On August 6th, 1997, in the middle of a heatwave that had been pounding the Manitoban plains for several weeks, I crossed the Manitoba-Minnesota border and first set foot in America.

For a couple of weeks beforehand, friends in Winnipeg had been asking me how I liked Canada.

“I like it. Although everything is very big here.”

Cue the knowing chuckles and under-breath laughter of those better informed than I.

“Wait until you go to America,” they said, “Everything’s much bigger there.”

And they weren’t wrong. It would be five years until I set foot on United States soil again, in a place famous for it’s glitz and glamour, it’s brashness and bigness. I had no idea at that time what those second steps on American ground would lead to, but just a few short months later, I packed up my belongings, left England, and moved to Los Angeles.

By way of introduction, my name is James Ridgers. I’m an expatriated Brit, hailing from the dreaming spires of Oxford. I left the only place I ever knew and made my home in California in late spring 2002. Over the years that I’ve subsequently lived here, I’ve heard many people make comments to me along the lines of “well, at least the culture isn’t that different, it must have been easy to adjust.”

They have no idea.

The differences between England and America are staggering. They are mammoth in proportion. They are colossal. And those differences are never more apparent to me than during those times when I journey back to my homeland to visit, to work, to see friends and family. This blog that you are so kindly reading is my journal of those aforementioned differences between my home of 24 years, and my new home of every year since then.

But James, if America is so big, shouldn’t the blog be titled “Notes from a Big Country”?

Good point, but one that misses my purpose. You see, as much as I love America (and I do, I really do. Even with its flaws, I understand why this country’s natives believe it to be the greatest country on the planet.), my heart and my allegiance will always be with England. By matters of definition and, indeed, comparison, England is a small country. And so, since my musings on this blog, whether they be happy, sad, funny, bitter, annoying, or just plain bland, are the result of an inspiration that starts in my heart, these are, in fact, notes from a small country.

William Wordsworth, an English poet, wrote a series of poems over a period of three years between 1798 and 1801. These poems were poems of love, heartbreak, desire, loyalty, commitment, and regret. They were, interestingly enough, written while he was in Germany. He wrote them to and for an idealised, probably fictional girl named Lucy. However, his imagery and description in these poems clearly leave one with the unshakeable notion that William wasn’t so much in love with Lucy, as he was with his country; his England.

And so it is with myself and this blog. California is home for me now. The United States of America is a place embedded in my heart, a heart that is well fond of it. But England? Well, England will always be my home. And so, as I thank you for reading, I leave you with the immortal words of Mr. Wordsworth himself. Take it away, Will…

I travelled amongst unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea,
Nor, England, did I know ’til then,
What love I bore to thee
‘Tis past, that melancholy dream,
Nor will I quit thy shore,
A second time, for I still seem,
To love thee more and more