UK meanderings 2026

I STARTED reflecting on life in the UK from over 20 years ago. I often do this. I wrote the following, and then, as it says at the end, I aborted the project- gave up. Started thinking 'what is the point?' England draft 1 PREFACE: May, 2026 WHY have I decided to revisit this adventurous period of my life? Could it be that I wish to escape from my current life? Might it be that I just feel the need to be creative and I don’t know what else to do? Or might it be that I still have this bittersweet feeling of wanderlust- that I have never really got travel out of my system. That I want to revisit this period because it feels comforting and tenderly familiar. Maybe I want to document when I can, outside of what I have already done which is type out and produce my diaries. When I still can. When I can still remember. And who gets what I hope will be a long, finished book by the end? Perhaps nobody. But I hope its fate isn’t an item atop of some big book burning bonfire. Simply, I don't want to forget. So where to start? The best place is Heathrow airport. I went to England twice before- I think in '87 and then again '93. Pre-marriage, pre-kids. Little or no responsibilities. But this time was different. I knew this would be a longer journey. It felt incredibly exciting. To work overseas. As I found out, it is something else. So we came straight from hot, humid Sri Lanka. Colombo airport. October 12, 2000. ................................................................................................. Heathrow to Hammersmith, to Victoria Station, to Bearsted, Kent. Lugging those two heavy grey suitcases. One each. Absolutely pouring rain. England, my England. And there was Simon at the station, prompt. What a welcome face! He tells us about the floods- Kent, Sussex, other places. Hearing the place names still cause a shiver. I am suddenly dreaming- of Sissinghurst, Asheham, Rodmell- why all Virginia Woolf? KENT Gravelly Bottom Road, Kingswood, Maidstone, Kent, ME17 3NS What a time we were to have here. Pauline and Simon, the little Degus, the cats Missy and Tigger. The world pretty and green. Pauline had this huge property on acres and acres of land. J and I explored our first day and marvelled at its size. Borrowing gum boots. A cute little walk to get milk in Kingswood, the local town. It would be a base for a year or so- a great rock solid foundation for the time we lived there, and for subsequent times as well. Our little Eden. I have many beautiful memories of the place. Times spend in the garden, the visits for J’s cousins David and Caroline, Caroline’s kids, of course all the times with Simon in his garage, or day visits, fox hunting protest, the cinema in town, Christmas… Perhaps there is none better than sitting in Pauline’s conservatory the first morning with the book of towns and villages in England. It felt like I had the world at my fingertips. The world of my childhood. The world of Enid Blyton and all subsequent British literature. Cornwall and Gloucestershire, and Devon and Yorkshire, and Shropshire and Worcestershire, and on, and on, and on. I had found my heaven. I pored over that book with a beating heart. Not a map as such, but a driving guide to all the motorways taking us to all the exciting spots, as if the towns and villages were little satellite places in the sky, and we would be travelling from start to star. We also went by the Greenline bus to London during those first couple of days. J scoured the internet cafes, and I went to the National Gallery and saw all those treasures again, like the massive Une Bagnaid (Seurat), Vincent’s sunflowers, the Arnolfini marriage (Van Eyck), the list goes on. Then the bookshops, like Ulysses in Museum Street, and Cecil Williams, Gekoski, Marchpane. A tour of the Café Royale on Regent Street in search of the setting of Lawrence’s Rananim outburst on his birthday. There would be many visits to London, but the first one back in a long while holds its own special memory. We packed in so much early on. It was a great excuse for Pauline and Simon to get out as well. Sissinghurst quickly followed, then Charleston Farmhouse and Monk’s House in Rodmell in wet, wet Sussex, taking in Brighton at Jill and David Read’s place. Canterbury we found to be nice, but much preferred Elham. In just over a week I landed the teaching job of a lifetime at Maidstone Girls’ Grammar School. The agency I joined- ‘Select’- gave me a couple of weeks at St Simon Stock before I started which was a useful warmup, whereby a nun walked into my class and jaws dropped when I didn’t stand up! My first cover lesson I merely observed Year 13’s discussing Alan Partridge. I sat there thinking, ‘Wow, I am in a British classroom’, it took my breath away. Just staying in with Pauline and Simon had its frustrations- the cooking, Pauline’s moods- but I always felt grateful to be able to live an ordinary life in England for the first time- touring, shopping for groceries at Netto, cooking when we were allowed, meeting Simon’s eccentric friends and buying a 25 pound car, and playing with a ball on the stairs with those beautiful, beautiful cats. Still, I was quite homesick in those early weeks. The postman would cycle up the path. We got a lot of letters in those first weeks, news from home. Gordon and Lisa split, and phone calls with mother showed me how worried she was. One night I just started crying in our room, and it was really sudden. It only happened once, and I didn’t really understand it. Just the feeling of being overwhelmed. Yet there were so many distractions, such as the massive Bluewater shopping centre, and further London visits on the Greenline, and going to the manuscripts room at the British Library poring over Koteliansky’s letters to Lawrence- the actual letters in their big envelopes!!, and Katherine Mansfield’s actual story ‘A Suburban Fairytale.’ And another time to Primrose Hill past the zoo, and Chalcot Square and 23 Fitzroy Rd, past residences of a king and queen pair of poets. By late November I officially started the best job I have ever had. I had an orientation day first where I felt really self-conscious because I had just had a really short haircut. It was terrible. You can imagine why. Fran Mallalieu was having a farewell with 9E, who would become my favourite class ever. ‘Say something Australian!’. I later find out that Harriet Hancock has a mock Australian accent on her home phone message- something about being out in the ‘ute.’ So I am thrown into the deep end at MGGS. Thanks God they are so good. 2 X Year 13, a Year 10, a Year 9, a Year 8, a Year 7 (all English), and on top of all that, 5 one off Year 8 Drama classes. During spares I come to use the lovely room at the top of the stairs for the computers and the internet, checking The Age every day (J and I do not have our own computer). But the staff come to be so friendly and nice that in time I go up there less. There’s the group of men that I talk sport with, especially cricket when the Ashes comes on. It is the days of Glenn McGrath, Steve Waugh and Shane Warne. Martyn Lowe-Wheeler is the intellect. He once attended a lecture at Cambridge by Ted Hughes and lent me ‘Winter Pollen.’ Val Thind is the Head of English, and her trust in me went so far as to order 28 copies of ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ for my Year 10’s by email. (I made the mistake of lending it out to them, and most of them read it that night. I wonder if it is still there, sitting in the English storeroom?? Then there is the trio that I get to know best- even socially. Roy Doughty, Jon Mallalieu, and Dave Reader. One lovely lunchtime we go to the pub and drink beers and play pool. It is so civilized. They can’t believe it never happens in Australia. Only Klaus, the German, is a bit creepy, but I handle him ok. I will eventually have a lovely day seeing Neil Young with Roy (and Murray) at Finsbury Park, and see Burnley V Gillingham with Dave. The only other football game I will go to much later is Leicester V Leeds at the Foxes home ground. We are into early December now, and we know we need to move from Pauline’s. It has been fantastic, but we don’t want to overstay thigs, and we need more independence. It’s not far away. It is 83 London Road, ME 16 ODX. It is not a particularly easy time. J and I fight a lot. She feels stuck, has a lot of pain (terrible weather) and not enjoying Maidstone Hospital, the NHS in general. And despite MGGS, I feel like I am not teaching that well, a bit flat and bored, a bit depressed, and probably very, very homesick. And this place, on London Rd, is pretty crappy. I remember how small it was- our living quarters a garret with a sloping roof. There was only one section in which I could stand upright. A shared kitchen didn’t help, and a bathroom with tired spurts of lime-scale water, no TV, sloping walls. To a degree we come to get used to it, but it is always poky. One day a woman with a polecat moves in downstairs- that’s interesting- and there is a guy (Russian perhaps) who propositions J, and then there is the day I lock downstairs on my way out, and she is locked in all day. My dark mood extended into mid-December, where even on a trip to London I am all complaints. We had seen J’s friend Rob a few times, and went to the V&A (marvelling at William Morris things), and finding Regent St and Oxford St Christmassy and commercial, not picking up much in Soho and Carnaby St, and queuing up for a Thai restaurant in the wind and the cold feeling miserable. I felt completely left out during Rag Week at MGGS, sullen amidst all the frivolity. I felt like a block of ice, dislocated, achingly shy, removed like Esther Greenwood (teaching The Bell Jar), emotionally sterile and not performing as a teacher well. And there is a depressed girl in one of my Year 13 classes- Rosemary Aves- who says The Bell Jar is therapeutic. I had some lovely birthdays when we were away. This first one in 2000- my 36th- was spent with old friends of Jack’s at their beautiful house (Monkton), in Ross-on-Wye. Really generous people, made a fuss. We were in the vicinity so we went to the first of may house-associations of Lawrence- this one the Old Vicarage where Catherine Carswell once lived (the tenants unaware of this association). The night od December 21 ended at Cheltenham Town Hall to see Van Morrison for my very first time. Not the best time to see him (his largely forgettable time with Linda Gail Lewis). But it was a fun night, and he was in good form. The second concert later on in Derbyshire, he was quite flat. We also had a couple of nice Christmases with Pauline and her family. My one and only experience of foxhunting protest occurred at Elham on Boxing Day, 2000. Part of a large group holding placards and watching the brave horsemen with their little Foxhounds. I felt a bit sick after only a few hours sleep and all that rich Christmas food. And Simon drove at 170 kmh. The sign he constructed spelt out the words ‘Fox hunting’s for ‘Barrarians’. Mmmmm… Our gloves were useless and my toes were crying out in pain. I pulled my cap low over my head. The bugles went off and the merry hunters were on their way, the crowd hoping to satiate the hounds by throwing them dog biscuits. When we finally got home, after a detour taking in Dover and Folkestone, I vomited up my Christmas dinner, managing to thumb the small, hard bits through the little sink holes, and scooping up the bigger bits long, grey capsicum bits and flushing them down the toilet. In bed for a brief respite, and then up again for a Boxing Day lunch in Marden for some more rich Christmas food, including vile Yorkshire pudding. How white, how snowed-in was everything in the morning, as we took a stroll around the schoolyard and interrupted the early morning meanderings of a small red fox. Winter in Kent like winter anywhere in England takes a lot of getting used to. Especially the first winter. The wind rocking fence posts and the traffic eerily quiet. A postal van slipping and sliding along the hill at Queen’s Road. 2001 began- literally New Year’s Day- in London again. Very touristy but my mood really brightened. I wrote in my diary that night that it was our mildest day so far, and that I found the walks glorious- along Whitehall, and St James’ Park, Westminster Abbey, and a film at Leicester Square. Maybe it suddenly occurred to me that I was a very lucky man. By late January I was really enjoying teaching. 9E were and always will be, my favourite class. Our little attic had become a happy attic. (classes) MGGS events- Mack & Mabel, theatre London Haymarket- An Inspector Calls By Mid- February we were finally starting to travel a lot, not just to London. A holiday in Bath visiting the tourist spots like The Circus and Royal Crescent, and also out to Van Morrison’s Wool Hall Studios. On this trip we also went to the first D H Lawrence associated house- Chapel Farm Cottage in Berkshire (Dollie Radford’s home). JUNE 29- ABORTED DRAFT