There's an election in your country today, said M. with a certain sharpness.
It isn't my country, I said, and you can't decide for me.
You're British and you always will be, she went on.
No, I never felt British. My country is the place where I've dug and planted. Where I've nested.
Scherry Shi was born in China, lives in London, her parents are in New Zealand; she is thinking about these things in a more immediate way than I am. You could see it in the way she moved between the tables at the book fair where we met her. She made a small book called departure, of softened photographs and some text. Departure /from air /from soil /from water
... I could not stop thinking of my homes, which I depart from, which I return to, of those within me, of those away from me; of those above the earth, of those on the ground.
Home is where I was, where I am and where I may be in the future.
Reading Sebald in bed, talking to M in the morning, working in the veg plot in the afternoon, looking at Scherry Shi's book in the evening.
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