The simple pleasures of this country have brought me inordinate joy

During the darkest days of the pandemic, my fiance bought a copy of a video game about Vikings. I’d never been one for video games – my brother used to tell me I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog with him on the Sega Megadrive when the second-player connection was pulled out, and that’s about the extent of my experience – but this one was mesmerising. As the Vikings went up and down England in their longboat, we talked about how much we missed the lush green fields of our home country, the rivers and the lakes, the rough-and-ready coastlines, and even the perpetual drizzle. Outside, it either burned at 35C or threw down snow in buckets. We dreamed of a maritime climate.

Now, one full week into my visit back to the UK, I have to say I may have had my fill of drizzle. But there are simple pleasures I’ve experienced in the past few days that have brought me inordinate joy. On Sunday, I went on a walk through a field that ended at a village church and a red phone box. Beside the church was a stall overflowing with books and other media, as well as an “honesty box” suggesting 50p per curiosity. The stall was inside a small marquee and the marquee was decorated with miniature union jacks clearly left over from a royal wedding party or some other such ridiculous British tradition. Stooping down to take a look at the wares, I came across a water-damaged VHS tape of a saccharine documentary about Princess Diana. “Ah yes,” I said out loud, “I’m home.”

This particular hike really was a walk of Great British Highlights. Halfway through a field, we’d veered off to have a Sunday roast, an apple and rhubarb crumble, and a pint of West Country cider. My first sip of that cider brought tears to my eyes after months of over-sugared American junk. For one small second, I could’ve leapt up in my seat and recited the lyrics of “Jerusalem”, hand on heart (because who in their right mind would sing that embarrassment of a so-called national anthem “God Save the Queen”?) A spoonful of that rhubarb crumble made me briefly forget the delights of chicken and waffles, cronuts and pizza.

I’ve never been one for patriotic paraphernalia, but there’s something that really gets you going about your own country’s quirks when you’ve been away. During the same walk, E and I took a wrong turn and ended up in the gardens of a National Trust manor. Within five minutes of us wandering around, an old woman with a pair of spectacles on a string and a pen in her front pocket approached us to tell us in no uncertain terms that we should never have entered the grounds. “It’s not allowed, you see,” she said, a guard dog in her own large, private garden, before demanding our names to enter into her book of trespassers. It’s that kind of computer-says-no, the-system-must-be-obeyed stickler Britishness that I sometimes think of fondly in the relative Wild West of Brooklyn. The whole experience made me warm with recognition. “Please take my number,” I said, all the while having to restrain myself from grasping her hand. “Call me any time about the rules. It’s great to be back. I’ve been in America, you see.”