Chelmsford - The Edge Magazine

ONE YEAR ONThis monthly missive has been winging its wayacross the Atlantic for over a year now. My timehere has gone very quickly, and it has to be said,I count myself extremely lucky to have had theopportunity to experience actually living in thiswonderful place. It is - and this is a personalopinion - one of the two best cities in the world;the other being London. Oh, and fortunately Ilived there too. If I believed in a God I’d bethanking her very much for being such alucky bugger.Most of these columns have tried to record areasof life that I’ve noticed are different between hereand Blighty. This one is no exception, with anobservation or two tucked away somewhere, butit’s also a reflection on the past 12 months inslightly more personal terms.All this introspective reflection was brought on bya realisation that I now belong here. You knowyou’ve really settled in for the long term whenpeople in the local shops and bars know yourname and you know theirs. People that don’t livein proper cities - and I’m sorry, but whatever youwant to call it, Chelmsford isn’t one - tend tothink that everyone is a lonely stranger to oneanother in places such as New York and London.That’s partly true and most of us who live incities like it that way, or we wouldn’t be in them.But on the other hand there’s a part of thehuman psyche that demands a sense of home.A part of that is where you lay your head eachnight. The physical building soon becomes homewherever you are because it has your stuff in it.But people come into it too - the lyrics to thetheme tune of the 80s programme Cheers went“sometimes you want to go where everyoneknows your name”. That’s very true, but there isa rider to that. You don’t necessarily want to befriends in any sort of meaningful way with all ofthose people, it’s just good to have anchors togive you a sense of belonging to somewhere orsomething.Other indications that you’re a proper residentcome when you start to get things in the mail tosay your annual contents insurance is about toexpire. Or would you like to renew your lease foranother year as you’re such a valued tenant.Then the TV you bought packs up one weekafter the warranty expires.And junk mail…..Boy, those boys are good at it. It didn’t take verylong at all for them to get my number. I’d beenhere but two months before my first unsolicitedinvitation to take out a credit card arrived. A yearon, and they roll in at about two a week, alongwith offers for dodgy magazine subscriptions,personally addressed Pizza Parlour specialoffers, cheap gym memberships - in fact, exactlythe same as in the UK.At this advanced age I’m not about to acquire anAmerican accent any time soon - the Essex oneis there to stay - but you do find yourself deliberatelypronouncing certain words the way thelocals do, just to make yourself understood. Inthe deli at lunchtime, for example, you get usedto reeling it all off the way they do on the movies.“I’d like roast beef, Swiss, lettuce, tomato andlettuce with mayo on a roll”. But it’s tomayto youask for, not tomarto. Most of the guys constructing(word used advisedly) your sandwich arefrom south of the border and English is very definitelya second language to them. If you askedfor tomarto, heaven only knows what you’d get,but it wouldn’t be round and red.Other examples of words I now deliberately mispronounceinclude my own name. Apparently it isWarrrrd. If you don’t roll the ‘r’ properly it getswritten as Wired. Then in a bar or restaurant, ifyou want a glass of red and ask for CabernetSauvignon, they’ll look at you as if you have twoheads. A simple Cab-ber-nay or alternativelyMer-low, depending on taste, gets you what youwant.You do feel distinctly self conscious for a whilesaying these words in a way that is odd for aBrit, but it soon becomes OK in your own headto say tomayto, simply when you’ve done it anumber of times and got used to it.The final proof to myself that I am, at least fornow, a New Yorker is that I’ve started to utter aparticular phrase with increasing regularity. Yes,time and time again I’ve used the immortalwords that single you out as a resident.“Bloody tourists”./ /The Edge 077 646 797 44 Page 27