from a very young age i was sure that i wasn't going to live in the village where i grew up.
no idea where this conviction came from, and even less so from where the notion that i wanted to live in England arose, but it was there. maybe cos Being Elsewhere was always a thing in my house; my dad's oldest sister lived in Switzerland, and an uncle of my dad came from the southernmost part of Limburg, where Holland meets Belgium and Germany, and used to descend on us, with his wife, at ungodly hours, announcing that they'd be staying for a few days, prompting my mum to make a double bed in my brothers bedroom, having him sleep somewhere else {can't actually recall where...}. he seemed enigmatic, had lots of stories about his travels to far flung places in Europe {this was early 80's, Europe was still a lot bigger than it seems now} my dad loved him {he was a younger brother of my granddad}, my mum despised both him and the over-chatty auntie who spoke in a deep Limburg accent and was often incomprehensible to me. she seemed a hoot though, despite the fact that she smoked a lot. in the house. as was then perfectly normal.
my childhood was alright. i can remember being outside a lot, in our huge garden, that stretched all the way to the other side of the road, to where the football grounds were, and nothing was built yet. we had loads of space to make dens, to discover the world, to hang around. there was no fence at the end of what was my parent's garden, it just went on, and the village kind of ended by the football grounds anyway. at one point houses were getting built, and a fence was put up, but i was a bit older then. also, i didn't really enjoy playing with other kids. i was introverted, quiet, sensitive, happy to make booklets about flowers i found in the garden, or write little plays about things i'd read about in books. my now best friend M. was incomprehensible to me, a lot of the time. she was frenetic, had 4 older siblings that seemed alien to me, loud and unsophisticated, and they frightened me.
it seems weird now, but life outside of my little bubble frightened me rigid... everyone seemed so confident, so obviously aware of what was asked of them, how to fit in. i had no idea, and felt out of place. the alienation most people feel when they go through teenage, i felt when i was 8.
looking back at who i was then, it seems a huge leap to make the move to another country, a country i'd visited once, with my brother, for just over a week, and instinctively knew was my Happy Place... we visited Canterbury, where we stayed in a lovely B&B, then travelled to Salisbury {which i didn't even know how to pronounce, asking for a train ticket to Sellis-bury, much to the hilarity of the guy in the booth selling me the ticket...}, which was this amazing place full of hippies and artists and artisan & spiritual types who made it seem like heaven on earth to me. i'd never seen anything like it! history and arts and crafts and nature and the spiritual and architecture and introverted people that i'd not come across in Holland, or Germany, in such vast supplies here... i wanted this all the time....
there's still an intuitive pull towards there, although i wouldn't have a clue about how to make the changes that were so much easier when i was 21... probably should've never left England in the first place. but back then it made sense, and truly wonderful things have happened here. as well....
how do we know when we've made the right choices....? how do we know where we belong...? sometimes i tell people that i feel homesick for England... and felt like my heart was ripped out for the first year after moving here. England wasn't even my home?!!
or was it...?
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