By nearly any measure, Drew was the most English person in our family. Both Paige and Drew had friends that didn’t know our children were actually of American origin. Paige, however, has an American accent she can bring out at will, but Wendy tells the story of Drew coming home from school one day asking if he could take in his passport to prove to his friends that he was actually American.

When Drew did use an affected American accent, usually as part of a joke, it wasn’t actually very good. Drew was the only one of us born here, but he could easily have picked up and perfected an American accent, if he wanted to. And there is the question, why didn’t he? Even before he was politically aware, he seemingly made the choice to “be English”.

This could easily become an essay on cultural stereotypes, and I’ll do my best to avoid that trap by sticking with ways the British like to think of themselves. For starters, Drew was a bit of a British eccentric. Take his dress sense, for example. Drew would not hesitate to go out in track suit bottoms with holes in them or in old t-shirt with rips and stains. I speculate he was of the opinion “it’s what’s inside that counts”, so, if someone were overly concerned about outward appearances, then Drew wasn’t overly concerned about them.

Another somewhat eccentric behaviour was his attention to spelling and grammar in all forms of written communication, whether it was an English exam paper or a text message. M8 or lol were not in Drew’s vocabulary. He would painstakingly write out every word and double check the grammar before sending any message of any kind.

His sense of humour was also classically British, dry and witty. He often kept that under cover. When he competed in debate during secondary school, he would roll out the big artillery, and competitors would often wilt under his onslaught. I loved listening him debate on the side of issues I knew he didn’t agree with. He would take what he knew was a positive and undermine it with humour before the opposition could use it in their argument.

When moving from primary to secondary school, Drew had to sit an interview at his chosen school, Reading Blue Coat. Wendy and I were allowed to sit behind him during the interview, and we were constantly stifling laughs at his answers to the headmaster’s questions.

Drew was always somewhat unfazed by figures of authority, and his answer to the question “If you could be any animal, what would you be?” illustrated his independent streak. I imagine most kids would cite a hard working or loyal dog, or a far seeing and strong bird of prey, but not Drew. Drew said, “I’d be a cat. I’d get to lay around all day, do whatever I wanted, and someone would still feed me.”

I am aware there are plenty of American bird watchers, but it always seems such a British hobby to me. The British even have an endearing term for bird watchers, twitchers, although I understand some serious bird watchers object to that term. In any case, an interest in birds is something Drew developed as his life became more urban.

Similarly, there are plenty of Americans who might claim walking as a hobby.  But moving here from California, where moving about without a car is virtually unheard of, Drew’s interest in walks of all kinds stands out as a rather British leisure pursuit.

So, I understand why his classmates asked him for a passport to prove he was American. I needed to occasionally check it myself.

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