It may just be down to the fact that we are having the worst winter the UK has seen for thirty years, but I think it could be time to start making a plan to move back to Los Angeles. It’s an idea husband has been dropping into conversation on and off for at least six months now. I’ve been resistant, not least because I’m liking my job at the moment. But a few weeks ago, something shifted. I’ve noticed that I’ve started making mental lists of things I want to do before I leave. There’s the Trouble House and the Kilkenny, pubs I drive by most days but have never made the time to stop in to. And I need to eat at the Plough at Kingham so I can taste Alex James’ goat cheese. In London there’s the Soanes museum and that Eritrean restaurant on the Harrow Road I’ve been meaning to try. Will I make it to the longest running show in the world, The Mousetrap, before it closes? What about the Louisana museum in Copenhagen and the new Magritte one in Brussels, not to mention Stockholm and a return cycling trip to Alsace? All of a sudden it seems like there is so much to do, and that doesn’t even include finding a job in California or any of the two thousand other practicalities associated with hopping the Atlantic.
Worst of all I feel like some kind of fraud. I’ve spent close to two years blogging about the charms of rural Britain and yet, faced with a little snow, I’m ready to turncoat on the market square wine bar and settle into a booth at Gilbert’s on Pico with a carafe of margaritas. Despite the fact that there’s a red passport snuggled up to the blue one in my sock drawer, I guess at heart I’m still an American in the Cotswolds.