…and so after just over six hours on a flight from Newark to London Heathrow I arrive in my home country. Surprisingly, the warm air and sunlight beams through the arrival gate greets me and soon I forget about the 30kg suitcase hanging off my fingers and the three pieces of hand luggage clinging to the other – my Victoria’s Secret bag pulled in close (I adore that place!) and my Miu Miu bag half falling open.
I’ll always love England for quite a few things but it’s no longer my scene for what I do as a job, I have fallen in love with America – everything is so inspiring and new and I have felt the last few weeks have been a dream working in NYC. I have been the most productive in one place I have ever been in my life and I put it down to positivity from being where I feel most comfortable. Not only productive but I can safely say I have made some life friends and some wonderful creative contacts who I’m going to miss (for now, anyway!)
I will always love England for it’s picturesque beauty, the memories, the characters, the rather unnecessary change in weather all year round and it’s ability to make me happy and unhappy at the same time. I will always remember my hometown (Tamworth, in the West Midlands) as my childhood – even as a child I wanted to escape and discover, one could say curiosity always got the better of me. I always wanted to run before I could walk – and I knew from very early on I would outgrow the place. It has been the birthplace of me and my career – which will I will always be thankful for, the beauty of the surroundings inspired my early archive – the girls (friends) I would photograph on hazy summer days swinging their hair wildly in the cornfields, the castles we would roam around only paying the entrance fee to photograph all day, the few friends I’d make swim in the leech filled lake (or should I say pond!) across the road from the estate I live on, the 6am phone calls to my friends to arrange a last minute shoot in the snow in fear it would soon melt.. and then there were the crime scenes – the patient models hanging from trees and smothered in fake blood and dirt, arms wrapped in rope and slumped up against walls.
All of this I am extremely thankful for – for the people who have helped me on my journey so far and to England for it’s early inspiration.
Not even an £80 taxi journey from Heathrow to Euston station to catch my train can make me angry today or the fact the driver ignored my conversation, or the girl that constantly made me move out of my seat to walk around the plane and go to the toilet, or leaving my American boyfriend late last night at the airport, or even the beautiful note he left in my moleskin diary to surprise me, (knowing me to well I’d open and sketch and plan in it the minute I got on the plane) or even the teary eyed phone calls to my loved ones before my departure.

Today is the start of preparation – the beginning steps to a brand new life living in New York City.. I have four months here and from then on I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for, god for sure knows it’ll be a challenge, but it’s one I want to be challenged to.