I left England yesterday afternoon, landing in the cool air of San Francisco in the early evening, back at last with my wife, who I have missed enormously. My nose was in agony after eleven hours of allergies that had been all but invisible in London. The god of jetlags was trying to strike me a deal – sleep as soon as you get in the car, sleep as soon as you reach home, and your body clock will not be disrupted. Sod that, I replied, with purple eyes; I want a Taco Bell, and to sit in front of the TV watching the replay of Brazil vs Croatia in Mexican Spanish with a cup of tea and my wife. Now, after a night of heavy sleep and dreams of the restoration of English magic (Strange and Norrel, not Eriksson and McLaren), I am up; it is five in the morning, and still dark. You don’t get that in an English June.

It was a strange sensation being back. I felt like Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap, returning to a past life to live out old routines, old thinking. I’ve only been eight months gone, but I could ring the changes; London felt angrier, especially in the suburbs. The high density of St George flags in the windows and walls of Burnt Oak pointed to a bubbling defiance at the way things are going; far from being the reclamation from right-wing associations that the media is congratulating itself on, a simple scratch of the surface revealed that a lot of people felt divided and threatened by the surrent situation regarding the large number of immigrants that have very recently and very rapidly changed the character of many suburban areas. Poor immigrants arriving in poor areas, eyed suspiciously by poor locals who hear daily tales of muggings and knifings and free housing and exploitation of the NHS; I felt a tension brewing that I know is being echoed across the country, and the proliferation of St George’s crosses still appeared to be a declaration of some sort, ands it had nothing to do with Rooney’s foot.

I didn’t travel into Central London anywhere near as much as I had expected. The Underground’s prices had rocketed for one thing, but mainly it was because of all the people. It is simply too busy, with people charging all over the place with busy faces and busy frowns. Bus drivers were rude and unhelpful, and buses themselves were completely unequipped for temperatures above twenty degrees Celsius. New paint and advanced window technology have been employed to solve the sweaty bus problem, but surely a simple air-conditioning unit would suffice? Where’s all this extra money going, Ken? (I note this was not as much of a problem on the old but airy Routemasters) I attempted Oxford Street only once; I am the master of Oxford Street, and can zone out the people as though I’m walking through the Matrix, weaving swiftly through the crowds without being held up by a single person or being run over by a single errant taxi. My mind forges a deep connection to the mystical energy known as the OxForce. But this time my brain was telling me – why bother? You don’t need to be in crowds, Pete, you don’t like crowds. So on every subsequent trip downtown I would slip casually into the system of back alleys and short-cuts that I’ve grown to know over the years.

It was great to see my family; I managed to spend a good deal of time with them, keeping them updated of my new Californian life. My nephews and nieces are getting so much taller. I didn’t see as many of my friends as I would normally have done, but spent some quality time with the ones that mattered. I rattled through areas I’ve known my whole life, even going down to Watling Park for a quiet read by the stream where I used to play every day of my childhood. There was even a mangled shopping trolley rotting in its shallow, greasy waters. The park was full of dodgy hooded youths – but was it not ever thus? I could always map out that park in my mind as a kid, knowing which bridges had the most gluesniffers, which benches had the most winos and smackheads, which places you were most likely to be pushed into a thorny bush for having ginger hair. I drew a couple of pictures and left to watch the World Cup.

And now i’m back in Davis, and in a couple of hours will have to go back to work. I dread to see what has piled up in my absence, but I come armed with Cadbury’s Heroes, the shadow of jetlag and the symptoms of World Cup fever (‘you give me fifa, fifa all through the night’). I’ll have to dust the cobwebs and black widows from my bike, and write home with photos and wishes; but for now, I have a big pile of panini stickers, a cup of tea and some hob-nobs, and I’m going to watch some early-morning footy. And then, when the sun is fully up, it is back to reality.