The story of Jim and June

Jim and June were the odd couple. Jim was a bantam weight cockney who despite over 20 years of living in the US still sounded like he came straight from the set of East Enders. He was as gorblimey guv as they came.June was a big boned woman from a more Home Counties patrician background who kept an immaculate 4 storey Victorian to house her collection of vintage of cookie jars. She was his bit of posh and he was her bit of rough. They had met in Brazil of all places where she was a dubutantish secretary at the British embassy in Sao Paulo and he was an expat art director at a multinational ad agency.How they came to meet I never heard and I think Jim could never remember. He described his time in Brazil as one constant hangover.He shared a house with a tribe of itinerant fellow expats and a
continuous stream of local black women.Black was Jim's delight so how he ended up with June I can't fathom.But with her he did indeed end up and she followed him to New York and then to New Jersey where they set up home. Now Jim for all his Kray twins accent was in fact the biggest lover of Americana I have ever come across. He was such an antidote to all the whining Brits I had met who didn't like the food here or the beer here or the telly here or just being here.He loved it,loved it ,loved it loved it.As his two sons grew up he adored going to little league games and would proudly display photographs of them at play.He had a great friend who was a photographer and every year the two of them would do a fear and loathing road trip not to Vegas but to Wyoming.There they would hunker down in a cabin in the middle of nowheresville and fish and drink and smoke their heads off.
Jim loved this place.He loved its eccentricities.For example the local Sheriff had been in power for over 20 years and nobody would run against him.Then came an edict from the state capital that this smelled of abuse of power and he would have to find one breathing life form to run against at the up-coming election.Not one citizen dared step up so the Sheriff put forward his dog. The dog won by a landslide but curiously enough and amazing for a dog it was able to swear in the now ex-sheriff as his deputy.
Jim and the new deputy became close friends and Jim confided in him that he loved coming out to
Wyoming partly because it gave him a break from June, who it's true did have a real ball-busting temper at times.The deputy thought about this long and hard and suggested that Jim might want to bring June out to Wyoming next year to which Jim being horrified at the idea asked why. `Well there's lots of
old mines out here' said the deputy.` you'd be surprised at how easy a wife could fall into one and never be seen again. I'm just saying...' June to her good fortune never did make that trip. Jim died of leukemia several years ago and I went to a gathering at that big house.Their kids were now young men. June hadn't aged a year.And all over the ground floor were examples of Jim's amazing art work.This was a Brit who found his true spiritual home in suburban New Jersey and was a real inspiration. Gawd bless yer mate!

The cautionary tale of Rupert and Rose

Rupert and Rose in real life were not as alliterative as I've made them.But Rupert has that
slightly effeminate boarding school feel about it and that's what the real Rupert was. Rose is
the casting department's name for the barmaid at the Dog and Duck or the Lodger and Landlady or whatever fanciful name you want to make up for a pub. One could imagine Rose in a 1960's Carry On movie if, of course ,one knew 1960's Carry On movies. She was innocently risque and ever so slightly common an impression fueled by her broad Solihul accent. To those who've never heard one imagine
a nasal drone with every vowel flat. Or better still imagine a female Ozzy Osbourne. Rupert was quite the BBC announcer and it was obvious on meeting them that Rose and Rupert were a match made by a blind deaf man with a pin. Rupert had come over with his bank and had rented a mansion in New Jersey and Rose was busy fitting it out so it looked like a 1920's council house in the industrial armpit of England from whence she came. Poor Rose.The job of decorating the castle was the only thing that came between her and throwing herself out of the window. She had no friends.She couldn't understand anything on TV and she would say loudly to anyone within a hundred yards that the food here tasted funny.Rupert was away on his travels quite a lot,ironically mostly to the UK. I met them through some Brit S.O.S. support group and remember thinking that she wasn't long for these shores. I next met them at a party they threw for no reason. The development since last was met was that Rose's Mum had come to stay and like some wizened and incomprehensible dowager duchess she occupied a wing of the house and supervised Rose.She too was deeply unhappy and the only alleviating factor was that Rupert had scads of money and so spending it was a kind of therapy.If I were a betting man which I'm not because I'm a losing man I'd have put money on Rupert packing Rose and Mum-in-law back to the jollity of England and setting himself up in bachelor digs with a harem of hotsie-totsies. The last time I went to their house it was Rupert who had gone,six feet under in fact thanks to an embolism. Rose was taken with a local plumber who had left his wife and moved into the mansion where he presumably learned to slurp his tea out of the saucer and eat shepherd's pie with chips. She was not only happy she was pregnant and the dowager was thrilled to bits and making plans. As they say a bit further North than Solihul `There's nowt as queer as folk' And it's true.

The ballad of Trevor and Nigel

Trevor and Nigel are not their real names but to me they are the quintessential names for these daft southern idiots and I say that with apologies to all nice normal intelligent brits who happen to have been given those hideous and dismal baptismal gifts by unfeeling parents.They are names remind me of wet Sundays.Perfect for two Brits.
Trevor was married to Shirley.Nigel was married to Monica. Back in the land of value added tax and now bedroom tax Nigel and Trevor were neighbours with a u.They both worked in finance albeit at different institutions.Every August bank holiday the two families would go caravanning together to somewhere expected like the Norfolk broads or Southend-on-sea. Nigel and Shirley had two children
Edward and and Vanessa.Trevor and Monica had two children Roland and Tabitha. Both sets of children were exactly the same age give or take or month.That's just an example of how in-synch these couples were. Their British idyll was summarily interrupted though when Nigel was transferred to the Wall Street offices of his global behemoth bank where he was a successful money trader. He and his family bought a house in a cosy New Jersey suburb and life was very good.Nigel and family were devout Roman Catholics and took to the suburban barbecue culture with enthusiasm and every
weekend there was a fair smattering of semi drunken priests and monseigneurs chewing over garlic marinated London Broil and drinking Jaegermeister. After three years Trevor managed to finagle a posting to the US to the New Jersey office of his company and with no trouble at all managed to buy a house four doors down from Nigel. Live was fantastic.On the surface that is. The truth was that beneath all the smiles and `let's have drinks at my place' there were a number of snakes in paradise. One of the reasons that Monica had agreed to move to the States with Trevor was that old Trev had been sharing his love of women a little too freely in the neighbourhood and Monica had caught him with the wife of the man who'd bought Nigel's house at a party.They were in marriage guidance counseling and Monica had thought that getting away would help them get closer.Also daughter Tabitha was getting a little too precocious with the local yobs and Monica had no wish to be a grandmother just yet. While Nigel's kids went to private catholic schools Trevor's went to the state public schools and Nigel couldn't resist being all snobby and pretentious about it.Two new priests started turning up at the weekly meat fest.One a young Irish novitiate who had a knack for comforting old widows into giving him very nice gifts and at the same time had an overly friendly interest in teenage boys. The other was a former Presbyterian minister who had converted and brought along with him his wife and five children. The size of his family precluded him from having a church house to live in because priestly accommodations didn't usually factor in a Mrs and a squad of kids.Instead he got a small allowance that went nowhere in this rich middle class community.His whole tribe was squeezed into a tiny shoebox of a place and as if that wasn't bad enough now that he was Catholic he had taken the vow of chastity.Though he was allowed to live with his wife there was no way he was allowed to have any physical relationship with her.Given the enforced closeness of their living conditions that put quite a strain on Mrs Priest who had a mental breakdown and had to go into therapy. These two characters would be first to every party and the last to leave every time. Equally as party hearty was the local police chief who after a few shots would tell anyone who cared to listen how proud he was to enforce
traffic stops for drivers whose complexion wasn't the whitest shade of white.
So here we are in this corner of a foreign subdivision that's forever England when the other serpents
came out of the trees. Nigel seduced Monica,calling in sick and waiting until Trevor drove off to work
and Shirley was off doing good deeds for the church before slipping over the garden fence and doing his confessions of a merchant banker impressions. Seducing her wasn't that hard because Monica knew that Trevor wasn't always driving off to work.He too was calling in sick and then tooling around to his new co-workers house in a nearby town and doing the hokey-pokey until it was time to catch the rush hour traffic home.And the hormones were rampant in other places too. Young father to be Michael was putting the squeeze on Nigel's son Edward who was quite enjoying the attention.It was only the jealousy of his sister who didn't like the idea that he was getting some and she wasn't that led to Shirley finding out. Poor Shirley's faith in her church was rocked.Not as much as she was when Nigel asked her for a divorce so he could shack up with Monica.When she refused Nigel ran off with her anyway
but not before Trevor had taken a powder with his mistress.When the dust settled although settled is probably the wrong word,Nigel was living with Monica in a tiny apartment and had inherited Roland and Tabitha and an old farty dog and two cats. Trevor was living out of state with his woman and refusing child support. Shirley was flat broke as Nigel had cleaned out their joint account and refused to giver her any money until she agreed to a divorce which Shirley never could on religious grounds.The young priest was caught fondling another boy and quietly sent to another parish by the bishop. The Presby-Catholic convert had a mental breakdown of his own and left his wife with a parting gift of a sixth kid on the way.
That's the ballad of Nigel and Trevor. I liked Trevor.He was an out and out rogue and to see him was to know that. Nigel was...well what can I say except he was as Nigel as they come.

You're not in Manchester any more.

Rule number one: There is no Brit Club.
These are just my infrequent and not too serious observations of the expats I see all around me.
When I first came to the US Brits seemed more few and far between and in the helter skelter of Manhattan it was easier to be unaware of them. Since moving to the suburbs however its very noticeable that there is a community and a network of the sons and daughters of Albion with further connections to those of Scottish,Welsh and even Irish origins.

At first it seemed that the Club was divided in two. The just arriveds and the long time been heres.
The new folks are also divided into two.One thinks that everything here is weird and not in  nice way.
In other words,the whiners. `Oh the telly's crap here innit? Nothing on. And the food is different.
You can't get things at the supermarket like you can at home.The tea is awful innit?. And they don't know how to make beer do they? And the weather's too hot,too cold,too different' The whiners are very vocal. They were obviously kidnapped by sailors and pressed into overseas service.After they came to in their rent assisted accommodation the first thing they did was talk about going home. And they've been talking about nothing else ever since. And then there are the settlers. These are the people who can't believe their good luck at being in a bigger house driving a bigger car earning bigger money and they love it. They have an immediate affinity to American culture and sports and feel less and less
connected to the UK every day.

This blog will profile a few of these two types that I've come across in my time here. I put myself in neither category so I can feel free to poke fun at them both.