In the two years since I’ve been away from the UK, my mother has decided to move to France, found a new boyfriend in the son of a man she worked for more than 10 years ago, and become a certified Reiki healer (she has the paper to prove it now).

I’ve never been surprised by anything my mum has done, but she seems to have been having a good time while I’ve been in Thailand. To my disbelief, our family home has tripled in value since it was bought 10 years ago. It’s nothing special – a three-bedroom property in the Southwest of England – but for some reason the property market in the UK has dealt my Mum a good hand.

My mum now plans to sell or rent the house and set up her own practice as a holistic therapist somewhere in France. This would make me a true expat, with nowhere to call “home”, but that’s not such an unsettling thought. With me being all the way in Thailand, my poor mother was worried that I would be angry and not approve (particularly about her new boyfriend), but I told her to stop being silly and do whatever she wants.

I’m not sure what will happen to all my possessions – I think most of them are scattered across the UK at the moment – and this will mean that should I return to the UK I will have nowhere to instinctively go to, but it seems that life is moving on in all four corners of the globe, from Thailand to England and back around again.

Sometimes when you’re out here in Thailand you forget that life goes on. In Thailand we have peculiar lives that we think are at the center of the universe. In other parts of the world people don’t have time to think about Thailand.