Home sweet home

When I was driving  through the Arizona desert on my own,  I was desperate for something to listen to other than the local radio (which seemed to be either country and western or fire and brimstone religion) ,  so I stopped at a petrol station in the hopes of finding some cd’s. Though I did find the best guacamole I have ever eaten,  served with beautiful beetroot purple tortillas, the cd selection was rather limited. The only band I had heard of was the Pet shop boys, so I left clutching a copy of their greatest hits. This became my companion for the next week,  to the point that I was word perfect and so heartily sick of it that I left it in the glove compartment of the hire car when I delivered it back to the airport at Phoenix. The other day I was driving down to the west country and one of the tracks came on. I was immediately transported back to that extraordinary journey  with the big skies and dust red roads. I remember arriving at a motel after hours of solitary driving  and suddenly wishing I was back at home. I missed the kids and friends, wanted  a proper cup of tea, to buy a sandwich small enough to avoid  having to dislocate my jaw like a python in order to be able it eat it, when I suddenly realised that I could actually get the Archers Omnibus on my Ipad. This may seem very trivial to those of you who have not succumbed to the delights of Ambridge,  but to me it was like having an unexpected and very exciting Christmas present. It made me think of home, a bit like Mole in Wind in the Willows when he realises he is near his burrow ( or molehill?). And it’s interesting what reminds us of the comforts of home and reassures us when we are far way. 

Obviously, there’s food. Particularly  when you are in  the States and surrounded by menus and varieties and dietary options as long as the yellow brick road, to the point that actually all you want is a bit of toast and and a cup of Earl Grey, with nothing whatsoever on the side thanks. In Japan  we craved salt and vinegar crisps and marmite ( we made do with vegemite but it wasn’t quite  the same). One day our dearest Camberwell neighbours came for a holiday. they rang asking if there was anything we wanted from London. Literally at that moment I was thinking about Cadburys cream eggs. Not that I even like them that much,  but you know how it is. Anyway,  they arrived bringing with them one of those large wholesale boxe containing 36 of them. Slightly melted and slightly sticky silver foil wrapping and a treat for all our students. And funnily enough wheneve I think of a cream egg now, I think of Tokyo rather than home. Travelling through Tibet when there actually wasn’t very much to eat became  a bit of a food fantasy trip,  and it got to the point where I would have sold my soul to the devil in exchange for a plate of pasta or an avocado. Drinking a bowl of frothy, slightly fermented yaks milk complete with additional bristly hairs,  while trying to convince yourself it is actually a frothy cup of freshly ground coffee is a good way to sharpen the mind, though in my case never very succesful

Another thing that reminded us of home when we were living in Japan was the TV. Or at least our yearning to be able to watch something in English. Japanese TV was endlessly terrible. Really terrible. Mostly consisting of game shows with over acting irritating  hosts who shouted and squealed as if they were hyperventilating on helium. And some of the games seemed to specialise in humiliating the contestants,  which obviously is terribly terribly funny. Their version of Candid Camera took things to another level. There was one sketch where they dug a person shaped hole in the road ( like when forensics draw around a dead body ) and then a man painted to look like tarmac fitted himself into the hole and lay there so that it looked like a proper road . Then unsuspecting people would cycle past,  at which point the tarmac man would jump up causing  the poor cyclist to shriek, fall off their bikes and land with a thump on the road, sometimes really hurting themselves. Ha ha I hear you cry. Another was a scene in a massage parlour. Someone who had obviously been living on a diet of baked beans was positioned with their bottom sticking in the air and a massage table was placed over them , with the opening where the face of the massage recipient would be,  placed directly over his bottom. Then a jolly  unsuspecting victim would turn up for his massage, lie on the table on his stomach while the massage therapist starts kneading his back. Lo and behold the hiding flatulent gent underneath lets off his hideous bean filled gas right into his nose, bingo! 

 The only two programmes we could get in English were ‘The A Team and  Little house on the prairie’. Such was our excitement  that we would re schedule our lives to fit around this treat and would even rush home in order to catch up with the latest exploits of Mr T or the goody two shoes Ingles family. This might seem extraordinary now when you can usually watch something in English pretty much anywhere in the world. But things were much more limited and different then. My friend F  admits to having watched Songs of Praise while living in Australia as it reminded her of home.  I can guarantee that had this been on our  menu we would definitely have stayed in every Sunday evening to watch it.