I participated in my first LGBT Pride when I was about 22. I’d just come out, and I stood nervously on a London street with my friend, watching bright and colourful Pride floats filled with people pass. I gazed shyly at those participating, admiring how they were so comfortable and proud about who they were.

I wanted to be like that. And then, unexpectedly, my friend grabbed my hand and pulled me right into the parade. For about 5 minutes we marched and for about 5 minutes I felt both terrified and overjoyed. And then the terror won, and we merged with the watching crowd again, grinning and feeling genuinely proud and empowered and part of something important.

A few years later, and a little less fearful, I signed up to participate as part of the British Government’s contingent in London’s Pride parade. The plan was to dress as traditional civil servants (black suits, bowler hats), and twirl rainbow umbrellas as we danced our way round the centre of London.

We practised in the Treasury – in the room with the balcony from which Churchill gave his speech declaring victory in Europe. It went off well – though I’m not known for my dancing (or not in a good way), there was something quite remarkable about the feeling of dancing round Piccadilly Circus…

Last year, the State Department invited me to ride on their float for the DC parade. Because DC is a much smaller city, I’d anticipated it would be much less of a big deal than it is in London. But I turned out to be quite wrong – Pride here is a real focus for the city and is impossible to miss.

The British Embassy float in the 2013 Capital Pride Parade | Photo by Sara T. Gama

As I waved a rainbow flag from the State Department’s float, I pondered whether the British Embassy should have a float next year. This thought cropped up a few times since then, but I was worried about how well we’d pull it off. And so I kept deferring the thought until a month ago, when I finally talked to colleagues here and we got the Ambassador’s go-ahead.

To my joy, we found a partner both for the float (HSBC) and for a party afterwards (Baker and McKenzie) and things began to look promising. But events organisation is not my forte (I worry too much) and so I spent a fair bit of the subsequent two weeks imagining what might go wrong with the float, or the weather, or that no-one would come to the party.

But all these fears were entirely unfounded. A grey day with spots of rain suddenly turned into blue skies. People from across the Embassy – and friends from the UK’s Research Councils and from the British Council – came along first to decorate and then to wave mini Union Jacks and toss shortbread from our float.

I was proud and happy that so many people – gay and straight, children and adults – were there. Our banner looked brilliant – “Putting the Tea into Equality” – and the crowd of around 100,000 people loved us. As did the judges, it turns out.  Perhaps it was because we played the National Anthem as we passed their table, perhaps it was because they are fond of tea, or perhaps it was because we were the first Embassy to participate in DC’s Pride!

But whatever the reason, we were absolutely delighted to find we’d won the Harvey Milk Award for best public sector float. The party at the Brixton went equally brilliantly, with a great atmosphere, and a lot of enthusiasm from our guests for the British music, Pimms and lemonade and fish and chips.

Later that night I received an email from someone who attended our party: “I can’t say enough what a lovely and important thing you and Layla did with your party tonight. You have my gratitude and my admiration.”

Britain is a champion of equality, and it’s hard to underestimate the impact of how we champion that abroad. As for me, I feel I have come a long way since my first Pride parade. And I hope there was a nervous 22 year old in the crowd this weekend who is feeling just a little more proud and happy with who they are, thanks to our participation.

Last year I bemoaned the lack of romance bought by spending Valentine’s Day evening with the otherwise charming British Government’s Chief Scientist, Sir John Beddington. (Of course in reality I secretly enjoyed it. Though that’s not something I admit to Layla.)

But this year, Layla and I agreed we would determinedly avoid any event connected with either of our jobs, and would go for the great prize of seats at the hottest table in DC, Minibar. Indeed it isn’t just the hottest table in DC but is one of the hardest-to-get reservations in the world, with only six diners per seating.

We had a great strategy to get ourselves a reservation – which mainly involved diligent emailing on the dot of 10am exactly a month before. Our delight at getting two seats has been palpable ever since – we felt like Charlie, clutching our golden ticket to the (rather expensive) Chocolate Factory. Few conversations since that moment have omitted a reference to our superlative Valentine’s Day plans.

And so, when we sat down tonight at 6.30pm for our 26 course extravaganza, we were somewhat bemused to find that there appeared to have been four no shows for the 6pm seating. We speculated as to why Jose Andres (the chef behind this and many other great restaurants in DC) hadn’t given them to some others on what must have been a massive waiting list.

We were bemused at the sight of the police just visible standing in the linked bar. And we also speculated about what lay behind the gauze curtain in the restaurant through which waiters kept slipping with plates in hand. In our minds these things were separate. But it turned out not to be so.

The Obamas were behind the gauze, celebrating Valentine’s Day just like us.  And so we found out when we got home… having read of the roads that had apparently been shut down during our gastronomic adventure… not to mention the crowds of gawkers who were outside Minibar hoping for a glimpse of… us. Or perhaps the Obamas.

Of course every fibre of my being is disappointed I didn’t appreciate that the intimate dinner of just us and four other couples included the Obamas. But then if I had realized it, I would have probably felt obliged to renege on my pact with Layla to ban work talk for the night, and toast the launch of EU-US talks on a trade partnership, which happened yesterday.

How could I fail to do so? Together we are the world’s largest economies and we constitute half of the world’s GDP and one third of global trade. The impact of a successful trade deal will be huge for the global economy- and so it is our Prime Minister’s top trade priority.

So I guess we can all thank goodness for the piece of gauze that separated me from the Obamas, and let all of us, for just a night in this city of politics, sit back, savour our amazing food, and prioritise romance. But in the cold light of day, it is of course time to focus on the brilliant news of the launch of talks on a trade partnership between the EU and the US. At least until next year… though goodness knows what Layla will suggest we do then (desert island perhaps?!).

Inauguration Day is a four-yearly highlight of the Washington calendar – and indeed, the calendar of most US citizens.

It is the day when the newly elected president is sworn in for the next four years. Full of pomp and circumstance, bugles, marching bands, songs, prayers, and lots of US flags, “What are you doing for inauguration?” has been the question on everyone’s lips since New Year – and for years to come, people seem to recount where they were when…

So the pressure was on for Layla and me to have a fabulous inauguration weekend.

Our personal inauguration extravaganza kicked off on Saturday night, at an inauguration-themed comedy event at a cool downtown event space, followed by a late night event in Georgetown showcasing political cartoons from Obama’s first term that had appeared in the Economist, Time and the Washington Post. The band and crepes were not an unpleasant addition to our evening, either…

Of course the main event was on Monday. 600,000 people swarmed to the National Mall to watch the President and Vice President being sworn in – until the morning, I could never have imagined quite so many people lining my morning running route.

Every inch of the grass that runs from the Washington Monument to Capitol Hill was claimed by flag-waving enthusiasts who’d arrived in the very early morning.  The excitement was palpable as we walked past, en route to a law firm which overlooks the White House who had invited us to see the Inauguration from their office.

With US flags pressed into our hands (and an embarrassing glittery US hat sported by Layla), we entered into the celebratory spirit. It was particularly fabulous to hear Obama’s speech and his passionate call for equality for all.  It was also really good to hear Obama voicing his intention to commit to domestic measures to address climate change.

It was a fun event, and we walked home after the parade amid closed streets and celebrating citizens to prepare for the evening ahead.

On inauguration night, Washington swarms with inaugural balls – a couple of official ones (where the Obamas join the partiers for a dance), and numerous unofficial ones. I was able to attend the Environment and Clean Energy Ball on behalf of the Ambassador – and not only was it a 5-minute walk from our house, it was a brilliant event.

There was a clear reaffirmation of the US’s commitment to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020 from Heather Zichal (Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change). And we heard the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus talk about the priority which has been given by the armed forces to renewable energy. Then the band started to play, and we danced the night away – an excellent end to our first inauguration weekend.

Though it was not quite the end for me. With a good chunk of the DC population celebrating into the small hours, Miriam’s Kitchen, an organization I volunteer with that works to end homelessness in DC, e-mailed me saying they had a volunteer shortage for the 6am breakfast-making shift.

So after our dancing, we left the ball early, and I set my alarm for 5am. Cooking waffles for some of DC’s homeless people before work on the coldest day of the year so far seems a fitting end to a wonderful inauguration weekend that celebrated the good that is being done, and committed to the good that is still to be done for people living in the US.

For me, election campaigning has been a constant element of life in the US. The entire year I have been lived here has involved the most prolonged, sustained, energetic excitement about choosing a country’s leader that I could have imagined. From the first day we arrived, the question of who was to be the next President of the United States has been on everyone’s lips. We’ve seen our friends giving up weeks of time and lots of money to help their preferred candidate get elected. We saw a friend actually moving to live in Virginia, one of the swing states, so she could vote there. We’ve seen people in tears after Presidential debates. But after $6 billion of spending, months of campaigning, television ads, canvassing, debating, analysis, and anticipation, it all came down to one day. Tuesday 7th November 2012 was of course the day of the US election, a defining moment in America that happens once every four years and has repercussions that reach across America and throughout the rest of the world.

I unexpectedly had to fly to the UK at the weekend to take my mother to hospital. Flying back on election day was surreal: after a year of election news, which had increased to fever pitch over the last couple of weeks, suddenly all electronic devices had to be turned off. I felt rebellious, resentful, almost panicky as I pressed the ‘off’ buttons on Election Day. I was to be disconnected from the constant polling, the pundits reading the runes, the arguments for and against the candidates… I sat there in the imposed silence of the plane and felt the withdrawal symptoms kicking in. As soon as we touched down, of course I raced to my multiple electronic devices for the latest news – and found the world hadn’t changed radically in all those hours I’d been in the air, longing for news. The race was on, and it was far too early to call.

It turns out that US election night is one of these defining moments, the sort about which everyone asks where you were when you heard the result. I dashed from the airport straight to the Embassy (we had opened the Embassy bar to turn our compulsive tracking of election results into a more companionable activity). Someone had created an election quiz. Everyone was tense with excitement. And yet, despite my best efforts, the UK/US time difference caught up with me. I staggered home, exhausted, around eleven, and so it was that after a full year of anticipation, every time I’m asked where I was when I heard the result, I have been obliged to admit I was in bed, comatose with jetlag. I groggily awoke at 3am, and there was the result, waiting decisively on my phone: Obama had won.

And now, after all that time, money, effort, emotion and dedication, the election is over, and the political map hasn’t changed much. The US has the same President. The same majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. And it’s essentially back to work. For us at the Embassy, along with pretty much everyone working in DC, that means figuring out what it all means for our policy areas. The truth is that we don’t really know yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spend hours in speculation and analysis.  And of course it also means a lot of heart-searching for the Republicans about why they lost the Presidential race.  But in the meantime, other stuff has started to creep back into the public domain as people emerge from the election black hole. Yesterday it was disconcerting to turn on the local radio and hear not more election coverage, but an hour-long program on Stalin. Friends who we’d lost to campaigning are inviting us to go hiking. People are sitting in cafes catching up on the latest novels. It’s back to business in Washington today, and it feels surreal.

But I hear my withdrawal symptoms won’t last long. My friends tell me that as soon as we begin to get used to diverse radio shows and news stories, and conversations that don’t feature the word ‘election’, the whole cycle will begin all over again…

Last weekend while sitting in the TEDx MidAtlantic conference, I found myself feeling edgy. I kept compulsively checking my e-mails and Twitter feed for mentions of “Sandy”.

After almost a year in Washington DC, hurricane Sandy was my first experience of extreme weather in the US. Which is why, as photographs of empty DC grocery shop aisles popped up, I marched Layla out of the auditorium at lunchtime, and straight to the nearest supermarket to join others in buying in stocks of food and gallons of water.

We downloaded the Red Cross app, and prepared as it advised us, including filling our bath with water, withdrawing cash from the ATM, and charging all our devices. I fretted about being unable to carry out the ‘sleep in the basement’ instruction since we live in an apartment on the second floor. Luckily enough, Sandy passed us by with some strong winds, some tumbling trees, and rain significant enough to make water drip in through our smoke alarm (I can now confirm that smoke alarms can also function as a piercing water alarm).

Thankfully, that was it. I felt I might have gone a bit over the top with all the preparations. Then again, maybe not.

We sat listening to the gale, and wondering if the full impact was going to hit us; hours later, my colleagues in New York found out that it hit them instead – and like others in New York state and New Jersey they were hit badly. The Embassy had all hands on deck making sure that staff and British citizens in affected areas were okay.

Not only did those working in the consulate have to cope with their personal challenges caused by the storm, fifty seven Brits came seeking help to the British Consulate in New York.

At least 80 people have died due to Sandy in the USA (and nearly that many again in the Carribean). 4.5 million lost power. Many thousands have nowhere to live now. It really disturbs me to think of how lucky we were. If that weather system had taken just a slightly different route, it could have blasted the capital’s infrastructure, and left us hungry and homeless. Or at the very least, sent a tree crashing through our window.

We could easily have really needed that water waiting in the bath. Others did. It made me think about how tenuous and vulnerable our lifestyle is to the whims of the weather –  and the feeling is a lot more acute here than it ever was in our London city centre apartment.

And now, with the clean-up job in progress, thoughts have turned to the possible impact on Tuesday’s election, hesitation over whether to cancel the New York marathon (they did, at the last minute, with many runners apparently turning instead to help deliver groceries and generally make themselves useful, circumnavigating public transport issues by running between locations to deliver help where it is needed), how to find food and fuel in the worst-hit areas, and how to reconstruct the parts of the East Coast that were flooded and battered.

The US is resilient, but the costs will be considerable.

Of course, watching the news from Britain, our friends and family have been worrying about Layla and me. We reassure them that we were far from the scary stuff. But as we watch people on TV wading through flooded towns, having lost their possessions, I can’t help but think how close it came to that being us. And how close we might come again. Those emergency gallons of water are staying right where they are.

You can donate to the Red Cross in the US and UK.

But I hadn’t realized the extent to which the debates really are like the Superbowl – an event that engages the nation. I was in Austin, Texas the day after the debate, speaking at a very fabulous South by Southwest Eco conference.  SXSW Eco took place over three days, and featured experts in the public, private and academic sectors, and an audience representing pretty much every walk of life, brought together by a shared commitment to finding solutions for a sustainable world.  It was pretty fun, but however, much as the audience were enthusiastic and focused on the event (particularly my panel I’m sure!), there was an undercurrent of distraction. Everyone had seen the previous night’s presidential debate, and everyone had an opinion. Break out discussions buzzed with the candidates’ performance. The next day, in New York (it was quite a week for travelling!) the same was true. I was intrigued at this massive level of political engagement, particularly as the voting turnout (57%) in the US is actually lower than in the UK (65%) where I did not experience this sort of mass post-debate political analysis.

As a Londoner, I have to admit that sometimes Londoners can be cynical. As we left for the US last November, we left our friends muttering about anticipated congestion and transport angst and plans to let out their houses to Olympic-crazed tourists and spend the month in Florida.

However, from the moment the fabulous opening ceremony kicked off (which I watched with several hundred close US friends at the Embassy in Washington) our friends’ plans to hit the beach were immediately discarded. These same friends who’d planned to leave have caught Olympic fever, along with the rest of the country, and my social media streams are crammed with photos of them grinning in the stadium, watching the marathon from their apartment windows, and close ups of our Team GB athletes doing rather well on the medal podium.

The only beach they were interested in was the beach volleyball court in central London.

Nevertheless, despite Olympic-fever it can’t be denied that British people are still heading over to Florida in droves. Around 28,000 Brits go to Florida each week at this time of year – lured by better temperatures, cheaper airfares and, of course, Disney – despite the fact that it’s hurricane season. And so it was that, as a member of the Embassy’s Crisis Management Board I headed over to the National Hurricane Center to meet its relatively newly appointed director Rick Knabb, with the Consul for Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

We talked about the particular challenges of hurricanes for tourists. I guess the real point is that British tourists, coming from a not very hurricane-prone country, tend to underestimate the risks. Being a tourist makes you less likely to find out a hurricane is coming. While locals will hear of it on the radio or TV, or from local friends, tourists risk failing to notice the fuss. And once you’ve noticed, you’re much less likely to have a plan of where to go and when.

The same could be said for newly-arrived diplomats. I admit to a few weekends when I’d called friends to make dinner plans, only to find they’d been listening to the local radio and planned to spend their evening in their basements, sheltering from major storms I hadn’t even clocked.

Of course, relying on TV and radio for storm warnings is so last century. I now have my social media feeds set to alert me to this sort of thing. Rick Knabb is similarly enthusiastic about social media. I’d seen his personal Twitter feed before the meeting and had been impressed by both the quality and frequency of his tweets.

In fact, I must confess to suspecting he had a team tweeting on his behalf without admitting to it – so passé. But having met him, my doubts were squashed. He runs a 21st century operation, and his innovative and dedicated personal use of Twitter to communicate about weather risk is inspiring – follow him if you are headed Florida way: @NHC_DrRickKnabb.


We might enjoy reading Tweets about Britain being swept off its feet by Andy Murray’s Olympic victory, but it’s also good to know if we’re at risk of being swept off our feet by a hurricane.

Many children dream of being an astronaut – but it wasn’t til I had qualified as a lawyer and worked for some years as a civil servant that the realisation hit me. It happened during my honeymoon, at New York’s Natural History Museum monthly SciCafe. Astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson delivered an exceptionally inspirational talk and suddenly I knew what the space fuss was all about. And I wanted a part of it. Unfortunately my colleagues raised their eyebrows and suggested it might be a bit late for me to be an astronaut. I consoled myself with listening to an astrophysics lecture series and dreaming of the stars.

And so, it was with much gratification, that last week I walked through the hallowed halls of NASA itself and realised my career choice had been right all along. Because the UK has a lot of links with NASA – there’s collaboration with the UK Space Agency of course, which covers a range of areas – most significantly on the James Webb Space Telescope, where the UK led a consortium that designed and built an instrument containing an Infrared camera. Less well known, perhaps, is the collaboration between the UKSA and NASA on space medicine. The idea is that there’s a lot we can learn from the impact of space on the human body that is useful here on Earth. And the purpose of my visit was both to talk about the importance of the UK-USA collaboration, and to explore innovative opportunities for the future, like the impact of microgravity on cellular reproduction. And as though the opportunity to do that wasn’t exciting enough, they also gave me a tour, showed me the control room, let me step inside a simulator, and presented me with a piece of British flag that had actually been in space aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, in 2010. I tried to remain suave, as though this wasn’t now officially one of my coolest possessions.

I may not be likely to fulfil my astronaut dreams, but I’m not alone in having them – there is something about space and the astronauts who pioneered there, such as the great Sally Ride who died yesterday, that inspires. Astronauts like Sally and space collaborations have pushed the boundaries of innovation and imagination, and hold the power to inspire whole populations with what the human race can achieve. And while perhaps space activities are not always as obvious as putting a man on the moon or the first US woman into space, I’m thrilled that I get to play even a tiny part in ensuring the UK’s role in continually pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility.

Sometimes you don’t know you have an addiction until the thing you’re addicted to is suddenly snatched from you. This is what happened to me on moving to the US seven months ago, and finding myself embroiled in a lengthy procedure to get an American smartphone contract. My realisation happened insidiously. Getting ridiculously lost somewhere in Capitol Hill because I couldn’t consult my smartphone map. Going to a disappointing restaurant because I hadn’t been able to check the reviews. Having to queue at an actual shop to buy my weekly groceries. Physically hunting in vain for an ATM. Getting wet because I didn’t know to bring an umbrella. Going out for a run and not being rewarded with electronic encouragement for my new exercise achievements. Being unable to locate the nearest bikeshare stand (or to find out in advance how many bike spaces were currently available). And so, as I pulled up to yet another bike stand that had no spaces for my bike, I had to admit the truth: my name is Rosalind and I’m addicted to Apps.

Apps, for the uninitiated, are little programs you can download to your smartphone to make your life easier, or more fun, or more interesting, or more effective (or in the case of popular game apps, perhaps less effective) by efficiently performing all sorts of little tasks for you, and giving you information in fun, convenient, customized ways. My smartphone apps would have given me all the information I was missing at the tap of a finger. Of course I could have found out most of that information in other ways, but apps just make it easier.

Thus it was with my newly confessed enthusiasm for apps (not to mention my love of the Newseum, DC’s fabulous museum dedicated to the news), that I was delighted to attend the Connect4Climate awards ceremony at the Newseum last night, celebrating the winners of a competition designed to inspire development of innovative apps that use World Bank climate data to empower ordinary people to combat climate change. It was reassuring to hear that I’m not alone in my enthusiasm for apps – there were 52 entries from 28 countries, including 19 developing countries, all seeking to democratize the data and make it useful for all, rather than confining the accessibility of important, high quality information about climate change to negotiators and statisticians. And it was great to hear that two Brits were amongst the finalists, for Data Story, and Globe Town. Both of these apps enable you to easily compare countries on all sorts of questions ranging from total foreign investment to which countries produce the most greenhouse gases, and, importantly, by giving people and communities around the world the information in a comprehensible way, empower them to act. Powerful stuff.

And so, when an imminent colleague asked me for tips for settling in to Washington life this week, I told them to sort out their smartphone contract. Bizarrely, access to these apps are perhaps what’s made me feel most settled here. And as I whiz past people clutching their bikes at a bikeshare rack with no spaces, I am smug in the knowledge that I know exactly where to park mine. Whether it’s a bike parking space for a DC diplomat or the latest drought information for a farmer in Chad, data is power, and apps can be an addictively helpful way to translate data to empower people.

In my last job, colleagues – even my lovely former boss, the now famous Lord Justice Leveson  would occasionally raise an eyebrow as I arrived with hair askew and rosy cheeks from cycling between meetings. Alas in DC, working at the top of a really fairly significant hill, I’ve reluctantly relinquished my addiction to the bike – at least as a means of getting me from one meeting to another. But when I read about Alan Turing, whose 100th birthday would have been yesterday, I start to fear that I lack commitment. Apparently Turing regularly ran the 40 miles from Bletchley Park to London for meetings during World War 2. Massachusetts Avenue on a humid late June Monday wouldn’t have got the better of him…

Alas, I suspect that our mutual enthusiasm for propelling ourselves to the office under our own steam (albeit his effort being rather more impressive than mine…), and of course our both being Brits who spent time working in the US (him during the UK/US security cooperation efforts in WW2), is probably the end of my similarities to Alan Turing. He was, of course, a mathematical genius, father of the computer and the key person behind the breaking of the German enigma code at Bletchley Park.  I left mathematics with considerable relief when I was 16 and I think it’s safe to say that I have no major inventions up my sleeve. But the occasion of his 100th birthday on Saturday struck me since I was working at the Ministry of Justice when the question of whether to apologise to Turing (for his prosecution for homosexuality and subsequent chemical castration) came up a few years ago.  I wasn’t involved in giving advice on the issue at all but it was interesting to be in the environs and hear some of the debate.  Requests that governments apologise abound these days for a plethora of reasons, of course, and many aren’t granted.

But the thing about Turing, of course, is how much both the UK and the US owe to him – in terms of his contribution to wartime success and in shaping the second half of the 20th century. And making the case graphically, I rather enjoyed Google’s Turing Machine doodle to celebrate his 100th birthday. Turing got his apology, and while it was sadly too late for him to appreciate it, the message of UK government’s ever increasing commitment to championing equality and combating discrimination was made clear.

And so, taking inspiration from Alan Turing on what would have been his 100th birthday, perhaps I shall revert to powering myself from one meeting to another, despite the giant hill.  At least until I’m entirely defeated by the Washington heat, anyway…