My mother-in-law asked me this week-end if I regretted going to America. I don't. Not ever. Not for one minute. We missed out on things here, for sure, and we made life difficult for ourselves, our children, our wider family. But we are the richer for it. We ended up staying longer than we meant, so what was intended as a short adventure became normal life, and there were some scary times when we thought we'd perhaps end up staying for good. In our bones we knew we wouldn't, but it also became very hard to see a route back to the UK. Thank you, credit crunch of 2008.
So no, I don't regret it at all. But there are things I do regret about our time there. Things I would like to have done, but didn't. Opportunities I didn't take. I don't want to be judgemental on myself, because it's easy to look back and forget just how exhausting and bewildering it is, making sense of a new culture. I didn't have a lot of spare imagination and energy. As a mother, now, of increasingly independent teenagers (did someone say "floordrobe"?), I forget how much of one's day - and sometimes night - as a mother of small children is taken up with their well-being, and the sheer domesticity of life. And that's without having to learn a whole new barrage of brand names in the supermarket, school routines, local etiquettes. I had cancer too, which tends to be rather absorbing. I battled cancer, I should say. That's what people say, isn't it? So I offer you these regrets with something of a wry shrug. If I had my time again, I would try and find a way to do these things - but I didn't at the time, because I was doing other important things instead.
First, I didn't make the most of the opportunities afforded by my English accent. I really can't over-state how much an English accent gets noticed in America. It never got old, when people commented on mine. The comments were always well-meant, and warm in tone: "I just love your accent". It seems strange that the British accent is so highly admired, but it was lovely to be in possession of something so prized - for free! I'd never practised it, never had to pay for training, never learned it consciously, didn't have to worry about its upkeep. Effortlessly mine. Putting this unique selling point of mine to work seemed like a good idea.
I first thought of using my accent when a local video studio put the word out that they needed a native Brit. They were making a series of training videos for a global pharmaceutical company, and the European office had asked for a British actor. There weren't many Brits in the city where we lived, so it was a request along the lines of "anyone? please?", rather than something that might involve an audition. At the time, I didn't have any hair, and though I generally felt confident in my nice selection of caps, I didn't feel quite confident enough to be in front of a video camera. Yes, I could have got fixed up with a wig, but I never liked that idea. There was also the issue that, at the time, I didn't have a Green Card, so I couldn't work for payment. I toyed with the idea of offering my services on a voluntary basis, but what happened in the end, was that Husband did the job. So if you are in Germany, being trained to sell pharmaceuticals to doctors, watch out for Dr Husband in the training videos, asking his probing questions, and reacting to your answers in his oh-so-British accent.
The people at the studio were very friendly, and told Husband to tell me that they were often on the look-out for voice-over artists. If I wanted to, I could go in and do a trial for free. Somehow I never got round to it. I did do a few recording sessions for the local Radio for the Blind, and that remains the extent of my recording artist career.
Who knows? If I'd gone along to that recording studio, maybe now I would have a career as a voice-over artist. My silky tones would be wafting over your ears when you hear a commercial for fabric conditioner or tea bags. Maybe I could have gone on to full-blown radio acting. Perhaps I would now be on The Archers, a long-lost sister returned from afar to bring a new plot line into the action.
There was a nice outcome of having my accent widely admired, though, even if I didn't make more use of it. I'd never liked my voice (though, does anyone like their own voice?) I'd always thought it rather heavy and ploddy. It was a drip-drip healing balm to have complete strangers and close friends tell me regularly how cute or beautiful my voice was, how they could listen to me talk for hours. I'm not a radio artist, but I do like my voice more than I used to - and that's worth something.
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