All is new again . . .
Early in the summer of 1998 . . . Yes that would be 20 years ago . . . I moved to London with my husband Bob who was beginning a new job and our younger daughter Susan who was 16 and about to enter her junior/penultimate year in secondary school. Our elder daughter Megan was 19, already a university student, and ineligible to be attached to my husband’s work visa for his new job, so she embarked on the Anglophile’s dream of regular holidays in England in her own bed. A few years later she one-upped us all by meeting and marrying an expat Englishman in Massachusetts.
Susan’s schooling required an American School to complete the final two years of an American high school curriculum which meant North London or the Surrey suburbs. After decades in the suburbs of New Jersey and Massachusetts, the lure of the city was unresistable. We settled comfortably into a beautiful flat in Hampstead, North London; so comfortable, we stayed put for 20 years. Hampstead is one of London’s loveliest and leafiest neighbourhoods, but none of those leaves were ours. Then we began thinking about South London where daughter Susan had been living since graduating from university. More suburban and more convenient to the countryside between London and the South coast, but still part of the great London conurbation of culture and transport.
In, not quite, the blink of an eye, last spring we moved from a mansion block flat in Hampstead to a Victorian semi in Beckenham. From single floor living (albeit on the English 2nd floor/American 3rd floor) to three floors up and down in our narrow half-house, a driveway, and a back garden. This is all an experiment, so we are renting the house to keep our options open on whether a year or two in the urban suburbs is a good choice. Taking on the responsibilities for pet ownership is still a step too far so we will stay with my little lost stained glass kitten for now.
Susan’s schooling required an American School to complete the final two years of an American high school curriculum which meant North London or the Surrey suburbs. After decades in the suburbs of New Jersey and Massachusetts, the lure of the city was unresistable. We settled comfortably into a beautiful flat in Hampstead, North London; so comfortable, we stayed put for 20 years. Hampstead is one of London’s loveliest and leafiest neighbourhoods, but none of those leaves were ours. Then we began thinking about South London where daughter Susan had been living since graduating from university. More suburban and more convenient to the countryside between London and the South coast, but still part of the great London conurbation of culture and transport.
In, not quite, the blink of an eye, last spring we moved from a mansion block flat in Hampstead to a Victorian semi in Beckenham. From single floor living (albeit on the English 2nd floor/American 3rd floor) to three floors up and down in our narrow half-house, a driveway, and a back garden. This is all an experiment, so we are renting the house to keep our options open on whether a year or two in the urban suburbs is a good choice. Taking on the responsibilities for pet ownership is still a step too far so we will stay with my little lost stained glass kitten for now.
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