January 1980. A new decade and another world. Landing at LA international airport, on the way to see Thom Johns, a more than honorary family member, and his wife Sachie. North to Hayward, SF bay area. A circus at the Greyhound station in Los Angeles led to a bus ticket decision that led to a few hours wait in Fresno and my first encounter with a cheap rentacop who demonstrated an IQ diminished by the size of his holstered gun. Early morning reunion in Hayward. It was a mark of the connection that Thom and I simply took up where we left off years before.

I felt so much at home that it was troubling. Thom was a massive component of a part of my life in England that had wakened me out of the torpor of small town, soulless British life. The Johns' showed us much to explore in the Bay Area and the feeling of belonging strengthened and became overpowering. A two day road trip down the coast past Big Sur left me rapt. This is where I have been traveling to for all of my concious days. Maybe there were two lives for me to follow, one was now done and the other just found.

The logistics and necessities all fell in to place, a small apartment with a view, jobs, cars, huge cars. Trials, personal and intruding, came and went and we moved North to the exquisite Russian River. Answering a help wanted ad, I started work on a horse ranch, idyllic and strange, five or so minutes from our cabin perched on a hillside, forty steps from the road, where Kieron revelled his first days. Our days were always busy and rich though working on the ranch barely paid the bills and after a sour end to that place of employment I found a job in Sonoma, the small town where the Bear Flag was raised in a declaration of Independence from Mexico in 1846.

This is my children's home town. After Sarah began working evenings at a Tex-Mex restaurant downstairs from our apartment, Kieron and I spent many evenings and days together. In some ways those years were magic. Kieron's personality and character developed into a place where I was enthralled by his depth, even as a toddler.