No, no, I haven’t got married. It’s alright.
Those of you who know me in my real life, will probably know that I’m not entirely English, despite looking and sounding the part to the point that nobody would know unless I told them otherwise. However. I’m only half English, my other half is South African, both by birth and by heritage.
Most of us nowadays aren’t entirely 100% English. Look back far enough and there’ll be some mixing and matching somewhere but quite often it’s so far back that it doesn’t matter much to you. That’s not so much the case when you’re a half and half, especially when you’re born in one part of the world and move to another.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that a move from one English-speaking country to another wouldn’t be a big deal. There might be some small hiccups and differences but it’d be an easy process for all that. Despite some of the linguistic quirks I’ve been talking about over on the Macmillan Dictionary blog (yeah, see that shameless plug? Follow the linky…) there is a something that gets left over, an essence of your former life and culture that lives inside you and sets you apart. It’s the thing that means whichever place you find yourself in, you’re always too much of the other half of yourself to truly fit in.
When summer comes, and it’s Braai time (barbecue for you English), you’ll find me fiercely protective of the Braai. It’s a uniquely South African Process that simply isn’t replicated in Britain. Personally, I think the weather’s responsible but nonethless …. nobody gets their paws on my braai! (It’s normally a male thing but in ex-pats, well we’ve got to do what we can) The notion of a braai, and it’s literal translation, is the cooking of meat over an open fire. Because of this and due to some of the techniques used, the idea of using a gas barbecue … well, perspectives aren’t favourable. We always use either wood or lumpwood charcoal (briquettes and firelighters get anywhere near my food and there’ll be trouble) and quite often chuck some beer on the flames for extra flavour in the smoke. Castle lager being a favourite. Braais are also more relaxed than the English barbecue. They tend to start at about 11am and often go on late into the night. Rather than a formalised lunch with everyone eating at the same time, certain foods are cooked depending on the heat of the fire and it’s a case of helping yourself whenever you’re hungry and doing it all at your own pace.
There is a definite slowness of pace, and less of a sense of rushing around for no discernable reason. There’s a kick back and relax, anything goes feeling that extends beyond the braai.
Beyond braai-ing and biltong, there’s far more that sits below the surface. In blatant opposition to the English reserve (something I have never quite managed to master) most South Africans are outspoken. In fact, I know many English people who find South Africans slightly less outspoken, and often more offensive.
Regardless, my instinctive habit is, and always has been, to call a spade a spade. Though I can get poetic and romantic about things, I just don’t do subtlety and reserve. You piss me off and you know about it and I have always preferred a bloody good argument to bottling things up and pretending it’s all alright. Can’t say it always does me a world of good but you’ve got to be who you are.
And when I daydream, it’s of big wide-open spaces that are more immense than anything you can dream of, of places and sights so huge that they make your heart sing. It’s of merciless sunshine and an elemental ferocity that is as apparent in the landscape as the people.
And yet, there’s something in me that yearns for the grassy, rolling hills of England. There’s a part of me that loves my English side because the sense of history here that gives you roots. It’s not the scenery or the old buildings that choke me up, nor is it the traditions or our modern day culture. There’s a part of me that when I’m upset will want to find myself standing at the White Horse in Uffington because nowhere else gets to the root of the English that sits below the reserve. There’s a part of the Englishness I feel that isn’t ladylike or gentle. It’s a feeling of the warrior England, an England that knows who it is and FIGHTS for it. There’s something slightly wild about that England: it’s proud, genuinely patriotic and bloody fierce. It’s an old England. It’s a HOMELAND and it’s mine.
It’s both places, both people that live inside me, in an uneasy marriage of two cultures. In their own ways, for all their surface differences, they have similarites. They’re both wild, passionate and fierce, whilst holding the key to the most profound and elemental peace.