Chapter 3: Living in America
Summer 1994 - May 1997
We moved to New Jersey in the summer of 1994 - but before all our stuff from the house arrived, we were living in Summerfield Suites hotel for 3 months. During this time, me & my middle brother Al kept ourselves amused by playing tennis every day - they had a tennis court onsite in the middle of the complex - I remember the humidity in the peak summer. Everyday we headed out and played tennis with borrowed hotel racquets. We went from total novices to actually quite decent players just by playing for hours and hours! At least they had a swimming pool to cool down in afterwards.
Eventually we moved into our first rented family home in Pennington. It was set in an idyllic town in New Jersey, America - white picket fences, plenty of open green spaces, ice cream parlour - turns out it was a commuter town for NYC workers (I had no idea really until now as when you’re 12, you don’t really think about this kind of thing!).
Starting school at The Hun School of Princeton, now that was surreal - the first time getting on the yellow school bus - those vehicles are not comfortable! Like being in a tin can on wheels, you feel every bump on the road, as there’s no seat belts either! Hun was a super premium school with a beautiful stately reception hall, and more modern classrooms spread all over the campus. There were plenty of open green spaces and communal lounge areas too, with tuck shops - where I discovered my love for ice tea, chocolate milk and ice cream sandwiches!
The yellow school bus and playing hackie sack
In break times, the popular game to play in the school lounge was hackie sack - the hippies loved it! A small colourful bean bag ball, you’d stand in a circle - and basically it was ‘keepie uppies’ with your feet, and I think it was after maybe 3-5 people had kicked it around the circle, keeping it off the ground, the next person could then catch it, and pelt it as hard as they could it at someone - and it really hurt! Especially on colder or wet days - the hackie sack would be damp and get heavier and leave a red mark on the unlucky victim! It was disguised bullying, as older kids always seemed to be pelting the juniors.
We had a new science teacher I remember who started when I joined the school - he was always talking about his childhood experience being on Bill Nye the Science guy - a US science-based kids TV show that must have inspired him to become a science teacher! Anyway he was quite a reckless guy, who taught us how to make petrol bombs, I actually went down to the classroom one day slightly earlier than official start-time, and found a plastic container with a petrol-soaked cloth on fire in the classroom - I ran up to report it - turned out it had been done by another crazy English kid who joined the same year as me - and he ended up being expelled! This science teacher also took his pupils out sledging on lunch trays when it snowed during class-time, so was no surprise when he eventually got fired!
Kurt Cobain had just committed suicide when we arrived in America, and you could see the effect it had had on some of the alternative kids at school. My brother Al got really into Nirvana, like really REALLY into them! He had all their music, posters and changed his fashion sense too. I think it must have also inspired him to be a drummer and play music, and that first Christmas 1994, he got his first full drum kit - which he still has to this day! The great thing about American houses - especially the modern ones - huge basements! It’s like a huge open-planned area - great for having friends run riot, playing music and table tennis!
Sports in America, or at least at our school, was taken very seriously - after every school day, we’d spend a couple of hours doing sports - I played football, basketball, tennis, and even dodgeball. Training especially for football (or soccer), was every day - and we worked hard. I also played in another league outside of school, and me & my brother were the star players on that team - but it’s fair to say the athletic ability of this group was much lower than school! What was also interesting at school was our soccer team mixed in girls and boys on the same team, which you don’t often see anywhere else.
In the neighbourhood where we lived in year 1 - me and my brother quickly made new friends in our street, and joined in with street hockey games - where we had to learn how to roller blade from scratch, but we soon got the hang of it. We had many good long summer days playing outside for hours. We’d also stay out late into the evenings, playing hide ‘n seek with other kids in the street, there would be fireflies hovering around in the warm summer air too. In winter, we always had lots of snow, and sledging was amazing, as behind our house the gardens merged with other houses and there was a large green hill rolling down to a small stream. We could sled down this hill at speed and make the jump that took us over the water!
Around the corner from where we lived was a small village high street, and the infamous Vito’s pizza! That for me was the greatest food I’ve ever had, and started my life-long addiction to good fresh Italian pizza! (later on after Uni I learned how to make them for myself…)
PJ’s ‘chocolate chip’ pancakes, Vito’s pizza and a big glass of fresh ice tea
America is also where we discovered the over-indulgent ice creams with huge chunks of cake, biscuits inside - Ben & Jerry’s ice cream probably being the most-well known brand now. Back then in winter of 1994 I went skiing with the school for the first time in Vermont, and on the way home, we visited the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory! The excitement on that trip was set early on when they told us we’d get to try out a new flavour that hadn’t yet been released! When we finally got to the end of the tour, they unveiled the new flavour… it was… ta da…Vanilla… oh… cool. I mean it was still nice and everything but...
A few months in, we were already starting to miss those home comfort foods, like Cadburys chocolate - so it was incredible when we found them in a UK import store right in the Pennington village. The owner loved us, I don’t think anyone else really cared or knew what he had, but we’d go in regularly with small change and buy as many of them as we could!
Pennington day I can still remember vividly- it was an annual carnival-type event with street sellers, games & other activities. I think the local businesses must have spilled out onto the streets - it was a nice atmosphere.
America also embraced Halloween like no other place I’d seen. They have ‘mischief night’ on the 30th - when kids will do pranks and smash pumpkins. Then trick or treating is on the 31st - we’d go out maybe with 1-2 friends from school with a pillow case, and by the end of the evening it would be absolutely full of candy!
At one point in 1994, a severe tornado warning came through. We were getting constant weather channel updates - it was a scary time, and at one point we all had to hide in the basement, as the storm got really close and we could hear the winds howling outside! Luckily it missed our house, but caused alot of damage nearby. That was something that I noticed coming from the UK - the weather was far more extreme. From the intense thunder & lightening storms caused by the summer humidity to the heavy snowfall in Winter.
My best friend at school was a kid called Nick. He went religiously to watch Princeton University basketball team with his dad - and they invited me along one day. I think we ended up doing most home games in the 2-3yrs I lived there, and even a couple of away games too. we became quite dedicated fans, making banners & Nick even used to get the ball passed to him by the players during warm-ups. Nick & his dad had been going to watch Princeton for so long, they had managed to reserve space on the front row bench. So every match we saw we had amazing seats & being so close to the drama was unreal. As well as the game, there was always. Subway Slingshot in the interval - where a guy would catapult a free sub sandwich out to the crowd! And the cheerleaders were also impressive - again you realise the athletic talent when you’re up so close.
We’d also spent hours shooting hoops outside - as a lot of houses in America will have a basketball net - it just seems to be a standard household feature!
Princeton basketball became an obsession - here’s some of the tickets from the games I attended & when they famously beat UCLA.
Music continued to be a big part of my life. I got exposed to MTV, and slowly my tastes in music transformed from 90s Techno to more rock influences. My first live concert was seeing Dave Matthews Band as they toured and came through Newark, playing a large stadium. Supporting them was Ben Harper - who I remember also being a great guitarist. I also started listening to more US rock music such as Nirvana, Soundgarden and also really loved the debut Foo Fighters album.
At school I used to hang out with another bunch of kids in breaks, they were really into UK music that I’d never actually heard of at the time. They were telling me about a new bunch of UK bands they liked - which was part of the Brit-pop movement. After this I really embraced UK music again, I was feeling a pride for all this new great music coming out of my home country.
Princeton record exchange was an awesome shop to visit - it had racks and racks of vinyl, but at that time I was only really buying CDs. I would be seeking out some of the new British music in here - some of it they’d be importing - like new singles not in the US charts. I discovered Blur, Oasis, The Bluetones and Kula Shaker - only the latter seemed to get more attention on MTV. Bush were another British band, but as far as I could tell had more success in America than UK, and I think a lot of Americans thought they were from their country due to their post-grunge sound.
Some of the music I began and ended up listening to from 1994 - 1997.
I do also remember making my own t-shirts - I’d hand-draw with fabric pens and copy existing band artwork onto blank t-shirts. I remember making a home-made Bluetones t-shirt, and a Dave Matthews Band shirt until I was able to buy one of the latter shirts from the concert merch stand.
Both grandparents came over to visit us whilst we lived in America, and we took them to see the Statue of Liberty, which was only 45mins drive from our house, but we never actually went into New York City - I think my folks must have thought it was took hectic for little kids, and having been back there when I was older, I can see why.
In the summer of 1996 - we came back to the UK for a holiday - we stayed in a cottage in Stratford Upon Avon, then another cottage in Lincolnshire. We brought my friend from school Nick with us - but just as his mum dropped him off before we left for the airport, she mentioned to my dad that he had severe sleep-walking, so just to watch out! And of course one night when we were all asleep in the cottage, he jumped up screaming, and ran into my grandparent’s bedroom one night! I’m not sure they were ever the same after that! Luckily my dad heard the commotion, caught up with him and managed to coax him back to sleep.
Because of our American guest, we had quite an educational trip to see some famous UK sights such as Shakespeare’s home in Stratford, plus we went to a Euro ‘96 football match in Leeds - as my uncle managed to get us some tickets. Unfortunately it was quite a dull 0-0 score. Nevermind, there was always tea rooms and cream & jam scones to eat. I think Nick enjoyed this, he’d never had anything like it before.
Shakespeare’s house, Euro ‘96 and Cream Teas
Moving to rental house no.2 in our second year, we then had the biggest snowfall for 40yrs. The snow was so deep it drifted right above the front door when the wind caught it. But on the positive side, school got closed, and we had some amazing back-garden sledging. We had a tabogan-style tunnel than started from the roof all the way around the garden to the bottom! Amazing…. In that same winter, myself, brother Al and my dad were on a 3-man sledge, and went so fast down a hill, we took off on an icy ramp at the bottom, and landed awkwardly - my dad cracked his elbow in landing and tells me he still feels it even now… ouch!
It’s around 1996 when I started hearing the kids at school talk of a new video game console - the Playstation. Eventually I got one for Christmas, and it was through this I discovered my love of Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII - both of which I’ve continued on and off to play ever since. Another big hit of nostalgia recently was that Final Fantasy VII: remake has just been released, and I’ve just started to play this during the lock-down!
Final Fantasy VII and Tomb Raider, Playstation in 1997
I discovered PBC one day whilst flicking the hundreds of TV channels - it’s an American TV channel with British programmes on - Red Dwarf, and other classic comedy suddenly made me home-sick. I realised I really missed the UK sense of humour, as whenever I was at school, my natural reaction to any verbal bullying was sarcasm, but American kids just didn’t seem to get it.
Most people we met in America were generally friendlier & more self-assured than the UK, and this helped me as a youngster to build my confidence, from a previously shy & quiet recluse. The girls in particular seemed to really love the British accent, and would just ask me to talk, but when asked on demand to speak, it’s hard to know what to say!
Thinking back to 1994-1997 when we moved to America, I honestly don’t remember much about creating too much actual art. I suppose it was a transitional time of adapting to a new culture, starting a new school and embracing American culture, but despite this, I think it helped me in other social ways - giving me more confidence in myself and willingness to try new things. If anything I think it was a period of inspiration and changed my outlook on life - giving me much more confidence to achieve greater things in my future.
We moved home at the end of Summer 1997, it wasn’t even three years, but felt like we’d been away for much longer.