Home is Where the Heart Is

So here we are. Bags packed, flights booked (well nearly, but more of that later) and we're almost set for Gruffalo leg 2! I have to be honest and say its with mixed emotions that I return to the U.S tomorrow. I make no bones about the fact that I'm a homing bird. I love my flat, my bed, my TV, my local pub (despite it featuring on Ross Kemps' most dangerous pubs in Britain... twice!). A lot of people say that what we're doing is amazing, fantastic, a great adventure, and it is, however, none of that stops me missing home, and there is nothing like 4 weeks of family, festivitiy, and friends to make you reluctant to leave it all. I have had an amazing Christmas, and I have walked around the grand old city that is London with a smile on my face loving life back home.

But, leave it we must and tomorrow we head for the cold climbs of Minneapolis (and when I say cold I mean flingin flanging freezing). This week the UK's weathermen have been in a tiswas over cold temperatures, well they aint got nothing on the -20c world we're flying into tomorrow. My bag is full of thermals, buffs, scarves, fleeces the lot. This is going to be well and truly cold.

I say "we're flying into" but that remains to be seen. I have a ticket, Anna has a ticket, and Alex has a ticket. Karina on the other hand, and perhaps its at this point I should refer to her by her full name- Karina Jane Garnet. This is a name Karina has been referred to by for a very long time, she has no other name, no stage name, no pseudonym, just Karina Jane Garnet, and a pretty name it is at that. It was even the name under which her ticket for the first leg of the tour was booked, and so it is with bewildered confusion that we can't quite work out why on this leg she has a ticket under the name Karina Jane HUGHES. Now it is true that Karina was born a Hughes, but she did not remain a Hughes for very long and has certainly not been a Hughes whilst being an actress, a mouse or any other creature for that matter, and there is no reason why anyone should even know she was a Hughes, let alone book a ticket under that name. But that is what the ticket says. Our airline are unmoved at the moment, refusing to change the name and merely adding a note to account and assuring that all should be fine... watch this space!

It could be that Gruffalo '09 starts with a key member of the team staying home. Now if only my ticket had a different name on it.

See you stateside

Alan