The Times Magazine 67adventure. I knew then that something had
to change. It might be time to come home.
Several weeks later Dan’s wife, Sam,
broke the not very surprising news too. “Last
Christmas Sam said, ‘Just so you know, this
is our last Christmas in Portland,’ ” he recalls.
“I said, ‘I 100 per cent agree.’ ” It had already
been a weird year on the West Coast, even
without Covid. “It seemed as if there were
riots every day and then forest fires and crazy
extreme temperatures in which quite a few
people died. There was so much going on and
so much tension rising.” Portland, a fiercely
liberal city in an increasingly far right state is,
Dan says, “this place where visions of America
were played out. And it was quite unpleasant.
So that was also part of the thinking: ‘We just
want to move home.’ ”
I felt similarly over on the East Coast. I’d
campaigned hard for Joe Biden (not my first-
choice candidate but the lesser of two evils)
and felt an odd sense of deflation after his
victory, a disappointed feeling that nothing
had changed or was ever likely to. When
I watched violent insurrectionists storm the
US Capitol on January 6, it felt worse than
that; it felt like watching the fall of Rome, live,
on rolling news channels.
Nonetheless, the decision to leave New
York was like breaking up with a partner
whom you still love with a passion, but with
whom you also know that it’s no longer really
working. I felt tortured, but oddly relieved.
The pandemic and my accident brought
into sharp relief something I’d always known
intellectually but now also felt viscerally:
that America is an extraordinary place full
of incredible opportunities, but not a country
in which you’d ever want to be ill, poor or
vulnerable. There is no safety net besides
cold hard cash.“The world is a fantastic place – and actually
a very small place, relatively speaking, when
you can travel freely,” says Emma Linnitt.
“But when you can’t travel freely, then the
world is that big place again and it’s all just
too difficult.” Linnitt and her husband,
Michael, moved back to the UK last summer
after 19 years in Hong Kong.
A 51-year-old yoga teacher, Emma says
she always knew they would come home
eventually. “England was always home; I really
struggled with the idea of Hong Kong as
home. And it got harder and harder to say
goodbye to people. Getting on the plane felt
like my heart was being wrenched out.”
But with three children – now aged 21,
18 and 15 – all in school, picking their moment
was difficult. They’d finally made plans to move
back last summer, before the pandemic hit.
“Thankfully, because staying longer in Covid
would have been a nightmare,” says Michael, a
56-year-old security consultant. “Flights werebanned from the UK, then there were 21-day
quarantines. We had elderly parents whom we
needed to see. While the pandemic wasn’t part
of our initial decision to leave, it confirmed
what we felt about needing to get back.”
But after two decades away, “There’s this
cultural gap of things you’ve completely
missed,” says Michael. “Strictly Come Dancing- what the hell is that, and why is it on TV?”
This spring, newly arrived back in London,
I scoffed at the endless public debate over
whether we’d be able to have “our summer
holiday” this year. Is your two weeks in
Spain really that crucial when there’s a
global pandemic on, I thought sniffily. By
mid-July I, too, was itching to get on a flight
somewhere, anywhere; I’d forgotten how
intense our crowded little island feels when
there’s no weekend reprieves to Paris to be
had. Brits mock the 58 per cent of Americans
who don’t own a passport, but when
international travel goes down and borders go
up, they can still drive to the Everglades or the
sequoia forests, Lake Tahoe or Yosemite, Cape
Cod or Maine, so the joke really is on us.
For me, after the vastness of America,
the UK feels small, slow, provincial, even
parochial sometimes. America’s cultural
hegemony may not be healthy but, when
you’re there, it’s compelling to be in the
room where it happens.
And, sure, America worships money, but
back here, I quickly remembered, everyone
is obsessed with house prices. On which note,
I’m back in the flat I bought in 2009 for
tuppence when the market had collapsed, and
while I know I am lucky to own a London
property at all, I hate living in it.
It doesn’t help that my bijou New York
apartment was the stuff of brownstone
fantasies and my neighbours included
Michelle Williams, Adam Driver and Daniel
Craig. I could sit on my Brooklyn roof terrace
and look up at Matt Damon’s (somewhat
larger) roof terrace a few doors down.
Now, I look out of my front window at the
alcoholics gathered on the corner, then
email my MP about the litter problem.
Socially, I’m finding, there’s no spontaneity,
with dinners and weekends booked up aeons in
advance. Maybe because it takes so long to get
everywhere in London; if I leave now, I might
just make that Christmas party next month.
I do realise that I moved back at the tail
end of a torturous lockdown, and the country
wasn’t at its fighting weight. And I do feel
London slowly blinking back to life; I’ve worn
high heels and Spanx on two occasions in thepast three weeks, which simultaneously kills
my soles and thrills my soul.
The Linnitts found the social scene one of
the hardest adjustments too, and not merely
because they moved from a bustling city
island directly to rural Suffolk.
On a local Facebook group, someone had
posted that they were new to the area and
Emma responded that she was also new, and
why didn’t they have coffee. Others chipped
in that they were new and wanted to join.
An initial WhatsApp group of eight is now
a coffee club with more than 100 members.
“And a few people have said to me, ‘How
would you even have got that idea?’ ” says
Emma. “Because that’s what my life has been
for 19 years. And actually I didn’t think it at
all strange. If you don’t do that when you live
overseas, you would never meet anybody.”
She and Michael feel they have adjusted
well, and quickly. “I think because we were in
the right headspace for it,” says Emma.
“We’re so excited to be home,” says Dan
Rookwood, who is making a career pivot into
finance for a small fund helping developing
brands, while Sam is building the vegan,
sustainable haircare brand Alott (alott.co)they created during the lockdown. “I’m sure
it will wear off, but we’re in the honeymoon
period right now. It’s bliss.”
So is it just me that’s struggling a bit? Or
am I just the only one who risks the wrath
of friends and family to say it here (and
occasionally in person, after a lot of wine)?
Perhaps it’s easier when you move back as
a couple or a family and have people to share
the resettlement process with – constants who
have been with you on both sides of the water.
Because living abroad is not just about the
things you missed while away or trying to slip
back into the life you had before (you can’t);
being a long-term expat does change you.
There’s a self-assurance that comes with
making a new life in a completely new place
and making it work. Unfortunately, it does
also tend to give one terminally itchy feet.
For now, though, I’m steadily finding new
ways to enjoy my old city. And finding that
new experiences partially scratch that expat
itch. A dear friend with whom I spent my
twenties partying now has three children.
And neither of us has stamina. So our new
hangout hobby takes place at 7am at
Parliament Hill Lido, gossiping while getting
high on an icy cold-water immersion (it was
11C this morning). In those magical, if numb,
moments, with both challenge and connection,
I am beyond happy to be home. nTHE UK FEELS SMALL, EVEN PAROCHIAL.
EVERYONE IS OBSESSED BY HOUSE PRICES
PAGE 50: STYLING BY HANNAH ROGERS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: JULIE READ AT CAROL HAYES MANAGEMENT USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE AND BOBBI BROWN. JANE WEARS DRESS, HER OWN; SHOES, MALONESOULIERS.COM; EARRINGS, SYLVIA TOLEDANO (FENWICK.CO.UK). PAGE 51: HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY CAROL SULLIVAN AT ARLINGTON ARTISTS USING MAC COSMETICS