17 August 2006

I don’t really know what’s going on with me at the minute in pining for home so much. Is it a Seven Month Itch? The Lady of Leisure thinks I’m going through the third phase of culture shock. Nice concept! The Three Stages of Culture Shock lie somewhere between the Nine Rings of Hell and the Seven Levels of Purgatory. Probably dreamt up my an overbearing Yank with an expensive restorative twelve step programme to get you through.

Actually I think I’m onto something here –Jamaica does lie somewhere in between Hell and Purgatory if purgatory represents the seven deadly sins. I’ll mull this over for a while and elaborate and expound at length at a later date. Dante fans and scholars you will be well warned incase I offend your sensibilities.

We got word last night of an appointment at home that necessitates a family sojourn to the old sod. This was not unexpected and a vague notion of us all retuning for a short holiday has been floating around my sub-conscious for a while but the date was so far in the future and not fixed that the thought didn’t really trouble me. For it to crystallize so sharply now and at a date more than a month earlier than expected was such a joy. It felt like the lights had come on after a particularly long power cut.

So its looking like the middle of October, a mere eight weeks away. Work permitting of course and there is no guarantee that I will be able to get away. Work is a little bit all consuming, but it is the reason we came here. The good money and great experience I’m getting here come at a price, which unfortunately for the next two years means that work calls the shots. It’s all a bit American for my liking where the working day becomes the primary social outlet, and the longer hours you put in mean the more important you are. It's all a big game for small minded people. Notionally work finishes at 5 pm and between 3pm and 5pm the volume of mail noticeably decreases as people save them until 5:15, as if to say “Look how busy I am.” Its all a bit pathetic really.

Even my little tangential rant there cannot darken my mood. My head has been in the clouds since the notion of going home became a reality. Dreaming of my beautiful house with modern furniture, clean lines, natural light and stunning views over the river. (That’s not a sales pitch – just a list of the stark contrasts with my current rented abode.) Dreaming of sleeping under a duvet again… being able to have a glass of red wine that doesn’t have to be poured from the fridge…., ordering a steak in a restaurant and not even considering the possibility that it will actually be under-cooked pork when it arrives at the table….Of course it will be mid-October in the North of Ireland so the chances are the weather with be a miserable as sin. Far off fields only look green because of the amount of rain they get!