’m so American – an hour’s wait!! Goodness if this was Pasadena we’d have been in and out and back home in front of the TV.....

Life After LA

Me, missing California? No way. All that sunshine? Who needs it. It’s England in September and I’m in a vest top and cotton skirt; I’ve had lunch in the pub; a walk in the countryside. What more could I want?

I spent three years living in LA and I couldn’t wait to return to the UK.  I’d got fed up of that easy lifestyle in the land of celebrity and excess. I’d got fed up of hearing about Kim Kardashian and Kobe Bryant (Kobe who?) every morning on the local LA news. The novelty of living in a bubble and not knowing what was going on in the rest of the world had worn off. In the US there is no rest of the world – the world starts at the Pacific west coast and ends 2,500 miles later at the Atlantic.  Anything north of Wisconsin or south of San Diego – who needs to know?  Talk about insular!

But  now of course, back in that lush green countryside, all those things I craved as normal now seem rather strange. I hadn’t realised just how acclimitised I had become – not just to the mega convenience of US life, but I’d become a townie.  Now I’m back in the longed for countryside  and I realise I’ve only been to movies once in the last 8 weeks. I’ve only had one takeaway, I have to get in my car every time I need something from the grocery store. And it costs me £50( $80) to fill my car up with gas.

I used to complain I felt I didn’t fit in – the friends I left behind were the ones I felt comfortable and familiar with. Now I’m out of touch with everyone again; I’m the fish out of water and I have to muscle my way back in. Last time I lived here I was a working mum of two teenagers. Now I'm this lazy leisure lady with too much time on her hands. My old friends are all at work; they have their routine.   I’m the one in the chaos zone.

Do I get up? Do I stay in bed? No I’ll write another blog. 

You see everyone writes a blog about being an ex-pat, but nobody warns you what it's like when you come back - as an Ex-ex-pat, and to be honest it is a bit weird.  It's unsettling; what I used to always think of "home" is actually unfamiliar territory.

Of course it wont be as exciting as Life in the LA Bubble because well, this isn’t LA any more. This is  England. But I still do things. I go out. I go to events. I visit places. How hard can it be to come up with 500 irreverent words every week?  Time to suck it and see.