Hello again everybody. I know I’ve been away for quite some time, but this doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been working on a collection of essays on the subject of home and belonging, which I’m planning on calling Home in a Suitcase. All being well, I’ll be publishing it next year. Here’s a taster of the sort of thing I’ve been working on…
Recently, we visited the hilltop walled medieval town of Morella, north west of Valencia, in Spain. Everyone else wanted to visit the castle, sited, inevitably, on the very top of the hill. I’m still relying on a walking stick and slopes, particularly slopes with steps on, are impossible. I wanted to visit El Jardí dels Poetes, the poets’ garden. It’s long and thin and tiny, with a house-high honey stone wall on one long side and a steep drop on the other. There are benches, sweet-scented box, yew and almond trees. It is early March and the pale pink petals blow from the dark contorted branches of the almond trees in the soft breeze. I sit on a slatted bench and summon my senses. The box and the blossom are sweet. I hear a small rock skitter down the wall behind me and watch a black cat’s leisurely stroll across the grey shale to secrete itself beneath the dark yew. Biographies of the Spanish poets who have found inspiration here are printed and placed behind glass to be on display along the length of the golden wall. Cervantes is the only name I recognise. I read the poems, understanding just enough to feel the emotion and my heart lifts. This is my ‘happy place’. I’m outside in nature. It is spring. Echoes of literary greats bounce from the walls. I’m well-fed from the homemade potato and onion tortilla I had for breakfast and people I love are close by.
I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to fully grasp the poetry of Spanish poets. Spanish is a language I’ve returned to learning again and again, especially now since Josh is living here. My friend Anne had a wonderful idea that inspired me—she combined a week of learning Spanish with a week of walking the Camino. She said it transformed her experience. I love the thought of trying something like that one day, and I liked the look of this one Spanish course in Barcelona that teaches Spanish through music, literature and painting, which is right up my alley. I might follow through one day. Though for now, I’m content with my weekly Zoom lessons with my tutor and earning points on Duolingo.
I take out my notebook from the purple velvet pouch Jacinta gave me and begin to write. A poem this time and after it’s done, though no masterpiece, I feel replete. I pause and ponder, reflect on the 29 years I have lived overseas in total and the seven countries in which I have settled or attempted to settle and realise I never made a list. Let me explain.
When we moved to the Netherlands in 2005 Sam and Josh were 14 and 13. Not the best age to move with kids, I know. It’s an age when their peers are beginning to be more important to them than their parents but you can’t put their mates in a packing case. When moving round the world with children the advice from the experts is to do your best to sign them up for the sports and hobbies they love in the new location. We knew this. We expressly chose the British School in the Netherlands because it was the only school to offer rugby as well as football. Ian, as the breadwinner and the one with the real job there just swapped one office environment for another.
Try telling any mum to, “Put her own oxygen mask on first,” and she’ll respond with, “Yes, but,” which, as we know, means “No.” As a mother, I always put my own needs last. I knew Josh needed rugby, drum lessons and his cat. I knew that Sam needed a mobile phone, laptop and X-box. Ian knew he needed to be in a band and a squash team and it didn’t take him long to find both. So the boys were happy. Ian was happy. But what about me? What did I need?
What was on my list? In fact, I’m not sure I ever made a list, not even a mental one, of the things I needed in place in order to feel at home somewhere. I confess, I struggled to look after myself until everyone else was settled. I’d be the same with the oxygen mask.
That day in the poets’ garden, surrounded by pink petals and poetry, I looked back and wrote my list.
First, and yes, this is the most important thing of all, I need to find other writers, who will in turn become my soulmates, friends and sometimes, even, clients. I don’t just join an existing writers’ circle, I start one. My father is to be thanked for this idea and the first one began in 1991. I’d been in Dubai for four years by then and though I had made friends none were really ‘like’ me. Neither particularly happy nor settled, my heart remained back in England, which was the only place that felt like home. I wrote a poem called The Love Song of the Reluctant Expat, a eulogy to my home town of Stamford and the people I loved who lived there. My parents came to visit twice a year and I lived for those times. My father was a writer and teacher too, who, like me, always had an eye out for the main chance. He wondered if I might like to arrange a writing workshop for him when he next visited, so I did just that. It was a huge success. Those ten students wanted to keep meeting and writing and so the Dubai Writers’ Circle was born and one day I realised I was happy after all. By the time we moved to Oman in 1993 I was hooked on this idea and decided to start one there too. I also decided to start teaching writing. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I remember pinning handwritten notices on supermarket noticeboards asking for those interested in an informal monthly writing event to call me. They did. Oman was my first ‘happy from day one’ posting.
My list isn’t all about writing, but as I sat on that sunny Spanish bench that day I realised that I also need to live somewhere where I have access to places that inspire me. A wood, a lake, history, architecture, places with trees and grass and benches, a cemetery (yes, even that!) or a poet’s garden. In Dubai and Oman, I had the beach. In Norway, the lakes and woodlands, in the Netherlands I had beach, lakes, woodland, canals and stunning architecture on my doorstep. In Kuala Lumpur, lake gardens and the soaring trees of the rainforest. I’ve been lucky.
When I am not feeding my muse I feed my belly. Access to good food is a must. Food that does not come in a plastic tray sitting on a ‘sanitary towel’ to mop up the juice. I need a source of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish from a market. In Oman I’d buy fat pink slabs of bluefin tuna from a sinewy old man with a long white beard and blood-spattered dishdash who would squat literally on top of his wooden market stall at Muttrah fish souk. In Kuala Lumpur I went to Lucky Market, where the Chinese fishmonger would reach for the whole black pomfret I bought each week before I even opened my mouth. While these fine fresh specimens cost pennies, Zee op Tafel, the very fine fishmonger on the street in which we lived in The Hague, sold cod and salmon for a hefty fifty quid a kilo. I’d buy less but I’d buy it anyway because fresh fish is a must-have on my list.
I crave culture too. Top of my list comes cinema, not just any-old cinema, but independent, foreign. I love me a slow-moving film with subtitles. It was in the paper only today that going to the cinema benefits mind, body and soul. The Open University have just done some research so it must be true. Apparently it fosters a sense of community, we focus more and therefore switch off more, in front of the big screen than at home and a small one. There’s more. Interestingly, when a bunch of people experience the same emotion at the same time, the effect is heightened. It reduces stress, enhances relaxation and is good for your relationship with those who attend with you. Finally, it inspires social and cultural reflection. I always knew that seeing a film was cathartic, whether it was uplifting or depressing but this study proves my gut-feeling was right all along. The only films on offer in KL were bang-bang-you’re dead films or high octane action. Not my cup of tea at all. We only went to the cinema twice in three and a half years there, to the French Film Festival. I missed it hugely and was delighted to be back in The Hague where indie and foreign films abound in addition to the live streams of the National Theatre productions from London. Did I say, I love theatre too?
One more thing, though, if I may add just one more. I need to be close to a way out of there. In other words, I need an airport less than an hour and a half away with direct flights to lots of places, including ‘home home’, England. My final drug of choice is travel, by train, plane, bus or car, preferably across borders. I crave adventure. I crave new experiences, new food, new inspiring spaces in new places, which all boils down to one thing: I need to do things that inspire me to write. Then, I am home.
So, there you have it. My list:
- Writers’ circle complete with writers that feed my soul
- Inspiring outside spaces that feed my muse
- Fresh markets that feed my belly
- Indie cinema that makes me feel good
- Adventure that feeds my travel bug
- Speak to the locals
