Coming To America

I’ve lived in the United States for 24 years now, another six and I’d have been here for as long as I lived in England. I’ll always be English but this place is home now and I have no plans to go back permanently. I do sometimes wonder how different my life would be if I’d stayed in London but in no scenario can I imagine it being better than it is now.

I never intended to make a life here, it just sort of happened. I first came in 1992 because the publishing company I worked for in London had an office in Clearwater, Florida and they asked me to go over there for a couple of months to work on a project. When that finished I returned to England for a few weeks but then they asked me if I wanted to come back for longer and offered me more money. At the time I had just broken up with my long-time girlfriend and most of my old friends had either moved out of London or were living in New York, so I thought “Fuck it, why not?” I moved out of my flat, stashed my books and records in my Dad’s basement, and left with no thought of how long I’d be gone for.

I didn’t think ahead because I was having such a good time. Compared to the daily slog of overcrowded and expensive London, Florida was a very easy place to live: sunny, cheap, with miles of beautiful beaches, and — I have to say — miles of beautiful girls. You know that bit in Love, Actually where the nerdy English bloke goes to America and finds himself fighting off the girls with a stick because they love his accent so much? That is only a slight exaggeration. I didn’t suddenly turn into Warren Beatty, but having an English accent did make you more interesting.

There was no internet to speak of back then which meant I was pretty much cut off from England. I kept up with the news from home via the occasional phone call from my mum (mostly about which famous person had died) or the large community of other expats in Florida who would gather in the many British pubs there to watch satellite football. One guy had his mum send over videos of TV shows which he’d convert to be playable on American televisions which was how I first saw Ali G and Alan Partridge. Otherwise I was out of the loop for what was going on back home for most of the 90s. Britpop, the death of Princess Diana, the Blair government, were all things I experienced from afar.

I did get homesick occasionally, like whenever I found a grocery store that stocked HP Sauce and chocolate biscuits, or a beautiful shot of the English countryside in Four Weddings & A Funeral that made me come over all wistful. But Florida had enough compensations to soften the pain of those feelings. I learnt to drive, lived in a nice apartment complex with a pool, and had a year-round tan.

For reasons too complicated to go into here I didn’t go back to London for three years, and I can still remember how I felt waiting for a cab home outside Victoria Station on the cold, grey morning I arrived. After so much time living in the big blue sky and open spaces of the Sunshine State, London felt very claustrophobic and it hit me that I would rather be back in Florida. Being away for so long made me see Britain through the eyes of an outsider and all things we’re perversely proud of — our negative attitude, the terrible service — seemed a bit depressing now. I hated thinking it but England felt small and shabby in comparison to America.

But even paradise can get boring after a while. Because the weather in Florida is pretty much the same unchanging season all year round, time goes by without you noticing so I drifted for a good part of the decade and I think lost my sense of who I used to be. My 30s basically became an extension of my 20s, there were lots of nights out and weekends lounging by a pool with little thought of the future. I know that sounds great — it was great! — but after a while the novelty of hot weather every day wears off and you even get fed up with girls saying they love your accent, especially when they ask you things like “Say something in English” (that happened). I was living in Tampa by this point which is a decent small city with some good bars and restaurants, but I was slowly yearning to be somewhere with a bit more culture again.

Luckily, just as this disillusionment was setting in I met a beautiful girl who not only was clever enough to not be all that impressed by my accent, but didn’t give me a puzzled look when I said something sarcastic either. Believe me, finding an intelligent girl in Florida who also gets your sense of humour is as hard as finding a decent cup of tea, so I married her tout suite.

Being married to an American meant I wasn’t tied to my work permit and could go where I wanted (the first question in our Green Card interview was “Has the marriage been consummated?”), and like me she was keen to live somewhere else with a bit more substance. So — to cut another tedious story short — we moved to Boston in 2002. Living here is about the closest you can get to living in Europe while still being in America. It has history, culture, old buildings, narrow streets, and decent public transport (in Florida only poor people use the bus) — and the supermarkets sell HP Sauce.

If you’d told me back in the 1980s that I’d be living in America with an American wife and two American children I’d have thought you were off your rocker. I had the knee-jerk prejudice against America of most left-wing Europeans and looked down my nose at what I thought was it’s tacky commercialism, lack of history, and awful politics. But living here made me see what a lot of patronizing, ill-informed nonsense that was. America isn’t perfect by any means, especially if you’re sick or poor, and there are plenty of idiots here (I once got punched in the face by a drunk redneck in a Florida bar who said to me “If you cain’t unnerstand what ahm sayin’ git the fuck out of ma cuntry!”) but you can find idiots everywhere in the world and England has hardly covered itself in glory lately when it comes to politics and culture. I still cringe at how pushy and demanding Americans can sometimes be, but I think Brits could probably learn to be more assertive themselves. We do put up with some awful shit in the name of not making a fuss. Free coffee refills in restaurants is another great American idea we should adopt too.

I still have my English accent despite two-plus decades here, but my diction is a lot cleaner and crisper now because Americans have a hard time understanding if you don’t talk like you live (upstairs) at Downton Abbey. My old Sarf London brogue and slang now only comes out when I’m talking to another Brit. My vocabulary has changed too, I say elevator instead of lift, sidewalk instead of pavement etc. But the moment I pronounce tomato as “tom-ay-toe” is the day I go back to England.

Download: Far, Far Away – Slade (mp3)