On Being British

Some time ago a generous friend contributed $777 to my crowd funding campaign because I made him laugh with my silly stories about The Magic of Seven. He says my sense of humor is kind of British, even though he knows I’m not British.

Which is true, but I might as well be. I was born in the holy land of New Zealand, aka Aoteraroa, and lived there for most of the first 20 years of my life. But my heritage and early influences could hardly be more British.

My parents emigrated to New Zealand from England five years before I was born, so I grew up thinking of England as home and getting letters and presents from English aunts and uncles and grand parents I’d never met. Every couple of months we’d receive a huge box from the fancy department store in London, Harrods, full of stuff you couldn’t buy in New Zealand. I think my mom’s father was afraid we might starve whilst away in the colonies.

When I was four and my brother Christian was seven we decided to sail to England on an upside down table. It was red, and there was just room for the two of us if we scrunched up and folded our legs. We had to seal some gaps between the boards with plastercine to make it sea-worthy, but I thought it was a good plan, though we never fully implemented it.

We moved to Wellington when I was five, and I remember seeing land in the distance across the water. It was so far away you could hardly see the houses. I thought that must be England. Then one day we drove there and I realized is was actually connected by land and was just the other side of Wellington harbor. Thus I was forced at a tender age to re-evaluate my concept of distance and scale.

When I was sixteen my mother finally took me to England and it felt uncannily like home. I had a wonderful time exploring my cultural roots, seeing Shakespeare live (not the actual person, Shakespeare, himself – just several of his wonderful plays), staying at country manors, visiting real castles and abbeys and ruins and cities from the stories I’d grown up with. It was like a dream, as though I’d lived there in a past life.

I grew up speaking with my mother’s upper class British accent so that everyone at school thought I was English. Once when I was about fifteen I answered the phone, and my mother’s best friend mistook me for her, and said, “hello mother of four.” I politely explained to her that I was one of the four.

Our literary diet featured English books set in Britain, I listened to great British rock music and watched British TV shows like The Avengers, Dangerman and Dr Who. I was not a complete purist. I enjoyed a couple of American shows including The Man from Uncle, which I used to retell to my mother at such length that she gave in and started to watch it herself, claiming that this took less time than hearing me retell it. I suspect she secretly liked it.

Then came the classic British Comedies like Yes Minister, Black Adder and of course, the glorious Monty Python! Hence the British humor influence.

I’ve been living in California for six years now, and I wake in fear every morning, wondering if I’m developing an American accent. It was a sad day when I agreed to publish the new edition of my meditation book in American English (aka barbarian English), abandoning at last the British English (aka Real English) along with all its illogical spelling. These Americans are so practical it is annoying. I especially hate it when they are right.

So now I’m in America, on a British passport, feeling more or less at home, but not quite sure. I have no choice but to forgive California all it’s manglings of the Queen’s language and its materialism and lack of British humor, because of the sunshine and the redwoods and these friendly, generous, practical people. And then of course there are the sea otters! 🦦💛