It’s almost 1 a.m. When my family asks me if I’m over the jet lag, I say yes, of course. What I really mean is that I altered my hours. The mornings are cold and damp and quiet. So are the nights. But at night, in the dark, with long shadows arcing around the room, I can be alone with the music playing. I’d say it keeps me sane, but perhaps it’s self defeating. Or something like that.

"Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon
But something happens. Don’t see it coming
Now you can’t stop yourself
Now you’re out there swimming
In the deep"

This last week has passed in a flurry and a blur. I’m still constantly aware of the time across the ocean. 7.05 on a Saturday night. Plates and glasses are clinking beneath the chatter of voices in restaurants. Evening meals before a night out, perhaps. The sun’s still up. It curved behind the thatched roofs outside my window and wound its way across the horizon to Birmingham, Alabama.

"Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you"

Last night I went to the pub with my brother and Dad. It’s been a Friday night ritual for a while here, and I’ve missed it. Since I left, a national smoking ban has cleared the air. No old men in overalls with their pipes. All that’s left is a lingering of stale tobacco, which grabbed hold of the carpets and walls and won’t let go. My brother pointed out that cider looks like pee. We both ordered another Strongbow.

"Big wheels keep on turning"

I feel a bit like a stranger here. People talk differently, but I don’t know how I talk anymore. Apparently it depends who I’m with. I am fed up of strangers pointing out that I have a “drawl.” They say it with heads cocked on one side, as if to prompt another specimen of a Southern dialect I don’t really have.

"So let go, jump in, oh well, whatcha waiting for?
It’s alright, ‘cause there’s beauty in the breakdown"

Today I went to the NEXT Sale. The first day of the Next sale. Ask any Brit – particularly the women – about the Next sale, and they’ll nod knowingly, and probably laugh and roll their eyes. It’s a fascinating display of crowd behaviour and of the thin line between humans and animals. The sale begins at 5 a.m. I was there at 2 p.m. Next is a clothes store, and the Next sale seems to always wait for me to come home – at Christmas and in the summer – before it opens its doors to the hoards of women hungry for the “50% or less” guarantee. I’m not quite sure why I do it. But every time I come back convinced that we are a strange species.

"Everywhere I went I was always looking for you
Bright smile, dark eyes.
I’m looking for some peace
But it’s so hard to find"

They hand you a clear plastic sack when you walk into the store, and you dodge around the vultures – beware of elbows – filling it to the brim before competing for a checkout. Some women seem to wait six months to buy their clothes on this day. They’ve scouted the store before the sale, judging what will and what won’t be reduced. For the first few days, the entire store is filled with sale items, technicolor aisles of garments with florescent tags. Changing/fitting rooms are closed, but this doesn’t deter the hungry shopper, who has deliberately dressed down so that she can try on every item in her sack, including the skirts. She stands stoicly before a tiny mirror on the end of an aisle and undresses, dresses, redresses. Don’t touch her clothes; she’ll bite (or at least cuss and hiss). A jacket on, a jerk of the shoulders in the glass: “Aeh, Bazz, whacha fink ov’is?” she asks her fellow hunter. “S’oright,” comes the reply. She slips it off and into the second sack (she has two; she’s enterprising). Next.

People actually bring kids to the Next sale. It perplexes me.

"She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing."

My Mum is on a plane right now, heading across the Atlantic from Colorado to Heathrow airport. Last night, in the pub, my brother regaled us with stories of long haul commercial pilots who sleep in the cockpit or read the newspaper. His instructor told him of one who did an Open University course in the air.

“The thing flies itself.”

"It’s a big girl world now
Full of big girl things
And every day I wish I was small…"

It’s almost 2 a.m. now. 8 p.m. Early diners have settled the checks and are making way for others. Time for a drink on the deck, perhaps, under the dimming sky. Perhaps there’s music playing. Abbotts Ann – this quaint little English village – is sleeping soundly under the cloudy black sky. Time to turn off the music and join them.

"Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied."