Home.

Dear Reader,

This season of mist and mellow fruitfulness cuts a figure fine against pickled salt-plums. A yam in hand was good in Japan, but butternut squash soup is home.

Which is where I am now. 

Well - one of them.

This weekend marks the first in a month and a half since landing back in the UK that I haven’t spent away from my house-share. Which of course means I can finally do away with excuses and write something short, something sweet, something to cover the weeks between then and now. Something to show I’m alive and well and living in Cardiff. And what a life it is.

My last few weeks spent setting in the rising sun were filled with a more pleasant, comfortable feeling than July would have suggested. (Could that really have been only two months ago? 70 days feel too small to contain it all) With the pleasure of company worth a million lifetimes, more goodbyes than my tear ducts could take, and a wonderful holiday on the Japanese island of Naha, Okinawa which elicited not one, but two looks of absolute terror! Once upon seeing a deadly sea krait whilst out snorkelling, and once again the following evening during an online job interview where my lovely now-colleagues very cheerfully told me that we’d now be moving onto ‘the Welsh portion of the interview’.

My sister as ever spot on in her analysis...

Movie time reader - picture the scene. Camera flash memories of my past eight years spent in Cambridge, London, Japan - the common thread throughout being me definitively not speaking Welsh. A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead, jitteringly whispering conjugation rules into my ear. Merry tumbleweeds rolling through my brain, picking up every Welsh word in their paths like a sick Katamari Reroll reboot and leaving behind only Japanese. 

Somehow - though GOD knows how - I stumbled through, and on the 30th of August I stepped off the train into my new home of Cardiff. And please get images of Annie or Animal Crossing out of your mind - this was most certainly not a movie-scene, me having spent most of the last week sick as a dog following (probably) a reaction to my change in diet (was it due to me consuming my weight in bread the day I arrived? … No comment). And in the last month and a bit, I have become happy here.

Well - nearly, British media bias and my now long-distance relationship aside. But as close to content as I have been able to manage in rather a long time.

I’m not sure what the next few months hold, nor what kind of writings/ramblings (is there a difference here?) I might post over the next few months. But I wanted to take the time to say to anyone I’ve seen or met or talked to over the past 70-ish days after two plus years apart - thank you. For you I am utterly grateful. And to those of you I haven’t - I can’t wait to catch up! Best believe I’ll be in contact soon. 

But for now the seasons change, some birds fly off for Winter. And I nest - for now at least - exactly where I belong.

All my stars,

Char xxx

24 hours without sleep. Fresh off the plane. Giddily happy to see my Mum.