So, I have been out of the country for three years.

In that time I have been pretty much cut off from UK change. Not entirely perhaps, there has been a couple of flying visits, I have had a few emails from friends and family and, not forgetting of course, there is the internet.

But you still miss out on so much.

Some things did sneak through. The Libertines for example had started to make ripples in the music scene before I left. At the head of them was singer songwriter Pete Doherty.

Now for reasons I only have the slightest grasp of, the very mention of his name makes otherwise laid back people all but spit on the ground in disgust. Okay so I know the basics Kate Moss, drugs etc. But I have honestly never so much as seen him on TV. I’ve only heard the music.

Talking of music, it all sounds a bit odd. We’d already started to turn the corner from a boyband low before I split and that had to be a good. When I was leaving the Scissor Sisters and The Streets were huge.

I come back and to my ears everything sounds like the aforementioned. Either camp, glam and overproduced or cock-er-ney, cor blimey guvnor stuff. Lily Allen, her music rather than her celebrity persona, managed to appear on my radar but I return home to find that she too has a few sound-a-likes.

Somewhere along the line Oasis seem to have become loved again. I heard the Killers while I was away and I return to find they made it from heroes to zeros inside a couple of albums. Thank God The Darkness have gone.

On TV I keep coming across Russell Brand and I can’t work out why. He’s seems as omnipotent as he does talentless and downright unlikeable.

Honestly, I turn my back for a minute and they’re allowing tossers on TV. Where did he come from? And why did they let him near a mic? I don’t get it. What is his talent?

Other changes are already entirely accepted practice. The cigarette laws may be comparatively new but what is amazing is just how widely they are adhered too. I went to a football reserve game and stood on an old fashioned terraces the other night. I looked around and there wasn’t a single furtive smoker. I was amazed.

Nobody claimed ignorance and smoked and had to be told to put it out. Everyone is either scared or have bought into it 100%. I also recently visited the once smokey Chillingham Arms Pub and it was like some European-style coffee shop. I’m almost sure that is a good thing.

Other changes? Polish people - ie smiley, well educated, motivated people working in places that used to employ pissed off, rude, British kids with less than limited enthusiasm.

Plus lots more Asian kids in the Universities. Fabulous. Newcastle could never really claim to be multicultural, but I like this. It makes the whole place seem to much more colorful. More international. Less dowdy and stuck in its ways.

There are other smaller changes. Chip and Pin is a new one on me but seems both easier and better. I am embarrased to admit that I actually had to Google to find out what a BlackBerry is.

Everyone is a little more eco aware which also has to be admired. Is there less SUVs on the road or am I imagining it?

Of course we have a new PM and that makes it easier for me to come home. But I also like the low profile of Brown. I’ve often argued that the media is celebrity obsessed and overlooks politics and hard news. But it changed. Blair became the celebrity. Now I am actually enjoying just how invisible the government is.

Possibly in reaction to all this, the political blogosphere now has right wing bloggers too in what was previously a predominantly left wing domain. I’d begrudgingly admit that should be positive, although there seems to be less debate and more squabbling.

Terms like astroturfing and sockpuppet seem to prevail and there’s much more anonymous posting and general behaviour that I only ever used to see on football message boards.

Talking of football, my team are getting in on the act. New owner, new chairman, new manager, new captain, new players and Kieron Dyer, football’s premier nob head, is gone.

Socially speaking, nights out are actually being organised using Facebook.

There will no doubt be a million more changes that I will chance upon and I guess they will form the bulk of this blog’s content.

Strangely I don’t feel like I missed out. I mean, Pete Doherty, Lily Allen and Russell Brand - who needs that? But discovering it all at once and without the drip drip of media is a little strange.

Having such little pop cultural understanding feels odd. This is how high court judges must feel.

But I am comfortable with being home and weighing it all up, for the most part, the changes, the ones that really matter, seem to be for the best.

Maybe I am yet to encounter and deal with more subtle changes.