Tag Archives: Expat

Talk Big, Live Small

Long before I knew I was moving overseas, I loved hearing my husband tell the story of his days as a child spent at Lambrook, a prep school in Berkshire, west of London.  Naturally, his mother sent him to school with a trunk packed with clothes, the necessities. But a week after his arrival, seven of the ten pairs of skivvies she sent were returned home with a note explaining that the boys would need only three: one for the hook, one for the laundry and one for wearing. Until now, I just assumed the proctors were being tight with the kids’ things. But after spending a week searching for a rental home in England, I get it.

Of course you’ve heard tell that English homes are small. Certainly I had. And we packed accordingly for the move, sending a good third of our belongings to government storage before the moving trucks came.  What this shoe and clothing lover never grasped was the fact that English homes (old and many new)  aren’t just physically small, they simply do not have closets. Storage is a fantasy. Economy is key. And Americans, even those of us who  routinely purge the excesses of the occasional retail therapy binge, do not economize. We have three of everything.

And that does not fly here. The stoves are small, the refrigerators are small (no shopping at Costco, sorry), the clothes washers and driers are petite (sometimes they’re the miserable all-in-on variety that have a two-hour dry cycle and produce little more than damp togs).  The closets…zippo. And I’m not talking cheapo housing here. This is grade-A real estate in Cambridge.

On our first visit to our would-be rental, a beautiful Victorian row house, I tittered in disbelief at the not-so-sumptuous dimensions of the “fifth” bedroom, which measured 8-feet-by-9-feet and, like all the other bedrooms, was devoid of closets. This does not explain why we like it so much.

I have been told by an all-knowing, highly sympathetic expat, that the UK has a booming cottage industry for storage solutions (beds that rise on hydraulics to reveal a season of packed clothing), organizers galore to fit tight spaces, a wardrobe for every occasion.  Just think about what you put in your closets – from ironing boards to vacuum cleaners, winter coats, the never-ending flotsam and jetsam of our consumer-heavy lives. Once the suitcases are unloaded…where will I put the suitcases?

A rare set of shelves, found in the dining room.

 

I positively winced yesterday when I entered a Boots pharmacy to buy a set of hot rollers and had but one choice – the large set of 24 curlers. Please…don’t you have a travel set? Something smaller, I whinged? There’s no space in the bathroom for dental floss. Where on Earth would I put this monstrous gadget? More important, how would I survive without the one and only tool that can tame my unruly  hair? In the end I bought the rollers. I am making plans to suspend them from the ceiling, Mission Impossible style.

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Over There

I have been blogging for nearly three years about motherhood: runny noses, messy diapers, the world of toddlers, which, if you have one, is undeniably engrossing. But in January, as my husband and I made the decision to leave our insanely comfortable life in the suburbs of Washington, DC for the land of rain and royalty, I became all-too-aware of how little I knew about the Brits beyond the big hats and Henry VIII’s wives, and how little reliable information there was in the mainstream about really taking on a new culture. Let’s face it, we’re not moving to Angola. We speak the same language as the Britons (mostly) and eat some of the same food (I’m being generous here). How difficult could this transition be? I sought out a few books for guidance, and short of visiting London, they were thin. Comically bad. I wanted the unvarnished insider’s view. Do I really have to pour my milk before spooning the sugar to avoid risking an international incident, as one guide warned?

I’m a journalist by trade, an avowed extrovert. Could I survive in the world this one tome depicted – where you do not ever invite neighbors over for a meal lest you strain the bounds of British privacy?

It is best, I was advised, to discuss cats and the weather. Only. My mother-in-law, who has spent a considerable amount of time in the UK, has told me story after story about the bitter cold she says we are sure to experience inside every English home. Sounds great, doesn’t it? On a four-day recon trip in January, I experienced none of these things (well one pub loo was exceptionally icy). The test comes when we begin to assimilate, learning both the ropes of  US government move (it’s called PCS-ing) to finding a suitable school for our children (a difficult-enough task in the USA) and trying to forge the same kinds of friendships we enjoy at home.
I don’t know what we’re going to find on this three-year adventure. But I’m going to give it to you straight: the good (I’m certain there will be plenty), the bad, and the cats.

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