Am I British yet? | 6 years living in England!!
I celebrated six years in England by doing something I normally avoided: watching my old YouTube videos. Once I finished editing and uploaded a video, I did not watch it again. I found the whole thing unbearably cringey. For my November 2021 anniversary video, I went back into the catalogue anyway.
I expected embarrassment, and I got it. I also got something stranger. These clips showed a version of me I did not quite recognise, talking about everyday things that had felt new when I moved here. I had always wanted the channel to be a time capsule. Looking back made that idea very real.
Before I knew who would watch
One of the oldest videos I revisited was about what was in my kitchen. I thought it was from late spring 2017, and I remembered it as the first video I had made specifically to be watched on YouTube. Before that, I had made videos about getting a driving licence and a bank account to put on my blog.
The kitchen idea had come from watching American vloggers living in South Korea. I loved hearing about the food they ate and what they made for dinner, and I wondered whether people might be interested in my life in the UK in the same way. In the old clip I explained all of that, along with why I had angled the camera away from the dirty dishes.
Watching it back, I noticed how different my face and voice seemed. I could not neatly explain all the changes in myself. Then I reached the bit about korma sauce and remembered something much more straightforward: I still loved a korma. I had eaten one the night before. Some things had survived the years perfectly well.
The pork pie people remembered
Next came one of my early British food taste tests. I used to call those videos “Eat this”, buying things from shops to try on camera. People had told me those were the first videos they found before subscribing. I recognised the old living room and remembered filming after work, when it was already dark.
My setup was not impressive. I had bought a cheap ring light, and the light flashed. I sat on the floor in front of a seat while filming. Watching that footage made me apologise again for the awful lighting. It also showed that my familiar greeting had already settled into place: “Hi everyone, it’s me.”
The food included a pork pie that I compared to a hockey puck. Rather than cutting a little slice, I bit straight into it. That annoyed so many people that I was still getting comments about it in 2021. Looking back, I could see the same habits and jokes beginning to appear in videos I barely remembered watching.
From observing England to living here
My two-year anniversary video brought up a larger change. In that earlier recording, I talked about becoming more independent since moving. Watching it at the six-year point, I felt that my independence had grown far beyond what I meant then. The younger person on screen seemed much more naive to me.
An old thought about everyday life still interested me. Back then I had been observing how English people lived and comparing it with how I lived in Canada. By 2021, I was living that way myself. The differences were part of my own life here, rather than something I was watching from the outside.
Small observations could fade surprisingly quickly. In an old video about lesser-known things I had noticed in England, I talked about letterboxes in doors. Watching that section again, I realised I had forgotten that this had once struck me as different. I also remembered my former cashier job when the clip reached supermarket staff sitting to scan shopping while customers bagged it.
Memories with the footage still attached
I finished the old-video tour with my March 2018 snowstorm video. I remembered that as the most snow I had seen in England up to that point in 2021, and some viewers had told me it was the first video they found on my channel. Seeing those scenes again brought back another piece of my life here.
What surprised me was how the recordings differed from my memories. I could actually go back and watch the moments, rather than just remember them. It was strange, but I was glad I did it. By the end I was getting a little better at dealing with the embarrassment. I was also hungry and ready for lunch.
No Comments