Le Lag du Jet

We're home! With all the joys that jetlag brings: plans to re-organize kitchen cabinets, one's knicker drawer, one's whole life; early hours and first cups of tea in bed; enormous cuddlings with much-missed dogs (one of which has taken to removing tomatoes from the vine and delivering them, excitedly to one's feet); the four ayem high like a trapeze before the wobbly lunchtime fall, moreorless inevitable. Maharishi cooks pasta mama in the kitchen for Minky; teen son, ambivalent in his reaction to our return -- isn't life better when your parents and pesky little sister are safely sequestered on an island on a fjord; wow, food's expensive and how do you cook the stuff?; I love you, I miss you Ma, now please go away -- is sleeping; the phone is already ringing with welcome home calls from dear friends. Hello, Los Angeles! Hello dry air & sunshine & fat tomatoes. Hello, psychotic punctuation & dizzy spells of clarity. Hello, weird city full of JoeCool folks in small trilby hats. Goodbye, Vale of Aylesbury with your soft skies. Goodbye buddleian butterfly colonies. Goodbye pork & leek sausages and brown toast for breakfast. Goodbye houseful of childhood treasures, cellars of tarnished silver, dusty demitasse. Hello Canine Olympics & Maharishi's stream of consciousness vocal torrent. Goodbye beech woods, elderflower cordial, jaffa cakes. Hello washer/drier, desert winds, Laurel Canyon.