I woke up with the tune from "Jerusalem", the great english hymn, playing in my head. I know that sounds almost too story-like to be true ... but somehow my subconscious mind had recalled that tune from its archives and set it playing in my head. When I was a kid, say seven or eight years old, I loved the music of the hymns we'd sing every day in school assembly. Particularly "Jerusalem": whenever that enormous crash of the opening chord of the introduction would reverberate through the assembly hall, a shiver would go down my back, and I'd sing the grand, old-fashioned words with gusto.

I shall not cease from mortal strife
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

Even now, singing the words to myself, I get tears in my eyes - a reverberation through twenty-five years of memories. The music moved me enough to inspire me to take piano lessons so that I could play those crashing chords myself - though it took me three years before I'd learnt enough to play "Jerusalem".

This morning, though, England's hills were not green and pleasant - closer to the "dark satanic mills" from the same hymn. It was foggy in London Town, and looking out the window at seven this morning, everything was grey.

The hymn kept me company as I panted round and round Russel Square for twenty five minutes, and later worked out in my hotel room. By the time I'd showered, and dressed, the fog still hadn't lifted, despite the weather forecast which claimed today would be very warm. I shouldered my backpack, and headed off, walking the few blocks to King's Cross Station to catch the train to St. Albans.

Half an hour later, I was picked up outside of St. Albans train station by my sister Sally. She hadn't changed in the least - still the same chipper hyperchondriac with the ever-so-slightly off-kilter social skills and the suspect genteel accent. I've never been close to Sally. I even hated her for most of my childhood; she was truly a brat, back then - selfish, greedy, bad-tempered, self-centered, a cry-baby with zero self-esteem. She's matured vastly since then, somehow building herself up to be a kinder, more sensible person - still with many flaws, but she's proven to be the one of the four of us to buckle down to caring after our parents. Still - we have less than nothing in common, and I just find that I have almost nothing to say to her, beyond civilities, and discussion of Mam and Dad.(2008 note to Sally in case she ever reads this - remember this was written eight years ago. Our relationship is much improved now.)

We soon pulled up outside a nondescript brick semi-detached bungalow on the outskirts of town - one like hundreds of thousands of council-houses (cheap, small homes built after the war rented out by city govenments) all over the country. I was suddenly minded of the visits I used to make to my Grandma when I was young.

My Mam and Dad came out to greet us, and they seemed less changed than I imagined they would after five years - my Mam seemed no more wrinkled, and my Dad still had the same amount of hair. He'd slimmed down amazingly, and now looked like the spry, still-handsome man of 75 that he is. I'd been warned by both my sisters that Mam's memory was disconcertingly bad, so bad that it was possible she might even forget who I was. But today, she was (mostly) alert, although there was a later comedy of errors when she would repeatedly go into the kitchen to pick up her cup of coffee only to get there and forget what she went for. But I do things like that too, so no big deal :)

When Sally had gone back to work, I sat there in the tiny house, surrounded by much of the same furniture I grew up with (I remember lying on that same carpet tracing the shapes of the patterns with my little fingers), looking at the profiles of my parents, not really knowing who they were anymore. But familiarity came as we chatted, and before long, our way of bantering grew on us all and it was like I'd only just been away a few months.

It was truly touching to see how Dad cares for and protects Mam. You could see the love in him, even after almost forty years of marriage. Dad showed me the family-tree album of memories, documents and photos he'd compiled. Dad is a strange bird; he's incapable of verbalising his affections, yet from time to time he reaches deep inside and lets something out non-verbally. In the album, he'd included his first ever love-letter to my Mam. It was undated, but seemed to have been written before they married. It was very touching. I'd found myself wondering how Dad had fallen for such a sheltered, innocent woman of such low self-regard as Mam, and there it was in the letter. He loved her simply because the one shining quality she had despite everything was her ability to love and care for others. She was, and still is, a woman incapable of a selfish act.

Two parents so full of love and care for their children and each other. Yet how did they produce children like me and my brother Neil who've distanced ourselves so much? I talked that over a little in the afternoon with my other sister Kirstie, whom I met down-town while a nurse was visiting Mam.

Having a drink with Kirstie in one of the oldest pubs in England (Cromwell stabled his horses here once!)

Kirstie and I instantly hit it off again, as I knew we would. We always got on well, and she's exactly the same funny, kind, intelligent girl she's always been. We talked about why the family isn't close. She agreed with me that part of it could be because my parents aren't capable of intimacy with anyone but each other. Neither of them have any close friends, and the only intimate conversations that have taken place with any of us over the last fifteen years were probably the few that ocurred when I came out to them shortly after I went to Philadelphia to do my graduate degree. Like parents like children: we're all introverts who prefer the company of a few close friends, and, for myself, I'm as chary about expressing emotions in person as my Dad is.

Later on, Kirstie and I met up with Mam, Dad and Sally, and we strolled through St. Alban's abbey, and the surrounding parkland, and then wandered through the old streets behind the abbey. The weather was perfect - grey and luke warm, and it was fun to be with my family. We were all of us playful - I pretended to be a paparrazi, taking lots of photos, while my sisters walked arm-in-arm ahead of Mam and Dad, hand-in hand as always.

Almost the whole family together finally - we're just missing my brother Neil, who's living in France.

The clean, unadorned lines inside St. Albans Abbey

The daisies and the Abbey

Strolling through the old village streets behind the Abbey

It had been a lovely day, and as I left for London, I was looking forward to spending Sunday with Mam and Dad, who are coming up here to London for the day.