Brighton early

Actually I have no idea what time it is or which country I'm in - jet lag is hitting in a very weird way. Every so often I look around and stop panicking about catching a flight or where my rucksack is because I realise that I'm home. I've been back a day - surely it shouldn't have taken so long to convince my brain that I'm back. Mind you, it may not have helped that as soon as I returned yesterday afternoon I zoomed off to Brighton to celebrate Richard's birthday. But he's a fantastic friend and I couldn't have missed it. I saw another friend that I haven't seen for years - time flies so quickly and it was so great to see her and finally meet her boyfriend. The redundancy and being away has helped put things right in my head - I'm going to make more time to see friends who really aren't so far away.

I stayed over in Hove and had a great breakfast - baked beans for the first time in a month! Richard and I walked along the seafront and strolled through the Laines, chatting all the way. He went home to have a sleep, and I met up with Jason and Jenny for an afternoon curry and cupcake. After talking about the holiday non-stop, I headed home and discovered I'd locked myself out. Saturday night - possibly everyone who had copies of my keys was out. But Fi came to the rescue (as did Si, but Fi got there first) and I had a cuppa with her and caught up briefly. The fluffy Dipsey needs a cat-sitter soon so that's something to look forward to.

Then home to the purr-monster that is Whisky and to three very talkative guinea pigs. F emailed to say that the weather had turned in New Zealand and he'd got thoroughly wet while tramping the Rees-Dart track. He may come home earlier than he had planned. Yay! Fi and Mark were chuffed that they had rightly predicted that F would stay on somewhere while I came back on schedule.