Weird stuff I brought to the UK when I moved here (and kept!)

I was trying to tidy up and find things to donate when I realised how much old stuff I’d brought from Canada to England. Some of it had travelled with me for years before I even moved countries. Some arrived later. Looking at it all together made the ages of these everyday objects a bit alarming.

On an ordinary day, my keychain is just my keychain. I don’t stop and calculate how long I’ve had it. But once I started working backwards through the things I’d kept, I ended up with a guitar keychain I found when I was seven, a bag from my first European trip and a prom outfit I’d never worn again in full.

A gift that moved seven times

The artwork on my desk was a gift from my mum when I first left home at nineteen to go to college. It says “free yourself” and shows a girl in the grass. It used to be bright green, but the sun has faded it over the years.

I’d taken it to every home I’d lived in since then, including my place in England when I filmed this. Counting the college house, returning home and my later moves, it had lived in seven properties with me. I didn’t want to make a hole in the wall of our rented place, so I’d bought one of those stands used for displaying plates and put it on my desk instead. I loved it and hoped it would stay with me for many more years.

The prom outfit that didn’t look very prom

I still had my dress, shoes, necklace and bag from prom. I couldn’t really remember why I’d packed the outfit for an international move, but I thought it was because I’d never been much of a dress person and wanted one formal option. That was the one I owned.

Shopping for it with my mum, I didn’t like the dresses in the prom section. Then I saw a peachy, pinky dress elsewhere and decided it was the one, even when Mum pointed out it wasn’t a prom dress. It cost about thirty dollars at the time. I liked the embroidered bottom and how different it was from what everybody else wore.

The accessories were the same sort of peach colour, with wedges and a little H&M bag. I’d used the shoes and bag since prom, but not the dress. The necklace had changed colour over time, and the bag was falling apart. Last I checked, the dress still fit, though less loosely than when I was eighteen. I wasn’t upset about that. I still loved it.

My first Europe trip stayed in a backpack

At sixteen, I got a place on a European school trip through my art class. I’d travelled with my family growing up, but this was my first time in Europe and my first big trip without them. We visited London, Paris, Barcelona and Madrid, with smaller places along the way, and I found it eye-opening.

Everybody got a backpack. I added a Canada flag and drew on mine, then used it for travel for years afterwards. I believed it was the backpack I’d used when I first moved to England, too. By the time I showed it in this video, it was peeling and had holes, so I’d replaced it with a newer one. The old one had become a memento.

Part of what I remembered was the freedom. Sometimes the teachers told us when to come back, and we went off on our own. That was a new experience for me. Looking at the worn-out bag brought me back to the trip, although opening it also turned up something rather less meaningful. A hair elastic.

The books came later

Books weren’t on my packing list when I first moved to the UK in November 2015. There wasn’t room. Years later, I wanted to reread my original Harry Potter books, so I asked Mum to bring some of the smaller ones when she visited for Christmas. I collected the rest when I went back to Canada in July.

I’d only read the series once as a child, despite watching the films many times, and rereading those same copies was comforting and nostalgic. My name was still written inside in my childhood handwriting. I remembered my older sister going to the midnight release of Deathly Hallows and leaving this very copy outside my bedroom door while I slept. I read it in forty-eight hours.

The thing I’ve had since seven

The oldest item was a guitar keychain I’d found in my bedroom after we moved to a new town when I was seven. I wasn’t happy about changing schools and leaving friends, and my parents let me choose my room. Somewhere in that room, I found the little guitar someone had left behind.

I thought it looked cool, claimed it and put it on every set of keys I’d had ever since. At the time I made this video, it was still with me in England. I’d be devastated to lose it. For something I usually barely thought about, it had been around for an awful lot of my life.

Watch the Canadian keepsakes that followed me to England in the original video.