Wherever I lay my hat

America is the only non-EU country I've ever visited, so I don't know if you have to fill out interminable customs forms when travelling elsewhere too. It at least gives you something to do whilst sitting in the departure 'lounge' trying not to gag on the smell of fast food and travel sweat recycled by the air conditioning. Apart from the obvious environmental reservations, I quite like air travel, especially things like the view of Grand Bahama, grey-blue and blending with the ocean in the dusk as you approach Florida. But the parts at either side of the actual travel - airports, customs, embarkation, check-in - sometimes seem designed by double-agent Greenpeace activists within the relevant authorities to dissuade people from flying altogether.

I mention the customs forms not because they're annoying - though they are - but because one question in particular gave me pause for thought (two, actually. 'What is the value of all goods that will remain in the USA?'. Errr, I have a cake. It won't be leaving the USA, but I don't know if you can say it'll be remaining there...). It appeared on two forms, once plainly, once pompously: 'Where do you live?'; 'What is your country of residence?'.

Both times, I wrote 'UK' without hesitation. It was only later, queuing for passport control and re-checking my forms, that I questioned myself. Nobody in uniform did so, they waved me through happily (as happy as border police get, anyway). But was it the right answer? How do you tell? By most measures, surely, it was wrong. Even if I spend all my holidays over the next few years in the UK, I'll still be spending the majority of my time in the US. I pay taxes here, my official status is 'resident alien'. When people, strangers, inquired about my occupation over Christmas, I said that I live and study in Miami.

It's irrelevant that being back in the UK felt like putting on a comfortable pair of trainers after a day spent in cripplingly unfamiliar footwear. Being at home is always cosy; that's been the case in the past whether I've been living in Sheffield, Bristol, anywhere. I suppose I now think of the UK in a wider sense as 'home'; previously, the term only really applied to Durham, whereas this time, I got that warm feeling in the pit of my stomach as soon as the tube from Heathrow left that airport hinterland and started to pick up commuters on the way into central London. But where you call home, and where you live, can of course be two different things, and in my case, it should be clear that they are.

So why do I write 'UK'? And why do I balk somewhat at the thought of doing otherwise? The answer's obvious, really. Despite all the considerations that suggest I live here, I feel very much like a visitor still. I can isolate three reasons for this. The first is that the culture, the lifestyle, the climate, remain surprising and strange. I'd forgotten, after just three weeks, how big the city was, how warm, how bloody awkward for anyone without a car. The second is that my lifestyle, at present, feels like one in which I've accommodated myself to the place, rather than settled into it. This applies in particular to my house, in which I feel somewhat more like a long-term hotel guest than a resident (through no fault of my landlord - I imagine this is just a general feature of lodging). Both these factors will dwindle, I suspect, as time goes on, my lifestyle changes, the city becomes mundane, I move house.

The third reason, though, I think will be constant; indeed, will become more acute as time passes. Despite the fact that I'm here for a while, despite the fact that I spend most of my year here, I'm on a finite time scale. A long time scale, for sure; very different from a fortnight's break on the beach. But I know that, once I've exhausted my visa and got the piece of paper from the university (fingers crossed), I'll be coming home. It may be a long, drawn-out, involved trip, but I'm really just visiting here. In my heart, I live elsewhere.

Well, that was all rather self-absorbed, wasn't it? Don't worry, I'll find something less navel-gazing to write about next time...