Ten Years
I moved to London ten years ago this weekend. I was 38 years old. In many ways, too old for a fresh start and such a huge risk.
I was running away from nothing. I had everything in Victoria. My family, my friends, a secure job with a pension and a generous holiday entitlement. I had a fuel-efficient car that rarely broke down and over 200 cable channels. I owned a charismatic horse, Countess, that lived a short twenty minute drive from my job and I rode five times a week. I took Countess to the beach and fed her watermelon in the summer. I travelled to Paris at least once a year to eat croissants, drink wine, and buy everything French. And, most importantly, I was happily married to a man who loved me hugely, thoughtfully, and wasn't afraid that I always wanted something more.
In April 2015, I travelled to London for a week with my shiny UK Ancestry Visa taking a place of pride in my Canadian passport. I gave myself five working days to get a job and left enough time for a short thirty-two hours in Paris.
I wrote in my diary on 25 April that week,
"I have just over three days left in London to find a job with four interviews during this time. They are all jobs I really want, and they are spread across the country in Bath, Cambridge, Leeds, and London. At home, it would be enough to make my head spin and my skin break out in a stress rash. I feel tense and unsettled. There is so much riding on these next few days."
I accepted a job at Birkbeck University of London on 27 April 2015. In my diary, scrawled across half a page in huge, black, block letters are the words, "JOB OFFER - BIRKBECK".
I left London a few days later with a signed employment contract. I had other job offers, including a role at Cambridge that the recruiter thought I was insane to reject. I wanted to start my UK life in London. I didn't see the point of trading one small town for another, even for one of the world's leading universities. My imagined life in the UK was full of relentless noise, grey, cracked pavement, overcrowded, dirty Tube trains, sticky pints at my local pub, and weekends spent exploring the West End. It wasn't about thatched, crooked cottages, cobblestone roads, green fields, and historical churches. I wanted to lose myself in London.
8 June 2015
SAY YES! I am waiting for my flight to London in Vancouver. THE FLIGHT TO LONDON!I am tear-stained and thinly coated in an anxious sweat. This is the one-way flight that will officially transport me from my life in Victoria. Everything I have known. Everything that I love and that I hate. Everything that makes me feel bored and frustrated, like I am treading water. Everything and everyone that has brought me comfort and security my whole life.
9 June 2015
Good morning, London! I will not complain. I will not be afraid. I will be grateful and positive for the opportunity to live out my dream. Even when I have tough days.
I am living in temporary accommodation at the appropriately named 'County Hotel' in Bloomsbury. I arrived with just two suitcases and I am already feeling a bit panicked that they are meant to contain everything I need to start my new life. Last night, I unpacked my still muddy riding boots and handfuls of French lingerie. What was I thinking? Apparently, flats come furnished so hopefully I won't have to buy too much.
Bloomsbury is also where I will be working. It's lovely. There is a large Waitrose, a vitamin shop, a few sushi chain restaurants, a Superdrug pharmacy, an independent cinema, countless pubs and second hand bookstores, and at least one Pret A Manger within walking distance. Waitrose sells two litres of sparkling water for 45p and a pint of organic (!!) milk for 89p. King's Cross Station is nearby, meaning I could conceivably travel to Paris in less than three hours.
Everything feels possible. I can't believe I start my job next week and my summer will be spent exploring, and falling in love, with London.
I learned that my new colleagues thought nothing of liberally spraying themselves with Axe body spray in our open plan office during all hours of the day. I previously worked in a strictly enforced 'scent free' office. I negotiated with my first London landlord for a one-year lease on a tiny Hampstead flat where I could sit on the end of my double bed and make a Nespresso. I didn't have an oven the first five years I lived in London. I cried when I signed the lease wondering how I would both manage the hefty rent and the lack of space. I learned that peanuts and crisps are an acceptable food group, and that the intimacy you feel with your colleagues drinking in the pub after work doesn't always translate into the office the next morning. In fact, it's often best ignored or entirely forgotten.
I eventually made real friends, but they felt hard won. I spent my evenings and weekends my first London summer walking the streets and trying to find my place. I fell out of love with London that summer as many times as I fell in love with London. I loved its wild anonymity, its ability to seemingly be everything to everyone despite it often being difficult and lonely. I fought to build my life and tried not to think about what I had given up in Canada.
I have about fifteen filled journals from the last ten years. I have written in them more consistently than I have on this blog. Many of the early ones include notes about where to shop, observations about Londoners, or things I overheard. When I first moved to Hampstead, I stood behind a woman in the local Marks & Spencer Food Hall who said, "You will have to carry me out of Camden".
I wrote about cheap Eurostar fares, eating my first bacon butty, and riding the Tube during that summer's heatwave. Later, when I started my job at Imperial College London, I filled journals during my frequent long flights and work trips. I wrote less often about Paris, and more about what it felt like to torn between two countries.
Five years after I moved to the UK, the world went into lockdown. I stayed in London for the first eleven months of the pandemic socializing with my friends and colleagues on Zoom for wine dates and quizzes. I was more or less completely alone. Chris, my family, and Canada felt very far away. After that experience, I couldn't imagine going back to Canada full-time. My life and my relationship with the UK felt irrevocably changed in ways I still can't describe or understand.
Perhaps something about the relative security that I felt locked up in my flat compared to the chaos going on in the world? Perhaps something about feeling hints of the 'Blitz Spirit' or the famed British stoicism that crept into the everyday monotony? Perhaps because despite the physical impossibility of seeing my London friends, our relationships grew stronger? All I know is that as the country and the world moved out of lockdown and the pandemic, I felt truly embedded in the UK.
Five years post pandemic I am a permanent UK resident living in Cambridge. The city I once dismissed in favour of London with its rich history, cobbled streets, and cows grazing placidly on the Fens. Chris and I celebrated our ten-year milestone last week while he was here, toasting each other with Champagne, at my favourite wine bar that glimpses the River Cam.
I reflected this weekend on my past ten years. I keep returning to what I wrote my first day in London. Say yes. To everything. I embraced that intention and sometimes it was to my detriment. I wanted so badly to love everything. Some of you will remember the famous line from 'Devil Wears Prada': "A million girls would kill for this job."
That line resonates with my initial expat experience. I chose to move to the UK, and I initially felt a lot of pressure to be relentlessly grateful that I had the opportunity to live my dream. I also felt that I constantly had to prove that I was proactively going after every new experience, relationship, or opportunity to justify being away from Chris, my family, my friends, and Canada. Not a second wasted. A constant voice in my head reminding me that so many others would kill to have my experiences or opportunities.
I have spent most of the last ten years living outside of my comfort zone. Equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. I have worked hard to settle in the UK, and to find a balance and my identify between the two countries. I am at a point where I feel less conflicted about not quite being British and not quite feeling Canadian. I remind myself that it is a privilege to call both countries home.
I am ready for next ten years.
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