Scratchy...

I just deleted the original first paragraphs of my writing this morning.  I just listened to a clip of film of Ram Das talking about his meeting with his guru, Mahara-ji.  Ram Das said his guru looked him directly in the eyes and said' 'Love everybody'.  'I can't'  was Ram Das' reply.  'Love everybody and tell the truth', was the reply to Ram Das' doubting response.  Suddenly and I mean in the flash of a moment,  I saw that the anger I felt this morning was simply a response from my ego and not from my loving heart, and the anger actually evaporated.  Just like that.  Remarkable. Now I can begin my day again with a lighter heart.

It's absolutely freezing outside.  I am having a wonderfully entertaining inner argument with myself about what I want to eat and what I should eat.  During these cold winter days I want to bake cakes, make puddings, casseroles, heavy soups and prepare general calorific foods in order to lay down stores of fat in preparation for hibernation.  Well,  I already have department stores of fat laid down and I have no time for hibernation this week.

As human beings we are not designed too well.  Animals have thick winter coats all built in and don't have to pile on layer upon layer of itchy woolens to stay warm.  Animals huddle together rather than going through their days avoiding eye contact on trains and sitting in separate spaces in over-heated or too chilly offices. Animals do not eat salad in the winter!

So today is also rant and rave day. My ego is fully operational and in fine form.  Everything seemed quite personal today.  The tree man from our local Council didn't call back - personal.  The Council denied our appeal for a traffic ticket - personal.  Someone is illegally parked in my space - personal.  In other words, the universe is conspiring to make this a decidedly unsatisfactory day and I am doing my best to cooperate by getting very scratchy.

Righteous indignation is wonderfully energising and I've been a busy little bee today. I  made a reheasal batch of potato latkes so we could practice wolfing down piles of them before tomorrow's first night of Chanukah. So far, the first 16 were good, but there's always room for improvement for the eight days of Chanukah. 

 I've fetched the menorah from the top shelf and polished it in preparation for Chanukah candle lighting tomorrow and once again shed an invisible tear for my absent progeny.  It's not the same when there are just the two of us to light candles.  My kids haven't been kids for many years though I still think of Chanukah as belonging to them.  I've sent the money for them to buy themselves presents and the rest is up to them. 

Before I finish for today I also need to acknowledge how lucky I am to have friends and teachers who whisper positive healing thoughts to me just as I need them.  I just received an e-mail reminding us to be good to ourselves and heal our spirits by remembering to do all those things we already know in order to connect with healthy spirit.  This I will take personally and try to remember.

Define wisdom...

Soon it will be a year since I started writing this blog.  I look back now and I can hardly remember what originally prompted me to begin on this most interesting journey.  I am not and have never been a writer - an artist, sure, but writing, never.  The most I've written in the past forty years are shopping lists. I never try to capture my thoughts on cyber-paper.  And yet, here I am, almost 300 entries later, having written thousands of words.

I think it may be time to look back over the year and see where I am now.  Is it a different place to where I was a year back?  Have I learned anything about myself or my world in the last twelve months?  Have I dispensed any wisdom at all?  I am totally not sure.  I never went into this because I had any particular message to deliver or wisdom to impart. I never thought to set myself apart from others because I have a particular knowledge of the world that needs sharing. I would never presume such arrogance.  I'm not even sure I embarked on this blogging journey to learn anything.  It just seemed a simple place to release some of the emotional madness that tends to overtake me in winter.  Has it helped?

Actually, it has helped, or rather I've helped.  In writing I have found a voice with a different tone.  I am more objective about who I am and what I need.  I have been able to observe the fleeting nature of my emergencies and maybe even felt less subject to melodrama.  I am nothing if not an incredible drama queen.  I can embroider and enlarge a small issue into a world war.  I am able to see the dark side of anything and for me I guess, the bread always lands butter side down. Don't get me wrong, I also love and indulge this side of myself.  It is endlessly entertaining. It keeps me busy for far longer than you can imagine, but it also creates and feeds my inner anxiety. Writing things down helps me to develop some perspective on reality instead of blowing things up into something more than they are.

This time last year I was busy obsessing about the cracks in my walls and the state of my house.  Even earlier this summer I was completely caught up in the recurring subsidence problems.  Now I seem to have relaxed with it.  My house has some cracks.  My house is about 120 years old.  I would crack if I was that old, but I am no longer convinced that the walls are falling down or that every little hairline crack is the portent of something far more ominous. I am quite pleased to say that I seem to have been able to let go of a little bit of that worry. Maybe in future I won't have to go into such a tailspin before I am able to stop and calm down.

In re-reading old blog entries, I am not surprised to notice how much weight I gained last winter.  For weeks all my blog entries were about the various foods I was baking, cooking and eating.  This winter I am moderating the urge to stock up on the stodge and hibernate, though I acknowledge how much I enjoy cooking.

In looking back over the past year I have also tried to look with the eyes of others.  I was told recently that my blog is a version of Schindler's List, or somehow obsessed with Holocaust horrors.  I read through many old entries to see how obsessed I have been and actually, I can see that yes, this is a thread running through some of my entries, but only about 20% of my blog.  About 80% is about other 'mishigas', other forms of madness with which I indulge myself.  It is an inescapable fact that my history is my history.  If I don't look at it, it will not change. It does not disappear.  Looking back over the blog entries I see that rather than being obsessed with the awfulness of my parents' past, I have been able to distill a genuine amount of strength from it.  I am really pleased that I have been able to transform the genetic trauma I inherited into real spirit inside me that has stood me in good stead for many years. We all take our strength from somewhere and my Jewish heritage is one of the places that feeds the positive side of me.

Over the past year I have renewed my old friendships with my friends in Holland.  I have visited the Humaniversity in Egmond three or four times and totally enjoyed working and spending time with friends.  It has become a home from home.  I have visited my dad three times in eleven months and watched him slide into dementia. This has been a source of sadness for me, but touched with such great love. I have met and made some new friends and at my age this is fantastic. My health has been surprisingly good (I can even say this out loud without feeling that the heavens are going to fall in) and my life is going well.

I will continue over the next couple of weeks to look back over the year and reflect on my present.  I am not depressed.  This is a revelation.  It's deepest winter here.  The temperature is way below zero, the days are incredibly short and I'm snuggled up at home with a hot cup of tea. I'm enjoying the sense of safety that I've been able to acknowledge this year.  I'm enjoying the fact that I'm getting older and better.  Life is giving me a lot of gifts right now and at this very moment in time, I'm more ready to accept them.

Climbing Jacob's Ladder...

... or as I should title this 'Making Cholent' in the UK!

This week in the NY Times there was an article about Jewish Ashkenazi foods that gave a recipe for a winter delight called cholent. My cousin in NY rang to tell me about this, my old Yiddish-speaking crew from Facebook posted links to this and my other cousin in NY, who I haven't spoken to in almost a year,  told me that he and his wife had also gone out to buy cholent making ingredients.  In other words, everyone I grew up with on the other side of the Atlantic was suddenly excited by this one pot meal.

I not only got inspired by this Times article, but inspired enough to do a whole evening's research on the internet for the definitive recipe for what is essentially meat, potatoes, beans and barley that cooks for anywhere from 12 to 20 hours in a slow oven. I found thousands of articles giving recipes, re-telling stories from the past, discussing the pros and cons of different methods, ingredients, flavourings and cooking pots. I got involved in reading tales from people's Ashkenazi and Sephardic roots, stories of their mothers and increasingly, fathers, making cholent.  Who knew that the NY Times would be responsible for re-opening this particular kosher can of worms?

The very next morning I went on a hunt for the ingredients for the perfect cholent.  First stop, the butcher.  My mother's cholent, which was spectacular, was heavy on the meat, as are most Ashkenazi recipes.  Us Eastern European Jewish descendants are confirmed carnivores.  So the hunt was on for a cut of meat called 'short ribs'.  I have often bought short ribs in NY to add to soups and for other long slow cooked dishes, but I have never tried to buy them here.  I went to my local North London butcher and asked if he had short ribs.  After a bit of a joke about his ribs having been cured of this problem after he saw his doctor (hahaha), he admitted he had no idea what cut of meat I was after.  He offered me skirt (no) chuck (no) and finally he pointed to a package of something called 'Jacob's Ladder''.  These were a single slab of what looked like very meaty beef spare ribs and voila! this was it.  He sawed and cut and eventually I had my short ribs. All that remained was to beg a few beef marrow bones and I was away.  The rest of the ingredients are readily available so I purchased what I needed and came home.

Today is cholent-making day.  This essentially means piling all the ingredients into my heavy, hernia-causing Le Creuset casserole, putting it in the oven and leaving it.  I am so excited.

I remember the smells that eminated from our little apartment kitchen in the Bronx early in the morning in winter.  We would go to bed on a Friday night, the apartment always a bit too cold since we were all waiting for the 'super' (janitor to the Brits) to send us up heat that came from the furnace in the basement of our building. The cost of heating was included in our rent. There was never enough heat in winter and in order to indicate this we would bang on the iron radiator pipes so the super in the basement would hear us.  Sometimes the cacaphony of banging made it hard to have normal conversations.  This winter chill indoors meant that putting the pot of cholent in a low heat oven all night was a great way of heating the kitchen.  It also meant that on Saturday morning, upon waking, the apartment was filled with the wonderful smell of lunch to come.

My father could never wait until lunchtime and I remember him at breakfast, opening the oven very quietly, pushing aside the lid of the heavy iron casserole and sneaking a spoonful of soft, melting meat and potatoes.  I also remember him inevitably being caught by my mother and severely admonished. I would be content to wait until afternoon when my aunt, uncle and cousins would arrive so we could all share in the cheapest and most delicious of delicacies together.

The decision to make this cholent is not such an easy one.  The insecurity surrounding the making of an inherited memory is fraught.  Will I get it right?  Was there a secret ingredient my mother used to add that I can't possibly know?  Will it taste as I remember?  The answer to will it taste as I remember is a resounding no. Of course not.  My mother is not there to make it and my family is not here to share it.  The memories of this dish are as important an ingredient as the beef.  They add that missing flavour and as much as I try to add that I know it will lack something.  As hard as I try to get the flavouring correct there is no way to bottle the nostalgia and warmth that go with the remembered uncovering of the aromatic mingling of beef, beans and potatoes. I certainly won't be adding the one actual ingredient that I do remember - kishke.

Kishke, or to give it its polite English translation, stuffed derma, is a sausage made from intestinal casing filled with a mixture of flour, onions, paprika and assorted stodge.  There are as many ways to make this as there are old Jewish mamas, but I will not be adding it to my cholent.  Firstly I think my English butcher would not have the requisite cow intestines to sell me and secondly, I cannot face the performance that this involves.  The cleaning, boiling and de-fatting of this particularly unsavoury part of a cow's body is not for me. I am by no means squeamish and I can certainly hoover up a plate of kishke slices in gravy with the best of the world's bar mitzvah attending gluttons, but I will not make it.  It's a memory too far for me and I guess my cholent will have to fore go this added delicacy.

Tomorrow I have friends coming to share this big pot of food with us.  One of my friends is Israeli with Ashkenazi and Sephardic roots.  He asked if I was going to add eggs to my cholent.  Oy, eggs??? Whoever heard of such a thing?  The internet research confirmed to me that Sephardic Jews did indeed add eggs, in their shells, to the cooking pot to hard-boil and absorb the flavours of the slow-cooking cholent.  I also learned that there are as many ways to make cholent as there are Jews.  Every family has there own preferred way of making a 'richtikeh' pot of cholent.  I'm sticking with what I can remember while I still have a memory left.

My anticipation of tomorrow's meal is tempered with a sweet sadness.  I miss my parents, my aunt and my uncle's unadulterated joy in sitting down to this simple pot of food.  I realise that just as I have memories of childhood and innocence attached to this, so did they.  Their memories were all the more poignant because they had so little time to share them with their brothers and sisters and families.  I have been very lucky to have had and to still have family I can share this with.  I am busy cooking today in order to lay down memories for tomorrow.  It may just be a pot of beef and beans, but for me, it's future history.

By the way, for anyone interested, this is the recipe I used (amounts are inexact because they don't matter that much):

• A few beef marrow bones
• 12 oz. dried beans (mixed haricot,lima, kidney, etc) soaked overnight and drained
• 3 sliced onions
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 4 large peeled quartered potatoes
• 2 lbs (or more) of boneless short ribs of beef (if you can't get boneless, it's easy to de-bone     them yourself - don't throw away the bones, they are great in soups)
• 5 oz barley
• 1 TBS paprika
• 1TBS honey
• 1TBS mustard powder
•  (Other seasonings can be added to your taste) Pepper can be added but don't add salt until the beans cook through a bit.
• Eggs (if you must) can be added too, but feh!

Put the ingredients in a large heavy casserole or cast iron pot in the order given.  Add water mixed with seasonings to cover the entire pot of stuff.  Bring to a boil on top of the stove and let simmer covered for about an hour.  Then transfer the covered pot to the oven (top up the water if necessary to cover) and leave in a 275 degree Farenheit oven for overnight or longer.  Check periodically to make sure there is enough liquid so it doesn't boil dry.  Serve with delight to lots of friends and family.

You can, I am told, cook this in something attractively named , a crock pot, but as my mother would never have used such a contraption, neiither do I. 

Cholent is an inexact dish. Memory is an inexact science.  Season both with as much love and nostalgia for days gone by as you can and I'm sure you can't go wrong.

Being thankful...

Well boys and girls, it's Thanksgiving in America today.  As I live in the UK I never have marked this occasion in any way.  As my dad once said, 'You live in England, what have you got to be thankful for?'

I've always laughed at my father's frivolous comment (at least I hope it was) and I've taken for granted so many of the things in my life.  When I lived in the States and we had Thanksgiving dinners with cousins I never remember it being a time to stop and consider what we were blessed with, or how grateful we ought to be feeling for the state of our lives. It was simply turkey time and sweet potatoes covered in gooey marshmallows and the Wizard of Oz on TV.

When I was quite young we used to spend Thanksgiving day with my mum's American cousins, Sophie and Irving, and they always made a wonderfully exotic American dinner.  i see now that it wasn't at all exotic it was plain American home cooking, but to me, being used to heavy Eastern European cooking, it seemed wonderfully different.  When I was a bit older my cousins moved to Staten Island, a train  and ferry journey from our apartment in the Bronx.  This was fantastic - we got to go on a boat.  The ferry ride was only ten minutes or so, but I felt like we had travelled across a continent. That's what I remember of Thanksgiving. Not much more.

When my mother made a rare Thanksgiving dinner at our house it always had a Polish/Jewish twist - potato kugel, not sweet potatoes, apple cake not pumpkin pie and it never felt too ddiferent from any other family dinners we had.  The idea of talking about or even thinking about things we were thankful for never entered my head. Perhaps my parents thought about this, but it was never expressed to us kids.

I always liked the fact that Thanksgiving was the most democratic of American holidays.  Of course the history behind it has been re-written and re-invented to suit US patriotism, but it is still the holiday that everyone celebrates.  It doesn't matter if you're Polish, Mexican, Italian, Chinese or Indian American,  Thanksgiving is for all Americans and is a huge big deal for families.  Most cultures and religions put their own twist on foods served, just as my parents used to do, but still everyone seems to mark the last Thursday in November in this way.

So here I am 3,546 miles from New York sitting in my living room in North London watching bad daytime TV and thinking about giving thanks.  What do I have to be thankful for? So, so much that I think I'll just start by listing a few things that immediately come to mind.

1) My relationships - with Ralph, with my talented, beautiful grown-up children, with my father and the rest of my family, my friends all round the world, my teachers, my work colleagues and with my neighbours.

2) My health - after countless stays in hospital, a major cancer episode,my spinal surgery and so many other 'procedures' I have had, I am remarkably healthy.  I sneeze and splutter and I complain like mad, but basically I feel great.

3) My home - I love my house.  It's warm and cozy and often feels like the safest place I know.  I love welcoming people into it and having a place of such long-lasting security.

4) My work - it keeps me sane in the winter when my moods fluctuate the way they are now.  I love the fact that for over 25 years I have been granted the privilege of working with thousands of people and feeling that I have made a positive difference in the world.

5) My talents and creativity - I am continually inspired and feel thankful that I have so many ways to entertain myself and feel fulfilled. The gifts I have been blessed with are never taken for granted and I am so lucky to have all these abilities.

6) My life experience - I have had so many varied experiences.  I expect that everyone who is over 60 will have lived an interesting life, but I am also thankful for all of it, even the bad bits.  I would not be me without them.  I have been tested a lot and always come out fine.  I am grateful for who I am and what I am capable of.

Enough, I realise I could go on and on and actually get quite maudlin sitting here alone in the fading light of the day. I guess today, on Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the sum total of all the places and experiences over all the  years of all my life, of my inheritance, my genetic history and my capacity to love.  I am and always will be eternally grateful to those who love me. I am even thankful to be living in England.  I am remakably blessed in my life, even without the turkey dinner.

Roller coaster weekends...

Posted on Facebook yesterday was a comment from my husband:
'Saturday blissful, Sunday shit. Life!!!"
This comment has got me thinking about the fairground ride that a relationship is , or in my case, marriage.

Saturday was a delightful day.  I woke up late. Lazed around the house and took my time getting ready to face the day. In the late morning Ralph and I went out for our Saturday morning amble through our neighbourhood.  Stopped, chatted to the man from the local shop, passed the time of day at the pharmacy while picking up necessaries and made our way down to the shops and restaurants via the shoe repairer and the post office.  So far, so good.  Then we went to the local Vietnamese restaurant and enjoyed a delightful lunch while discussing the differences between the UK and the USA in terms of culture and priorities.

The tone of the day changed a bit when we had a small spat in the street over the way I off-handedly spoke to Ralph.  It's true that I am quick to snap and quick to flare up so this temporarily changed the tone of the afternoon. Luckily we both agreed to forget my big mouth moment and carried on with our sweet afternoon outing.

Arriving home we both grabbed the late Saturday afternoon lull to have have a brief afternoon nap.  Ah, the wondrous decadence of such a luxury.  On waking we got dressed and left to go to Trafalgar Square to a Beethoven concert. A quick 20 minute tube journey and there we were in Trafalgar Square.  A moment to notice a giant ship in a glass bottle had been installed on the oft empty plinth in the Square and then to the crypt of the church where the concert was held,  to have a snack before settling in.

The concert was sublime.  The orchestra was small and perfectly formed and the music and ambience and sound quality was wonderful.  Watching Ralph during the concert made me very happy.  Every time I looked over at him he had his eyes half-closed and this big grin.  He looked as if he'd found religion and that religion was making him very, very happy. Lovely moments amidst beautiful music.

After a perfect (almost Saturday), Sunday was an unmitigated disaster. I mentioned in my blog entry yesterday how angry and irrational I was.  I felt enormous pressure building inside me all day and finally popped in the afternoon.  As the day drew to a close I was depleted and tired.  By the time I went to bed last night I was just exhausted and happy to say farewell to the awful day.

How does that happen?  How is it that one day I can be so calm and relaxed and easy and the next I am scratchy and annoyed and annoying? For years I have studied different philosophies and had practice days and group sessions in order to still my mind and bring me to a point of evenness.   Obviously I haven't learned the lessons I need or I wouldn't send myself and those close to me on this rollercoaster ride of madness.  Maybe I just give myself too much permission with those I love.  Would I behave like this at work?  with friends? with distant family?  The answer is simple. NO! I would bite my tongue, hold my temper, curb my madness impulse.  I think it is not a good thing that I let these moods leak all over people.  I need to stop it. Just stop it.  It is an indulgence that does not make me feel better, clearer or relieved in any way.

Sometimes I watch this programme on TV called 'Supernanny'.  This is about an English woman who goes into people's homes and teaches them to cope with their own children.  She is the originator of the idea of putting children on a 'naughty step', the place where they have a time out for misbehaving - one minute time out for each year of their age.  Maybe the anwer for me is to re-train myself when I go into my  indulgent tantrums and put myself on a 'naughty step'.  For me that would mean 61 minutes of sitting in silence with no distractions in order to think about what I've just been through.  This would be quite a meditation for me.

The more I think about it the more I remember something my mum used to say and it was something I never liked.  My mum used to tell me that the reason she could be brutally honest, to the point of offensive, with me was that I was her daughter and it was okay to do this because I wouldn't reject her because of it.  What a load of tosh!  And I see that this is exactly what I do with my family.  I believe I can act out in any unpleasant way because they will love me regardless.  This is absolutley true, they will love me, but maybe they, and importantly, I, won't like me so much.

So this may be me turning over a new leaf , the leaf that involves treating those I love with as much respect as I treat strangers.  Familiarity breeds love too.

No Light today...

I am in the most foul tempered mood at this moment.  I debated as to whether or not to write anything at all for this day and decided that I could not just walk away from this mood without noting it.  I felt it coming, like a horrible dreaded maiden aunt's arrival, I have seen the cloud of doom descending for some days and I kept doing small things that I hoped would ward off the arrival of this evil spirit.  No such luck.

After a terrible night's sleep with dreams of a technological catastrophe at my work tomorrow I woke up, got dressed and walked round the corner to buy the Sunday papers.  It took a moment for me to realise that I had walked out coatless and in my slippers. This is the sort of thing that a crazed friend of my family's used to do when I was a kid and I can remember what we said about her.  Luckily I didn't meet anyone I knew and the man who owns the shop has just had a cataract operation so I doubt he noticed. I made poached eggs for breakfast and then remembered that I don't like soft poached eggs. Doh!  I sat down at my computer and started to work on the handout material for my course tomorrow. It took three times as long as I expected. I finally finished my work and embarked on lunch prep.

I knew that this mood was percolating.  The supposed non-stick grill pan stuck like crazy and my beautiful tuna steak was a mess.  The carrots were overcooked and I just felt my internal mood temperature starting to boil.  I almost threw lunch against the wall, but remembered the subsequent cleaning mess that would enrage me even more.

I am now in full, rolling boil.  I just screamed very loudly at Ralph for something that was only a tiny bit his fault and if I really have to look at it, maybe it wasn't his fault at all, but I am nowhere near ready to admit that. My teeth are gritted so hard they might shatter. I also ate half of a large bar of milk chocolate knowing that my skin reacts really badly to milk chocolate so I have that to look forward to later this evening.

I feel like I have an enormous lump of a two-year old's  tantrum sitting in my chest and waiting to reach exploding point and then...watch out!

Why does this happen?  Why, no matter how I try to distract myself, try to do what I know is good for me, create pockets of harmony and beauty in my life, does this pig of a mood take such an iron grip on me?  I really am not a happy bunny right now.

Do not give me advice to relax, chill, accept this new state. Right now I cannot hear you. In the mood I am in I am liable to commit an act that later I may regret.  I am not able to be compassionate, rational or clear thinking.  I nearly smashed my computer a moment ago when it did not behave in a way that I thought was reasonable.  It's a good thing right now that I don't have a dog.  It probably wouldn't survive the day.

I think I will go to bed and wait for the storm to pass. Thankfully it usually does.

Adopting the Land of Hope and Glory

In July of 1970 I arrived in Great Britain.  I was five months pregnant, had been married for nine months to an Englishman that I had only known for a short time and I once visited the new country I arrived in for a week. For the first month or so I lived as a guest in the house of my new in-laws who were religious and far more observant than I had ever experienced. I felt like I was walking on eggshells for those first weeks and I hardly dared speak in more than a whisper.

What did I expect?  I can't really remember, but I was under the misapprehension that New York and London, two cosmopolitan cities, would be very similar.  Sure the English spoke in a more refined way, but I thought that was where the differences ended.  I was completely wrong.  The country I arrived in could not have been more different than if I had travelled from New York to Timbuktu. Culture shock did not begin to express my feelings at the time.

I arrived here, I see now, with the arrogance of an American on holiday. 'What do you mean there's no central heating?'  'Why can't I have bigger portions?' 'Where are the all-night supermarkets, the discount clothing stores, the Italian/French/Chinese restaurants?'  I had little understanding or patience with any of the differences with which I was confronted.
Being an outsider, I was able to see a lot of differences more clearly than those who lived here, but I had no frame of reference for them.  All I did was compare and find London sadly lacking. For at least two years I was unhappy with my newly adopted land.

The London I had moved to was small and narrow in its thinking.  There was little that was cosmopolitan about London in the 1970's.  Most English people were content to be an island race completely separate from their European neighbours.  The English Channel may have only been 22 miles wide, but it was a universe away from the opposite coast. Politicians were busy trying to convince this insular island race to stay away from their corrupting European cousins and stay out of the Common Market. The Brits seemed much happier relating to their Commonwealth past. Rule Britannia was the order of the day.

I also needed to re-learn some of the history of the Second World War and how much it had affected Britain.  Bombings, rationing, shortages and the wartime mentality were not even twenty years past.  Rationing had not really ended until 1954. I had no awareness of this and thought the scarcity mentality I encountered in 1970 was simply a meanness of spirit, rather than a delayed shock reaction.  The Britain I arrived in was still a country living in a state of fear. Fear of strangers, fear of war, fear of shortages and just a sense that everything they had was terribly fragile and needed doling out in very small portions.

How ignorant I was of the history of other parts of the world.  I never really thought about this until this very moment and now I wish I had been educated and informed before I arrived, but I was young, in love and assumed that this country would be just like home from my first moments here.  Instead I felt awkward, loud and even more of an outsider than ever.  I kept trying to keep the heat on in our tiny flat for the whole day (super expensive) and I kept looking for the supermarkets and shops I was accustomed to (not for years yet).  I wish I had been prepared, but then maybe I would not have come here so willingly. Maybe in my case ignorance was bliss.

Now I can't imagine living anywhere else. After 40 years here I finally feel like I can understand the English sensibility.  I can relax in this strangely uptight society and relax even more in the diversity of London and how much that diversity is celebrated.  There are few segregated neighbourhoods and much economic mixing of classes.  This is still not a land of plenty and no one would fool themselves into thinking that in London the streets are paved with gold, but it's turned out to be a pretty civilised place to live.

Again I come back to the fact that it was meeting people and making friends that created my sense of home.  After my daughter was born, late in 1970, I was even more isolated and relied on Ralph to bring me into his world.  Eventually I met people I could begin to form friendships of my own with, some English, some Australian and even some Americans.  I got to like fish and chips, roast dinners and appreciate Sunday closing of shops and the quietness of the day.  I began to see the benefits of living in a country that was so close to so many fantastic European cities and started to travel across the Channel to many different countries whenever I could.  I started cooking English food and discovered that there is such a thing as English cuisine! In short, I began to assimilate into this new culture.

Of course, I will never be fully assimilated.  I don't really want to be.  My 'Noo Yawk' accent is still almost as strong and I still hunger for the 'heimlich' quality of the city of my birth, but I am home here and I guess I might stay for a while longer. I see now that being an outsider has given me a lot of permission to be different while at the same time I have developed more insight into the English consciousness.  There are fewer differences now than there were 40 years ago, but the whole world is much smaller now that travel is easier.  The English have become a nation of coffee drinkers and I, for one, am delighted. While I wasn't paying attention, I started to think of this chilly, damp, grey country as my home.