January 15, 2005
the story behind the “wolf/sheep” cartoon.
The story behind the “Wolf/Sheep” cartoon.
There’s been talk of me going to Asia recently.
My parents weren’t rich, but growing up we moved around a lot, because of my dad’s work. So when I was 10 my folks sent me to a very old fashioned Scottish boarding school in Edinburgh, in order to provide me with some sort of continuity. I pretty much stayed there till I went off to university in Texas.
I was in Edinburgh last weekend, seeing old friends. All boarding school buddies; all in town for the weekend for one reason or another. Seeing them again brought back lots of memories.
Maybe one day I’ll write about my school days. It was a long time ago, but I still look back on it rather fondly, in its quasi-Victorian, other-worldly way. Nothing whatsoever like the quiet suburbs most of my American university friends grew up in.
One thing I liked about it was everybody’s parents lived somewhere else– Saudi, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Kenya, Bahrain, India, Nigeria, Singapore, Sierra Leone, The Bahamas, Monaco, Gibraltar.
Even though the British Empire had long since kicked the bucket, the expats could still be found pretty much anywhere the Brits had a former colony. Dressed in linen suits and panama hats, smoking Cuban cigars, getting sloshed on gin & tonic, watching the polo matches, working for some foreign multinational, or serving in the diplomatic corps or the military. This could have described most of our dads perfectly.
And when the children reached a certain age, we were all whisked off back to the motherland 8 months a year for boarding school. That’s just what happened.
The world has changed a lot since then, and perhaps what I’m describing seems a bit of an imperialist anachronism, like reading Kipling or Graham Greene. Still, in retrospect the thing I appreciate most about boarding school wasn’t so much a decent education (I wasn’t much of a student, to be honest), or the day-to-day mundanity of Latin, Shakespeare, Rugby, ‘Jerusalem’, fist fights, ink-stained hankies, cold showers and horrible food, but the horizons.
We all seemed to come from families who, regardless of privelege (or lack thereof), went off and did interesting things in faraway places. And most of us expected to go off and do the same, once our turn came. We left school at 18 knowing it was a big world out there– and we knew it from first-hand experience, not from watching MTV.
Not all the kids at the school boarded– there were also day pupils. You know, kids who lived in the ‘burbs and got to see their parents every day after 4.30pm. We never thought much of them. We saw them as pampered, boring, vacuous, provincial, materialistic little mall rats. And they in turn thought we boarders were all disconnected weirdos with strange accents. Close friendships between boarders and day boys was rare; both factions preferred their own.
Eventually we graduated, went off to university for 3 – 4 years, and then onto other things.
One chap I know installed satellite dishes on the roof of the Bagdhad Hilton for a major news organisation during the Gulf War.
One friend started a dotcom in Santiago, Chile.
Another friend is currently serving as a senior officer on an aircraft carrier for the Royal Navy.
I got a job in a large, Chicago ad agency for reasons that seem utterly remote to me now.
Other friends of mine live in places like Tokyo, Holland, Vancouver, Switzerland.
But not one of my old friends from school still lives in Edinburgh. Not one. A few are in London, but there are grumblings about buying houses and relocating to places like Costa Rica or Bulgaria.
So, welcome to the land of the British Expat. Where you feel like a stranger in your own country, where you only feel at home when surrounded by foreigners. That is the land I hope to be re-entering very soon.
The Land of The Wolf.
Enjoyable read. Thanks.
An interesting and well written commentary on my favorate cartoon of yours. As an expat myself (other way though, Long Island, New York to London) it’s an idea that really strikes a chord with me.
Thanks for “sharing”. I am one of those “expats” you describe, living on one of the smallest of the Canary Islands, in a multinational community. However lonely is not a way I would describe myself. Quite the opposite.
Loneliness is living in the UK in a box or a house in “a field”, commuting and appearing to be happy.
Happiness is living in an apartment, overlooking the sea, with a few steps to the local shops and an interesting and interested community. Happiness is living in a community where people enjoy life.
Hope you find it Hugh
Graham.
That was moving. Maybe because I can relate to that, although in a smaller scale.
having stuided in the land of the Raj and in boarding school, with the full regalia of blazer, trousers , starched white shirt and tie. I have found that none of my fellow alumni actually are in the same place, even the day schohlars.. they are seperate globally.. is this just one of the things that appears part of the british system of education ??
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btw, I hardly know where each of us are in todays world !!
Good post Hugh. Very nostigalic for me !!
You’ve been reading Hemingway again, right?
I left Germany, where I was born, as soon as I could. Lived in London for 17 years, with intervals in the US and Canada. I went back to Germany three years ago, just to give it a shot. I lasted a year before leaving again, this time for Canada.
Living home is just too mundane for my liking. I like being disorientated, having to adapt, finding my way around new cities, new languages, new customs.
Hope you find what you’re looking for.
Gaping void
Hugh MacLeod is a genius. He writes gapingvoid and makes me laugh at least once a day. I don’t pretend to know anything about marketing or advertising but I do know that what he preaches about the future of marketing…
Is it possible to simply be ‘longing’ to be an expat? I know I want to travel and be ‘a Wolf’ so to speak, but it seems to scare the holy hell out of my parents.
nice piece. i think many people from small places can relate on a level. the UK has become a small place in a big world and i’ve always appreciated the global melting pot that is london through more or less regular sojourns. life in all its color!
I’m one of that crowd, and I haven’t set foot in my homeland for five years. I have friends and family who come and visit me, and I suppose I am quite close, but my social network extends a long way, as you describe. What puts me off the home country thing is the way that you almost have to clip your wings when you talk to the people who are still there.
“Yes, I would have stayed in Cowbenbeath and been a bus driver, but a series of chance occurences forced me to move to a foreign country and be highly successful instead.” And then you talk about what you do day to day. If I do it with my ex-pat friends, they say things like “Yes, Paris is nice, but I find that the French in Lyons are more friendly, and the food is better,” and they have something of the same experience. If I do this in Scotland, the feeling very quickly is that you are a flash git, and could we talk about the local football team instead.
If I were to move back to Scotland now, it would be another foreign country. I know very few people there, and I have a faint feeling of familiarity because I know the streets, and profound feeling of strangeness, because I know no-one on them.
I lived in Ghana as a small boy and used to take the School plane back and forth to England as an 8 year old with my 6 year old sister. I would imagine that BOAC warned passengers to avoid the flight — it was like St Trinians and Molesworth co joined. It was fun though. Not so for the crew.
It has taken me 50 years to have to stop wandering myself — do you get the itch after 3 – 55 years in any one place?
An Englishman my wife works with once made the comment that England is a wonderful place to be from, but you wouldn’t actually want to live there. Sounds like there’s a lot of other people that agree with him.
“We all seemed to come from families who, regardless of privelege (or lack thereof), went off and did interesting things in faraway places. And most of us expected to go off and do the same, once our turn came. We left school at 18 knowing it was a big world out there– and we knew it from first-hand experience, not from watching MTV.”
As a current boarding school senior I was moved by this statement. While my school is very nontraditional and American, we share this seperateness. Myself and peers also really share the sense of quest that comes from our unique situation. I like the idea that something about being bound to other teenagers in a highly organized environment makes for a explosive individual. Though our breed are not denizens of “The Land Of The Wolf.”