A t-shirt from my quirky British friend, Marc, started me musing about being an expat straddling two cultures. Marc Jarrett is an enterprising fellow. By that I mean has set up many different enterprises. One of them is Agents of Ish at agentsofish.com. When I first saw that URL, I misread it as agents of fish. But no, according to the website, it’s a disparate band of rogue yuppies sworn to a secret government code of “thereabouts,” “I’m a bit busy that day,” and “hmm maybe.” The Agents of Ish are 97% and a bit committed to not be committed and to bring down the tyranny of exactness, time management and definiteness. Or maybe not.
Being of a generous disposition, Marc offered to give me a gift of an ‘ISH t-shirt. They came in black or white. That decision was easy for me, as I tend to wear my food and attract all kinds of stains, so white was definitely out, as my white clothing never stays white, instead turning into a grey-‘ISH colour (or to translate for Americans, a gray-‘ISH color), with various splotches that won’t wash out. However, there were more than twenty different ‘ISH slogans to choose from. Marc was hoping I’d select something provocative, like Sexy-’ISH, Del-’ISH-ous, D-‘ISH-y, or even Devil-‘ISH. Not appropriate for an old fart like me who has just entered her 6th decade, which I definitely was not going to be broadcasting to all and sundry by wearing the 60-‘ISH shirt. And I didn’t want to lie about my age by getting the 50-‘ISH or even 40-‘ISH T-Shirt, which might make me, as they say in British vernacular, mutton dressed as lamb. Undercounting the many years I have existed on this planet would make me too much like my mother. In her day, the entries in a British passport were hand-written, and she changed a 3 to an 8 in her birth date to shave five years off her age. The only people who would actually see her passport were grizzled old passport control officers, mainly in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the action somehow made her feel five years younger. But I’m digressing. Back to the Agents of ISH T-Shirts. I knew right away that the right choice for me was the Brit-‘ISH one, because it got me thinking about my confused sense of nationality and culture. Did I feel more Brit-‘ISH or American-‘ISH?
Time passed and I had all but forgotten all about Marc’s offer to give me a Brit-‘ISH T-shirt. Maybe he had decided not to give me one because he thought I had chosen the wrong kind of ‘ISH. But finally, a size small black Brit-‘ISH shirt appeared in my mailbox. In tribute to the efficiency of the British Postal Service, it took THREE MONTHS to arrive. In contrast, a birthday card I mailed to a friend in England took all of ten days to travel from Hawaii to London, proof of the superiority of the US Postal Service over British Royal Mail. However, my packet from Marc might have been delayed by the fact that on the envelope his assistant wrote the country down as Hawaii rather than the USA, which must have really confused the Royal Mail postal workers. I recognize that sometimes Hawaii seems like it’s in its own little world—some cynics might say it feels like part of the Third World, but so far it remains in the USA, even though it was the last state to join the Union.
For the past couple of decades, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to divide my time between California and Hawaii. At least before the dreary Covid era, many of my American friends found the idea of living in London and Paris to be glamorous and exciting. But to a London girl like me, those cities were too familiar to be anything special or unusual. Instead, California felt exceedingly exotic and the tropical shores of Hawaii even more so.
So, am I Brit-‘ISH or American-‘ISH? Or even Hawaii-‘ISH? I’ve certainly got spoilt by the warm weather on the islands and could never go back to London’s icy winters and rainy everything else. I attempt to speak the local language and embody ho’oponopono, but friends in Hawaii make fun of my very British pronunciation, especially when I declare “a hui ho” before leaving a get-together. However, the truth is that I have no accent—Americans have the accent. Mine is the original one—standard BBC-style received pronunciation. I’m relieved that despite having spent over half my life in the USA, I haven’t picked up the twang.
I was born and raised in London, but haven’t lived in England since the mid-1980s. Culturally I feel I straddle the pond. Just to make my background even more mixed up, I have no British blood in me at all—my parents were Jewish war refugees. My father was born in a small town in the brand-new country of Czecho-Slovakia, formerly part of Austro-Hungary, and currently in the Ukraine. Pretty much every week he had to learn a new language as someone else had taken over the country. My mother was from Germany, and her father came from East Prussia, currently in Russian territory. Then, before moving to the US, I lived and worked for a couple of years in Beijing, China. I’m also a citizen of Germany, ironically thanks to the Nazis, as under Article 116 (paragraph 2) of Germany’s Basic Law, any citizen during the Nazi regime, or his or her descendants, who lost his or her citizenship for “political, racist, or religious reasons” has the right to have it reinstated. Ethnically I’m an expat mongrel, like so many people in my adopted homeland of America, despite deep down being fundamentally British.
My vocabulary is a mix of English and American. I played guitar (badly) as a teenager and used a plectrum, not a guitar pick. I raised my kids in the US, and bought them diapers rather than nappies. Here in America, I’ve got used to putting the American “D’” sound in the middle of the word “water” because otherwise I’m often misunderstood, especially if I’m asking for a glass of it in a restaurant. I’ve spent more of my life driving in America than back in Blighty, so my car has a hood and a trunk rather than a bonnet and a boot. Playwright George Bernard Shaw declared that England and America are two countries separated by a common language, but Shaw himself was Irish, so perhaps he wasn’t be the best judge of English English, or rather English as spoken in England. Irish English is a law unto itself.
One of the few things I miss since I no longer live in England are the apples—British varieties are so much more flavourful (not flavorful) and tangy. Give me English Coxes Orange Pippins and Egremont Russetts over American tasteless mealy Red Delicious (not) and watery Granny Smith apples.
I remain quintessentially British in my taste for hot drinks. I go for tea (AKA as a cuppa or a cup of cha) and biscuits rather than coffee and cookies. Coffee? Nah, fuhgeddaboudit! Nothing like strong builder’s tea with milk. That’s real whole milk and not cream, watery fat-free milk, or even worse, some fake soy, oat or almond milk concoction. Boiling hot water has to go over the teabag and steep for six minutes, rather than the American habit of plonking a teabag in lukewarm water. I get my teabags from England, because the teabags in America have less tea in them. Seriously. I’ve checked this. I even compared the Tetley British Blend sold in Safeway with Tetley Original teabags that I bought in London. Both of them are round, but the original blend clearly has more tea in each bag. The proof is that when you pour hot water over a British teabag, you get a wonderful dark liquid you can’t see through, but weak wishy-washy American stuff remains an amber color.
If you visit a friend in the UK and you’re bemoaning the fact that you’ve had a bad day, you’re likely to be offered a rejuvenating mug of tea. In America, you’re more likely to be offered a margarita. That doesn’t work for me, since I’m that rarest of individuals, a Brit who doesn’t drink alcohol. I did drink somewhat when I worked for the BBC in Britain, because sadly, if I didn’t go to the local pub, I would have had no social life. Brits can sometimes be pretty unfriendly to newcomers. When I worked in different parts of the UK for BBC Radio, for a limited period in each location, it was a rare thing to be asked over to someone’s house for dinner, unless the invitation came from a guy seeking a bonk. I’ve found Americans to be far more welcoming and open to making new friends.
If I want to go and have a pee (and being a very weak-bladdered woman, I do it very frequently), I feel very schizophrenic about describing the place where this important activity occurs. Is it the loo or the bog? Or do I verbally cross the pond by calling it the restroom or the bathroom? What if I don’t feel rested afterwards or there’ s no actual bath in the room? One American phrase you’ll never hear me say is “go potty.” In Britain, only babies use a potty, and if you go potty it means you’ve gone mad or crazy, or in the British vernacular, stark raving bonkers.
My sense of humour (rather than humor) is most definitely British. As a lifelong Monty Python fan, an eye for the absurdity of life pervades my writing and public speaking work. Rather than the optimistic, brash, slapstick, winner-takes-all type of humor popular in the US, I prefer the British style of comedy that is subtle, witty, pessimistic and/or sarcastic. This ties in with a 2013 survey by globalvisas.com on foreigners’ attitudes towards the United Kingdom. It found that the top three things foreigners disliked about living in Britain were:
- Sarcasm—guilty as charged.
- Heavy drinking—not guilty, but I have British friends who, if they invite you for dinner, don’t believe they have done a proper job of entertaining you unless you have a serious hangover the next day.
- The weather—not my fault. I recommend following my lead and leaving for somewhere with a better climate.
To conclude, I’m proud of my British cultural roots, but, sorry Britannia, I’m happy to no longer be there. I’m very grateful to be in Hawaii right now. But maybe all I’ve done is trade one island for another.