I’m not certain the exact moment when it happened, but at some point I think I might have become a Londoner. It isn’t just that I can mentally work out the way to walk or cycle to the various places that I know in London while waiting for the bus. In fact, I probably still know New Bedford and Providence at least as well as London. It isn’t that my brain first goes to words like ‘rubbish’ and ‘whilst’, or that I have to think for a minute to remember that US therapists call ‘zimmer frames’ ‘walkers’, or that I am equally bad at finding grocery items in both countries. It isn’t even that I call there home when I am here, and here home when I’m there. I pause whenever I come to the ‘@’ in typing. The last time I went home, the salad arrived before I remembered it would when we went out to eat. During my Christmas holiday/vacation, I become extremely restless when I can’t work on my personal projects. When step off the pavement/sidewalk, I automatically look over my right shoulder. I suppose it is a sort of critical mass of those things. At some point, there were enough of them together that made me a Londoner.
I recently came to the realisation that after two years (and still counting) of yearning to move back to the US, that I will actually miss this place. I know I won’t miss it as much as I miss my own country. But I will miss it. The food will definitely be one thing I miss. I remember when I said something like this to a friend of ours during a prior visit to the US and she was quite surprised. I am not taking about British cuisine. I am not bashing British cuisine either. The bland factor is something that England and New England have in common. The best thing about living in London is that we have the world at our fingertips. And while that is true of any big city, the flavours of London are quite different from those of the large US cities due to Commonwealth influence. So for example, while home-made hummus still blows away the store bought stuff. The store stuff here almost tastes like hummus and bares no resemblance to the barely edible swill that is passed off as hummus in US stores. And the same can be said of the other cuisines as well. So there is good eating. And there is loads of cask (or real) ale here, which have so much flavour, I am tempted to classify them as food rather than drink.
Although I frequently berate the British tendency to acquiesce, I already miss the standing on the right and walking on the left that carries over from the Tube to shopping malls and other semipublic establishments with escalators when we visit home. We have met some incredible people here… and that has been quite a surprise. The city gives off a lonely, and sort of standoffish air. But let me tell you, it is not short of kind, compassionate, giving people.
I am not sure what other actually things I will miss. But when I thing back to the people I knew back home who had move their from another country, I remember them occasionally talking about feeling like a foreigner in both countries. I have a feeling I may understand on a more personal level when I finally return.
