07.02.10:

So with the cat out of the bag in terms of my friends, it was now time to spring the surprise on my family. I got a couple of hours kip at Hugh’s gaff (Hugh of ‘Hugh Sings The Odyssey Blues’ fame) and I arrived at my family home on Honeys Green Lane at around 2pm – just in time for Sunday roast. Again, I had set up a ruse of seeing everyone via Skype and with the help of my brother Mike (who I had brought in on the deal) snuck into the house without my parents suspecting a thing. Luckily, my webcam is pretty naff so nobody recognised the background on the Skype video link was the house until I entered the room.

In typical Hughes form, my mum burst into tears, my dad was wonderfully nonplussed, my brother Alex was annoyed I didn’t let him in on the secret and my nephew Matthew claimed to have known all along. And so I sat down with my parents, brothers, cousins, nephews and (brand new) baby niece for my first roast meal since Sierra Leone back in July. And it was great.

• Roast Lamb
• Roast Beef
• Roast Potatoes (fluffy on the outside, crunchy on the outside)
• Yorkshire Puddings
• Broccoli, Peas and Green Beans
• Gravy
• French Bread
• Chocolate Profiteroles & Ice Cream
• Cheese & Crackers

Yum.

After din-dins, the traditional Hughes Family Trivial Pursuit Fight was put on hold while my brother Mike and I started cooking up schemes for getting The Odyssey fully publicised this week ourselves, while I’m here (something that mmmmmmm promised to do and never did, the scoundrels). We’re not professionals and we’re kind of making it up as we go, but we might as well give it a try. We decided to get cracking first thing in the morningw, so I went to his house in Runcorn to sleep on his couch.

It’s good to be back.