This, here, or about parallel lives of expats.

Well, we are back. From what originally seemed like a very long summer break in the UK.

I have to say we had a fantastic holiday. Truly great. And, somehow, surreal.

This is, I guess, what happens to expats when they go home for a few weeks. It is not simply a holiday but a quick step into a parallel universe, this parallel life of yours, which you left behind a while ago, but never completely, not really. It is like playing a yearly role in a reality TV show, with the same characters and at the same set. And what lovely characters, what beautiful set.

It is difficult to explain, almost impossible to digest yourself, just how surreal it feels. Is this, here home? Or is it back there? Is this the real life? Here, where your job and things are, and the routine is established after a few years? Or is it back there, where you have not been for a whole year and yet, everything seems comfortingly unchanged, the same faces in the same shops, the same music on your favourite radio channel, and the same taste of Pimm's and Lemonade in the local pub, just like you remembered it.

You buy a ticket and get ready and then, just like in the scene of His Dark Materials, you cut a small hole in the air around you and suddenly, you are somewhere utterly different from your current home, only it is also your home and you soak in every familiar detail.

And then, there are those familiar faces. Friends who, after not having seen you for a whole year accept you right back in, and you are sitting there amongst them, like it is totally the norm for you to be there, and it feels like this, here, is your real life...but then, of course it is! And it feels like you have got forever yet- weeks!- but, suddenly you are packing again and you step back into that hole in the air and you are in your other, parallel life, leaving everything over there behind once again. And you sit in your home- your current home, with your current things around you, and you look at those pictures on Facebook and you can't help but think-Hold on a minute?! Did that actually happen? Recently? Only like, a week ago? You try and remember what it felt like to be back, the smile on your child's face when she saw her best friends, the amazing taste of food and the sound of the rain at night. But it takes just a few flying hours for it all to disappear and get shelved, once again, somewhere in your memory, as you quickly get settled into your This, Here life again. Until next summer then, my Over There parallel life. See you then, and please, please, please! Just try and keep everything unchanged for me once again.