Home is Biggleswade

Here continueth school summer 2009, week two.
Week two of the school summer holidays; not summer proper which kicks in somewhere around May/June if we're very lucky. Must remember to slather on the factor 30 for those three hot days sandwiched between endless weeks of mean grey sludge.
My sister visited last week and now she's gone. Back to the frozen North, where my other sister, Mother and some of my closest friends still live. We moved down south in 1998 and it felt like moving to a different continent in the sleepy, beautifully time warped village in west oxon with its unfriendly lack of street lighting, shops or any signs of life closer than ten miles away.
I remember the first week we arrived, thinking that we had probably made a huge mistake, whilst at the same time suspecting that time would dilute or cleverly displace those thoughts and perhaps reveal, at some distant date in the future, why we decided to upsticks 250 miles across the country.
Instinct shouted louder than emotion and I paid attention.
I remember slouching in the tiny L-shaped lounge of our lovely little house in Freeland, not long after we moved, listening to distant thunder, and wondering, worrying, if we had made the right decision. I realized, about four of five years ago, that we had.
We were no longer trying to convince ourselves and others of our shiny happy enthusiasm about leaving family and friends behind in the North West, but truthfully, genuinely content. And now, when I accelerate down the slip road to the M1 ( or mostly when Gavin does it, cos I avoid motorway driving if possible ) ,we are going uo North for a visit, not 'going home'. Home is Biggleswade.