I am walking on air! My book Diplomatic Baggage, first published in 2005 about my adventures as a trailing spouse to my E.U. diplomat husband AW, has been bought by Bloomsbury and released again with a fancy – you could almost say sexy – new cover!
A big thank you to Alexandra Pringle, who published my last two memoirs (Packing Up: Further Adventures of a Trailing Spouse and Full Marks for Trying: An Unlikely Journey from the Raj to the Rag Trade) and decided to make it a trilogy with Dip Bag.
I made so many friends all around the world during the years described in the book, and then through hearing from its readers (including Nicole, the creator of this very blog)! When I wrote Dip Bag, I don’t think I appreciated quite how many of us trailing spouses there were because I was mainly thinking of dip wives like myself and not the hundreds — thousands — whose partners work abroad for other reasons. I now realize that I am part of a real global family.
There are no changes to the original text — it is woke enough for today’s readers I wonder? — but there is a new intro and an epilogue telling what happened to some of the people I write about in the book (including the sad story of Julia, the gorilla we knew in Africa).
Unpacking and repacking again
What happened to us? My husband retired from the foreign service in 2010 and became chairman of the charity MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine). He’s also writing a book and is one of the judges for the MEMO (Middle East Monitor) Palestinian book prize.
We live in Somerset, UK, but we have a little house in France which I bought in 1968 after doing a TV advertisement for washing powder that paid me well. (Read more about this in Full Marks for Trying.) I was quite a famous fashion editor at the time, and my friends told me I shouldn’t do it, that I was selling my soul. But, I had always wanted to get a place in France (my great-grandmother was French), this was my best chance, and I’ve never regretted it. The house cost 1,000 old francs and we have been going to the village ever since, including spending the lockdown there in 2020.
I have just resigned from The Oldie magazine, where I spent six happy years writing a column called “Getting Dressed”” about what people wear as they get older. I interviewed such interesting people – including Joanna Lumley (whom I knew decades ago as a model and is still the nicest person), author Margaret Atwood, author William Dalrymple and his painter wife Olivia Fraser, and my heroine, the great designer agnès b.
I had a stroke five years ago that took away my speech, but have gotten it back now thanks to a really marvelous speech therapist, Dr Renata Whurr, in London. (They say that France has the best medical services in the world and we certainly found them to be amazing, as well.) The stroke happened while I was in the middle of the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka, and the doctor there wouldn’t let me fly for three weeks; the festival’s organizer, Geoffrey Dobbs, allowed us to stay in his hotel until I was fit to fly, which saved us.
My grandchildren thought my stumbling speech was hilarious, however; somehow every time I tried to say fish it came out as shit! One famous day, one of my daughters asked me what I was cooking for supper and I said “baked shit!” And just the other day in France, I told someone how much I like gestapo soup instead of gaspacho!
Still, I dont much like giving talks now, but love having conversations. Here is one that I enjoyed having, as a guest on The Third Act podcast.
The two naughty daughters previously described in Diplomatic Baggage have done us proud. Our eldest Hester is a diplomat (like her dad, but with the British Foreign Office) who has been posted in the past year to Afghanistan and Doha, talking to the Taliban. Claudia, our younger daughter, and her husband opened a beautiful hotel in Bruton, Somerset just before the outbreak of the pandemic, which was disastrous timing — they had to sell their house and come live with us — but Number One Bruton is now thriving. Check out their great review in The New York Times last month!
They have also each given us two lovely grandchildren, for a total of three boys and a girl. Claudia also has a sweet dog, Cubby, who is a bit like a grandchild in that we can love her without being responsible 24/7! (Brexit has made it much harder to travel from U.K. with pets, unfortunately.)
Planning for the journey ahead
What’s next? I am trying to write a funny book about getting old and never had time to get on with it. Watch this space in about five years time!
But first, I’m hoping for a trip to India! William Dalrymple has asked me to take part inthe Jaipur Literature Festival in January. AW was posted to India back in 1986 and our girls went to The British School in Delhi; we should have been there for four years but had to leave after only two when AW was offered a post as E.U. Ambassador to the Gambia.
I was born in India and I believe that that it was such an important part of my life — giving me much wider horizons than I would have had as a middle-class child in U.K. — that I really want my family to see something of it. My nephew Perry Ogden, a well-known photographer and filmmaker in Dublin, also wants to make a film about our Irish family’s five generations of serving in India with the British Army. We hope to visit Hyderabad/Secunderabad, where Dad was President of the Club, and Mumbai, where as a little girl I watched the historic final parade of the British Army before they walked through The Gateway of India and onto their boats in 1948, leaving the subcontinent forever.
Looking back over the years now, I wish I had known 40 years ago that everything would turn out all right — especially with the children. I wouldn’t have wasted so much time worrying about everything and everybody!
Editor’s note: Diplomatic Baggage and Brigid Keenan’s other books are available on Amazon and elsewhere good books are sold. Happy reading!
Got a relocation story of your own to share? Contact us at hello@trailing-spouse.com.
