Adjusting to life back in the UK

Posted on January 23, 2019

We have just moved back to the UK after the best part of 25 years traveling the world with my job. We left England all those years ago with suitcases, and we are returning with 2 kids, a cat and 2 containers full of furniture and personal effects. Of course we were expecting some adjusting, particularly for the children as they associated England with holidays and fun times, they’d had no experience of day to day life here as such. And for us the luxury of living with home help, maids, drivers and gardeners for the past quarter of a century would be a hard felt loss on our return.

But in truth these concerns did not really materialise because its just a case of getting on with life, kids go to school (or Uni in the case of the eldest) they make friends, go out, play sport just as they did in Asia. We need to do a little more around the house to keep it all ship shape, but we don’t pine after our Expat life style, and in fact the stability of knowing that we will remaining in the Uk for the foreseeable future negates any sense of loss of that transient expat life style.

In moving back to the UK I have actually been surprised as to how little things have changed, however we have been caught out on more than a few occasions. We have learned to our cost that there are now cameras everyone, and rules must be followed for parking at supermarkets, crossing a box junction, and respecting bus lanes. We’ve learned to separate our rubbish, and put it out for collection on the right day. We’ve learned that we must not stand on the coach side of the pitch at soccer practise. And we’ve learned that at some point over the past 25 years the BBC started to make really good TV dramas.

All in all the transition to life back at home hasn’t been too tricky, and things that we worried about, have really not been a big issue at all.