Why I Could Never Live in the UK (again)

Eleanor Cording-Booth wrote this piece for House & Garden and asked me to contribute. Unavoidably, once my fingers hit the keyboard, they kept going and the poor lady ended up with far more than I think she’d hoped for. It was clear my next Substack was emerging, so, I’m ’finishing’ it here… 

Growing up as an expat child, you somewhat lose a sense of identity. Until the age of 16, I’d actually never lived in the UK, but as far as my response to anyone who asked where I was from, I was ‘British’. So, when I finally moved to England for my last two years of school, university and a short London life post-education, I was keen to cling on to as much Britishness as possible. For an unexplained reason, the UK has always been ‘home’, despite my (lack of) residency. 

For me, calling England home represented heritage (it’s where my family is from), it’s my mother tongue, I went to English schools so I learned English traditions (hymns!), and for someone who didn’t live anywhere too long, it gave me an anchor point. I was, I am, proud to be British - and if I’m being really patriotic, I still get a very special feeling walking off the plane at Heathrow Terminal 5 (T-minus three hours - I’m writing this from the plane). 

At ‘home’, you can be lured into a false sense of immediate ease – the language, your familiarity with how the country works, your friends are there, Waitrose(!). It was only when I moved to Hong Kong and later returned to London in an attempt to put down roots and build a life, that I realised home isn’t just where you come from; you make your home. Not only in the physical sense but also in the life you create for yourself. Now, very happily ensconced in New York, it’s taken me moving here to realise why my attempts to move ‘home’ to London, and that ‘ease’, didn’t feel like they fit. 

If I dissect this a little more fully - as an expat, you’re taught a new way of living. You’re a transplant in a city where you have to start again, you have to be social, you have to put yourself out there (physically and emotionally). A lot of the time, a relocation overseas is for a job where there are different cultural working practices, so you’re forced to change. Starting again, topped with that expat sense of impermanence, brings with it an appetite for exploration and a keenness to get to know your new surroundings – it awakens a ‘get up and out’ attitude. When you’ve been hiking mountains and diving off boats, returning home changed and open to new experiences, the frustration lies in that others don’t always have the same mindset. 

I don’t think there will ever be a third attempt to live in the UK (sorry, Mum). Just last weekend, I was hosting dinner for a fellow Englishman in Hudson when he too proclaimed the same thing. It’s the lack of adventure, the weather, and dare I say it, the predictability of a life lived in England that makes me not want to live there. It means resorting back to Sunday and Monday nights being out of bounds for socialising and the realisation that friends are too settled and happy with their routines to want to share in the extraordinary experiences and adventures I hoped we’d have together. Those ‘home comforts’ I so badly craved whilst living abroad the first time were suddenly the reason I wanted to get the hell out of there again. There’s no right or wrong, but I’ve made a different life now and the place where I feel at ‘home’ isn’t where I expected it to be.

There is no identity crisis left in me now. I am British, yes, but Hudson, New York is home. In the physical sense, we have a space to call ours; a house to make our home. In the emotional sense, we’re living the best versions of us - a blend of an expat outlook but with a special anti-expat feeling of permanence, and a group of friends who all seem to embrace and celebrate it with us. 

And so, an ode to the place I now proudly call home, and the reason I love it so: 

That every night of the week is a chance to do something. Nowhere harbours Sunday scaries like Londoners do. 

That nothing is too much. If people want to do something, they’ll make every effort to do it. New Yorkers are anything but lazy.

People celebrate each other here - whether you’re more successful or they’re more successful, success is spoken of, often. 

Everyone is different. No one went to my school. No one asks me what school I went to. There’s no pre-conceived versions of me I need to be. 

We dream. There’s so much potential here.

I never thought I’d say this. Americans chat! You will start chatting to a stranger in a restaurant. You will give someone you just met your number. You will tell someone walking down the street you like their outfit. 

The sun shines. A lot. 

And my favourite part? Contrary to what the movies might depict, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘bitch’ in earshot. Maybe I’m naive, but being able to be blissfully unaware is what being ‘home’ is all about. 

But, New York, until you get a Waitrose, there’s always one thing the UK will have over you.