What I miss MOST about England (when I’m home in Canada)
After about a week visiting my family in Canada, I started making a list of things I missed about England. At nine in the morning it was already 30 degrees and I was covered in sweat, although the air conditioning inside was wonderful. I was happy to be home. I also missed being able to walk to the supermarket.
That probably sounds like a very boring thing to miss when there’s a pool and time with my family. But after living in England since 2015, some of the things I grew up with in Ontario feel different. I used to accept that getting anywhere meant driving. Now I know how much I like having another choice.
Watch my Canada visit reflections on YouTube.
Going somewhere without getting in a car
Where I live in England, I can walk to the station, supermarket, cafes and activities, and I have plenty of bus routes nearby. I use that every day. This isn’t true everywhere in England, and I used to live in a small village where we pretty much needed a car.
My family in Ontario live outside a town. It’s not what I’d call deep countryside, but I can’t walk into town or reach a train or bus route on foot. Growing up, that never seemed strange. I learnt to drive at 16 and got a car because that’s what I needed to do.
The difference becomes particularly obvious when I’m making dinner and realise I’ve forgotten sour cream. In England, I’ll walk to the shop and get it. On this visit, I wasn’t going to drive to the supermarket for one forgotten ingredient, so I had to make do or write a very specific list for the weekly trip. Unfortunately, forgetting things is something I do often.
I miss short train journeys too. British trains can be expensive and unreliable, but I can use them to visit a friend or go shopping in another town, sometimes only one stop away. In Canada, my train journeys have been trips into Toronto. We went to a play during this visit, and the journey was smooth, with a double-decker train and a walk to the theatre at the other end. The catch was the drive of more than 20 minutes on the highway to reach the station.
A good journey into Toronto doesn’t replace the small trips I’m used to making in England. I couldn’t just hop on a train to a neighbouring town as a teenager in Ontario, especially before I had a car. Now that I’ve had that option, I would find giving it up difficult.
The things I pass on an ordinary day
I also miss seeing old buildings without organising a special historical outing. Victorian homes, Tudor buildings, churches and old pubs are there in the streets, along with wooden beams and plaques explaining who lived somewhere or what happened there.
Canada has its own character, but I feel the absence of those old English streets when I’m away. If you pass a blue plaque, read it. I like that you can learn something while doing whatever you were going to do anyway.
Travel distances have changed for me as well. In England, a journey of an hour or two can take me somewhere with a different coastline, castle or accent. Growing up in Canada, a long drive was simply part of going out. Now a plan involving three hours in the car, an hour at the destination and another drive home tests my patience much more than it used to.
Yes, I miss my milk
I usually use full-fat milk in my morning coffee in England. On visits to Canada, the milk tastes more watery to me, and I miss the creaminess I’m used to. It wasn’t something I expected to put on this list, but here we are.
I’ve noticed sweetness in unexpected places too. We make pizzas on the barbecue, which I love, but the pepperoni tastes sweeter than the kind I’d get at Tesco. Even Coke Zero tastes sweeter to me in Canada. I’ve always preferred savoury food, so I don’t particularly want sweetness sneaking into it.
Mostly, I miss my routine. My bed and pillows, a quiet desk for editing, the gym, a coffee and a walk around town. Tesco’s Finest salt and vinegar crisps deserve a mention too.
Coming back to Canada is strange because it can look like a time capsule while neither the place nor I have stayed the same. I’m grateful to spend this much time with my family, long enough to start missing my ordinary life in England. Both things can be true while I’m sitting by the pool with a book.
Francisco
The watery milk thing is not just an international thing. I switched to whole milk a few years ago when I realised that I actually took in less calories that way as I could easily drink a litre of skimmed in one go.
One thing that we noticed was that whether it was UHT or fresh, and even the brand, would make a difference to how it tasted. My other half even described one of the options as “milk flavoured water”.