I’ve been away so long, I’m seeing England in a new light

For the first time in 20 months, I am officially back on British shores. I flew over during the weekend on a 350-person plane that only had 66 passengers (“Welcome to your own private jet!” said the head flight attendant as we took off) because, it turns out, Delta Island isn’t exactly a leading holiday destination for the rest of the world right now. We were delayed 20 minutes because some “special cargo” needed to be added to the hold last-minute (“Coffins,” whispered the man behind me, craning his neck out the window by the wing) and held hostage at immigration for a while as each passenger showed negative Covid tests and various extraneous forms, but otherwise had a pretty smooth time of it. Even Heathrow was basically deserted as we landed on a weekend evening, two days before the travel rules for fully vaccinated US travellers officially changed. Fly during a pandemic and you get business class space at economy prices! (NB: I do not actually recommend this.)

I’m now isolating at my sister’s flat with a supply of the food I’ve missed most: salt and vinegar Chipsticks, Tetley teabags, onion bhajis, Jaffa cakes, bread without added sugar. I walked in from the airport to a care package of such British treats collated by my mum and sister, which included a home-baked Victoria sponge. I devoured it within two days – nothing comes close to a fluffy English sponge, in my opinion (and my palate is sophisticated enough that I’ve long declared pickled onion Monster Munch the pinnacle of culinary achievement).

My mum and stepdad, double-masked, came to wave at me from outside and dropped off a package of lateral flow and PCR tests so that I can come out of isolation as soon as the laws allow. I’m still getting used to the temperature, shivering in the British summer cold and forgetting that I don’t need to keep all the windows closed to stop hot air from coming in. I’ve done a lot of craning my head out the window and staring wistfully at the grey skies, the rural landscape and the tiny cars without an SUV or a pickup truck in sight. I still find it jarring when I hear passersby on the pavement below, speaking in an assortment of British accents.

I’m spending my time working my way through piles of letters that arrived for me since 2019, sorting through boxes of clothes I left in my mum’s attic around the same time, and bonding anew with my giant ragdoll cat Felix, who I left in the care of my family when I left “for three months” almost two years ago. Everything is simultaneously familiar and strange: the landscape looks so incredibly green, the sky so strangely white, and the people so reticent and quiet. News programmes feel dreary and dull in comparison to their American counterparts, where every few seconds someone “can’t wait to tell you this” or promises “you won’t believe what’s coming next!”

I expected not to feel as affectionate toward England as I do: when you live in New York, you spend a lot of time explaining your move by telling Americans about stale supermarket bagels, washout summers and Boris Johnson. But having been away this long, I’m seeing it anew. The fields are abundant; the towns are bursting with history; the buildings are old and imposing. Schoolchildren don’t do active shooter drills and few people tell you they literally don’t believe in government. But the American influence is alive and well: there was an anti-vaxxer march in my mum’s town the day before I arrived, led by a bunch of shawl-wearing conspiracy theorists with megaphones. Some things never change.