When I tell my friends in the U.S. that I am heading home for a visit, meaning that I’m going back to the U.K., they typically respond with: “You still call it home?” And yes, yes I do. It is too deeply a part of me to deny it that privilege, even though I have spent almost more of my life living in the US at this point. My deeply formative years were spent there, and being British will forever remain in my bones.
You can take the girl out of England, but you can’t take England out of the girl.
When I first moved to the U.S. in 1998, a entire lifetime ago, I used to get teased by my new American friends for starting far too many sentences with, “In England…” at which point they would jokingly add “…where it’s better…” Truthfully, in my newly minted ex-pat era, I didn’t mean to suggest England was better, I was merely trying to make sense of all the subtle, nuanced differences between the two countries.
Fast forward to where we are in 2025, the differences are no longer so subtle, and I don’t begin my sentences with “In England…” because honestly, I now only have my view of the UK, and it’s one I’ve carefully, if accidentally, curated. One that is a snapshot of May, and possibly August, when the weather is generally quite lovely. Although for some reason there was an Arctic chill for the first few days of my visit that definitely wasn’t on my UK bingo card. (Note: only a Brit would start a list by talking about the weather.)
It’s a view where the abundance of the British countryside is fully evident. Where birds trill joyfully with the delight of having survived yet another harsh winter, and flowers explode under occasional blue skies, and idyllic sunny days that remind you of an E.M. Forster novel. Where trees are fully leafed up with the glossiest, greenest foliage that I swear you won’t see anywhere else in the world. Where village cricket teams are reunited for a brief season on manicured greens. And where office workers rush outside to get some Vitamin D and sunburn during their lunch hour, just as I used to do in Soho Square, and then spill out on to the streets for a few drinks after work.
This England of mine, is one of nostalgia and fanning the flames of friendship that many tell me would have died out long ago were it not for my insistence that every year or two, a handful of us get together to retell the stories of our young adulthood, and regale each other with twists and turns of the lives that have since followed. I like to joke that I miss being wistful, but the truth is, I never gave up my wist – if that is even a thing you can do. As life marches on, my fervent belief that you don’t get new old friends only deepens.
One of the reasons for this particular voyage home, was to participate in a reunion of former colleagues from a job I held from 1993 to 1998. But calling it a job, is a disservice. This experience fundamentally shaped me, not just in my career, but also in the relationships that I’ve kept across the pond and the years. It was my second job after I graduated, and the first one where I was given the opportunity to be entrepreneurial, and responsible for outcomes, but that is barely the point. The company, Lexis PR, was founded by two individuals, who were really quite different personalities, but fundamentally the best humans you could ever ask to work for. And I say this, reflecting on over two decades of working in Silicon Valley, which has provided a stark contrast on many an occasion.
The co-founders had a knack of hiring a really good, if eclectic, group of people, and if memory serves me, I was employee number 10. The five years that followed were so full of growth: personally, professionally and for the company itself, it was a crazy ride. We were a fierce group with a passion for doing game-changing work, holding each other mostly to high standards, and more importantly building relationships that went far beyond our work together. We would workout together at lunchtime, and then open a beer and spark up a ciggie at our desks after 5pm. Once work was done, we’d head to the pub together at the end of a long week rolling into the weekend by letting off (a lot of) steam. We went on holiday with each other, lived through each other’s dramas, some even fell in love, and so we attended each other’s weddings, and over the life of the company apparently eight marriages were made.
By the time I reached the U.S., the life-stage of my peers (being partnered-up or married, having babies, buying homes, etc, etc) precluded the type of bonds that you tend to make in your first or second job out of college, although I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge a couple of dear friends from my early work days in San Francisco.
In preparation for this reunion, which was an insane evening of joyous reunification, and madly and loudly scrambling over each other’s words as we melted away the intervening 25+ years, one of our number shared a video of a few of us at his wedding. It is a profoundly moving (and hilarious thing) to stare your much younger self in the face. I marvel at her freedom, lightness, hilarity and giggly-ness, with a little bit of awe. Even her voice is different. But mostly, WE WERE SO YOUNG and nothing had really happened to us yet. Being GenXers, we didn’t grow up being constantly videoed, or photographed, so it’s wild to have this moment of vivid time travel.
I ask myself more and more often these days, and others ask me too: Would I ever move back to England? Just like all those years ago, when my British friends asked me how long I’d stay in San Francisco, I really don’t have the answer to that question. I would be lying if I pretended that I don’t imagine it. I recently joined a Facebook group for Ex-Pats Moving Back to the UK, and just today, a woman posted a photo of her two horses boarded on a plane, leaving LA on their way to Dorset, England. Is it a sign? I ask myself.
Let’s be honest, the most common question I get when I muse about moving back to the UK, is “What about your horses?” Well that’s a simple one. They would come with me. The hardest question to answer is “What about me?” My life in England wouldn’t be made up of back-to-back reunions, unlike my whirlwind visits; I couldn’t expect to just pick up friendships where I left off. Would I find work? Am I simply just too American these days? How would I cope with the arcane process of buying a house, where I’m used to it taking 4-5 weeks; not 8-10 months in some cases? And so the list goes on.
I think for now, the answer has to be about living in the moment and enjoying all that I have created at home in California. And yes, confusingly, I call that home too.
Perhaps, after all, home is where the heart is. It’s just that your heart can beat in two places at once.
There’s a TikTok series in you moving your horses to the UK!