A Spectator's Notebook Tfihe civil war in Cyprus brought home

another °W of homing emigrants, those English _People who have preferred to live abroad or 7,110 made their living in other countries, just as Ine changes of government in Chile and Tortuga] did recently, and the de-colonisation Of African and Central American countries did ,a,.few Years before. It will not be all hardship for `11.emi nor is their forced return to England without compensation, in spite of continuous ram and the dreary lack of sunshine throughOut this year. Perhaps my own experience may cin something to convince them of this. cSomewheie among the voluble outpourings G. Wells's prose I think in a '",te-remembered novel called Joan and Peter r":,' came on the sentiment: "England is a good to be born in and a good place to die in, in between No." It is many years since I ,',ead these words, and I may have misquoted inern slightly, but the sentiment was there. „Although' few people live out their lives glprding to a predisposed plan, and I, more fl most, have followed chance and circum"Wnce, I seem to have unknowlingly accepted ' Wells's dictum, and have spent most of litY adult life abroad, in no less than thirty eetantries. r.inallY disillusioned by the arrogance and racialism which I found just under the surface 1h° „most modern Germans (as these qualities ,an. been openly paraded under Hitler), I in to return at last and take up residence i England, after the best part of twenty years In other countries North African and European. i,11,e never been anything but incorrigibly and "ueliblY English, however much I have -e'aPted my ways, language, manner of life and liven character to the people among whom I „aye lived, so that the year I have now spent 0-"nng the green, green grass of home has been drIce. of the happiest of my life. I do not say this he'lantlY, but rather in wonder, since the year as been one of constant alarms at home and a,,ross the world, of wars and rumours of wars, rc! sPite and invidiousness among politicians, of l'InaPpings and bombings, of endless self-seektrilig strikes and flaccid attempts to control

of little sunlight and not much humour,

of the slow realisation that we are broke. A ear, moreover, of petrol and other shortages 4_nd threatened shortages, of psychopathic and de!er-Increasing crime, of philistinism and a '41111 of any books, plays or music worth

Me • •'

ntioning, of civil or at least guerrilla warfare 111 Ireland, of spendthrift public and private life t: a. Year in which the British realised that sec' their backs they had been turned into a econd-rate nation, l)aPpearing problems The , immemorial delight of our people in ng back to their little country after the veA, 8 of working in the colonies, suffering the ifremes of heat and cold and what seemed to eip the the exasperating inefficiency of for„ 'is, may have been dulled, but persists ,..7a3r, 1 soon found that the bogey of income sfrigx which had latterly kept me abroad ceased to 1ten me when I realised that as a fully to-LP`nYed writer I did not make enough money un7bco ' ncerned with it It has been said that the inivIn er g so, ,y of writers in Britain who can earn a veel by their work would fit into one large room, and since PLR remains a from dry iream and the subject of endless promises °In succeeding governments, no one except

the very best-selling writers can expect to earn as much as a delivery man or office cleaner, so that to achieve the payment of income tax is a hope rather than a threat.

soon found that other supposed disadvantages did not really matter—the impossibility of obtaining personal service, or a home which might be large enough to house one's books and other personal items, the climate which in spite of hearing so much about it on television and radio is soon taken for granted, and the violence which is only noticeable because we who were born in Victorian or Edwardian times were long used to having it kept out of sight and out of mind.

Other disadvantages have disappeared because of my own maturity. The fears and inconvenience of motoring are avoided because for the first time since my teens I have ceased to have a car and find that the lack of it is rather a relief than a deprivation, so that smugly I watch the heated and anxious motorists trying to get from one point to another or to park anywhere within a mile of the shop or house or place of work they want to reach. The enormous prices threatened by people from England meeting one abroad do not materialise, and though I have even less money to spend than I had when I lived in Morocco or India, I want less. Holidays abroad have no attraction for me since I do not want to see again the places I have loved becoming anthills of unseeing tourists looking for a fortnight of torrid weather and missing the thrills I used to feel at the mere fact of 'being abroad'.

Eating English As for food, one returns with age to the proved and sometimes half-forgotten tastes of childhood. Yes, I sometimes miss mangoes, calamares, inexpensive fruit, the plentiful truffles of North Africa and wine taken for granted with meals, but all these are nothing to the delight of old gastronomic friends virtually unobtainable abroad like Whitstable oysters, uncultivated mushrooms, home-grown green vegetables, the seasonal luxuries like strawberries and asparagus and such delights as smoked cod's roe, kippers, smoked haddock, Burgess's anchovy paste, Patum Peperium the Gentleman's Relish, and tripe prepared for cooking in the English way. Although to my partial eyes sausages, haggis, Melton Mowbray pork pies and Stilton cheese are not what they were, they still seem much better than foreign produce.

Bournemouth There are more positive advantages of life in. England compared with residing abroad which are not easily enumerated, but a matter of taste for the individual. When I came to live in England I had the good luck which has followed me round the world in one single respect (and one only)—the finding of a home. I discovered in Bournemouth, that Victorian and most genuinely bourgeois watering place, a flat exactly suited to my needs a ground-floor flat with an open paved patio overlooking the tennis courts in a public park laid out with great taste and horticultural knowledge. The flat is small enough to be run by me and my Indian secretary without outside domestic help, and large enough to contain my most intimate possessions. It is also five minutes from 'The Square' at the centre of the town and ten from the sea.

The patio provides just enough space for the 487 most English of pursuits, unambitious gardening, with flower beds between the paving stones which can be filled by a perpetual succession of colourful annuals and bulbs, in variety unobtainable for instance in Spain where geraniums and roses cover 80 per cent of available garden space. There is also room for a bird table, which in this town of parks and trees provide endless entertainment and unexpectedness, not only in the birds which come to it daily but in the grey squirrels which I have trained to eat nuts from my fingers, and who perform brilliant gymnastics as they hang from the roof and branches of the bird table.

There is something else about Bournemouth. Though as a Kentishman I became accustomed in childhood and since to holidays and recuperations from illness in the resorts of Thanet and Sussex, while those of Hampshire and Dorset remained comparatively unfamiliar, I find myself now in a country delightfully waiting to be intimately explored. Bournemouth after all lies on the edge of the New Forest, an area still romantically screened from factories and paper mills, mines and dormitory suburbs, an area which, its inhabitants insist, is in many respects unchanged from the time when it was the hunting-ground of the Norman kings.

Happy associations Through the kindness of friends, I have a retreat in its fastnesses, and the use of a pony-and-trap to go trotting through grassy avenues in the intense silence of afternoon. If it seems to you sentimental and pseudo-literary to remember here that jumble of inaccurate but picturesque hearsay which at school we called 'English History', even to suppose that hereabouts William Rufus was assassinated by a skilled archer, you may find my nattreff absurd, but it is rewarding, all the same. Even more rewarding is it to be able to buy venison at Lyndhurst through the bounty of the Verderers, and to remember that it was here (another association) that W. H. Hudson walked and talked and established for all time the truth about the behaviour patterns of the cuckoo.

Also, I find as I establish myself in England that the very things people grumble about are most welcome to me, coming as I do from abroad. The cost of food, for instance, though of course it has risen from our customary levels, is still lower on the whole than in any other country in Western Europe, and this I know not from statistics which I distrust but from actual daily marketing in France, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Ireland and The Netherlands, a proof that satisfies me by experience.

There are other blessings. To those who have suffered from the cupidity and incompetence of Spanish or North African doctors, our muchabused health service relieves anyone but a rabid valetudinarian from worrying about the consequences of illness, while the even more (by me)abused police force, whatever its faults, puts to shame the blackmailing and bullying flies of most European countries.

One could continue in this not altogether jingoistic way indefinitely. Civility, neighbour lioness and a respect for privacy are of a very high standard, so is British television and, in spite of much loud disapproval, public transport and entertainment. Above all, perhaps there has been for me the delight of being in touch again, not only by reading a daily paper but through friends, business associates, conversations and news of 'movements' and tendencies. So here is one returning exile who regrets nothing that he may have lost in sunshine and colour.

Rupert Croft-Cooke

upert Croft-Cooke, who will be contributing the 'Notebook' for four weeks, has written, besides his novels, biographies and poems, several books on travel, food and wine, circuses and gipsies. His most recent volume of . a utobioeraphy (1973) is The Dogs of Peace.