I am exceedingly risk-averse. And yet, this character trait is precisely the thing that led me here. Here being roughly 17,000 miles from home. When my then boyfriend, now husband, asked me if I would consider living in the UK, just for a year or two, for the sake of his work, initially I responded with a firm, "No." Of course, I do now live in England, and that provisional year or two has passed. As has the third. He has since confessed that the, "Oh, just for a year or maybe two if things go well with work," timeframe was his way of getting me here, lulling my fears, knowing that once we were immersed in English life, I would be reluctant to give it up. Luckily for him, I am.
A stile on one of my favourite country walks
That I ended up living what looks like the embodiment of the 'English idyll', on the opposite side of the world to where I was born, is a happy accident. Thinking back though, I have hungered for this 'green and pleasant land' for as long as I can remember. Residing in close quarters with my Yorkshirian Nan and Surrey-born Gramps, I was raised on a diet of gravy-soaked Yorkshire puddings and exaggerated tenor renditions of Rule, Britannia, and a rather humorous song about a woman who married eight times- always to men named Henry, on car journeys. My Gramps, I think, missed England his whole life long. England, or the idea of life in England, was romanticised to me to such an extent it became an Eden in my mind. Familiar enough, yet somewhere I was a little sorry I never got the chance to know so intimately myself. Suffice to say, being here has been a lot like curing a case of homesickness for a home I didn't know I was missing.
I am deeply in love with English country living. It suits me down to the ground. I'm smitten with the gentle yet predictable rhythms of the seasons, how each one unfurls slowly, tentatively, stretching out its characteristic refrains to their fullest extent in the same way a new-born lamb stretches its precarious limbs as it frantically bleats and stands for the first time. The scents, sounds and seasonal markers of the countryside fill me with renewed joy every year, as each one begins afresh.
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Perhaps we should go back to the start? I semi-regularly get asked on instagram the story behind our move to England, and specifically the ins and outs of making the transition, as well as the hurdles to jump visa and cost wise. I have held off on writing a big blog post like this because I often feel like my experience was far too easy and hassle free to be of use to anyone. And that may still be the case, but I do get asked, and there are people who are just generally curious. So, being as transparent and honest as I can be, I hope the following answers some questions or guides you on your own journey in some way.
A patriotic cottage on the day of the
Royal Wedding, 2018
In all honesty I will be of little help to those wondering about how to get a visa. My Dad is English (born and raised in Leicestershire) and my husband's Dad is Scottish (born near Glasgow). This automatically affords us British passports and citizenship. As far as Her Majesty is concerned, we are as British as we are Australian. I believe you can apply for UK citizenship if a parent or grandparent is British, but no further back than this. Luckily for us both our families are, in relative terms, rather newly Australian. I remember our freshly processed British passports with the shiny EU foil on the cover arriving in the mail at our Sydney flat the day of the Brexit referendum. A strange but still exciting day.
There are of course other avenues to pursue if you do want to live in the UK but you don't have rights to British citizenship. The UK government website will detail these. In some cases, once you are here you can apply for your place of work to sponsor you to enable you to stay for an extended period of time and maybe even indefinitely. I have heard visas can be expensive and the application process to initially come to the UK and then to renew to stay etc is fairly drawn out. I am sure there would be chat forums in most countries around the world detailing the costs and procedures, so it is worth searching these out to become better informed.
The shelves in our cottage kitchen
I remember the exact date that I finally agreed to move to England- Valentine's Day, 2016. It would be another few months before we left. I had just started my masters degree, hence the initial hesitation on my part, but my husband had won me round with lines such as, "If not now, maybe there will never be another opportunity." My heart desperately wanted to embrace the adventure. My head took a little more convincing. It is an entirely dizzying and disorientating thing, to prepare yourself to move overseas. So much of the decision making and discussion was had by my husband and his workplace, then I would find out details later. This isn't a criticism by any means, but I recall a sense of knowing a big life change was about to occur, but being entirely hands-off with the process. I busied myself by culling and curating our possessions so that we were only shipping over what we truly loved and needed. Bear in mind, I left thinking we'd be away for a year or two. For that reason, I didn't pack as much as I would have if I'd known we would still be here over three years later. For example, I only packed very treasured books and un-read books from my bookshelf. The rest were put in my childhood bedroom for safe keeping. I also knew that being in England would be an unbelievably wonderful opportunity to source and buy beautiful antiques. I had always wanted a French farmhouse table and a set of bentwood chairs, gilt framed mirrors, pine blanket boxes... the list was, and is, endless (luckily for me, we now live very close to a wonderful auction room). We barely filled a shipping container. I don't remember the exact cost, but I do remember thinking how reasonable it was; on par with removalists moving a household within the same state of Australia. Quite amazing when you think that they pack up your household, handle all of the customs paperwork, ship it across the world, and deliver & unpack it in your new home. For full disclosure, my husband's company covered all our shipping, flight, and relocation costs. This was wonderfully generous, but quite standard for a corporate move such as this.
An antique bedside table and vintage alabaster lamp,
both purchased in England
The thing that unnerved me most was how life remained completely unchanged in the lead up to our departure. It wasn't until the employees of the shipping company were in our flat on a sunny Monday morning with rolls of bubble wrap, packing our things into boxes marked "Oxford", that I truly believed we were leaving. Until that point, our home and life had looked as it always did. My husband had woken up that morning in our regular surroundings, got dressed, and gone to work. Never to return to that flat. If it was disorienting for me, watching the packing later that morning, I can't imagine how strange it was for him. Instead of catching his regular bus back across the Harbour Bridge after work that night, he met me and our four suitcases (the only possessions we would have until our shipment arrived in England three months later) in a hotel in the city.
We are here, in the UK, for my husband's job. He works for an Australian management consultancy firm and they wanted to build and expand a presence in Europe and the Northern Hemisphere. My husband is one of two directors in the UK office and manages Europe, Middle East & Africa. He travels quite often for work and goes into the London office around 2-3 times per week, but right from our initial discussions about moving to England I was adamant that I didn't want to live in London. We floated the idea of Oxford for a while. Maybe Reading. Ultimately we based ourselves in Henley on Thames for the first few months, living in an Air B&B whilst we familiarised ourselves with life in the UK and decided where to live. Our first home was in the beautiful, quintessentially English, village of Castle Combe. This is where I fell truly head over heels in love with living in the English countryside.
Castle Combe, the first village we lived in
To be continued.
Kate x
The humorous song my Gramps sang to us more times than I could count, can be listened to HERE
