When “home” starts to mean somewhere else

I’VE BEEN in Mauritius since Thursday 6 March. I laboured remotely during the first and second weeks, and still felt guilty when I started my holiday at the beginning of this week whilst aware that an important project deadline had been missed and that a colleague would have to cram it out.

Adding to the strangeness of being in Mauritius twice within a two-month period and the uncertainty back in England, what with the missed deadline, the recent storms in Britain, the unattended house, and the toppled fence left as-is, is the budding confusion about the meaning of “home”. Indeed, I find myself saying that “I am bored of being in Mauritius and would rather be home” quite often.

To muddle things even more, I don’t feel the same urge as before to obtain the British citizenship and often contemplate remaining exclusively Mauritian; but, at the same time, I want Britain to be my home.

Is there a fellow ex-pat reading this and having similar feelings?

Saint David’s Day

Or, when to wear a leek with style.

So, there was something that I had not seen during my seven years in the UK: Prince Charles wearing a leek on his lapel.

From Wikipedia:

Saint David’s Day (Welsh: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi) is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March each year.

[...] Many Welsh people wear one or both of the national emblems of Wales on their lapel to celebrate St. David: the daffodil (a generic Welsh symbol which is in season during March) or the leek (Saint David’s personal symbol) on this day. The association between leeks and daffodils is strengthened by the fact that they have similar names in Welsh, Cenhinen (leek) and Cenhinen Bedr (daffodil, literally “Peter’s leek”).

Males usually wear leeks while young girls wear daffodils. The younger girls usually wear their Welsh costumes to school. This costume consists of a long woollen skirt, white blouse, woollen shawl and a Welsh hat.

And so, this is why the Prince of Wales was wearing a vegetable today (or rather, yesterday).

Of course, this is nothing new for most British.