Eagle Eye Has Landed!

The whole journey took about a day including to and from the airports (overlooking the five hours time difference) by the time I reached my new temporary home of Bristol, U.K. I still have a tall tale or two to tell about my last days in the States and the characters I met en route but this here thing is my first impressions of being back.

No matter how prepared you are, quitting one life and starting another from scratch alone in unfamiliar territory is no piece of cake. So it's great to be back once more in the house where I grew up - a house requiring zero introduction and zero set-up. I took the National Express (like a Greyhound but less seedy, my American friends) from Heathrow and the view was full of reassuring images: green fields alongside the M32 with grazing cows, the monument on the hill where we partied all night aged seventeen, the city skyline with its historical buildings and balloon rides in summer... I vowed for the hundredth time to never again live anywhere as small or disconnected as Norfolk.

I can't believe my dad and I are getting along so well. When I was a teenager and he was a frustrated 50-something in an unhappy marriage and a body that was beginning to fail him, we once argued and didn't speak for six months... I guess we've both been through a lot and grown up since then. I find his presence comforting. He told me his father gave him his first cigarette when he was fifteen (though he smoked already), asked me if I wouldn't mind only smoking outside (he doesn't anymore), bought me traditional fish and chips for my homecoming meal (a bit greasy for my taste but inarguably appropriate) and downed half a bottle of Seagrams's with me last night as we watched his new favourite film, Troy. (You know you're dog tired when the caption "Port Of Sparta - Greece" reads "Sorta Part Of Greece".)

I haven't sweated profusely in at least 24 hours, my hair is straight and manageable again and I even felt the house was getting cold last night. Yay, yay, yay! And hey, don't English people talk funny?!