MARCH 30

FOR some reason I forgot to mention the dinner we had to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday on March 22. Why I didn't put this up at the time is beyond me as his birthday and my parents' 45th wedding anniversary the day after were the reasons we came out in March. I can only surmise that, as the esteemed Dr Flynn once put it, I am a colossal spacker. Sorry, mum and dad.

ANYWAY, we're back in California after a fairly easy trip. Our taxi turned up on time, we said our goodbyes to mum and dad and headed off down the A40 to London, stopping only to take the above photo of the sunrise over the M4.

After checking our bags we were left with almost three hours to kill in the delightful surroundings of Terminal 3. On the upside I managed to find the latest Arkady Renko novel in WHSmith which made my day. We hiked the six or so miles to our gate and sat waiting to be called.

We got bulkhead seats so here's the view I had for the best part of 11½ hours. Thankfully I slept for the best part of six of them and two Tom Sharpe novels kept me going for the other 5½ (The Wilt Alternative and Blott on the Landscape, if you're interested.) Arriving back in California we were met by Ev's mum who drove us back to the flat where me and Ev crashed out. On the upside I don't have to be in work til 2pm tomorrow, but on the downside I have to be in work tomorrow. Oh well.

And I want to say thanks to everyone who took the time to make our stay enjoyable. Me and Ev appreciate it.

MARCH 28

YESTERDAY we went to Hay on Wye with Blunty and his family. As well as being set in a beautiful area, Hay is also famous for being basically nothing but bookshops. I have a list of books I want to get and besides, what's better than visiting a town full of second-hand bookshops?

As both of you can probably imagine, I was in my element.

I managed to find nearly all the books on my list and we had a good look around the town. Then on the way back we passed this:

Obviously we had to stop and take some photos:

TODAY is our last day at home. A taxi is coming at 4am tomorrow to pick us up as our flight leaves at 10.15am, and thankfully we're not going from Terminal 5. We've had a great time here and are now very much not looking forward to our 11½ hour flight back to LA. At least this year we'll have a day off before we have to go back to work.

MARCH 26

WHILE waiting for Blunty to turn up this morning I went out in the parents' garden with my macro lens and shot some random photos.

MARCH 25

TODAY Flynn took us on a hike over part of the Malvern Hills. Of course we didn't actually know what a hike over the Malverns consisted of, but I did take the precaution of shelling out £15 on some cheapo walking boots as even I know my knackered Converse All-Stars are no good for hill climbing. As is mandatory on such trips I took my camera, sans battery grip as I'm sick of lugging the extra weight around.

Here we go. This doesn't look too bad and so far my new boots are doing a great job.

We're not even a quarter of the way up and already the views are breathtaking.

This is taken looking south. The flat bit on top of the hill is an Iron Age hill fort known as British Camp.

Looking back down the path we'd come up I was pleasantly surprised to find the going wasn't as hard as I thought. Then I turned around to look at the next section of the path.

Oh shit.

But the views are stunning, absolutely stunning. This is looking west into Worcestershire, where the sauce comes from.

This is looking east into Herefordshire, where the cider comes from, and beyond into Wales, where the Grand Slam champions come from. I have no idea why there are two fires below us.

Looking back to the south with Gloucestershire in the distance. After much debate over whether to press on or go back - with Flynn on the pressing side and me, Ev and Becky on the going side - we headed back to the car down the path to the right of the main one in the above pic. Bear in mind that along with the stunning views we also had to contend with a wind that could variously be described as "cold", "bracing" and "downright bastard freezing". In the evening we went to a Chinese place in Gloucester where we stuffed ourselves stupid.

MARCH 24

AS IT'S a four-day weekend over here (which, along with how cold March is, is something I forgot about) pretty much everything is shut. We were stuck for something to do until mum thought about The Weir near Hereford. It's a garden designed and landscaped in the 1920s which has beautiful views over the River Wye all the way into Wales.

AT LEAST my fears about smoking haven't been realised. It was odd coming out of the Chinese last week and not sparking up and my alcohol consumption has plummeted to two (two!!) pints as the more drunk I get, the more I smoked. (Beyond a certain point of rat-arsedness I'd also start ripping the filters off, but that's another story). On the other hand I know that a) if I had one ciggie I'd be back on them, and 2) Flynn and Ev would kick the shit out of me.

AS FAR as books go I've done OK so far this trip. I have a list of about 25 I want to get while I'm here. Most are books I can get second hand on Amazon.co.uk for a quid, but as most second-hand booksellers on Amazon seem to think a 150-page paperback costs £8 to send to America (hint: it doesn't) the total price is ridiculous. A case in point - I want to complete my collection of Spike Milligan's war diaries, three of which I took to the US when I moved there. The other four I found on Amazon for a total price of £4.25 plus TWENTY-SIX QUID postage. For the Yank(s) reading this that's about $50. Happily I just bought them all second-hand at the Saturday market for the princely sum of eight pounds so up yours, Amazon.

Talking about second-hand books, I went into a used bookstore here in Ross to which I'd donated a load of books before I emigrated. Looking over the shelves I spotted at least five novels that used to be mine. It was an odd feeling seeing them again. I might even buy them back.

Anyway, as well as the Milligan books I've also managed to find Lights Out For The Territory, a collection of walks around London, and The Subterranean Railway about the creation of the London Underground which I'm reading at the mo. I'm still after a couple of Ian Banks and a load of Tom Sharpe novels and there's a couple of other books about London that I fancy but we'll have to see what happens with those.

MARCH 23

ON FRIDAY me, Ev, Flynn and Becky went to Eastnor Castle near Ledbury for a look around. Eastnor's not actually a real a castle, it's a manor house built to look like a castle. As usual you can't take photos inside so here's some of the grounds:

AND here's this year's obligatory photo of a Smart Car:

MARCH 22

HERE'S the second day of the London visit, so for the next few minutes pretend it's Wednesday:

WE met Jules outside St Paul's Cathedral at ten in the morning and spent an hour catching up on old times and yakking about life in California and London. After he'd shot off to work we met up with my cousin and set off for a walk down Fleet Street, which was the home of printing in Britain from the 1500s and until the 1980s.

This is Ludgate Circus. The silver car in the centre of the photo is coming out of Fleet Street.

Looking back up the street gives an idea of how busy it is.

This is the Temple Bar marking the western edge of the City of London. We're now standing in the City of Westminster looking back into the City of London. We passed the Inns of Court and the Royal Courts of Justice and kept going towards Charing Cross Road tube station to go to Warren Street.

Our basic plan was to follow a walk around the Bloomsbury area that I'd found online last year. We were going to do it on our 2007 visit but ended up doing another walk my cousin planned.

The only trouble was the freezing cold - temperatures fell to about 43 degrees by the afternoon and combined with a biting wind to leave us just wanting to get indoors. So we headed to the British Museum.

After an hour or so looking at the exhibits in the Egyptian section we called it a day and headed back to Southgate.

We took advantage of the "buy one pizza, get another for a quid" offer at Domino's and packed for our trip back to Ross on Thursday.

MARCH 21

I'M UP and out of bed early in order to get the London trip on here before we clear off to Cardiff Castle Eastnor Castle with Flynn and Becky later this afternoon. So sit back, put your feet up and pretend it's Tuesday afternoon for a bit.

Here's the view out of a Piccadilly Line tube on the platform at Arnos Grove. After a train journey from Gloucester which we managed to get on 30 seconds before it departed, we arrived at my aunt's on Monday evening with plans to go to Abney Park Cemetery the next morning. But for various reasons those plans were chucked out the window so on Tuesday we decided on Westminster Abbey, the London Dungeon and the Imperial War Museum.

One of the problems with Westminster Abbey is that you can't take pictures inside it. One of the other problems is that it now costs £10 to get in, which is pretty bad considering you're being charged to go into a church.

But it is a stunning building that contains more history per square foot than most other places in the UK. It has 17 monarchs buried in it going back to Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) along with a host of statesmen, scientists, politicians and poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer.

The other thing about the Abbey - and London in general - is just because it's a freezing March day doesn't mean the tourists are staying home. The place was pretty packed but there is a one-way system around the interior which made things a bit easier, and I did get to see Elizabeth I's tomb.

From the Abbey we headed across the river to the London Aquarium to get something to eat in the McDonalds there. Although McD's is the last place I usually want to eat, by this point it was becoming increasingly clear that my thin jacket and baseball cap weren't doing a lot to protect me from the 46-degree temperature and the wind coming off the river so I just wanted to get inside. After the "food" Ev and my cousin (who were wearing more suitable clothes) proceeded to take the piss by having a Mr Whippy ice-cream on Westminster Bridge while I wondered if my fingers would need to be amputated.

After they'd finished their ice-creams we headed back across the river to Westminster tube station and took the Jubilee Line south to Southwark to get to the Dungeon.

The London Dungeon is another place you can't take photos in so I'll just have to describe it from memory. I hadn't been there before so I didn't really know what to expect. First off you pay to get in (another 20 quid each, but luckily we'd found two-for-one coupons at the train station). Then you stand around for 15 minutes waiting for enough people to turn up so the "tour" can begin. Then some actors in period dress explain various gory bits of London's history, such as the Black Death or Jack the Ripper, as you walk around the exhibits. One thing I couldn't understand was why the Great Fire of London was included given it only killed about 12 people. There's a water ride that takes you to a reproduction of Traitor's Gate and some animatronic figures jump out at you every now and then. Ev loved it, but even though it had its moments I thought it was pretty average and massively overpriced.

From the Dungeon we got back on the Tube and set off for Lambeth and the Imperial War Museum, passing the plaque above on the way. I had been to the museum years ago but couldn't really remember much about it.

The museum does have a pretty impressive entrance.

The back end of the guns, which are 15-inch battleship guns from HMS Ramillies (left) and HMS Resolution. Photography is allowed inside so I took some pics, although by the time we got there we only had an hour before the place closed.

This is a section of the Berlin Wall. From the museum we went back to the tube at Lambeth North, which by now was starting to fill up with rush-hour commuters:

From there we changed to the Northern Line and got off at Tottenham Court Road to begin a walk down Oxford Street. Although it was dark and freezing cold there were still plenty of people about.

About halfway down Oxford Street we turned left into Regent Street (which is very, very posh) and on to Piccadilly Circus.

By this point it was 12 hours after we'd set off. We were all cold and tired so we decided to call it a day and head back to the wilds of Enfield.

After getting off the Tube, my aunt picked us up by the architectural masterpiece that is Southgate Leisure Centre. Back at her place Ev and I tried to discover where all our money had gone. With my cousin's help we worked out that the day cost us £144 - about $280.

MARCH 20

I WAS going to to a big update about our trip to London but unfortunately I ended up going to the pub and then the Chinese so I'm too stuffed to think straight. I realise this will come as a crushing blow to at least one person out there, but I shall endeavour to do something tomorrow morning before we head out.

MARCH 16 - I WAS THERE II: THE DAY AFTER

I'VE been trying to think of words that express what it was like to watch Wales win the Grand Slam in Cardiff last night. All the usual ones spring to mind - fantastic, great, wonderful, bloody marvelous, holy shit, etc - but they just don't seem adequate. I don't think there really are any words to describe it; you just have to be Welsh.

HERE are some random photos from my walk on Saturday morning:

MARCH 15 - I WAS THERE

I REALLY really wanted to do an update about Wales winning the Grand Slam and what it was like to be there, but as I've now been up for 19 hours I think it would be best if I went to bed. I'll get some photos and words online tomorrow (honest) along with some pics I took when I went for a walk at 7am.

MARCH 15 - THE EARLY EDITION

AFTER a refreshing sleep I'm wide awake and raring to go. Trouble is it's 5.09am. Everyone else is asleep and sunrise isn't due for another 90 minutes, meaning I can't even go for a walk and take some photos like I did when this happened a couple of years ago.

And it's not like I just got up - I've been awake and out of bed since 3.06am. The only reason I got up then was 'cos a) I woke up and b) I could hear a bird singing outside and thought the sun was coming up and that I'd go for a walk and take some photos. Anyway, for want of something better to do I checked Planet Mut's stats and found this:

Oh dear. Nicking my photos only means one thing:

Sorting that out killed 20 minutes.

I FINISHED reading The Dante Club on the plane over. It's a cracking thriller set in 1865 Boston and concerns a series of murders committed in the style of some of the punishments in Dante's Inferno. A group of real-life scholars and poets who are translating the Inferno into English are dragged into the investigation and have to find the killer before they fall under suspicion.

Luckily I took more than one book with me on the flight. For the past two years I've taken Sara Wheeler's biography Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard as it's by far one of my favourite books. It was one of those books that, upon seeing in Barnes & Noble, I just bought without a second thought as I knew I'd love it.

AT 25, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was one of the youngest members of Robert Scott's 1910 expedition to the South Pole. Cherry was initially rejected but secured a second interview by offering to donate £1,000, a huge sum in those days. Rejected again he told Scott he would like the donation to stand and Scott, struck by this gesture and after hearing good things about Cherry from another expedition member, accepted him for the trip south.

Cherry was appointed to the post of assistant zoologist. It was in this role that he undertook what came to be known as The Winter Journey - a five-week, 120-mile round trip in the middle of the Antarctic winter from the base at Cape Evans to Cape Crozier to find and bring back some unhatched Emperor Penguin eggs. Travelling with two other companions, Bill Wilson and Birdie Bowers, the trio man-hauled (i.e. dragged) their sledges in temperatures ranging from -40F to -70F across miles of broken ice and waist-deep snow. At one point Cherry's teeth shattered in the cold. They got their eggs (almost freezing to death when their tent was blown away during a blizzard) and returned to base camp. One of the scientists described them as looking like creatures from another planet when they staggered into the main accommodation hut. "This journey had beggared our language," Cherry wrote years later. "No words could describe its horror."

In 1912 he and a companion travelled to One Ton Depot, the last major store of food and fuel which had been made earlier to assist the Polar Party on their trip back from the pole. By this point it was becoming obvious to the other team members that the Polar Party - Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Captain Oates (of "I may be some time" fame) and Edgar Evans - had died, either of frostbite or from falling into a crevasse. Cherry resupplied the depot and decided to wait in case the Polar Party showed up. On March 10, with his companion delirious with some illness, he headed back to Cape Evans. On March 30, just 11 miles from One Ton Depot, and trapped in their tent by a blizzard, Scott, Bowers and Wilson died from starvation (Evans had died in February and Oates on March 17).

A year later Cherry was part of a team that discovered the tent with the bodies. He was devastated at the loss of his friends and developed severe clinical depression after returning from Antarctica. His life was forever changed by his experiences there and he began to believe that, had he gone on further from One Ton Depot, he could have saved Scott, Wilson and Bowers. He became friends with George Bernard Shaw who persuaded Cherry to write down his experiences on the expedition as a form of self-help. From this grew Cherry's book The Worst Journey In The World, widely regarded as one of the best books on exploration ever written and a book I've read four times and never tire of.

Like I said, Cherry is easily one of my favourite books and one I read at least once a year. He was very much a product of his time - a member of the landed Edwardian gentry, brought up on a sprawling estate in Hertfordshire, educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, and generally living the life of the idle rich. The expedition to Antarctica seemed to give him an aim in life and he took full advantage of the opportunities it gave him. He found a camaraderie there that he never found again, not even on the battlefields of World War I. But the expedition's tragic ending was to haunt him for the rest of his years and he could never fit into the post-war era, a time of massive change when the social order that underpinned everything he believed in was beginning to crack.

A man who'd been through hell on the ice, sometimes you get the impression Cherry wished he'd died in that tent (he was actually very close to being chosen for the Polar Party but his appalling eyesight killed his chances). Wheeler obviously loves her subject and holds him dear, and this helps rather than hinders her biography. You really begin to feel for this quiet, shy young man who, if he'd decided to keep his money, would never have had his life and health shattered on the Antarctic ice.

In his later years Cherry took to going on long Mediterranean cruises to get away from the pressures of running his many estates and business concerns (all of which he sold off as the years went on). On one of these cruises he met Angela Turner, who was on holiday with her parents. Although 30 years her senior they struck up a conversation, danced, went on excursions together and began to fall in love, eventually marrying. During their courtship Cherry presented her with a small piece of quartz. Years later Angela learned that penguins present possible mates with pebbles as part of their courting rituals. It's a touching scene and one that goes a long way to explaining why I like Cherry the person and Cherry the book so much.

MARCH 14 - HOME AT LAST

I'M TYPING this in my dad's study (which is just a posh name for "the spare downstairs room with the PC in it") and I am absolutely knackered. For once I couldn't get to sleep on the flight and stayed awake for all nine hours and 38 minutes of it. Ev, on the other hand, managed to get a few hours' sleep but has already gone to bed (it's 7.50pm here - midday in California).

The trip was pretty good. My sister phoned us while we were in LAX asking if we'd get her some ciggies and Jack Daniels. After many back-and-forths along the lines of "Christ, couldn't you have asked us a couple of days ago?" and "It's only some drink and fags and I'd do it for you even though you don't drink and gave up smoking nine months ago" we picked up three litres of JD for $75 and 400 Lambert & Butler for $70. So that's 70 quid she owes me, but as she's my sister we'll call it eighty.

We got bulkhead seats on the plane. Ev asked about upgrading to business but it would have been $1200 for the pair of us just for one way, so surprisingly we decided to give it a pass. After more hanging around we boarded the plane and took off for nine hours of boredom. As usual the movies were crap so I set my watch to UK time and just got on with reading The Dante Club.

We landed 30 minutes early but as the gate wasn't clear we spent 40 minutes sitting on the tarmac waiting. After getting through immigration and claiming our baggage (easy enough to spot on the carousel as all our cases are plastered in cat hairs) we met mum, dad and Lou, got to the car and headed home. As I have now been up for about 26 hours and we need to be up in the morning to get to Cardiff for the big Grand Slam game, I'm off to bed. But I'll update this tomorrow with pics of the match. Honest.

MARCH 12

THE cases are packed and our passports, check-in paperwork and my green card are at hand. The shuttle is coming to pick us up at 1.30pm Thursday to take us to LAX. So barring any disasters about 26 hours from now we'll be touching down at Heathrow.

But there is the weather to deal with. Every other time we've flown to the UK it's been May or June but this time we'll be getting there in the midst of some of the worst winter storms in years. According to the Beeb the forecast for the next few days could best be described as "pissing down with a chance of sun on Monday". Temperatures aren't predicted to rise above 53 degrees (here in California it's been in the low 80s for the past few days) so we've had to dig out the warm clothes and are hoping we'll get a few rain-free days.

ONE disaster did come to light today - the trailer for the sequel to the Lost Boys. Yes, 21 years after the original 80s cheesefest (which, I have to admit, I love) a sequel is coming - and what's more, it's got both Coreys in it reprising their roles as the Frog Brothers! Holy shit! It's almost as if some movie executive took my fond memories of the original and shoved them up his arse before casually tossing them away to be eaten by mangy dogs! Anyway, here's a link to Corey Feldman talking about the new movie. I apologise for linking to MTV.com but apparently it's some kind of "exclusive". Quite how many of MTV's 12-year-old viewers have heard of a) the original movie, b) Corey Haim, c) Corey Feldman or d) all of the above is beyond me, but I suppose that's what you get in a world where people who use phrases like "cross-branding" are allowed to roam free instead of being tied to a chair and liberally doused with petrol while Red Bull-addled chimps throw lit matches at them.

MARCH 8: IRELAND 12, WALES 16

GETTING a phone call from my sister at 7am would usually lead to a panic attack on my part or a bollocking for her, but this morning she called to tell me that we beat Ireland 16-12 to win the Triple Crown. So the game next Saturday against France - which we're going to - is all that's standing between us and the Grand Slam. Hopefully we'll take out the Frogs, but even if we don't it looks like we'll still win the Six Nations championship.

MARCH 5

AS THE flight home approaches (only a week to go now) the accumulation of electronic gadgets designed to make my life easier and my bank balance smaller continues with the purchase of one of these. It's a small hard drive that's slightly bigger than my iPod, has a capacity of 160Gb and, I hear you ask, how can it make my life easier?

I have a tendency to take shedloads of photos when I'm visiting home. In 2005 I took 750; in 2006 that rose to 1,900; last year I took 3,040. The worst thing about having so many pics is burning them onto CDs at the end of the trip. My dad's PC, which is four years old, takes about 30 minutes to burn a CD. Last year I came home with 25 CDs full of pics which - if my superb skill at maths is right (I failed GCSE maths four times) - works out at five years spent copying photos onto compact discs. Of course lots of these pictures are either doubles or just crap so I could (and should) delete them before I burn them, but that would take up valuable time I could spend taking photos.

Hence the purchase of the hard disk. In theory, I should be able to plug it into my dad's PC's USB port and copy photos to it straight off the CompactFlash card. This will also mean I can shoot in RAW mode and not have to worry about only being able to fit 80 photos onto a CD. Will it work? Only time will tell, but if it buggers up you'll be reading about it here.

EMRIC is coming along fine after his surgery and proved he's pretty much back to normal by taking a slash in the bathroom sink earlier this evening. Sometimes I look at Emric and see a scruffy orange cat. Other times I look at him and just want to pick up the nearest chainsaw.

MARCH 3

EV DROPPED Emric off at the vet's this morning and unfortunately remembered to pick him up this afternoon. He's had his stitches and is now in a semi-comatose state on my side of the bed, leaving me to wonder if I'm going to have to sleep on the sofa tonight.

The one bright side to all this is that the surgery "only" cost $475 instead of the $500 we were quoted. Mind you, I'd have done it for $50 as long as Ev bought the staples.

MARCH 2

A COUPLE of days ago Ev noticed Emric had a scab on his back. We thought about taking him to the vet but as it didn't appear to be bothering him and looked like it was healing fine, we decided to leave it. Today we noticed that Emric had somehow managed to rip the scab off and was now the proud owner of a gaping wound about half and inch across. So Ev, being the brave soul she is, decided to take him to the vet.

See, the problem with taking Emric to the vet is that you have to put him in the cat carrier, and Emric doesn't want to get in the cat carrier. And once he's in he yowls. And yowls. And yowls. This is the biggest factor in my decision to stay home and watch Porridge on DVD instead of going. In fact, it's the only factor. Once Ev got to the vet's surgery in Garden Grove she called me to let me know that Emric's yowling had got so bad that she'd let him out of the cat carrier, only for him to leap all over the car and open one of the windows by standing on the button. Unfortunately Luckily he didn't get out and Ev closed the window, pulled off the freeway and got him back in the cat carrier.

So Emric got to see the vet and the practical upshot is that he needs stitches, which will cost about $500. Not only is this 10 times what he cost, it's also 500 times as expensive as "losing" him would be. But no, Ev won't let me release Emric into the wild (or off the pier) so we're lumbered and the little orange sod has been saved again.

MARCH 1

STONE me... today I've been in the States for four years.