A Southern Boy Living in England - Do They Still Have Dirt Floors?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the experiences I had while living in England. For those who don't know, I was born in New Orleans and was raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast but spent 27 years living in England as an expatriate. So, I spent a big part of my life out of the US but 3 years ago my wife and I moved back to the US and live now in North Carolina.

Why North Carolina you might ask? Well, I met my wife in England. She's British and it was a bit of a selling job to get her to agree to leave her family, especially her two grandsons, and move to the North Carolina woods. We do live in the woods. We live so far in the woods that our nearest grocery store is 13 miles away. However, where we live is a big part her doing. When she finally agreed to move to the US with me she told me that since I was a project manager, I would understand that she had certain requirements that had to be met. I said, "OK, what are they"? Well, she said, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no earthquakes, had to be green, had to be 4 seasons, not too hot for very long, not too cold for very long, had to be in an old historical house, had to be far enough away from other houses so that our 5 Labradors wouldn't bother any neighbors and couldn't be close to my family. She's a Jehovah Witness so she said it had to be near a kingdom hall, also. "No problem", I said, and then frantically started searching the internet for a place in the US that 'sort of" met those requirements. I found it in Leasburg, NC. It met all the requirements except every 10 years, or so, we may have the remnants of a hurricane but nothing like what happens on the Gulf Coast and every now and then we have a tornado watch or warning (I can never get those straight although it would probably be good if I did know the difference). Our house has been here since 1832 so I figure that if it was going to get hit by a tornado it would have happened sometime in the last 178 years. However, others might say that it hasn't happened in the last 178 years so the odds were building up that one would do us soon. If you see my wife, don't mention the odds thing to her. So as in any project I got her to agree to the changes in the requirements and we happily moved into our house in December 2007.

I'll never forget going through US Customs when we moved. They asked me if I had anything to declare so I lifted Linda up and put her on the counter. That's a joke because it took loads of paperwork, a physical exam, a statement from the police in England that she was an upstanding citizen, an interview at the American Embassy in London and I'm sure I'm missing something here before she got permission to legally move to this country. Loads of stuff.

Anyway here we are, we've been here for three years and I thought it would be interesting to document some of my experiences in the UK and show how the UK and the US are actually two nations separated by a common language.

Richard

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