There are many of us who have moved “abroad” – Cymbeline to the Caribbean, Bravo to Russia, Nobby to China, Bearsy and Boadicea (assuming you’re not a native Sheila :-)) and CH Luke to Australia, Bubbles and Dickie Doo-Dah to France, Janus to Denmark and yours truly to Portugal, to name but a few. In the other direction there are brave souls such as Shermeen and the sadly missed Petite Marie who moved to Blighty and who in their own way are also living “abroad”.
In Portuguese culture there is a concept of saudades, which roughly translates as an exile’s longing for the mother country. In Germany they talk of heimat – the homeland, but I know of no such cloying sentiment about England’s green and pleasant land, except that certain expats still refer to the tender ministrations of a bucket-shop airline as “going home”, which to me shows entirely the wrong mindset. For me, going home now is always, instinctively and without fail, a black cab to the airport and a one-way flight back to The Cave and the wide hillsides of deepest Portugal. Don’t get me wrong – I shall always be a proud Englishman and at some point in the future there will be a little bit of a Portuguese mountain that will be forever England, but I have no desire ever to return and, quite frankly, feel little affinity with the land I left.
So, how’s it going for you? Have you settled well into your adopted country, learned the language, made friends and adapted to your new circumstances? More importantly. do you ever even think about the profound step you took (for make no mistake it was a very profound step), or do you still retain saudades for your home country, a stranger in a strange land?
OZ
Boadicea's Chariot 
Hi OZ,
I was just about to trot off to bed when your post appeared – your first here, I believe?
You raise an interesting topic.
I’ve been in Australia for about 20 years, I’ve worked in Australian industry for most of it, a job which involved many visits to ADF sites all over the country, so I’ve seen more of the place than most who were born here. Boadicea and I have taken a keen interest in politics and have voted in many State and Federal elections, and we’ve lived in 5 different State and Territory capitals.
Me, I’m an Aussie. My only ties with the UK are my son and my dear old Dad, with lesser ties to Boadicea’s family remnants there. The country itself, and its contemporary customs and culture, and its politics, are incredibly alien to me when I visit – and when I read what Poms post here and elsewhere. I do not recognise the place as the England I was born and educated in. No saudades for me! The very mindset is almost incomprehensible.
Boadicea, on the other hand, will remain British in spirit no matter how long she lives in Oz. She admits it’s not how she remembers it when she visits, but emotionally she’ll never change. Gallons of saudades in her handbag! Megalitres, even.
Hiya, Bearsy – Yes, my first blog here – been finding my way around for the past few days and doing a lot of reading on your blog and elsewhere. I’ve only ever blogged on MyT and here, but now I’ve found my feet I’m sure to burst into print again soon and bore you all senseless. 🙂
I probably feel the same way about Portugal as you do about Australia and I have to admit I have more saudades these days for Kangaroo Point (where A Zangada and I lived for three years) and Brisbane’s CBD than I do for anywhere in the UK.
Sleep well and give Boadicea a cyber-hug from me.
OZ
Hello OZ, and welcome, I’m an ex-pat Welshman and the word in welsh is hiraeth (roughly homesickness) as Cymbeline will know. I’ve been away since 1969 and a US citizen since 1986.
My thoughts of the homeland are closer now to those of a visitor than a subject.
I travel a lot and during my frequent visits to the UK I am assumed to be an American visitor by everyone but those family members still living there and even by some of the younger members of that group. My time in the towns and villages of my youth are marked by my complete anonymity, in twenty years I have not met more than five people I knew back in the sixties.
I have few, if any, regrets about my exodus, first to Canada then to the USA. My homes here in the eastern US are exactly that to me and returning here is now my homecoming. I think many ex-pats have a fondness for their place of origin that is often not shared by those who remained there, frequently in conversation I find myself defending a more sentimental view of the UK against the residents criticism. Maybe I have forgotten what it means to be British.
I’ve been living abroad for over ten years now and very rarely feel nostalgia in its true sense. Missing my kids sometimes, yes. But if I lived in England I’d do that too. Occasionally I could murder for a pint of best bitter in a particular pub in the Derbyshire Dales. I’d like the chance to ‘do’ a rugby match or a day at Edgbaston now and then, but I have fond memories of times when I did go and that’s enough. It’s a cliché but home IS where the heart is.
Oz
Well said, move on get a life is my stock answer.
We of course invented the phrase ‘Whenwees”
It applied to every Rhodesian that I ever met, they would always start a conversation with “when we were in Rhodesia……….”
(Apologies to Sipu, who has never done the ‘whenwee thing with me)
😉
Low Wattage – The difference is that you have been away a lot longer than me and that I retain a British passport, neither of which is any reflection on your own choices as I could never be mistaken for a Portuguese national anyway.
I am totally in accord with everything you have written from “My thoughts of the homeland are closer now to those of a visitor than a subject” onwards, particularly the bit about your homes in the eastern US. Even after only nine years away (three in Australia and six here) I think the UK has changed beyond all recognition and that we, the exiles, have a less realistic (more sentimental?) view of what the place really has become the longer we are away.
OZ
Janus – Oddly enough I had to visit the UK only a couple of weeks ago (see the MyT blog for this) and I instructed my brother, who met me at the airport, to drive directly to the nearest pub where I could get a pint of decent, hand pulled bitter and jolly tasty it was too. It’is the only thing I miss.
I ended up the next night in a small working mens’ club which still had mild on draught (!), a gallon optic of Yate’s white(ish) wine and bottles of Mann’s stout – the ones with the red labels – on the shelf behind the bar. Happy daze!!
OZ
Interesting Oz: I cannot comment because I have rarely spent any amount of time abroad. I certainly prefer your attitude and that of the rest of the posters to the whinging ex-pats who have nothing good to say about the country they choose to live in. Very ungrateful, in my opinion.
I have to say though, that I prefer to live in the UK, and although I can imagine living somewhere else if my family were to leave, I think I would be very homesick at first. I’m not sure I would really like to have to learn a completely new language either, I think it becomes harder, the older you become. I’m also not so keen as I used to be on extremes of temperature, either, which we don’t normally have to put up with here.
OZ, yes. I visit Blighty a couple of times a year to catch up with my family’s activities. One unmissable feature is the first pint with my brother-in-law.
Arrers, if I dare to generalise (which is against my religion), my experience of expats in groups has been dire. ‘Home’ is either better tha anything ‘here’ or the worst place imaginable. In either case the reply is obvious.
Afternoon,. Soutie. Are you born SA or a British export, as a matter of the most casual interest? 🙂 I am “moving on” and have no wish to be involved in the “whenwees” thing. Where I live, I can go a week or more without speaking any English and even the kittens only respond to Portuguese commands, goddammit!
OZ
Ha ha Ara 🙂
“not so keen as I used to be on extremes of temperature,” so minus 17 to 70 (perhaps 80 on a good day?) is okay is it?
I’ve no idea what those numbers are in centigrade, here the scale is 10-35ºC
Oz, you certainly don’t strike me as a ‘whenwe’
No comment on your question though 😉
Hi Soutie: I just thought of the -17C as I typed that, but that was a little unusual. 🙂 It doesn’t ever get as hot as Queensland, for example or as cold as the Boston area.
Well, who on earth would want to live in either Queensland or Boston? (Ooops 🙄 )
I agree, Janus, my experience is about the same. Pretty dreadful bunch sometimes, particularly if they form their own little enclaves and, like the ones I know in Spain, have lawns, try to grow English flowers, don’t speak a word of the language and demand suitcases full of “essentials” which they can’t buy locally and cannot live without. This is accompanied by irritating phone calls about how wonderful the weather is, but they come back here in the summer because it’s “too hot”.
They claim there are no shops in Spain so they have to come back and least four times a year for extended shopping trips for clothes and etc.
Oi!!
OZ
Araminta – Like I said, colonials to a man, and to a memsahib! They think Fawlty Towers is a documentary.
OZ
I lived in South Africa as a child (1960’s) and in Australia in the 80’s for a year (first year of marriage) and have been settled here in Oxfordshire for the last 20 years, with trips to both SA and Oz in the last 8 years (each 5-6 weeks at a time)
In my opinion every country has a side that can not be replicated elsewhere. I love each of these countries for different reasons, but none is ‘better’ than the other.
I am content here, on the whole and completely happy at times. On each of the trips I had perhaps more ‘episodes’ of intense happiness squashed into a short period, than would be usual… but then I was on holiday! once you start working in a place it becomes your ‘normal’ and the edge is taken off the experience, perhaps?
It was very much my choice, Oz, for all sorts of reasons, but yes, Bilby lived in Australia for twenty five years, so her choices were different.
The choice of where you live, Oz, is entirely a personal one and people leave their country of origin for all sorts of reasons, I doubt that running away is applicable for most of them. I think it takes a certain spirit of adventure and adaptability. Those who fail to adapt probably don’t have the the right attitude in the first place or haven’t done their homework, perhaps.
I was born in the UK, moved to Rhodesia when I was only two and went back to England for the first time in my late teens. After that I went back and forth. My parents were very British (English dad Scottish mum.) I was raised thinking that Britain was home and at some point I would go back there. I had some wonderful times there in my late teens and early twenties but Africa always called me back. I would have stayed in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe had I any faith that Mugabe was going to deliver the goods. I left and went to the UK then US back to the UK and then here, with a few detours in between. The US was fun, but I could not see myself becoming American, nor could I see myself becoming Australian when I went there. I did try living in the UK, but I just could not do it. The last time I was there, I actually felt ill when I stepped off the plane. I could not wait to get home. And for all its faults, Africa is my home. I cannot see myself living anywhere else. I am still British, because I do not believe that Africa will ever really accept the white man. We don’t live here, we stay here indefinitely. They can and probably will kick us out at some point, but until then it is wonderful here. (I speak for myself, not for Soutie.)
BTW, Soutie, whenwe were in Rhodesia, the first whenwees to arrive, came from Kenya. I venture to suggest that there are probably a few SA whenwees in Perth right now.
You are probably dead right 😉
I was born in North London, lived in the East End of London and grew up there until moving out to suburbia in my early teens. My parents had very little except each other and an honest job. I have travelled the world and seen many things, but there is still an indefinable quality about England.
My great-grand-parents came from Scotland and I have a real affinity with it too but I still consider myself English and are proud to be so.
England is a fractured nation. What I have in the past controversially named a ‘Nation of B*stards’ and if you consider the diversity of cultures of history and tribal distinctions, the celts, irish, scots, norwegians, saxons, jutes, angles, romans, normans, and so on, you can see why this might be true. We struggle with a united national identity and it only comes together in times of common crisis.Britain is the last feudal nation on earth, yet the most innovative, the most controlling and yet also the most open. It allows critism yet ignores it, runs things so badly yet rewards incompentence and can’t win any of the sports we invented.
There is however a strong sense of indefinable pride. A stubborness and of course an Englishness that exists in fry-ups, Sunday roasts, the green countryside and diverse landscapes of the nation, the dynamics of London and the sophistication of society that I have not encountered anywhere else. Without it, I would feel lost. For me the UK and London in particular is indefinably home. Where I grew up may have been taken over by ghettos and ocupied by foreign migrants, my past scattered to the four winds, but there is still something about England, the green and pleasant land that says ‘I’m home’. For me it is more friends and family and a sense of familirity, like an old pair of comfortable walking boots.
“England, my England.”
I hate it, I loathe it, but I love it too with all my heart, until the moment is betrays me.
Araminta – Bilby lived in Australia for 25 years??? Get the short legged, long wellied one out here right now to give us her impressions.
Pseu – Good comment. 🙂
Sipu – There seems to be something unique about Rhodesian/SA descendents that makes them especially loyal to their roots.
OZ
Paul – Most evocative writing. Thank you. There was a series on the telly a year or two ago called “Mongrel Nation”, hosted by Eddy Izzard, which delved into English social history and demonstrated the wide (and often unknown) diversity of our national roots. Fascinating stuff, particularly the stubborness behind the tolerance which makes a stereotypical Brit, or at least used to.
OZ
Oz, Yes, I think different people definitely have a different perspective of Britishness. It isn’t all ‘Cotswolds’ and ‘Cream Teas’.
I am fortunate/unfortunate enough to have seen all sides of British society and the big differences in cultural and regional divides.
It is a cold, damp island, but it is still home and nowhere is better on a summer’s day in a bright meadow. No quakes, fires or tsunami; and of course, warm beer is our speciality too.
Paul – I’m Scouse and Lancastrian by upbringing and will always be immensely proud of my roots. Nothing can or will change that, but it’s just that I can’t live in the UK any more. The Cave and its environs offer so many more experiences.
OZ
I knew this was a familiar title.
Oz, I saw a programme about central Portugal not too long ago. It was about Cork growing and the natural habitats. I have to say the place looked idyllic. I must check it out sometime.
WTF!! – I shall sue immediately for breach of copyright and intellectual wassname.
OZ
LOL! Takes me back a bit.
Thanks for the hug – have one back!
Bearsy is right, I will be English to my last breath, but I am sufficiently realistic to know that I would probably not be able to resettle there. It is far too different from the place I left.
When I’m on the plane going ‘home’ I get a lump in my throat and landing at Heathrow is always emotional. I run around like a lunatic trying to catch up with family and whatever bit of research I’m in the middle of – but after about two months I know that it’s time to go ‘home’ again.
I can best sum my feelings up by saying that sometimes I feel like a stranger in two lands…
Araminta – try being short in this land of giants and you’ll know why I hit M&S the minute I land… 🙂
What you have said here reminds me of an aunt who emigrated to South Africa after the war. She now lives in the States, but she says that Africa got into her soul and she has never been able to remove it.
Yes, Boadicea: I take your point but there are always, I am sure things I would miss, if I lived abroad. I love going to France, for the wine and the cheese, but that’s my point. No where is perfect, just different. I bet the good outweighs the occasionally longing for Marks and Sparks 🙂
Boadicea – I know what you mean. One of the most personally moving experiences of my life was to hear Paul Simon’s Graceland, an album I have listened to many times and thought I knew well, for the first (and only) time in a friend’s garden in downtown Maputo. Absolutely totally different.
OZ
Araminta – With the best will in the world there is so much more to emigration than Frog plonk and mediocre cheese. 🙂
Where’s Bilby and why TF was Ethel roaming MyT earlier? Can’t one of you keep an eye on The Key?
OZ
Sounds great. I bet you have some wonderful nature photography opportunities. Do you have Eagles there? I seem to recall something about birds of prey too. Lots of exotic African species migrate there too.
We have eagles, honey buzzards and suchlike that migrate through Portugal on their way to and from Africa each season. Magnificant!
OZ
Hang on Oz: of course there is, but that’s my point. I don’t want to live in France but I can appreciate the occasional visit. Bilby is lurking; Eff has gone feral, and is completely out of control, but with my blessing. Order will be restored in due course, but I understand your concern. xx
Araminta – I want to hear of your, and Bilby´s, experiences of living abroad and your impressions of “home” while you were away.
Eff never made it to the planned and eagerly anticipated assignation at Lisbon airport the other week. I am both hurt and concerned.
OZ
Araminta – The worst type of British “expat” is the colonial one who should have been abandonned in Tanzania (or wherever) in the mid-fifties – “You there, waiter, bring me a beer!” – this in English after spending twenty years in the country.
You say you “prefer” to live in the UK, a choice which I do respect as long as it was a proper choice, but it’s a big world out there. Did not Bilby spend some time in Australia? The bit I wrote in the post about a “profound step” was a challenge to those Inseln-Affen who write casually about us running away.
OZ
Paul – There are worse places to be than central Portugal. Lots of cork trees to rub against and plenty of wild boar, sheep and suchlike to sustain a wolf’s appetite. It can be hot as Hades in the summer with temperatures in the mid-40s, or cold as a witch’s whatsit in winter (such as now) when the only good idea is to stay curled up in The Cave in front of a roaring log fire.
OZ
We have not lived in another country for a very long period, so Britain is still “home”. A couple of years in the States did convince us that the USA was not for us. As Araminta says, spending a lot of time in a country does open your eyes to the fact that it has defects just as Britain does. But I think it is indeed a question of “where the heart is” and since the children and now grandchild are in England, that’s home. Terrible thing for a Scot to say, eh JM?
Hello, OZ.
What a great blog and thread! I’m too tired to make an attempt at a comment at the moment and this brings up all sorts of conflicting feelings … will have a go tomorrow, I hope.
🙂
Hi again, OZ
I moved to Canberra with my then fiancé (Australian) in 1978 and we were married a few months later. I liked Canberra very much; the weather was to my liking and I was happy with my new family, friends and job. It was very exciting being in a new (and definitely foreign) country and didn’t understand, at the time, the effects of being separated from my family long term.
My husband died a year later and I went home for a while. Most people expected me to stay in England and, with hind sight, settling back in England may have been a better choice for me. I am of the Boadicea frame of mind, “I can best sum my feelings up by saying that sometimes I feel like a stranger in two lands”; having lived half my life in one country and half in another, I feel neither Australian nor English.
I do love Australia and sometimes long for it. Tearing myself away from Australia was one of the hardest things I have done, but it has worked out well and I enjoy being with my family and getting to know my nieces. However, I miss my property in Queensland and its wildlife, and the almost seamless transition from indoors to outdoors. I take walks in my mind’s eye from the house to the creek and furnish them with memories of my dogs, bright parrots and the soft thump of kangaroos moving through the bush. I expect I will always miss it.
On occasion I don’t just wade in saudades (in my long green wellies), I wallow!
I haven’t seen much of England really. Sights from the window on a fairly recent train journey, via Birmingham, were so totally depressing that I gave thanks for living in a beautiful country area.
One of my first impressions on returning to England; so much litter!
Bilby and Sheona – Good afternoon and apologies for the late reply; I’ve been away on a lope up North for the past few days.
Sheona – It is very true that living in any country, as opposed to just visiting, exposes all its faults, but I am not so sure that cubs and grandcubs do (or even should) dictate where the heart lies. Cub No.2, for example, is presently contemplating a job offer in Saudi, a country I have never visited. I don’t think I could ever have saudades just because he might be there. Anyway, the grandcubs visit The Cave every summer and there are plenty of photographs and Skypes in between. My heart is firmly fixed now in Portugal.
Bilby – My sincere condolences. No wonder you have left such pertinent comments on some of my posts. Please accept cyber-hugs and a howl from the Lone Wolf.
A Zangada was born in Yorkshire, but lived most of her life abroad including the Caribbean, Singapore and South Africa before falling for the rough charms of yours truly, which is why I always read comments from Cymbeline and Soutie (to name but two) with much interest. Most of all, though, she blossomed and loved with a passion the years we spent in Queensland, where our spiritual home will always be.
She died unexpectedly less than five months after we moved permanently to The Cave where we were planning to spend the rest of our days, albeit rather more than we actually were granted. All the grandcubs came on holiday for the first time not two months before that horrible day and I have never seen her so content than during that one unforgettable summer fortnight watching them play in the pool and wolfing down OZ’s offering from the barbie.
They have come every year since and now I sit alone on “pool watch”, wishing with all my heart that she was still here to see them grow up. On every visit the cubs take them up onto the hillside to visit A Zangada’s graveside garden, shaded by a purple-flowering jacaranda tree which is so so reminiscent for me of Queensland in general and the Brisbane river in particular.
OZ
Oz
How very sad that A Zangada died so soon after you had found a place to enjoy the rest of your lives together. Thank you for telling me a little more about her life; I have a picture of her in my mind, my own version and no doubt wildly inaccurate, but it has been formed from your obvious love for her and your feelings of loss; A Zangada, a very special person.
Thank you for your condolences, OZ. It was a very long time ago and I knew him for few short years. We never had the chance to have children and build a life together. He was twenty five. It was shocking, devastating and changed my life in many ways, but it is quite different, I think, from your experience of loss … I do not grieve any more, but I still think about him, dream about him sometimes and mourn the loss of his young life.
I have happy memories of Jacarandas; what a beautiful tree for A Zangada! Hugs and howls for you too!
Bilby – Of all the bloggers on MyT amd DNMyT you alone understand where I’m coming from and why I record my emotions here.
‘Nuff said, except bless you.
OZ
An extra cyber-hug and a few tears, Dear OZ. xxx
Nighty night, Bilby. Dry those eyes. Sweet dreams and cyber-hugs from The Cave.
OZ
Night night, OZ. x
Commiserations, OZ.
Thank you for sharing this OZ, my condolences too.
Bearsy and Boadicea – It still hurts like hell. Thank you for your good wishes.
OZ