Home Is Where The Something Or Other Is

Poet, novelist and musician, Gil Scott-Heron, wrote a poignant song about the tawdry life of a junkie: Home is where the hatred is.  Well, I feel blessed, because – despite a little adolescent turbulence – 'home' has always been a happy concept.  In fact, until I became an ex-pat, I never gave the matter much thought. To paraphrase the old Marvin Gaye song, it was really just a matter of 'wherever lay my cat, that’s my home.'

Living in someone else’s country, however, has nudged things out of kilter.  On an everyday basis, my wife, daughter and I are comfortable with, and proud of our home in the Lot.  It’s only during infrequent trips back to the UK (I nearly wrote 'home' then!) that the disturbance starts.

Any return visit is obviously tinged with nostalgia. This recent stay with my mother-in-law in Cumbria was unusually unsettling. It was during the Toussaint week, when the French remember the dead with chrysanthemums placed on austere graves in funny little walled cemeteries.

The tug of dichotomy started with that first Scouse accent at Liverpool airport.  I’m not even a Liverpudlian, but I grew up with the Beatles and that innate familiarity warms you like Ready Brek.  By comparison, much about French life still seems - even after 12 years - so bewildering and so relentlessly challenging.

In my days of wage slavery, 'home' was a place to cosy-up with your loved one at the end of the working day. Up there in old Westmoreland, bordered by the Dales, the Pennines and the Lakeland Mountains, I felt curiously 'at home' in a kind of poetic and elemental dimension.

Maybe the damp peaty air, the lie of the land and/or the demeanour of the people reminded me of Northern Ireland. I grew up there as a boy and haven’t been back for years. Yet the mere sight of a tree-lined Belfast suburb or the bluish outline of the Mourne Mountains would probably render me wobbly-kneed and moist of eye. If so, this surely must represent my 'spiritual home'?

For the first time since my self-imposed exile, I felt discombobulated enough to envisage an eventual return to this corner of my native England. The people were just so nice, so friendly and so helpful, the countryside was stunning, the weather wasn’t too bad for November, and – great Googamooga! – the train that took me to a meeting in London arrived at Euston ten minutes early.

Then the inane chants of some Preston football fans ringing around the station forecourt made me doubt my sentiments. Maybe my mother-in-law, her neighbour and friends were all right. The nation was going to the dogs, they told us. Everyone muttered about an infrastructure collapsing under the weight of a population too big for such a small island.

By the end of the week, I was ready to return. I’d seen too many news broadcasts about NHS shortcomings, senseless stabbings and inner-city anarchy. We left in the fog and arrived under a starry evening sky. With relief we reclaimed our pensionable Peugeot, retrieved our dog from temporary lodgings with friends, and found the cats alive and possessions intact. We were home.

To an extent, expatriates condemn themselves to rootless-ness. So perhaps home is simply where your clobber is. But I’m not totally convinced. Nevertheless, if our bilingual daughter can speak in parallel tongues, I’m sure I can overcome my split-haven disorder.

The author, Mark Sampson was born in 1954 in London and raised in Belfast.  He has lived in Southwest France since 1995. His family’s straw-bale house was featured in Grand Designs Abroad and his latest book, Essential Questions to Ask When Buying a House in France, appeared earlier this year.  He writes a fortnightly column for 50connect as an ‘ex-pat’ living in France

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