Sobweb Productions: Death of a Traveller. Birth of a Blue Steel Hitler.

My mum bought me a “Welcome Home” balloon. It was one of those overly fancy ones made of tin foil. It floated around my bedroom proudly displaying to everyone that I was not only home, but I was welcome. Feeling truly welcome is one of the most pleasant feelings one can experience, and when I returned home after 17 months in Asia, the welcome I received was mammoth. When you live somewhere as an ethnic minority, in a culture that is so wildly different to your own, you grow to miss the feeling of being at home. I didn’t have a problem with feeling welcome in Korea; 99.9% of people I met (yes I met over a 1000 people so that percentage is accurate) were very kind at made me feel at ease. At ease, but not at home.

Home is a place that brings back childhood memories, like the first time you watched the Wizard of Oz. And now I have come to realise that the crazy cow Dorothy was right. There really is no place like home.

So anyway, this awe-inspiring balloon that was making my life worth living has decided to piss its helium all over my room and start sinking... slowly. We are talking weeks - seven and a half to be exact - for that balloon to descend to my floor and its sinking is having an unexpected effect on me.

I take this falling balloon to be a symbol, a metaphor for a dying set of personal beliefs. I have returned from travelling feeling like a bit of hippy with a luscious ginger beard. My attitudes are very different from when I left and seem alien to some of my friends. But my hippy ideology is slowly being corrupted by our culture and is crashing down to consumerist earth. Just like this damn balloon.

Why can’t it just float forever? How hard is it to make a completely air tight tin-foil container that can hold my dreams aloft, above my TV, touching the ceiling for a lifetime!? It’s a strange thought but that’s me in a nutshell. I add meaning to the meaningless. This balloon means nothing. It isn't trying to convince me to progress with my life. It doesn't represent my travelling free spirit and its decline as the “real world” sinks in. The balloon isn't forcing me to drop with it, deeper into the depths of the soft carpeted floor of a middle class England life. It's just a balloon.

I know all this but when that balloon finally hit the ground, a bit of the explorer inside me died. I looked in the mirror and I saw a very hairy, ginger faced man staring back at me. The balloon had fallen and I felt I only had one option left... Shave the beard off.