I think Ynglonde is going to smell funny. Maybe it will be better, (I suspect so) because it is not in the middle of a large continental landmass. But maybe it will smell funny because it's the wrong ocean. The Pacific Ocean is in my genes and I don't think any other body of water is ever going to smell like the right one.
I'm worried that things will be just that little bit different that it will throw me off and create a kind of mental nausea. If it were radically different, like Darfur or Shanghai, it might be easier since I would always be expecting it to be so wildly alien that my brain would never bother trying to compensate. But I suspect England is going to be just different enough to make me wake up every morning and not be able to remember which country I'm in.
I have, as you might imagine, much to report, but am mostly unable to get hooked onto the net, for various reasons, and so the big posts will have to wait.
Suffice for the moment to say that this country smells right.
It feels and sounds right.
The only thing I find surprising about it is that I find it entirely unsurprising.
My uncle Mike said, "It's as if you never left."
I was walking the young cousins home from school the other day and we went in search of conkers (a week or so too early). We were strolling along through a woodsy bit just past the churchyard, when I was suddenly brought to a halt. I smelled the early signs of an English autumn. I don't know what particular combination it was, whether it was just the local leaves being burned with a hint of Jersey cow in the background, but it did that thing of powerfully bringing back a long-lost early memory. There it was. Something so familiar and deeply buried that at the same time, it seemed as if I had been transported back in time, and as if the intervening 35 years had simply never happened.
I'm glad to be back. More than I dared hope in fact.
Many pics to follow.
H
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