Two things…

…surprised me on my arrival back in the UK for the first time since leaving the country for British Columbia nearly four years ago…

The first was that on landing, coming through customs and leaving the airport I had the strangest sensation that I was entering a foreign country. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was that made it feel that way, but it undoubtedly did so.

Now – a day and a half later – the feeling has diminished somewhat but I still find myself experiencing the sensation of being a little disconnected from everything I see about me.

The second oddity is quite the opposite. I had been rather concerned that, having driven only in Canada for the past four years, I would find it difficult to deal with a right hand drive car on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. This would have been made worse by the fact that I had hired a manual (stick) vehicle as opposed to the automatics that I have been driving for the past four years. That I had immediately to set out on that bear-pit of a road – the M25 ( the London orbital motorway) did not help at all.

In the event – and for reasons I need not go into here – the vehicle was upgraded to a better model, one with a hybrid transmission (to all intents and purposes an automatic).

Further – and to my surprise – it felt as though I had never been away and driving on the left felt entirely natural. In the last couple of days I have driven into London twice but not yet felt out of my depth once. Fingers crossed (and wood touched) that this state of affairs continues.

The visit is already massively busy – but at the same time really rather lovely (with the sorry exception of badly missing The Girl!) and everyone is being most kind and massively generous.

My heartfelt gratitude to all…