winter | Desperate Housewife: From America to England

My sources in the land that is Eng across the waters have told me they are experiencing something called ‘Spring’. That must be very lovely for them.

Bootiful!

Mother Nature has so far decided to keep Spring from us in this part of America, and instead is ‘springing’ us little surprises in the form of freezing rain, snowstorms and wind chill factors, the likes of which I have never experienced before.

My parents back in the UK Skyped me the other day and showed me the sun shining, flowers emerging from the soil and I could hear birds tweeting about the joys of spring (that is they were singing, not sending social media messages).

Here on the East Coast, during the Winter of my Discontent, the sun shines, sure, but not long enough to melt the snow that is currently on the ground before the next dump comes along; I haven’t seen a flower in about five months; and I suspect the birds I hear are probably having a right old moan about the weather to each other too.

‘But it’s cold in England,’ cry my friends. Oh, you have NO IDEA!

This.

Number One Thing I shan’t miss from the East Coast of the USA: Effing Winters!!!!

I can’t wait to reacquaint with that crazy little thing called Spring! Never more shall I cast you aside impatiently for the Summer!

This time in two weeks, I’ll be at my parents’ house, and, since it will be 5pm in the UK, I suspect we’ll be having a bit of my mother’s homemade banana cake and a cup of tea. Or they’ll be having a G&T no doubt …. 😉

Cup of tea British-stylie

Yep, I’m heading on back to Blightly for a flying 10 day visit mid-January.

The reason?

Well, there are several……I haven’t been back since August 2013, January is a really pants month here in Maryland because there are generally 12 snow days out of 20 so Harry won’t be missing any school, my mum really wants us to pop over, it will be cool to see my friends and family, I have a job interview, I want to play netball at least twice, and…..I’m curious to see what it will feel like and look like. and I really want to get Harry engaged in the English way of life a little bit more so that the changes don’t come as a great big shock to him.

Just this morning I said to him ‘Have you ever had British fish and chips?’ and he looked at me and wrinkled his freckly nose and said, ‘What?’ So I explained the phenomenon that is British fish and chips, and now I really hope that they come in some form of newspaper from wherever we get them from, because that was the bit that appealed most to him….!

Proper job!

I also told him that I had had a dream that I was back in the UK and that it was really raining hard and I was driving on the wrong side of the road and there were lots of cars coming towards me. Let’s face it, both those things are possibly going to happen at some point…. ;). I’m sure the former is a certainty.

My top questions upon my return are these:

1. Will England look beautiful and appealing? When I went back in August it did look gorgeous, but that’s the summer, so I’m not sure if it will feel a bit gloomy in January.

England looked gorgeous in August

2. Will I just fit back in? What are my friends doing and have they changed? I’ve had such a crazy two and half years in the States, I wonder very much if it will feel just like I’ve never been away.

3. What new things will I spot in my hometown? Are there new restaurants and shops and stuff, and how will it feel?

How will it have changed?

4. Will I feel like Gulliver in Lilliput when I go to my house? Our UK house is much smaller than our USA one. Much. I often say, though, how much I miss our house in the UK because a) it was easier to clean and b) we didn’t have to YELL to each other from room to room – we could just talk. How pleasant. Here’s an anecdote from when I was six about how things appear to look bigger or smaller depending on what you’re used to. I went to Canada to stay with my aunt and uncle and they had a big Red Setter called Sunny. I was with Sunny for two weeks, and when I returned home my spaniel-lab mutts Bess and Babs looked really dinky and small because I was used to the great bigness of Sunny. Equally, when I visited Liverpool and spent some time with my great aunt’s terrier Mitzi, when I returned home Bess and Babs felt like giants. You work it out.