Home Sweet Home

I have well and truly settled into Cambridge life. We have been in Cambridge a month tomorrow, and I now have a home, a job and even a sort of funny routine.

I don’t quite feel like a local yet, but I don’t feel like a visitor anymore either. Travelling is interesting, you’re always seeing something new and different, but I think there is also merit in staying long-term somewhere, getting to know another place’s norms and customs. It’s hard to think of what makes the difference for someone to feel like they are a local, a piece of the furniture, rather than someone who is just passing through. Perhaps if you move a great distance you’ll never quite get that feeling, probably, rather, it is a continuum and you slowly work your way along it.

There are a couple of things that make me feel like I am making steady progress… Barry once provided me with his theory on the meaning of life… basically it was consumption… he believes that it’s as simple as that… we were put on this earth to consume – and if that’s so, I think we are doing a pretty good job. I have become a Cambridge consumer, I have adopted my own ‘locals’ – the local supermarket, the local deli, the local Indian takeaway, the local post office, the local café with the fantastic chocolate brownies (Pandoro who?!)…

The other thing that makes me feel like I have a sort of temporary permanence in Cambridge is that I have developed a routine. For example… Sunday night is Indian takeaway night…every second Tuesday is cheap movie night… Wednesday night I have netball practice and Thursday night is pub quiz at the Unicorn.

I have also developed a small network of friends and acquaintances… Fran, our land lady, with her gorgeous, ancient dog Ella; Angeli, our temporary flatmate; the neighbours John, Mark, Evelyn and Frances, who tend to check in on us, and inform us of local expectations/customs; Pete and Sarah – a link back home, who have been so welcoming… and also form the most intelligent third of our pub quiz team! … I look forward to getting to know the girls in the netball team (there are about twenty of them!) and the ladies from work too, and before you know it… I have developed a semblance of a home in the middle of England… so far away from all of the most important people in my life.

Last night I was on the internet (in England), chatting away to Barry (New Zealand), and our friend Steve who’s in Canada at the moment, who was in turn chatting to Barry… I had talked to Mum and David (from China) that morning and received an email from family in the States the day before… all of the sudden the world doesn’t seem so big… and it doesn’t seem so impossible that Cambridge is going to be my home for the next six months...