I'm supposed to be on holiday in Sweden. Unfortunately my dear old friend Christian changed his summer plans without mentioning anything until it was too late to change my leave dates, and now I can't get free for his revised invitation.

So rather than visiting Chris and Ulla-Karin and getting to meet their baby daughter Signe, this reality sees me in an offensively muggy, secluded Welsh village, where hostilities between maternal parent and youngest sibling are reaching something of a climax, and access to blogging interface is limited to the hours when the folks aren't nurturing their embryonic business, thus tying up computers and phone lines.

During a brief pause in last night's row between Mum and Josh (in which I caught some shrapnel for failing to pronounce properly the Ts in 'spaghetti') I wondered aloud why I come here so often. It was a joke. Of course, later on, when Mum used the comment as evidence that all her children hated if not her, then certainly the home she'd created in Wales, I had to offer reassurance that the comment had been flippant, and certainly hadn't been intended to be taken seriously.

Regrettably, Mum blames herself for being the driving force behind the move from Halifax to Llancarfan, for tearing Josh away from his roots (consequently sparking his resentment of her), and for depriving me and Thomsk of a long-familiar habitat we knew as home. She shouldn't. Home is where the family is, not what they live in. The house they left, Ellen Royd, was a vessel, a good ship, but all journeys must end somewhere.

And Mum and Josh will be fine. He's still growing, still trying to find himself. One's not meant to appreciate one's family at the age of 18, and us Fell boys have always made a point of doing things late. So despite the continuing friction, I'm not worried.

Anyway, truthfully, there's no mystery in why I come back at all...

The bottle of gin and large jar of Spanish eucalyptus honey out of the deal this time, mean it's all good. :)