Tag: England

Expat blues

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 2 Comments

Even though I’ve been very happy living in New Zealand for the past twenty years, I expect England will always feel like home. I’ve been fortunate to be able to return for a short visit every summer – until now. I had booked to fly to London next week but my trip has been cancelled due to Covid-related restrictions.

Earlier visits involved a joyful, if exhausting, whirlwind of activity – travelling round the British Isles by train and plane, staying a night or two in several different places, often having lunch, tea and dinner engagements with different people on the same day. The itinerary has gradually become less demanding, as I realise I can’t see everyone every time, so recently I’ve just stayed in London and done day trips. I always try to see my closest friends and relatives, and visit some favourite places – Oxford, Malvern, the countryside of Kent and Sussex – which hold special memories or are featured in my novels. I also like to visit one or two tourist attractions such as Blenheim Palace or the Tower of London. And I always buy something from Marks and Spencer.

The change to a less hectic pace is partly my own choice, as I don’t have so much energy as I used to, but partly because my circle of friends – mostly in their 70s and 80s – is shrinking. Six of those I knew and loved have died in recent years. I was able to visit all of them in the last months of their lives, but because of being back in New Zealand was unable to attend any of their funerals. Several of my surviving friends are unwell at present, and one of the hardest things about being unable to travel this year is not knowing when and if I will see them again.

Apart from that, I don’t mind staying home. I have my memories and photos of England, and the internet has made it easy to keep in contact with people at the other side of the world, even if not all of them can accesss Zoom. I’m glad not to be parted from Brian, the cats and the dog. And Auckland is a lovely place to be, even in winter, with the weather reasonably warm and many flowers in bloom.

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Jennifer Barraclough’s latest novel You Yet Shall Die, set in Kent and Sussex, is available from Amazon.

A psychiatrist remembers

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 1 Comment

Many friends and former colleagues of my husband Brian are already reading A Partly Anglicised Kiwi: a psychiatrist remembers, the newly published memoir about the first 32 years of his life. The main focus is on Brian’s experience of the psychiatric training programme at London’s Maudsley Hospital in the 1960s. There are shorter sections on miscellaneous topics such as being a patient in a TB ward, and tramping in the southern alps of New Zealand.

To quote from Brian’s Introduction:

“In 1962, aged 28, I left my home in New Zealand and sailed to England as a ship’s surgeon. I was on my way to apply for the world’s foremost training programme in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in London. 

“Part I of my memoir describes growing up in Auckland, studying at Otago University Medical School, and practising as a doctor in New Zealand. Part II is about my three years at the Maudsley, where I worked in general psychiatry and some subspecialties. Given my modest beginnings, the intellectual and cultural life of London came as a revelation. I received a liberal education from my peers, took holidays in Europe, had a psychoanalysis, and a bad trip with LSD.”

The book was mainly compiled from the essays Brian has written over the years, originally for his own satisfaction rather than intended for publication. My role as editor was to arrange them in a logical order, check for consistency of style and grammar, and discuss with Brian how much material needed to be removed as potentially offensive or libellous. In my experience, writing or editing books is easier done alone than in collaboration with others, and we didn’t always agree. However we are both happy with the finished product, and hope readers will enjoy it.

A Partly Anglicised Kiwi (ISBN 9798623114792) can be purchased from Amazon websites including Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.au. Shipping restrictions at the time of writing may prevent readers in some countries from buying the paperback version, but the Kindle ebook is available worldwide.

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Jennifer Barraclough is a retired doctor, originally from England but now living in New Zealand, who writes medical and fiction books. Her latest one You Yet Shall Die, a novel about family secrets and a long-ago crime set in southern England, is available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Smashwords.com and other online retailers, or can be ordered from bookshops and libraries.

Homelands

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 1 Comment

 

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.

limerick

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.