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The long journey home was sad - I'd really got attached to life in Brisbane - the friends, places lifestyle... but time to move. Plans change, all the time sometimes huge life wrenching changes, going home or continuing travelling in Australia and then South East Asia was for me one of those choices that would lead one way or the other. I choose to use my ticket to go home, see my family and friends and then think again. I had been working on a website over the last few weeks for a company called The Cloud. It turned out that I choose to arrive in London just a few days before the launch of the entire brand. Picked up at Heathrow in a Mercedes taken to a hotel and then made my way to work... worked quite jetlagged for three days and then went to the launch party. Should have wandered round and handed out business cards and made contacts, instead drank free wine and sat on sofa enjoying the affects.

Unless you know me this will be a boring blog. Has blog made it to the Oxford English dictionary yet? I hope it falls into more common use so that I don't have to explain what a blog is every time I talk about this site ;)

Then I went home - it was so good to see my family. Nothing had changed. My Dad has changed career, retrained as a gas plumber and is setting up a business, if corgi ever get round to fixing the paper work. I had installed a huge laminate floor before I had left at my parent's house. After a year the skirting boards had been mostly nailed to the wall, but finishing touches such as a rope round the base of the stairs still hung exactly where they had been placed before leaving. My mum has framed her paintings, learnt to frame, cut mounts and all that - she now has enough paintings for an exhibition. My little brother Matthew was doing his exams and saving to go travelling for a year before Uni. My sisters Jenny and Ele were both in Liverpool one with a first good job and the other finishing Uni.

I caught up with my friends... parties with Cleo, a crazy weekend in Godmanchester with much beer and many games of Perfect Dark with Andy and Iain, a night in Norwich with Mark. A few days in London with Luc and his family, and a few days in Manchester with Reena and Tim. A family reunion with family I have never met and family I know well, Unc. Simon, Unc Jonathan and Aunty Luara and Cousin Eliana.

So what did I learn in a year? I have changed I don't know exactly how, I feel lucky to be British, with all the opportunities to travel, to work, not to be persecuted for just being. I feel lucky that I have family and friends with which I can meet after a year and feel as comfortable in their company as when I left. I did accomplish things whilst I was away, I now speak bad Spanish, dance salsa badly, surf badly and scuba dive... I don't touch/break coral or scare fish so I guess I do that right. I know things I like and I know more things that I don't - frijoles being one of them. I have one hundred pages of travel journal. I've read classics, walked miles and made friends that I want to keep for the rest of my life. Travelling was the best experience of my life.

So I've decided that my life will not be going back to seven to seven in London. From now on I'll live off my skills with IT contracting or freelancing, and moving where I want to when I want. I earned the same as what I spent over the year, with the contract in Brisbane and the freelance work when arriving home... I have some savings so am going to make the most of it. So... travelblog for me will keep going - I'm going to improve the site at every opportunity - but I'm going to continue writing - more regularly in fact ... hence backdating a few of these. And I'm going to see more of the world, starting with some of Europe this summer. In fact I'm going to start with Denmark, I get on with Danes... something in the blood, probably alcohol.

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