ABSOLUTE BEGINNER: THE ADVENTURES OF A MIDDLE-AGED UK NEWBIE

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Epilogue: The Citizen
Part 2: How British Am I?

[Blogger’s Note: I was born and raised in the United States, moved to Canada for love in my early 40s and then relocated again, well into my 50s, to the southern coast of England with my British-born spouse. This has been a series about my sometimes amusing and frequently embarrassing exploits as an expat.]

How British am I? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself now that I’ve reached the end of this blog series on life in the UK from a newcomer’s perspective. After residing in beautiful, occasionally baffling Britain for eight years, I’m clearly no longer a newbie, but every day and in countless different ways I’m reminded of how much more there is to learn about my adopted home. So I’m not quite sure how far along I am on the path to reaching peak Britishness. Getting my citizenship in the summer of 2023 certainly helped, but I worry that obstacles like my flat American accent and near total ignorance of the Two Ronnies’ comedic oeuvre keep holding me back. 

Which leaves me in a kind of national identity limbo because my connection to my birthplace grows weaker the longer I’m away. This really hit home during a return trip to the States for Thanksgiving last autumn.  [Blogger’s Note Deux: I know, I know, I really should be more timely with these posts. I mean, I published part one of this epilogue nearly a year ago! What can I say? The muse, she is fleeting. Plus, it’s been a bumpy 2024 so far.] After a five year absence, due to the pandemic and the travel hassles it left in its wake, I felt strangely out of place in the US, or at least in the sprawling swath of suburban Georgia where I spent the holiday with family. Everyone I spoke to sounded odd, that is to say, just like me. Not one person trilled “lovely-jubbly” or “toodle pip” in a charmingly sing-song lilt like they do in my little village beside the English Channel. And everything was miles apart. I shelled out $30 for a cab ride from the Atlanta airport to the “convenient” Airport Radisson, where I stayed the first night after my plane got in late. Walking to any destination was out of the question, and even when I accompanied family members in the car to their nearest shopping centre, the drive seemed to take forever. And once we got there, I was reminded of how absurdly huge American parking lots are. In fact, the only substantial walking I did during the entire trip was from far-flung parking spaces to the doors of whatever big box store we were visiting. (I think I see the Target entrance somewhere in the distance…) I’ve become so accustomed to the compactness of our English environs, where we can stroll to dozens of shops and restaurants in less than 10 minutes, that the vast distances between places and the excessive expanse of commercial spaces in the States kind of shocked me.

And speaking of shocks, the TV news was terrifying! Again, I’ve been lulled into a false sense of all being right with the world by light dispatches from southern England on purloined baby donkeys and biscuit throwing competitions.  I’d blissfully blocked out the onslaught of mayhem broadcast breathlessly on the American news channels, like the report on police finding a decapitated head in a burned-out meth lab in rural North Georgia. Nightmares! At least I didn’t see much of the news this trip, as it was football season and spending Thanksgiving with my sports-loving family meant the TV stayed tuned to whatever game was on. While the tackling and grunting on-screen was met with equal ferocity by the cheering or groaning from the sofa, my mind wandered to what I was missing on British telly. I yearned for a quaint murder mystery set in a picturesque locale, someplace where in real life the murder rate is virtually nil. But reality is overrated! Give me a body sprawled on the town common or on some windswept moor or at the bottom of a cliff, and an implausibly clever amateur sleuth who pieces together clues leading directly to the culprit. (The police, of course, are perpetually hapless in these stories.) And as the football players hurled themselves violently at each other in all-too-vivid HD, I also thought fondly of Britain’s gentle, non-concussive competition shows like The Great Pottery Throw-Down and The Great British Bake-Off, where nice people make nice things and hardly anyone is ever carried off on a stretcher.  When I first wrote about British telly in 2018, it was to fret about all the references that were like gibberish to a new arrival. But while I’m still flummoxed whenever famous snooker players are mentioned, and, let’s face it, always will be, my reservoir of cultural references, as well as my love for the programmes, gets deeper by the day. 

Maybe the biggest change that I noticed during my Stateside sojourn was my attitude towards tipping. When I puzzled over tipping in Britain in this post, I was still in the throes of my very American compulsion to lavishly reward bartenders, servers and taxi drivers, and was taken aback by the casual attitude towards gratuities that Brits have. The very prospect of not tipping filled me with anxiety back then. During my Thanksgiving vacay, however, I noticed the tables had turned. The level of gratuity on top of whatever service I was paying for seemed astronomical. For that $30 taxi trip from the airport, I tipped six bucks and the cabbie reacted as if that was the bare minimum he expected. In the UK I’ve become very fond of the standard practice of rounding up to the nearest pound for a cab fare, meaning the cabbie’s tip averages around 50p. So sensible!

The hand-outs kept flowing right to the end of my stay. At the airport waiting for my return flight to the UK, I treated myself to a glass of white wine at one of the soulless terminal lounges. The cost for a small-ish serving of pinot grigio was $18! Absolute highway – er, runway robbery. I only had a $20 bill left in US currency, so I tipped the bartender the remaining $2, figuring that was a decent remuneration for merely pouring a glass of wine and sliding it in my direction. Her unimpressed eye-roll in response suggested that she considered my largesse to be rather puny. I couldn’t wait to get back to my boozy, boisterous British pubs, where it’s customary to not tip at all if you order at the bar.

One thing did connect me immediately, and deliciously, to my American roots: the divine Thanksgiving banquet my sister served. Alas, there’s just no British equivalent to the Thanksgiving feast. I mean, the Brits do lovely Christmas dinners, of course, and as I wrote in this post from 2018, I adore their hearty Sunday roasts. Yet to my mind – and stomach – you can’t beat a bountiful autumnal spread like the one my sister cooked up, which included many of the favourites she and I were raised on: honey-glazed ham, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, soft rolls, and the indispensable closer – pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert. (As a bonus, a delectably moist loaf of pumpkin bread for snacking. With more whipped cream, of course.) It was all so yummy and comforting and familiar that it almost made the football on the TV bearable. Almost. 

It took that nostalgic meal to remind me that I am still a Yank deep down at my core, no matter where I live in the world. But I’ve agreeably immersed myself in the British way of life because it’s just easier and more polite than remaining obstinately an outsider.  Besides, I can’t find pumpkin pie for love nor money here, and making one from scratch seems like a lot of work when I have easy access to such sweet English faves as sticky toffee pudding and crumble with custard. Also, I happen to really like the ways of the locals and I feel very comfortable and at home here. How British am I? Let’s say moderately British, with a chance of heavy, sustained Britishness developing in the forecast. (The weather reference should earn me a few more Brit points, no? It is their favourite subject after all.) But here’s the thing. I also lived in Canada for years prior to moving to the UK and was married there and gained citizenship as well, so I like to think of myself as partly Canadian. And obviously there’s no denying my American roots. So I guess when it comes down to it, to rather loosely paraphrase Donnie and Marie Osmond, I’m a little bit o’ three countries, and hopefully still a little bit rock ‘n’ roll.

The Rest of the Series

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