An Englishman in New York

Having missed it last summer, I was determined to finally see Jason Bell’s exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. For starters, it would give me yet another chance to plonk a child on the back of one of the black lions flanking Nelson’s column. Something we seem to do with the same frequency we mark incremental height increases of our progeny in pencil on the wall. For another, we’d be able to eat in the crypt at St. Martin’s in the Field. Any opportunity to eat hearty food in a crypt should be seized. It’s just too wonderfully peculiar and the crypt’s menu is cracking. Finally, the desire to see Jason’s environmental portraits of Englishmen and women in New York had struck a chord too bold to ignore. The exhibition was closing just four days after we arrived and although he hadn’t photographed me I wondered if I’d see something of myself in them.

As a visiting New Yorker, it might not be that curious to arrive with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in mind. For a native Londoner, or at least a Home Counties girl, it might not be odd to come up with that as a plan for a free day or a coffee date either. But my recent returns (wearing both hats) were increasingly feeling like an odd condition of limbo, a British national comfortably familiar with the layout of London but as hungry as a tourist to inhale on a smorgasbord of all things British. This experience seems common to ex-pats, and a quick rifle through the various online forums designed to serve the queries of Brits abroad or those attempting to repatriate proves the point. There’s an urge to revisit and recharge, maybe to reactivate memories that can fade on foreign soil with an absence of friendly sources to ping them back into focus. No doubt it’s the reason I suddenly have to eat vinegary fish and chips with mushy peas, crave a cuzza, smile indulgently at (hitherto revolting) late night donner kebab vans, and stuff my luggage with jars of Marmite.

I bristle a little at the word ‘expat’. After all, noone likes to feel irrelevant to the big picture, ostracised from family, especially when you still keenly vote by proxy from overseas. An old employer once quipped there’s nothing quite as ex as an ex-employee, and somehow ‘expat’ – a word that has to be practically spat - has a similar vibe. So, back on London terra firma, proving my mental dexterity in negotiating streets and the underground subway system map-free is probably as important to me as the 0-60mph acceleration of a bright red Lamborghini to a middle-aged man. (He’s still got it and so have I.) It’s the reason I can be found sheepishly posing for pictures with my little British-American children in front of red telephone boxes and London landmarks. It’s also the reason I’m quite happy to pick up trinkets from souvenir stalls like Union Jack tissues and Big Ben fridge magnets. In some weird way, I must be operating on a theory that the more touristy memorabilia I accumulate, the more armoured protection I’ll have from losing my English status. Throw in a royal wedding and suddenly the need includes flag bunting and a royal mug.

In his photo assignment for American Vogue, a shoot featuring English models in the Manhattan-located English tea room, ‘Tea and Sympathy’, photographer Jason Bell was told that over 120,000 Brits currently live in New York City. He may have been surprised but frankly I wasn’t. You can hardly walk a block in the city without hearing recognisable clips of British accents, north and south, which possibly explains why British expats are collectively nicknamed ‘teabags’ around town. Nonetheless as an industrious Englishman living and working in New York, this statistical gem prompted Mr. Bell to seek out his countrymen and ultimately photograph them in their natural New York work environments. From cab drivers, policemen, designers, and deep-sea divers to the more famous faces of musician Sting, actor Kate Winslet, writer Zoe Heller, geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, or the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he captured them on film underscoring the breadth of this British exodus and its impact on the cultural life of the city.

My interest was piqued not only by the exhibition description but an assertion of what the photographer had found. A quote in the exhibition’s accompanying book explained, “Amidst all the questions about why people have come here and what they had left behind, I learnt a little bit more about what it means to be English, what it means to be a New Yorker, and where the two intersect.” And in tiny room 38a of the National Portrait Gallery the faces looked as familiar as any daily street scene and the backgrounds felt remarkably like home. That a NYPD cop, city man holes, and retractable fire escape ladders should all look warmly familiar while standing in a museum in the centre of London struck me as proof that my New York and British identities had just collided.

Outside, my daughter threw money to a gold-painted mime and danced to a busker outside the National Gallery while a huge digital display clock counted down the days, minutes and seconds to the London Olympics 2012. Despite not owning a London transport Oyster card or having previously seen the London Mayor’s ‘Boris bikes’ neatly lined up for self-hire and return, such changes didn’t make me feel any less at home. I did however manage to pick up a red London telephone box key chain as a protective talisman to take home with me to New York.