Rhi Axtell – Writer

Think back on your most memorable road trip.

It’s 2015 and I’m in love.

I didn’t expect to be in love. I still have Tinder on my phone, although I never really had the chance to figure out how to use it. One month earlier I was alone, wondering why I was so bad at talking to people. Now, I am boarding a train with Julie after a whirlwind romance fuelled by film marathons, expensive whisky, and deep, philosophical conversations that stretch late into the night.

We’ve decided she should meet my parents.

Now, I’m terrified for two reasons:

1. What if Julie meets my parents and they are exactly how I expect they are going to be?

Awkward. Kind of stiff. What if they are so… my parents-y?

My dad will make weird jokes and fall asleep. My mum will talk non-stop about Hereford and music teaching. Julie will look at them and look at me and look at them and look at me and think oh no. She will realise what kind of man I really am. Not the cool, funny, musical, charming guy that I’ve been pretending to be, oh no. She will realise, with great horror, that I am, in fact, English.

That’s right. The doddering, one-language-speaking, Queen-loving English that eat roast dinners on a Sunday and their idea of a good time is sitting in front of the TV watching re-runs of Blackadder. The kind of English people who cannot fathom much of the world beyond their borders (England is God’s Own Country, you know?) and ‘exotic’ is the India restaurant down the road that removes most of the spices from their dishes for delicate English mouths. That kind of English. The kind of English that are… boring.

2. What if my parents don’t like Julie?

Julie is a beautiful, well-travelled, artistic, creative, intelligent, multiple-language-speaking woman who blows me away daily with her worldly experience and unique view on life. She is caring. She is honest. She laughs with her whole body and she gives the best hugs in the world (according to my granddad and me).

Revolting, right?

Okay, worry #2 was a stupid idea, but my past love affairs had not fared well in the eyes of my parents. The words used to describe my previous girlfriends were… not positive. They found faults quickly and were not hesitant to let me know. Which, while I was dating the girls, was very offensive. Afterwards, though, I could see where they were coming from. A place of love.

What if there was a horrible thing™ that I hadn’t noticed about Julie? What if, at the end of the day, my parents took me aside and whispered in my ear ‘You do realise she’s a racist, right?’ or something equally awful?

For the whole one-hour-and-a-bit train journey I was a nervous, anxious, twitching wreck, babbling nonsense, trying to make light of the fact that my whole world was falling apart around me. Julie saw right through me, of course. She thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Then we arrived.

My dad picked us up. Julie was calm and cool and made jokes and my dad laughed.

I saw the whole thing, feeling like I was a million miles away, watching through a telescope.

You can probably guess how the rest of it went.

Julie and I were engaged within a month.