Back

Returning home I was greeted by my Mum and Dad at the airport.  Which is more notable than it might sound.  I hadn't been in contact for a number of weeks and although I had left them with my return flight details, anything could have happened and I most certainly hadn't said 'I'll see you in a couple of weeks at Terminal X' when we last spoke.  Oh the wonders of pre internet and mobile phone life!

It really was very sweet of them.

I'd been on a flight or two for around 24 hours and the drive back home wasn't as surreal as one might have thought.  I guess I've always been quite good at not embracing the drama or the culture shock.  I was just back in the UK.  Back home.  Without a clue what I was going to do with myself.

By massive coincidence, L called within the hour of my arriving home - not knowing that it was the day (just the period) of my arrival.  She, Mum, Dad and I went out for lunch at a local pub and that was it - back to normality.  Without a clue what I was going to do with myself.

The period of re-normalising was typified by getting more-or-less straight back into the social circuit of 'ten phone calls resulting in a trip to the same pub as usual'.  Not that that was dull - it was just what it was.  A particular memory is of someone who I wasn't particularly close to saying 'where's the tan from?' - and me telling them. 'Wow - good for you', they said.

I was lucky in that I still had some money left and I was living at home so there was no hurry to get into work - or any work.  And then the phone rang.  It was L again.  She was saying that a friend of hers needed some help putting on a show at the Kings Head Theatre.  She wasn't quite sure what the job was but perhaps I was interested.  And within days I was within the vicinity of one of the minor legends of the London Fringe.