Homelands

Happier, healthier and several pounds heavier, I am back in Auckland after spending a sunny September in England. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to revisit my home country every year since we moved to New Zealand in 2000, and this year Brian came too. We were both anxious about travelling in view of our recent heart problems, so it was reassuring to discover that a consultant cardiologist was seated next to me on the outward flight. Neither of us needed his services and there were no medical emergencies during the rest of the holiday.

This visit was more than usually nostalgic, filled with reminders of my mother who died nine months ago. One sunny Sunday afternoon a group of cousins from her side of the family, the Guys, gathered for a picnic in the grounds of Gray’s Inn; our homes are so widely scattered around the UK and overseas that many of us had not met for decades. I had a friendly meeting with my first husband, having resumed email contact with him after my mother’s death. I walked on the sands at Margate in Kent, where my mother spent part of her childhood. And scattered a portion of her ashes beside her brother’s grave in the churchyard of the Yorkshire village where she lived in later life. Thanks to her wartime service in the British Army, I was able to stay at the Victory Services Club in central London, an ideal base for making daily trips around the country with my Britrail FlexiPass.

There have been other deaths among my UK contacts in the past year: two close friends have been widowed, another couple have lost a son, others are getting old and unwell, so some of my visits were tinged with sadness. But I still have many relatives and friends around the country, including some younger ones I did not know before, and though there was not enough time to see them all I did meet people from diverse places: Malvern, Frome, Gosport, Winchester, Kirk Hammerton, Oxford, Dorchester on Thames, Hythe, Manchester, Birkenhead, Shetland, Soberton Heath, Saffron Walden and various parts of London. Everyone was so kind and hospitable – thank you! Here I am in Sue’s allotment, with Sara’s dog, and with Brian in Oxford University Parks.

There were sightseeing visits too, to Charles Darwin’s home at Down House and the Sackville-West estate at Knole, both in Kent. My most adventurous solo trip was to Limerick, a first step in exploring my Irish ancestry on the paternal side, a topic I may write about in a future post. Limerick seemed a charmingly old-fashioned small city, so quiet and peaceful after London, and I had a lovely view of the River Shannon from my hotel room.

As always these visits make me question where my true home is, but at least for now it is in Auckland, and it is good to be back as England turns towards autumn and New Zealand to spring. Wearing clothes in different colours, after the all-blue wardrobe I packed for the trip. Thinking about writing another book. Being reunited with my cats.