Whistlestop tours

What a busy last few weeks it has been.

After several varied attempts to deliver one of our new Billy bookshelves (I say one since we ordered three - our excesses know no bounds), I had little or no faith in IKEA successfully negotiating the delivery of the new sofa. And yet, somehow they did - even managing to get here during the specified delivery window. Bizarre. Anyway, new sofa all sorted. Now my Sauron-like eye turns to other things, viz. a new dining table. (Is this when you know you're old? When your wishlist veers away from shoes, entertainment and frivolity to furniture and homewares?) Gareth thinks I'm kidding when I speak of more new furniture - he little knows the true horrors that lurk within my catalogue-perusing soul.

The last week or so saw me fleeing the English countryside for warmer climes as I paid a brief but fruitful visit to the motherland and the sandlands. Three days in Chennai were filled with watching baby cousin Diya dancing like Flag Hippo, a dramatic bit of food poisoning, picking out lighting fixtures and attending a religious ceremony at my parents' new flat which involved circling around an indoor fire comprising of twigs and dried cow dung. Yes, an indoor fire.

The sandlands were simultaneously just as I left them and completely different than I remember. As always the roads have changed, there are innumerable new buildings and the new dedicated Emirates terminal has opened at the airport - all very big and shiny and new (natch) but with just a touch too much of the great hall with all the columns under the mountains of Moria in LOTR for my taste. Still, hurrah for getting hair and nails done, catching up with good friends and, of course, shawarmas.

Must make special mention here of the girl behind the counter at McDonalds in Jumeirah who spent longer telling me that getting a cheeseburger with no pickles would take more time than a regular one that was already made than she did actually considering that she was wasting more time having the conversation than just placing my order and getting on with it. When I ask for better customer service, this is not what I mean.

Still, visits to Dubai always serve to highlight to me just how right I was to move away when I did. What seemed like a bit of an irrational and not fully-formed plan at the time has worked out for the best in so many ways - stressful though it has been at times - and I am grateful for having had whatever sense I did that made me make the leap into the unknown. While the city remains a nice place to pop by every so often, it feels less like 'home' every time - even less likely to feel so once the few remaining people I know there move away, as they inevitably all will. Cue a long and varied debate on the nature of growing up as an expat and the sense of inherent homelessness it engenders.

Anyhoo, back in sunny England now, with the wedding approaching ever closer and a mild sense of panic setting in that I have to turn 29 before then.