Ch-ch-ch-changes - the expat experience

OK, so everyone who is anyone is writing about what marks you out as an expat.

See here (Moscow)

and here (Chicago)

and here. (York)

I thought I'd better join in.

What do I do now, that I would never have done before my stint abroad?

• I don't mind if food isn't piping hot, and I don't expect plates to be warmed (though I do warm plates myself, if it's just me and Husband eating, without the children, which I guess is a dangerous indication of double standards, but I'm just being honest here).
• I used the adjective "excited" to describe adult emotions or behaviour. That always used to be a word just for children.
• I expect attentive customer service. This is a long, weary road to disappointment. I look back on myself in my pre-US days, and think "Why did I think that being ignored was comfortable and non-intrusive? What was wrong with me? What is wrong with Britain?" The one that really gets me is when someone says "I'll be with you in a minute" and continues writing on a piece of paper behind the till. I feel like saying "That piece of paper isn't going to make a purchase. I might. It is in your interests to serve me first, and attend to the piece of paper's needs later."
• I might mention that I used to see a counsellor. I might even go so far as to use the word therapist. I know. I'm never going to fit back in.
• I can't stop going on about how wonderful the NHS is. My GP politely listens. I haven't yet made an appointment with her just to tell her how wonderful the NHS is, but I can feel it coming. There was a notice up on the waiting room door saying "We arranged an extra clinic to meet demand, and ONE THIRD of patients didn't show up for their appointment. Please let us know if you are unable to attend an appointment." I wanted to go out and buy my GP flowers to make up for it. 
• I would quite like magazines in the waiting room that are dated later than 2011, though. 
• I say "uh-huh" instead of "yes". Which actually is quite Scottish, so that's ok. No-one notices. I sometimes say "absolutely" instead of "yes". I sometimes say "totally" instead of "yes". 
• I use the word "totally" way too much. I say "way too much" way too much.
• I find John Humphrys way too rude, irritating and aggressive. In fact, I don't listen to The Today Programme at all any more, which was one of the things I was looking forward to getting back to. There are only so many times you can shout "let them finish their answer" at the radio before you give up. 
• I would like parking spaces (which I call "parking spots") to reflect more accurately the width of the average 21st century car.

There are a million other things, but the list is long enough.

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Accents

Thanks to Al Fresco Holidays, for putting right the situation, and offering a second holiday prize.

Now, here's a story about accents. My kids have varying degrees of American accents. As you would guess, 7-yo, being the youngest, has the strongest. She sounds American to me. According to a local here, you would think she was an American child, with rather proper parents.

That's one aspect of the British accent that I think fuels the American love of it. Somehow it speaks to them of bygone eras, and feeds that vague nostalgia we all have somewhere in our psyches, the sense that things used to be better. There was a time when all was well with the world, or at least a bit more so than today. I might be wrong about this, but it's a working theory. For Brits, it plays out in period dramas. We all know intellectually that life in Edwardian England was oppressive, smelly, and you couldn't get antibiotics, but somehow we all have a slight yearning for Downton Abbey days. Not From Around Here has an interesting take on the matter.

Anyhoo, 7-yo has clearly picked up this idea that a British accent means you're a bit proper. I know this, because she was annoyed with me for some parental injustice or other - you know the kind of thing - and from the back of the car, she piped up with her rendering of what I was insisting. And out came this prim, disapproving, rather aloof, voice. Think Maggie Smith as Miss Jean Brodie in an English accent, with light hints of Penelope Keith as Margot Ledbetter, citrus suggestions of Judy Dench as Q in James Bond, and woody after-notes of Helen Mirren as The Queen. (I haven't yet seen Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher; otherwise I expect she'd be in there too.)

"Mummy, you always say [enter Maggie Smith combo stage left] 'We can't possibly go, it's far too late, and you need an early night because we've had a busy week'. [back to Midwest twang] You always say that." (Or whatever the details were. I forget the exact conversation, but you get the picture.)

We've all had those moments when we hear our child use our phrases, and think "oh my goodness, is that what I sound like?" I tell you, this occasion was that feeling in spades. Do I really sound all prim and proper to her now? Or was she just taking the mickey? Or is she so attuned to American cultural assumptions, that to her, an English accent now implies a whole package?

It made me laugh, but it also made me a little sad - this gap between us. It's not that I want her to be like me, but it's that need for shared heritage with your children. Why else do we have Christmas traditions, take our children to places we went to as children, and teach them history in school?

Of course the alternative interpretation is that I really do sound like that.

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The Chicago Six

So there I am, sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Chicago, listening to another English woman tell a story which begins “so there I am…”, and I’m thinking “I love that – the way English people tell stories in the present tense. I miss that here.”.

Get me, though. Chicago. Chi-ca-go. I’m having this FABULOUS week-end. We’re eating, we’re drinking, we’re being driven around on our own personalized tour, we’re looking at pictures in the Art Institute, we’re strolling around Chicago in the late autumn sunshine… We’re having the best week-end, and all the time, we’re talking, talking, talking. I think I haven’t ever talked so much in a 2-day period in my entire life. We talk as if talking is going to be banned tomorrow. We talk as we eat, we talk as we walk, we talk as we sit in a taxi, we talk when we’re ready for bed and should be going to sleep. I don't mean 19 to the dozen; it’s more like 91 to the dozen. We use much-loved phrases, rarely heard in our American lives: we speak about a fortnight, faffing around, losing the plot, being all over the shop, going to the loo. It’s the conversational equivalent of comfort food. I feel enveloped in a warm blanket of spoken words.

The cast list. You want to know the cast list. There were the two Chicagoans who organized us and looked after us. Thanks, Expat Mum, for your knowledgeable guided tour, and Nicola, I’m in awe of anyone who can wear a white wool coat and keep it looking that good. There were the two Californians, who turned up in bikinis carrying surfboards. Hope you’ve warmed up, Calif Lorna and Geekymummy. The East Coast was represented by Nappy Valley Girl, with her tales about visiting New York's Museum of Modern Art, (though I suspect she’d just got lost in her own neighborhood and was looking at the Hallowe’en decorations, which, if her blog is anything to go by, are works of art of museum quality in their own right). And then me, feeling like I’m one of the hicks from the sticks, though I think I impressed them all with my tales of how we have electricity and hot running water in every house, and a Wal-mart on both sides of town.

I remember a period of time when bloggers in the UK started meeting together. In real life. In the flesh. Sometimes it was an ad hoc group, sometimes it was arranged by British Mummy Bloggers. There was a flurry of ‘meet-ups’. If I’m honest, I hated reading those reports. I felt I was missing out big time. I wanted to know what it felt like to clap eyes on a completely strange face, and yet know the person behind it so well. I wanted to join in all the posting and commenting: “you were JUST like I imagined you! Can’t wait to see you again!” Sometimes living abroad really sucks. Then last summer, I was thrilled at the thought of meeting people at Cyber Mummy 2010, but I was also a little irritated that the blogging wagon had rolled on without me. Everyone was over the novelty of the whole meet-up thing, and was moving on, before I had even had my first taste. People were going to Cyber Mummy because they wanted to attend the sessions and learn stuff, when all I wanted to do was sit at a succession of coffee cups and talk. Not even talk… Just chat… I’m even going to confess (sorry, Susanna, Jen, Sian) that in advance of the conference, I emailed a few bloggers who I really wanted to meet, and sought to lure them out of sessions, so that I could fill my day with my own personal serial meet-up. (It only partially worked.)

Anyway, what I’m trying to say, in amongst all this wittering on, is that this week-end in Chicago was not only a fun-filled, chat-filled, friendship-filled two days which will live in my memory for years to come, but it also somehow made up for all those meet-ups in England which I missed. And in Chi-ca-go, for heaven’s sake. Yup. I think I’ve caught up now.

Thank you, fellow members of The Chicago Six. I wish I could put all those conversations we had over the week-end in bottles, and uncork them over the next few weeks. I'd love to re-run them and chew them over again and again. There was so much great content!


PS Since someone is bound to ask, I don’t know if I’m going to Cyber Mummy 2011. Don’t know if I’ll be in England at the time. But if I am, and you fancy a quick coffee and a chat behind the bike sheds when teacher isn’t looking, email me.

Olde English Tea

I've just been to an Olde English Tea. It's an annual fundraising event, run by a local church. It was most enjoyable, and it made me realise something I hadn't fully realised before. We English have a lot to live up to. I knew that Americans like our accent, and I knew that many of the older generation are somewhat fascinated by the idea of the monarchy. But, oh my, if this event is anything to go by, the image they hold of life in England is truly refined.

The occasion was one at which Miss Marple would have felt at home. Piano music tinkled away in the background. Tea was poured from large, elegant silver teapots on silver platters. The food consisted of small sandwiches cut into dainty circles or squares, and tiny cakes, and morsels of tray bake, and little pieces of fruit precisely displayed. There were mice made out of a cherry dipped in chocolate for the body, with a chocolate head, pointy nose and all, and ears made out of flaked almonds. The cherry stalk was the tail. What imagination! Everything was beautifully presented on plates, with doilies (can't remember when I last saw a doily), and a small vase of flowers in the middle of each one. Flowers were everywhere, actually. On each table in white teapots-turned-vases, in huge arrangements down the centre of the buffet table, either side of the pathway as you walked into the building.

I have no idea how many people they serve in the four hours that it runs, but it will be several hundred. Mostly ladies, and all very smartly turned out, with many in hats. Hats! "Like an English wedding" someone told me.

You'll be pleased to hear I didn't let the side down. I tried my best to look elegant and glamorous, but in an English way. I'm going to have to digress here, and tell you about the dress I wore. I've had it for 15 years (I just worked it out) and for most of those years, it's been hanging in my closet for old times' sake because, let's face it, who can fit into a dress they wore 15 years ago after three pregnancies and the onset of middle age? But ha, there has to be some hidden positive in cancer and chemo, and guess what, I am now lighter than I was 16 years ago, and it would seem pretty much as slim. I was so excited when I tried it on and found it fit, and it kind of compensated for the black and purple toilet brush which is my head these days (I never did go back to the hairdresser; I know, I know, I should have...)

Anyway, yes, understated English elegance was the look I was going for, which involves a lot of tummy sucking in, I can tell you, and walking as if you have a book balanced on your head. I tried to talk in my finest accent, and shower little droplets of British English into the air. It was the least I could do.

You'll be glad I didn't spoil the ambiance by letting on that there were a few little wrinkles in the Englishness. The event took place between 10.00am and 2.00pm, so not actually teatime as we know it. The tea was served with a slice of lemon with a clove stuck in it. Delicious, I'm sure, but not traditionally English. There was milk and sugar available, but it wasn't milk. It was cream. (I hear your small gasps of horror from across the ocean). There was a choice of tea or coffee (coffee... I know... sacrilege). And the drinks were served in glass cups - proper teacup-shaped cups, not mugs - but without saucers. Alas.

But it's the worst kind of expat who is a pernickety spotter of faults in this way, so these things are just between you and me and a gatepost standing by a verdant green meadow somewhere deep in rural England. And let's face it, if they were really going to recreate an English tea, it wouldn't be flowers and hats and delicate food and refined chatter at all, would it now?

Associations

Today I went to a baseball match. Actually, I don’t think they call them ‘matches’. A baseball game. I enjoyed it. Definitely a whole blog post in there – another day.

It made me think about sensory associations. It was the loud, twangy thwack of the baseball on the (five syllable) aluminium bat that got me started. I bet that to Americans, that particular sound says ‘summer’. I bet they’d recognize it instantly, even if they’d been away from America for decades. I bet they’d close their eyes, and see in their mind’s eye a baseball pitch from their childhood or college days, feel the heat of the sun on their backs, smell the hot dogs at the concession stand, and hear the song from the seventh innings stretch.

As an expat, you're constantly developing a new set of associations. I suppose that's true of everyone, but it's exaggerated by a move to another country. The equivalent of the baseball thwack for me would be the repetitive thump of tennis ball on racquet strings, or the thud of leather on willow. Those are the sounds of summer. Accompanied by the smell of newly cut grass, of course. When you move abroad, you start building up a new library of associations: sound, smell, taste, feel. They don’t replace the old library. I guess you just overlay one on top of the other.

I had a moment, a couple of years ago now, when an association stopped me short. I was outside a store, and I heard a clang, clang, clanging which I couldn’t place. It confused me, and then suddenly I knew it. It was the sound I used to love when we lived by the sea in Scotland, of boats in the harbour on a windy day, the ropes slapping against the metal masts. I looked around, and saw a tall flagpole. Ah, that was it. Same sound, different context. A cross-reference in my library of associations.

Sensory associations run deep, and the expat has to undergo a little retraining. The comforting sound of coming home is no longer the click and turn of the key in the front door lock, but the whirring of the automatic garage door as it opens. I have to trust that a bathroom is disinfected, even though it doesn’t smell of Dettol. I’m guessing that for Americans, the smell of Lysol or Clorox carries that same hygiene-assured feeling. The labels say they kill germs, but it’s been a leap of faith for me. They just don’t have that trusted Dettol smell...

I wash up after dinner to Jazz Café instead of The Archers. That didn’t feel right at first. How could I fill a sink with water and bubbles without that familiar music? And on the subject of music, does anyone else still miss the ba-ba-ba-ba of the Pearl and Dean adverts when they go to the cinema? That’s an age-related association as well as an expat-related one. The passing years pose no threat to old associations, though. When she visited, my mother said that the tornado siren, tested on Mondays at noon, was the wrong way round. The warning tone should be the all clear, and the all clear should be the warning. Strong associations from 70 years ago.

Once you start thinking about these smells, or sounds, or tastes, you realize what a huge number we all carry around with us, and of course we carry far more than we are consciously aware of. I love associations. Why don’t you tell me some of yours?

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Expats, are you voting?

I have to vote. I do. My grandmother impressed it on me. "When I was your age, I couldn't vote because I was a woman" she told me. "You must always vote. Always. It's your moral duty." So I do. I always vote. I vote because of the generations of women before me who were not able to. I vote because women fought, and were imprisoned, and force fed, so that I could. I vote because my grandmother couldn't until she was 29.

It's not difficult, as an expat. Don't use that as an excuse. You have to register, and then either choose a postal vote (unlikely to be workable unless you live in Europe, and even then, a little risky), or nominate someone to vote for you by proxy. You can print out the forms here. You'll need to be quick, as the forms have to be at the electoral registration office by April 20th, but you've got the time to achieve that if you want. The forms aren't difficult or time-consuming. The only part of the process that is likely to be an inconvenience is having to find another UK passport holder to witness your signature (can't trust any foreign johnnie to do that). I've got a bit stuck on finding a proxy, but I'm persevering. I couldn't look Emmeline Pankhurst or my grandmother in the face if I didn't. "Too much of a nuisance to keep on emailing" wouldn't impress them as an excuse.

Who to vote for is the next question. Brown, Cameron, or Clegg? I usually choose the one with the prettiest wife, because I always feel that says a lot about a man.

What about you? Are you living abroad but still going to vote? Or do you feel that if you're not in the country, you shouldn't have a say in its elections?

(And yes, I was joking about the wives thing...)

Post script

I realise on re-reading this post that it sounds as if my grandmother was a sufragette. She wasn't. Not as far as I know, anyway. But having been unable to vote as a young woman, she was very aware of the need to pass on what that had felt like to me.

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Small world

The girl who I was at primary school with was… Brit Gal in the USA. I can’t remember quite how we discovered the connection – something to do with a website that I’d typed ‘Chesham’ into. As I mentioned, Brit Gal was a couple of years below me, and I can’t honestly say I remember her. There was also a girl with the same name as her in my year, who I do remember well. That made the process of uncovering Brit Gal’s identity a little complicated. According to Friends Reunited, that girl is living in the Chesham area, divorced, with five children, whereas Brit Gal in the USA claimed to be living in Oklahoma, married to a man known as the Hubster. For a while I was confused - but I worked it out in the end.

I enjoy Brit Gal’s blog, with its friendly and open style. She talks about things that, like for me, would have been completely alien to her a few years ago: tornado warnings, trucks, the front porch. These are now the stuff of her life, as they are of mine. I read her posts about these things and think “yes, it’s just like that”. We live a few hundred miles apart, but so much of what she writes is familiar. Except for the rattlesnakes, for which I am very grateful. We don’t have rattlesnakes round here. Who needs rattlesnakes?

Brit Gal and the Hubster have an intriguing hobby. They go geocaching. I’d never come across geocaching before reading Brit Gal’s blog. I think I’d enjoy geogaching. It sounds to me like treasure hunts for grown-ups. Treasure hunts were a part of my childhood, and I often do them for my kids too. I love watching as the excitement overtakes their critical faculties. The clue says “this is where you put your dirty laundry”, and with a shriek, 5-yo exclaims “I know, I know. It’s the television!” and sprints off in the direction of the sitting room. Geocaching is a little more sedate, but I imagine there’s still a child-like thrill in finding the box you’ve been hunting for.

One thing the Midwest does very well is the sky. Brit Gal posts a photograph of the sky on a Friday: ‘Skywatch Friday’. If I’m ever feeling low about living in this part of the world, it reminds me of one of the things I will truly miss when we leave. If you think you’ve seen a big sky, let me tell you this: if you’ve not been to the Midwest, then you haven’t.

The only bad thing about your blog, Brit Gal, is that it is one of two that makes my web browser crash (Not From Around Here – you have the dubious honour of being the other one). The only way round it seems to be to read the post in Bloglines, rather than opening it up. So if I don’t comment very often, that’s the reason why. Anyone have any ideas how I can get to the bottom of this problem? It's only started happening recently and it's only these two blogs. Just as well I'm not into conspiracy theories...

So here’s to you, Brit Gal. Funny to think of us in our blue stripey dresses, running around the playground playing tag, doing ‘Music and Movement’ in our pants and vests, working our way through our times tables with the scary Mrs Edwards, she with the bouffant bleached white hair. And yes, I share your memories of the chain-smoking Mrs Davis, and Mr Kitchenman. How could one forget a teacher with a name like that? And oh indeed, the egg and spoon race too - that annual highlight. I won it one year, which is the one and only sporting achievement of my life. But I also still remember the horrible humiliation of coming last in the bunny hop race. Ah, the highs and lows.

I wonder what our head teacher Mr Ford would make of us now. He taught my class to sing ‘All Through the Night’ in Welsh. That was pretty darn PC, before PC-ness was even invented. I wonder if you learned that too?

Thanksgiving: yes, I'm still on about it

OK. Time to reveal what is behind all this ‘shadow cast over the sunshine that was Thanksgiving’ blurb.

We don't have a return ticket. It must be nice to be sent abroad by a company, for a fixed period of time, 2 or 3 years say, safe in the knowledge that they'll bring you home again to the corporate fold. But we're free-lancers. We sold our house and bought one here. We don't have jobs to go back to. We don't have an obvious community to go back to. In sum, we don't have a life to go back to. Just lots of loose strands. Lovely, important, crucial, life-enhancing loose strands, but all the same, they're not a firm enough rope to pull us back. Not a job and an income, is what it boils down to.

What do you do, as free-lancers, if you've been looking hard for a year for opportunities to return to the UK, have found none, and then out of the blue, get an offer, which is great in pretty much every detail, except for the location. Wrong side of the Atlantic. It'll involve moving job, city, state, home, schools, leaving friends, undoing all that hard work we've put into settling here, and still not get us back to Britain. It would be a good stepping stone (both career-wise, and geographically), but dang it, I didn’t ask Santa for a stepping stone.

I’m sure there were moments, as a child, when I screwed up my eyes and wailed “I want to go home now. Can’t we just go home?”. Forty years on, and deep down that’s what I’m doing today. I could write out the pros and cons of this new opportunity. The pros would be a great long list, and the cons would be “Iota wants to go home*, and can’t face moving unless it’s to achieve that”. Does that count for anything?

And that is why, dear Bloggy Friends, writing about the Expat’s Paradox is so scary at the moment. Moving within the US now, with the kids at the ages they are (oldest will be 13 by next summer, which is when the move would happen), feels like we are making the decision to stay for the duration. I know it’s not, or it doesn’t have to be, but it feels like it is. And I really don’t want to. I really don’t. Had you spotted that already? I really don’t.

Which is why I felt almost resentful, as well as happy and grateful, when we had such a nice Thanksgiving. As I said to a friend here, I was excited to move to America, and embraced it as an adventure. But I didn't really mean it.


* and remember, I haven't let myself use that word to refer to Britain for three years now, but have religiously attached it to my current abode. But this morning I'm allowing myself to peel it off and reposition it.

Thanksgiving: the shadow side

Okay, okay, so that Thanksgiving post was a bit Pollyanna. I admit it. Truth is, I chopped the last bit off the first draft. That was partly in line with my policy of trying to write shorter posts these days, partly because I thought it spoiled the Thanksgiving jollity, and partly because I thought it was an idea that merited a post of its own. Here is that last thought…

There's a line in the film Father of the Bride when Steve Martin is reflecting on how it feels to bring up a daughter. He says:

"There comes a day when you quit worrying about her meeting the wrong guy, and you worry about her meeting the right guy, and that's the biggest fear of all, because then you lose her".

The Parent's Paradox. I suggest that there’s an Expat’s Paradox which parallels it. It goes like this:

“There comes a time when you quit worrying about this being the wrong place, and you worry about this being the right place, and that's the biggest fear of all, because then you lose something important of yourself”.

I'm not there myself yet, not by a long chalk, but perhaps my idyllic Thanksgiving break gave me a glimpse (maybe it was the redemptive green bean casserole that did it).

Blimey, these thoughts look a lot scarier typed out in black and white than I imagined they would.

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Stop press

I know I've already done my daily post, but I have to share this nugget with you, oh fellow expat bloggers.

I was speaking on the phone to a fellow Brit in America, and he ended the conversation with "Good Day". I don't know this man personally: I was speaking to him in his official capacity. Do they train people to sign off "Good Day" do you think? Just to remind us expats of BBC period dramas, and make us feel nostalgic? I know you're going to ask whether I'm sure he wasn't Australian, but it was definitely "Good Day", not "G'day". And I'm not sure I didn't hear a gentle thud as he tipped his bowler hat to me.

Made my day, even if he can't help me speed up the green card application process. It was top hole talking to him.

An American in England: the Director's cut

Day 13 of 'The Daily Post'.

I thoroughly enjoyed Calif Lorna's short movie. She's an English woman living in California, and the movie shows her asking for a glass of water, and getting lots of cliches along the way.

At the end of the clip, it says "If you can type, you can make movies". I can indeed type, thought I, so off I went to the movie-making website, and had a jolly time.

I thought I'd try a little empathising, so my movie is about what I imagine it's like to be an American in England. The English woman comes across as rather aggressive - I intended her to be conversational. I'll have to scrap her and get a more empathetic actress next time.

US expats, have you had conversations like this?

Paul's house

Day Eleven of 'The Daily Post' (and if it's not about laundry, it's about poo).

One of the anxieties of an expat is this: when I go home, will I find everything so changed that it won't feel like home any more? This is a valid concern. Things like this aggravate it.




I hate American tv commercials, and have always considered British ones very superior. But this is making me challenge my assumptions.

What worries me about this advert is why the mother seems quite happy to let her son go out of the house on his own. Are we to assume that Paul lives next door? And if so, why does he need a backpack?

I am also worried by Paul and his family. Do they open the door to this boy and say "Hi there, John, come for a poo again? Nice to see you."?

But most worrying of all is this. It must have been made by people who know nothing of small boys, otherwise they would be aware that most of them positively enjoy pooey smells. It would be more convincing if Paul was coming round to the stinky house to have a poo (though not so good for Glade's sales figures).

My only comfort is that there are some great remakes on Youtube.

The laundry challenge

Day Nine of 'The Daily Post'.

“I love you English and Scottish women! I must admit I'm an American who has been spoiled my entire life by a tumble dryer. I'm reconciling to the idea of line-drying when I move to England in a couple of months. I have one very important question for you, though -- and please don't laugh. What do you do when it is winter and raining or snowing? The "drying cabinent" at my boyfriend's house is small and there are only two radiators that I can put socks on to warm-dry them. Do you have secret clothing lines that come out from trap doors in the halls and extend into the kitchen? I'm not being funny here -- I truly would like to whole-heartedly embrace something that is so good for the environment. I could easily dry my clothing if I had a yard in California as the weather is so nice, but what do you do in stretches of rain?”

This was a comment on my post about washing lines. It got me thinking about one aspect of expat life which is a real pain in the ass. It is this. People are used to their own way of life, and find it very hard to explain to a newbie why or how they do things. I found myself wanting to reply to Rachel, the commenter, “It’s hard to explain, but it’s just a question of muddling through. Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it.” And then I thought how really frustrating that would be for her.

It took me right back to my early days here, when things that seemed just a part of life to everyone, were compete mysteries to me. Mysteries that they didn’t seem able to explain. Of course part of the frustration is that you can see their point. There are so many things in life that can’t be explained very easily. Or explaining them is just the beginning. What really needs to happen, is for you to jump in, try a few things a few different ways, and then after finding one that works and repeating it for a while, you are just as much an expert as all the rest of them. A little help to get you started is, actually, a big help, but there are no short cuts to experience.

Incidentally, my husband wrote a whole PhD thesis on this very subject. What a waste of those years, when all along he had a wife who could sum it up in a paragraph! I should just have discovered blogging a few years earlier, and we’d have saved ourselves a lot of time and money - though the university might not have awarded him a doctorate and the right to wear a fancy hat on the basis of one paragraph in a blog post. Universities are picky like that.

But back to Rachel. In my early days, I often did pose questions such as hers to the blogging community, because (a) it was a lot quicker and easier than asking 10 local people, and I didn’t even know 10 local people at that point, but it meant I got 10 answers, (b) I got fed up with asking basic questions to people face to face - it didn’t make for great conversation, and (c) I quickly came to realize what a fabulous bunch is out there in the blogosphere, and what top quality answers they gave.

So, on Rachel’s behalf, tell me. How on earth DO we manage to get washing dry, in the British climate, with no tumble dryer? I mean, talk about setting a difficult challenge. Rachel’s boyfriend is already a huge step ahead of me (and I thought I was a pretty impressive laundry operator), because I don’t even know what a ‘drying cabinet’ is. Unless it’s what a Prime Minister appoints if he/she wants to counteract the effects of a government of Tory wets.

Let me start us all off. Rachel, I did have a tumble dryer in Scotland, for emergencies, but I hardly ever used it because there’s this marvellous thing called a drying rack. It’s worth taking time and choosing a good one. By good one, I mean one that will make the maximum use of the space you have available. A lot of people have the rack in the kitchen, where it is a permanent annoyance and gets in the way of whatever you are doing. Other people put it in the bath, where it stands for days on end with semi-dry clothes, because bathrooms are cold and draughty in the UK, and it’s only eternal optimism (see ‘Dunkirk spirit’ in my previous laundry post) that keeps us in the belief that the clothes will actually dry in there. Radiators are a good bet, even if your boyfriend only has two small ones in his small house. As he has perhaps already told you, size isn’t everything.

We Brits are prepared to spend more time and effort on laundry than our US counterparts, so that we are quite happy to get up from the sofa at intervals throughout the evening, even though this means interrupting our viewing of splendid BBC programmes since there are no commercial breaks (which, come to think of it, would actually be useful for laundry purposes), and remove a few dry socks to make space for the next lot of them. We are a bit laundry obsessed, truth be told, so that first thing in the morning, when we get out of bed, our topmost priority isn’t to get the coffee maker on, but to remove the dry socks from the radiators and put out the next batch of damp ones.

As for those secret lines coming out from trap doors, no, we don’t have those but it’s a magnificent idea, which you should develop, take to the Dragons’ Den (UK equivalent of the Sharks’ Tank), and use to make a fortune. Then you and your boyfriend will be able to buy a big house and install a huge tumble dryer in it.

Come on, fabulous British laundry experts. What other tips and advice do you have for Rachel?