We fly home from the US of A tomorrrow. It’s been a good trip but over far too quickly for my liking. Still, it will be nice to sleep in our own bed again, as the sofa bed we’ve been kipping on all week isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, to say the least. That and the idiosyncratic heating in the room we’re in having two settings: “hot as the sun” and “freeze your balls off”.

As much as I like America, though, it will be nice to get back to “normality”, I guess. Haven’t quite adjusted to the time change while we’ve been here, so going back home is going to be interesting. Either I’ll be able to sleep normally, or I’ll have to endure the mild annoyance of a completely screwed up body clock again. We’ll have to wait and see.

Mostly, though, it will be nice to feel like I’m in my “home” country again. America is superficially similar to the UK in many ways (only a bit bigger) but every so often you’re reminded that you are a foreigner in a strange land.

Try to find prepacked sandwiches in a supermarket, for example. Or decipher a menu at a Mexican restaurant. Or remember what the different types of eggs you can order at breakfast are (hint: it’s not “boiled, fried, poached and scrambled”. Or have a discussion about a kid’s grade point average. Or… Well, I could go on. But I won’t.

It’s actually pretty interesting to see quite how different two cultures which speak the same language can end up. You say “tomato”, I say “why are you shouting out names of fruit?”, that sort of thing.

I’m sure you get used to it after a while living here. Perhaps one day I’ll have the opportunity to get used to it for myself.

Dream on, eh?