Perceptions of home

... vary with length of time away. I know people who've been away for years, and their sense of home remains firmly fixed in a jelly of What It Was Like When I Left, or How Much Better It All Was Than Here.

I seem, within the space of one small month, however, to have gone from slight feeling of homesickness for accents and speed of understanding (that's the Americans who don't understand English, mark you), to some sort of weird unfathomable fantasy homeland that never once existed, not anywhere, not even in my jaded dreams.
The home country? In my mind it's all warm Marmite and salty chips, people speaking really fast and being wordlessly understood by patient, knowing elderly folk; it's wall to wall soft beds, privacy, roaring fires and hugs, by now.

Bloody ridiculous.