Anyway, so my holiday was to go home and just be British for a while. Oh, what a fine time I had, getting stuck in traffic on the M4, bless it, listening to Capital on the radio and struggling with the gearbox of the hired Peugot with my left hand, as God and nature intended. The very first night, jetlag notwithstanding, I was straight up the Curry Garden for a massive and punishing chicken Vindaloo of a quality and ferocity that you just can't find out here in the US, washed down by several pints of lager. The first weekend I was back, all my mates came down from various parts of the sceptred isle, and we quaffed copiously in the very same pub that we first burned Hendy's jeans in, all those years ago. In fact there were an amiable but evidently well pissed group over in the corner, off their collective face and celebrating someone's birthday, who could have been us 10 years ago, on Dave the Rock Star's birthday, just before that mega smoking session up on the Downs, the fateful night that Zippo was first put to denim. It was spooky.
I was travelling with an American friend at the time, and she found it quite bemusing just how much pleasure I derived from the simple process of coming home. I guess that culture shock is one of those things that you don't really grok exists unless you've experienced it, like jet lag. That moment when you're out of it, you stagger through customs and don't really know what time it is except that it's time for a cup of coffee and a fag, and you find your way to the smoking zone next to the coffee bar and pay for it in proper quids and know that you're *home*. It's important.
So, it's great... I get back, delag and play proper British WipeOut with the real tunes, go down the pub and hang out with my mates. I show my American friend the splendours of Basingstoke and the goodness of fish and chips and the meat pies from Grigg's pie shop that I used to subsist on when I was a teenage hacker. We do the tourist thing and go over to Paris on the train, which is kinda cool but also embarrassing as the train does 300KPH on the French side and a lot less in good old Blighty :-)... we go up the Eiffel Tower and get to see the outside of the Louvre, which is I suppose better than not at all. I got dragged into a perfume shop; she had to hang around while I communed with a rather nice goat (you wouldn't get that in London. And I smelt better afterwards). I thank fuck that the Parisian tube map is now based on the London design and as such is now legible by mere humans, and manage not to get too lost most of the time, despite varying states of mind. Generally a good time is had in that French environment. we even end up at a bar where a French dude plays passable Pink Floyd covers and I don't feel the urge to ask anybody "ou sont les chamelles". It works out OK.
However all the splendour of the Champs Elysee and the soaring curves of the Eiffel Tower meant nothing to me compared to the utilitarian shape of the Second Severn Crossing slipping by as we finally crossed the water into Wales on the last few days of the trip. We listened to a weird program about cocktails on Radio Cardiff (or maybe it was Bristol) as we traversed the new bridge and then, finally, as I had been anticipating keenly for months, zoomed past the sign with the dragon saying "Croeso", welcome, to Wales, to the place where there are no vowels in the place names because everybody uses vowels from the fourth dimension that simply cannot be transcribed into English.
YaK was home.
Here's Yak becoming external to a pint of Proper British Beer in the beer garden outside my old local in Cwmcych. Actually there's a tale to tell about that pint - when I first walked into the Fox after long absence, Josef the Bavarian bardude was just installing a new keg onto one of the taps - what was going to be the new regular pint of bitter. I actually had the very first pint of the stuff to be served in the Fox, and it's a lovely pint. The name of this fine brew is Merlin, a synchronicity that I found most excellent and auspicious, considering the work I am doing at the moment :-)... I celebrated the fact by becoming external to several pints of Merlin on multiple occasions. 
And here it is, my ex-local, the Fox and Hounds at Cwmcych. That blue ship parked outside is the very Peugeot that I mentioned earlier. If you're ever in the vicinity of West Wales, around Newcastle Emlyn/Cardigan way, you should definitely pop into the Fox and have a pint of Merlin, and tell Josef that I sent ya :-)
And here's a drinker's eye view of the beer garden. My gaff used to be about 150 yards up the road from the pub (and you should see what they have done to it, they've removed the paint from my telegraph pole where I had painted it to look like a giant Camel cigarette, they've got all kinds of twee hanging plants and little bird tables all over the place, and they're even planting flower beds in my garden, for flip's sake. My garden, where two of the fairest flowers ever to grace Wales used to be firmly planted - Molly and Flossie, and where my most excellent Siamese cat Denis used to eat all the twee little birdies heh heh). Anyway, it was my habit, on a fine summer afternoon (which was quite a rare occurrence in Wales you understand) to blow off coding for the day and just go and park my arse in that beer garden, and bask in the sun and gaze at the river and become slowly and comfortably unfit to drive. Oh, I do miss Wales...
And here's a fine typical view of Wales from just outside the lair of one of my mates, who happens to be a black dragon and whose couch I occupied in a horizontal unconscious manner while I was visiting, being as there are strangers living in my house now. As you can see, Wales is understandably appealing to me - the high ovine density is quite pervasive in that locality. Wherever one looks one sees the pleasing rounded greenness of the hills and the equally pleasing white fluffy roundness of a multitude of bleating ungulates. Very nice. :-)