I've been away from this blog a couple of months, or maybe more. Can't even remember the last time I updated it. Been away on an extended overseas trip, i.e. a sort of vacation. Well, not quite a vacation in the best sense (slouching on a beach in the sunshine, sipping something exotic through a pink straw) but rather a strange blend of family catch-ups and emotional patch-ups, with business meetings in between. No need to go into the boring details but basically I spent the first part of 2013 in Spain and Turkey.
In Spain I met my mother, who also happens to be my employer. She now lives in Australia most of the time but has some Spanish property interests that needed urgent attention, so she summoned me over from England to sort out the problem. It was all quite stressful and unsatisfying but it was good to be with Mama for a few weeks. She really is an amazing woman. She celebrates her 70th birthday next year but still looks as glamorous as she did in the 1960s.
After leaving Spain I traveled solo to Turkey to visit relatives and attend a couple of family events. I'm expected to behave myself on such occasions and not draw the wrong kind of attention. My past hangs over me like a dark cloud, threatening to engulf me in a fog of immorality. To some members of my Turkish kin I'm still a pariah, a renegade, an outsider who doesn't really belong. On this occasion I was welcomed into the family homes, but not everyone treated me in a friendly way. The fact that I'm in a homosexual relationship was mostly ignored, although some of the younger folk did ask how things were going, and I furtively showed some photos of Bobbi.
The best part of the Turkish trip was meeting up with Trish, my sister (half-sister really), whom I miss terribly since she left the UK. Unlike me, she has now been rehabilitated with The Family and all her mistakes have been forgiven or forgotten. Everyone congratulated her on how much she has changed in recent years. Swapping skin-tight jeans and clingy tops for traditional dress won't turn her into a different person, but it certainly made the trip a whole lot easier for her.
The upshot of all of this is that I'm now back at HQ, back at the computer. I suppose I could have found time to maintain this blog while I was away, but I didn't. I could have gone back on Twitter too, but didn't get around to it. So I've got plenty of catching up to do. I'll start blogging and tweeting again as soon as I get organized.
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