Welcome to The Immigrant Chronicles.

       I didn’t set out to be an immigrant at all. When I was in my twenties, I was the quintessential young Londoner, with not a whisper of a notion to leave that fine city ever. Why would I? I had been born and raised there, had been to school in Wood Green and to London University at Royal Holloway College, and soon after graduating had embarked on a career in journalism in  which I was now flourishing, interviewing interesting people during the day and in the evening attending plays or press openings, or just sitting in pubs and restaurants with my sparky circle of London friends, laughing and talking the night away.

       Except … that I was in my twenties, had never lived anywhere but London, and if – as expectation seemed to suggest would happen – I landed that longed-for newspaper column, and used some of the money to buy that dreamed-about London flat, then I would very likely never have the opportunity to live anywhere else in my life. So, stealing a last march before adult responsibilities engulfed me, I packed my worldly goods, my reporter’s notebooks, and a jar of the Marmite that everyone told me was impossible to find in America, and took myself to Los Angeles for six months.

       The culture shock was intense: suddenly I found myself living not only in an alien environment, but, for the first time in my life, in a place where I knew almost no one and almost no one knew me. For the first few weeks, I was miserable. I would give it the six months, I told myself on a solitary Fourth of July, standing alone beside the ocean and looking out to the horizon. I’d have to give it the six months, but the day that the six months were over, I was going home to London.

       Well, I didn’t go home to London. I started to make friends, to slip into the LA way of life; I started to realize that I liked Los Angeles. I liked the sunny optimism, I liked the laidback humor, I liked the people. Six months turned into a year, which turned into two. One day, I looked around me and realized that I didn’t need to go home any longer – I already was home.

       And that, by the way, it really isn’t in the least difficult to find Marmite here. You simply have to walk into a supermarket and look for it.

      Join me as I chronicle the experiences of a Londoner turned LA lady who still sometimes pinches herself when she considers her good luck.