While I have been swanning around in foreign parts, I haven't been getting much feedback from anyone reading this column.
So, last week I thought no-one would notice if there wasn't any noise from me.
I was wrong. Very wrong.
Thanks for the compliments but no thanks for the tellings off!
I am writing this from just near Pebble Beach.
My darling and the Darbys and the Doyles are all enjoying a beautiful afternoon watching the final day of the US Open in freezing winds with the other 35,000 people who are squished into the very small space that this famous golf course occupies.
My neighbour offered me a free ticket to the golf today and I didn't want to appear ungrateful by saying I couldn't think of anything I would like to do less, so mumbled something about packing and laundry and thanks so much for the lovely thought.
It's fun being back in America but I always hate the getting-in bit.
They seem to have stopped calling non-Americans "aliens" at the airport, but you can still tell they think that's what we are.
I think that getting a job with Homeland Security here means you have to be convinced that all non-Americans are likely terrorists.
They have an interesting poster at airport that says something like ICAN - I reminds HS staff to IDENTIFY suspicious persons, CONFIRM suspicions (how they do that, I can't imagine) I've forgotten what A stood for , maybe AGGRAVATE - but N is for NOTIFY.
Honestly, that much paranoia starts making me wonder if I am the undesirable they are looking for.
The difference between here and Europe is so huge. Crossing borders there is a doddle, if you can even tell where they are.
We took the train from Paris to Cologne and never so much as saw any immigration or customs people.
We were really going to Strasbourg, but were a teensy bit hungover and tired from Kristin Guthrie's 60th the night before.
To make absolutely sure my parents really were going back to London and not deciding to carry on ruining our holiday, we took them to the Eurostar station ourselves.
Once we had pushed the old dears through security, we felt too lazy to change stations for the train to Strasbourg so just took one to Cologne.
What a city. The poor thing has been battered and bombed and rebuilt and blitzed and bruised and beautified time after time over the last few millennia.
We had masses of things we wanted to see there, but spent most of the first day at the dentist's getting my darling's fang plugged back in his head ... a little overexcitement at the birthday dinner had seen it come flying out in his meal.
German dentists work in very space-age spaces, all white and sterile and very, very bright.
It couldn't have been more different from the rest of Cologne which is very, very old and in various stages of decay and discovery.
There are archaeological digs going on all round the city and you can just look in and watch them working.
They find REAL relics, not like the horseshoes and beer bottles we find at home.
In not very PC named Jew St, they are excavating the ancient Jewish baths and synagogue and creating a museum to house all the good bits they unearth.
Cologne was so fascinating that we had to stay another night drinking excellent beer and watching the amazing street performers.
A huge African guy was a human fountain and drank down two litres of water which he would then spurt from his mouth, then talk to the crowd and do it over and over.
We never did find out how he did it.
Staying in Cologne another night meant we had to abandon our plan to drive along the romantic road.
Instead we drove the very unromantic autobahn and fought like crazy over who was the stupidest navigator of German roads.
My darling definitely won that title.
It took us most of the day just to get to Heidelberg.
It's very stressful on those autobahns as you think you are creeping along when you are already doing 140kmh, and the next minute the car does an almighty shiver as someone doing over 200kmh blitzes past.
There's not much time to decide which lane you want to be in.
We ended up in Baden Baden.
Beautiful, beautiful Baden Baden.
It's an ancient spa town, and you can still see the old Roman baths. They just built the new ones on top of them, about 200 years ago.
I wanted my darling to come to the spa with me but when he found out that everyone has to be naked, he chickened out and trotted off to the very glamorous and spectacular old casino.
Stubborn to the point of foolishness, I decided to go on my own, but it was a very "did I understand them properly?" feeling as I walked totally naked down the corridor to the gorgeous marble pools.
It was a huge relief to discover that I had understood and that there were very few supermodel types around.
My own Buddha-shaped darling would have felt quite at home with all the other very round and very bald German men showing their wares.
One of the many reasons BB is so lovely is that there are almost no cars in the city centre.
There are underground carparks everywhere and almost no carparks above ground.
The streets are totally pedestrian-friendly and there are wonderful ponds and gardens and trees everywhere.
Carparking near the centre is $NZ5 an hour or you can pay $1 an hour to park and ride from a little further out.
It really works and makes everything look so much prettier and cleaner and calmer.
We are having a ball, and the only thing that stops me feeling completely happy is a little bit of homesickness and a huge feeling of sorrow for dear Doc and Sally Mahon whose beautiful daughter Rebecca died on Saturday after a very long battle with cancer.
Reading has not been a big part of my travelling life, apart from reading and misreading maps and instructions.
However, I did find a very splendid bookshop in Carmel yesterday and the helpful man reminded me of two great golfing books that even I loved.
The Greatest Game Ever Played, by Mark Frost, is a history of the US Open, and even though it sounds impossibly dull, it is FABULOUS!
Golf in the Kingdom, by Michael Murphy, and it's about to be made into a movie.
It's golf as a metaphor for life and very, very clever.
I'm counting down the days until we are home, now.
One of the best things about going away is the sheer joy of coming home again.
