Brett, on the way to Heathrow on Thursday.

Ever since leaving Heathrow Airport on Thursday, my emotions have been up and down like a ritalin-deprived yoyo (not that many yoyos consume ritalin). On the plain, I started to write the following journal entry:

4.20 P.M. London time, on board American Airlines flight to New York

Traveling home, I'm infuriated by the in-flight movies. There's only one that I'm at all interested in seeing, "15 Minutes" with De Niro, Edward Burns and that hideous British actor with the shaved head. The movie breaks down half-way through. Ever helpful, the flight-attendant gets the movie running again ... but the movie restarts ... at the beginning once more! I suffer through an hour of "Driven" on one of the other channels, and then rejoin my movie at the point it first broke down. It breaks down again. And for this - an upgrade to Business Class - I surrendered 50,000 frequent-flier miles?

Feeling rather put out, like a spoilt child who's been grounded, I try to read for a while. It's a wonderful biography of John Gielgud, which I've been reading ever since I borrowed my brother's copy of it just before we went to Paris (one of the few things Neil and I have in common is an enthusiasm for the same books). But tiredness invades, and I slide back in my comfortable seat for a while. Every time I'm on the point of falling asleep, I feel a momentary panic that I'm not going to be able to breathe. So I give that up too, and turn to writing.

This is definitely the part of travel I hate. The boredom, constraint and stress that can interrupt travel bring out the worst in me, as Brett may have discovered in our last two days in London ...

But, once I was home, in the familiar comfort of my clean, tidy apartment, looking out at the fog invading the Bay, I realized that I didn't want to publish what I'd written (the original version went on to draw some rather negative conclusions about myself). I'm always reluctant to post my more gloomy pieces. But this time it was also the recognition that what I'd written wasn't a fair assessment of my state of mind. Life always looks different from the perspective of 37,000 feet in the air.

Once back on the ground (or at least, back on the 22nd floor of my apartment building), despite feeling jet-lagged, I started to feel a sense of excitement about all the little ideas and plans that had come to me during my trip. I always come back with a wild jumble of ideas. The problem is, how to find the time to attack them. This time it's going to be even harder, since I'm starting a fairly intensive course of classes at City College; a course of study in Film, which could last at least two years. I don't know how I'm even going to fit in regular work on the website!

Still, even though I've been feeling up-beat, there have been a couple of ... well ... is it too melodramatic to call them daggers in the side? The first came when I got home and checked my email. There was a rather nasty, petulant email from my brother Neil, all because I apparently forgot to reconnect his answering machine when I stopped by there on Wednesday to upload my journal. The poor thing missed twenty-four hours of potential phone messages. I couldn't believe that this was how he wanted our final contact to be.

The other blow came when I started to go through my three-hundred and eighty three email messages at work. Apparently, there'd been a slight reorganization of Western Region consultants while I was gone, and local team-leads had been appointed in each of the three major offices. I felt like I had the biggest claim for such a position in San Francisco; after all, I was the first consultant there, I have lots of management experience, there is nobody more senior than me in my office, and I'd already told my boss that I was interested in moving in that direction. Instead, though, the position has been given to a guy who just transferred recently from our UK office. It wasn't only that this other guy had been given the position I felt I merited, but also that my boss, who's otherwise a guy I like and respect, hadn't even seen fit to recognize that I'd be pissed off and write me a personal note explaining his decision. I was mad as hell, but I tamed my initial instincts and just wrote an inquiring email to my boss. We're going to chat on Monday, but my strong feeling is that this is the final email - I mean, "nail" - in the coffin. Gonna redouble my job-search starting Monday!

I guess Brett and I can't get enough of each other, since we're going to go see "Planet of the Apes" tonight. :)

What else? Oh, I got home Thursday and realized, with a panic, that I had nothing new to read. For a confirmed bed-time reader, that's a fairly horrifying situation to be in, so I scanned my bookshelves for something I hadn't read in a long, long time, and I came up with "Northanger Abbey", by Jane Austen. The main reason I mention this is that I thought it hilarious how strongly the lives of young society girls in her day parallel those of young, urban gay men today. So here, then is my rewriting of a scene (end of chapter 2, beginning of chapter 3):

The crowd began to disperse when the last drink orders were given - enough to leave space for the remainder to walk about in some comfort; and now was the time for a stud, who had not yet played a very distinguished part in the events of the evening, to be noticed and admired. Every five minutes, by removing some of the crowd, gave greater openings for his good looks. He was now seen by many young men who had not seen him before. No one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding him, no whisper of eager enquiry ran round the dance-floor, nor was he once called a cutie by anybody. Yet our stud looked hot tonight...

He was looked at, however, and with some admiration; for in his own hearing, two guys pronounced him to be good-looking. Such words had their due effect; he immediately thought the evening pleasanter than he had found it before - his humble vanity was contented ... and went out to his car perfectly satisfied with his share of public attention.

Every morning of his vacation now brought its regular duties - shops were to be visited; some new bar to be checked out, and the Castro to be attended, where they paraded up and down for an hour, looking at everybody and speaking to no one.... He was always dressed in the height of fashion so as to appear gay and catching to the eye, with the finest of hats, and the latest sprigged muslim dresses from the best stores in Bath and ... (okay, this last sentence is my own invention, I admit it :)