Here’s an excerpt from my recent Expat Authors Article featured at Blog Expat. To read the rest of the article, click on the icon at the end of the article.
1. Why did you move abroad?
Like most baby boomers from Britain … I was brought up on a diet of old Hollywood Matinee movies and I still remember my pre-teen yearnings to live in America. I’m not sure if I thought it was possible; it was just an escapism tactic from small-town rural life.
At 20 I traveled to New York to embark on a 6 week Greyhound bus adventure up and down the East Coast of the States. This was the early ‘80s, when 42nd street was still a heaving den of XXX inequity, with drug pushers in every door way, and I stayed at the nearby YMCA, but my mum’s biggest concern was that I would be enlisted into a cult (like the Moonies); shave my head; dress in white robes, never to be seen again.
I survived the Moonies, and vowed to myself I’d return to the States one day. Back home, I met and fell in love with London, and enjoyed a long, fruitful and gloriously eventful relationship with that fabulous city.
But America was always whispering over my shoulder, and I knew I needed to come back. So 7 years after my first visit, I planned a holiday to New York. I intended to stay for 6 weeks; but didn’t leave.
