Englishmaple

Just a note to say I'm back!

And it's been an interesting morning already in London UK - some things are the same, some things are very different.

I've decided to deal with it with humour and people have been very kind so far.

I walked into Sainsbury's to pick up lunch and, on facing a whole stack of self checkout machines, I asked the one staff member there whether they'd done away with people! She was very kind and showed me how things worked.

The scent of the lilacs in Bedford Square also blew me away this morning .. and the green everywhere is so lovely. The air definitely is fresher too - where I lived in Ontario it was either very cold or very humid and not much in between so it's really nice to experience breezes here.

Will post again when I've been back a while. At the moment I'm still jet lagged but it feels good to be back at this minute and, while i expect my feelings will see saw up and down the next few weeks and months I'm really glad that I've come back now.

Before I left Toronto I was having a chat with the owner of the B and B I was staying at about having to decide where to live and I said: I've got Citizenship in Canada and the UK so I could live in either country. And she said: it's a good problem to have isn't it? That I have the freedom to choose.

So as I navigate the next few months, I'm going to keep reminding myself, this is a good problem to have!

Thanks for all the support from people on the board - I have really appreciated it

curleytops

Welcome home, enjoy this special time and hopefully you'll feel settled soon.

NiHao

Welcome home! As you say there are bound to be lots of ups an downs but I hope everything works out for you.

Please keep posting to let us know how its going!

r0briley

So happy for you (and a little jealous, I think of nothing else at the moment except being home) Look forward to hearing how things are going for you.

Englishmaple

A few more thoughts ...

1. I find the climate here easier on my body already - I miss the bright blue sky of Canada but I struggled with the heat and the cold. Will see how things go the next few weeks but I've been surprised at how quickly my body has felt at home in the UK climate.

2. The London skyline is radically changing and it made me quite sad - when all the new towers are up, it will look a lot more North American. One of the things I've realised from walking around London the last few days is how nice it is to walk on streets where the buildings don't tower over you. The trees seem a lot more obvious too when the buildings aren't so tall. I loved the friendliness of the people in Toronto but I struggled walking around the city - the streetscape wasn't people sized!

3. I can't get enough of the colour green. Walked through Kensington park in the rain yesterday and it was lovely - so so green. Saw a heron and a nesting swan and just revelled in the landscape.

4. Everywhere I go there are a lot of young slavic speaking people serving in stores - they are incredibly friendly and I'm guessing they are Polish from the news stories I've read. I have been wondering how they manage paying London rents but the immigrant in me admires them for being here. I've also seen a lot of diversity in London which is nice - far more than I expected. But when I switched on the TV for the first time last night I was struck by how white the presenter was - one of the things I will miss in Canada is the celebration of diversity (especially in Toronto) - from reading the news here there seems to be support for an anti-immigrant party called UKIP which saddened me.

5. I've seen jobs advertised in windows in quite a few places - so London definitely doesn't have the feel of a downbeat economy. I'm sure some of the jobs are probably precarious but, for example, on the back of buses there are ads for people to drive buses and in a pret a porter window I saw ads for team managers at 23K a year (the ad outlined how they had great parties, you could wear jeans to work and they had great benefits!).

6. English people are charmingly apologetic about things that aren't working and everywhere there are notices reminding one to take care which kind of reminds me of a parent! For example, yesterday as I walked from the tube station platform up some steps an announcement was made to take care when walking on the steps because they were slippy in the present weather conditions! And there are also a lot of notices everywhere - eg on roads at crossings it says "look right" ... I find it quite endearing and its very different from Canada.

7. Related to 6, its so nice that cars can't turn on a red light here - it means that when you cross the road you're not having to look out for people running you over (said with much feeling!)

8. I've found it easy to eat healthily in London. Now I appreciate that London is like Toronto and it's possible in Toronto to find nice healthy food cafes but the difference is that in London the pace is not so frenetic. For example when I was in Toronto I used to go to a chain called Freshi which sells healthy stuff - but a lot of people grab and go - eat on the run. In London you still see people eating on the run but there is also still a culture of sitting down and taking time to eat - so when you enter a cafe there isn't the same sense of freneticism in terms of getting you the food and getting you out - at least thats the way it seemed to me this weekend.

9. I really liked that some of the shops were shut yesterday. I turned the news on last night and there was a gardening organisation protesting that they couldn't open there garden centres on a sunday and people were saying that they would like sunday opening. But really, I don't think people realise what they've got until it's gone in terms of pace of life. I really struggled with the open all hours/work all hours culture in Canada and, maybe i'm old fashioned but I would love for the shops to be shut more not less.

I'll stop here. Feeling a bit nervous as I am trekking to Hampshire today to meet my new landlord and keeping my fingers crossed that it works out okay!

Perth

Thank you for your lovely updates! As an old friend used to say: my heart soars like an eagle. London was my home, and much of what you say is so familiar and much missed. And although I will never be able to afford to live there again, we will visit as often as possible. Looking forward to hearing more. Good luck with the house viewing today

spouse of scouse

I really enjoyed reading your first impressions of being back home. Hoping everything is smooth sailing for you

NiHao

These updates are so interesting! Good luck with meeting your Landlord, fingers crossed it goes really well!

r0briley

I have been lucky enough to go home to London for visits the past three summers and there's always some new tower changing the skyline. Funny you mentioning the no turn on red lights-every time I do that here I wonder if I'll do it without thinking once I'm back home and cause an accident! The anti-immigrant sentiment bothers me too, and something I struggle with a lot when I go for visits especially as I work for a diversity education program. Did you catch any of the London Marathon yesterday? I always loved the atmosphere on that day. Good luck with the landlord.

Englishmaple

Quick update!

Trekked to my place in Hampshire today. The only mishap I ran into was that I did not know that when you put a rail ticket through the barrier at Waterloo (to go onto a platform) that you are supposed to pick it up after it's run through. The machine I went through swallowed the ticket and so I assumed that that's what it did ... until the ticket inspector on the train asked me where my ticket was?! Oops! He wasn't very nice initially, especially as I couldn't produce much evidence of the ticket purchase but then he waived it - I guess he could see I was genuine! Next time though I will remember to hang on to the ticket or ask someone to get it back for me if the machine eats it!

Met the landlord - he picked me up from the station which was kind of him. He seems nice. House nice. Room nice (and big enough for me to put my boxes in I think - phew! - though I'll find out when they arrive in 8 weeks or so!). Spent a couple of hours chatting to landlord and then he took off for his girlfriends house in Camberley and I went off shopping to Sainsbury's.

Oh my Sainsbury's! It's funny how you can be away for a relatively short period (12 years isn't that long!) and when you get back, things have changed a lot! I felt like an alien from some distant planet shopping in the UK for the first time! It took me quite a while to get around and find everything. But what really surprised me were the prices. I haven't compared them completely to Canadian prices yet, but my sense is that food prices are cheaper or much cheaper than Canadian supermarkets.

So I made 2 shopping trips in total which involved about 40 minutes walking each time (20 minutes there and back per trip) and it was so nice. The weather was mild, a blackbird was singing it's heart out and the actual walking was really pleasant. Even along pavements which were adjacent to roads - the roads are smaller in this area (and much much smaller compared to North America) and so the traffic doesn't predominate. I could enjoy the trees, the green verges, the shrubs and the general landscape without feeling like I was walking past some industrial park with dust blowing in my eyes and where pavements are an after thought.

That said, the housing situation in the UK seems quite um challenging. My landlord said he thought he'd read that there was a need for at least 40,000 homes a year to be built because of the shortage. He also said that the prices have shot up so much it's got way out of hand. He actually downsized from his last home and that was the only way he could afford his current home (which is much smaller and needed doing up). The reason he did that was because his last home took so much of his salary to pay the mortgage that he had very little left over each month. But he couldn't have bought his present home if he hadn't sold his last home - because the prices had shot up so much!

So long term I don't quite know what I'm going to do about housing (I do not want to just have a room in a house at 60 and 70! - I'd like my own kitchen at some point!) but in the short term, where I am feels good for now and providing things continue to go well with my landlord, and I've got a job, I will stay until I figure it out. It's weird going from a whole apartment to a share though - especially as I realised I was back to the 2 shelves in the fridge for my food! - took me right back to my flat sharing days in my 20's and 30's!

There's also the sense of unsettledness that comes with knowing that you live in a space with someone else's blessing - that it could end at any time - so it's quite precarious really and very different from, say, signing an apartment contract in Canada. I don't know whether signing an apartment contract in the UK is any better security but given the prices of rentals and the fact that work is so precarious, it seemed sensible in the short term to do this arrangement - but I do hope I can put roots down somewhere in the long term in terms of having some kind of place of my own - I do feel less secure and unsettled and I don't know how long that feeling will stay with me. But then, staying in Canada just for an apartment of my own seems crazy too .. especially given that the labour market in Ontario is so so challenging and, long term, working at Tim Hortons wouldn't allow me to save more towards my pension!

But there are things I miss about Canada too in addition to my apartment - the Canadian blue sky, warmth (it's a bit chilly in this English house!) and the upbeatness of the people - as well as the familiarity of what I know (change is hard!) ... but I knew my feelings would see saw up and down so I'm just living with the knowledge of that at the moment - the time for a big review will be 1 year from now - until then, I am just going to live with the ups and downs of things as much as I can. So at the moment I'm homesick for Canada, glad to be back in England and also feeling very unsettled!

Tomorrow I'm going to try and get a bank account sorted and then it will be on to the job hunt!

Englishmaple

No I didn't catch the London Marathon yesterday! Completely missed it.

Re: the anti-immigrant sentiment. Yes, I don't like it at all. If the UK government were doing what the Harper government in Canada are doing with the temporary foreign worker program I could absolutely understand why people would be up in arms - the abuse that is going on by Canadian businesses using that program is appalling (just read another story about it today: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskat...kers-1.2615157)

... but to me, the immigrants here in the UK are just hard working people trying to make a living - they are not displacing anyone as far as I can see.

And, to be honest, I think most people who go to another country are just trying to get by (immigrants and temporary foreign workers) but problems arise when businesses try to exploit loopholes to avoid allowing the market to govern wages ie. when there's a labour shortage, the wages should go up! - not be displaced by cheap exploited labour.

jmh

Hi! Just wanted to drop in with a comment about the ticket. The machine swallows the ticket at the END of the journey not the beginning. That means that you were either using the wrong ticket or you left it behind in the machine. I'm glad the inspector didn't fine you, but he/she might next time.

Nice to hear your comments on the UK. It's interesting how our impressions change when we've been away for awhile.

between two worlds

Welcome back, English maple. Fascinating updates--sounds as if you never visited in those 12 years, so it must indeed seem different in lots of ways.

The green is one of the best things about being here, yes!! On visits I used to be bowled over by it and I still am even tho I'm living here now! The birdsong--blackbirds, robins, thrushes--can still bring tears to my eyes. Spring is one of the loveliest times here....

On immigration--and I'll try to be brief and not get into a political minefield--yes, so many of the lovely people in shops and restaurants are hard-working Polish or other immigrants, contributing so much to society. The concept of openness to immigrants is a wonderful one, and I am all for diversity. And of course most immigrants are just looking to better their circumstances and make a living,and one applauds them for that...

But one has to be practical. While I'm not a supporter of UKIP, I do think the huge amount of uncontrolled immigration is a problem for a small country like England--or even Britain as a whole. It's so much smaller than places like Canada or USA! The NHS is at breaking point and not helped by the many who apparently many come here just for free health care. Then there are (tho this will change due to new rules, I think) many immigrants who are on benefits without having worked first... please don't judge me for anything I'm saying here, I haven't even formulated my thoughts on it all properly yet, but I am not a stereotypical harrumphing old colonel or anything!!!!... I'm just trying to say that it's a complex issue; and the social services and the housing availability are strained to the utmost....
...and yet, while Europeans can come freely in, non-european spouses of Brits have to jump through hoops to get the spouse visa!
On the other hand, the free movement throughout Europe rules have benefitted me and my family, so should I complain about them?! ....enough. It's complicated. I don't want to start a discussion about it all here.

I love reading about the things that strike you, and how you're getting on. I relate to so much of what you've said about the friendliness and banter, the way people converse etc.

Yes, as your landlord says, the housing market is crazy!

But so many positives here, as you say...slower pace, charming notes of apology, healthy food.....

keep us posted!!

BEVS

Just wanted to say thanks for such candid and wonderful updates. So interesting to read .

Sally Redux

I have some trepidation about this also. Just have to grin and bear it I suppose.

PS main thing is, great updates!