I’ve been home for just over a week now.

And what a week it’s been.

After travelling halfway around the world, surviving three flights, airport security, questionable airline food and an unexpected red wine shower, I finally arrived back at my own front door.

I was exhausted.

I smelled considerably better than I had when I left Dubai, although that wasn’t setting the bar particularly high.

And I was about to discover exactly what my animals thought of my prolonged absence.

The Welcoming Committee

As I walked up the front path, I could already hear them.

Squealing.

Not barking, exactly.

More the sort of high-pitched noises you’d expect from a collection of excited toddlers who’d just been told Christmas had arrived early.

Two Springer Spaniels and a Golden Retriever.

All apparently convinced that the greatest event in the history of the household was taking place on the other side of the front door.

But before I reached them, I spotted somebody else.

Sitting on the windowsill of my bedroom was my extremely fat ginger cat.

All 12 kilograms of him.

He saw me.

I saw him.

There was a moment of recognition.

Or possibly disbelief.

I couldn’t quite tell.

Then I unlocked the door and went inside.

And the cat promptly disappeared under the bed.

The Ginger Tribunal

Now, cats are very different from dogs.

Dogs greet your return as though you’ve risen from the dead.

Cats consider whether your absence constitutes a breach of contract.

And apparently, mine had decided that I was guilty of abandonment in the first degree.

I went into the bedroom and found him firmly established beneath the bed.

I put my hand underneath so he could sniff me.

“Look, it’s me! I’m home!”

Nothing.

Not a flicker of forgiveness.

Perhaps he thought I was an apparition.

Perhaps he simply wanted me to understand that leaving him for several weeks was completely unacceptable.

Either way, the verdict was clear.

Guilty. No possibility of parole.

As I was taking off my jacket, he slipped past me and headed straight for the front door.

Where he began screaming to be let out.

Oh, honestly!

I’d only just got home and already I was being subjected to a domestic dispute.

I gently scooped him up.

Now, picking up a 12-kilogram cat is not something you undertake lightly.

It’s rather like trying to lift a small, furry sack of cement that may suddenly develop claws.

I carried him back to the bedroom and placed him on the bed.

“Come on, you silly old thing. It’s me.”

And just like that, the prosecution withdrew its case.

The transformation was extraordinary.

One moment, I was being treated as an unwelcome intruder.

The next, I was apparently the most wonderful person who had ever existed.

He began purring.

And rubbing.

And pawing.

And drooling.

Lots of drooling.

He pressed himself against me as though he intended to become permanently attached.

The great ginger grudge had lasted approximately five minutes.

Now he couldn’t bear to be parted from me.

Cats. You couldn’t make them up.

Three Dogs and Absolutely No Personal Space

With the ginger tribunal finally adjourned, I ventured into the lounge.

And walked straight into a canine riot.

The two Springers and the Golden Retriever had been waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

By now, they were practically beside themselves.

Three wagging tails.

Three wildly excited bodies.

A considerable amount of squealing.

And absolutely no regard for personal space.

Everyone wanted to be first.

Everyone wanted to be closest.

Everyone wanted both my hands.

Preferably at the same time.

There was pushing.

Shoving.

Jostling.

The occasional attempt to climb directly into me.

I was being thoroughly inspected from head to toe, presumably to establish where I’d been and why I’d taken so ridiculously long to come back.

The Springers were doing their usual impression of furry springs, while the Golden Retriever attempted to claim as much of me as possible.

It was complete chaos.

Wonderful chaos.

For a good ten minutes, the excitement didn’t let up.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t sit down.

I could barely hear myself think.

But after weeks away, it was probably the best welcome I could have wished for.

And unlike the cat, not one of them felt the need to make me suffer first.

The Best Cup of Tea in the World

Eventually, things calmed down enough for me to make a cup of tea.

A proper cup of tea.

In my own mug.

In my own kitchen.

With no airport announcements, no boarding calls and nobody asking me to put my seatbelt on.

And it occurred to me that I hadn’t had a decent drink since leaving Heathrow.

That first cup was absolutely glorious.

I sat there surrounded by my animals, drinking tea and looking around at my own home.

My own things.

My own familiar surroundings.

It felt wonderful.

For approximately five minutes.

Because then the exhaustion arrived.

Not ordinary tiredness.

Not the sort where you think, “Oh, I could do with an early night.”

No.

This was the kind of exhaustion where your entire body seems to be shutting down, one system at a time.

I made it to bed.

And fell asleep.

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning.

Jet Lag – The Gift That Keeps on Giving

I knew what was coming.

When I’d arrived in Britain, jet lag had flattened me for about a week and a half.

And now I’d done the whole thing in reverse.

Twelve hours’ time difference.

My body was in New Zealand.

My internal clock was somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

And the two were apparently refusing to communicate.

People often talk about jet lag as though it’s simply being a bit sleepy at the wrong time.

I wish!

For me, it’s like having a particularly nasty virus.

The physical exhaustion is overwhelming.

I felt nauseous.

My head was thick.

My limbs felt heavy.

My whole body seemed to be wading through treacle.

Even getting out of bed required a degree of determination normally reserved for climbing Everest.

And once I was out of bed, I wasn’t much use anyway.

I could sit down with the intention of doing something perfectly ordinary, such as putting a few things away, and then find myself staring into space wondering what I’d been planning to do.

I’d walk into a room and forget why I was there.

I’d pick something up, put it down somewhere completely illogical, and then spend the next half-hour looking for it.

Not that I had the energy to look particularly hard.

It was rather like being a walking zombie.

Except zombies generally seem to have more enthusiasm for getting about than I did.

The Fog That Swallowed My Brain

The best way I can describe it is like being caught in an enormous, thick pea-soup fog.

Or being becalmed in the doldrums in the middle of an ocean.

Everything slows down.

Nothing seems to move forward.

You know there’s a world out there, full of ordinary people doing ordinary things, but somehow you can’t quite reach it.

And it’s not just physical.

Jet lag plays havoc with your emotions too.

I found myself feeling strangely flat.

Sometimes tearful.

Sometimes irritable.

Sometimes completely overwhelmed by things that wouldn’t normally bother me in the slightest.

Decisions became ridiculously difficult.

Even small ones.

What shall I eat?

Shall I put the washing on?

Do I need to go shopping?

Should I answer that message now or later?

All perfectly normal questions.

But when your brain is functioning at approximately three per cent capacity, they can feel like major strategic decisions.

I certainly wouldn’t have trusted myself to make any important choices.

I could barely decide whether I wanted toast.

And the really frustrating thing is that you can’t simply sleep it off.

You can go to bed absolutely exhausted, fall asleep immediately, and then find yourself wide awake at some completely ridiculous hour because your body insists it’s the middle of the afternoon.

Or you can spend the entire day fighting to stay awake, only to discover that when bedtime finally arrives, your brain has suddenly decided to open for business.

It’s maddening.

One Hour at a Time

My recovery seemed to happen in tiny instalments.

At first, I felt dreadful all day.

Then, gradually, I began to notice little improvements.

On the first better day, I managed about an hour of feeling reasonably human.

Then the fog rolled back in and that was me finished.

The next day, perhaps two hours.

Then three.

And so it went on.

A little more energy.

A little more clarity.

A little longer before my body announced that normal service was being suspended.

It was almost as though I was having to earn back each of those twelve hours of time difference, one hour at a time.

And there was absolutely no rushing the process.

I could try to push through it, but all that achieved was making me feel even worse.

Eventually, after just over a week and a half, I began to feel as though I was finally catching up with myself.

My body had arrived in New Zealand long before the rest of me.

I think my brain must have travelled home by sea.

Possibly on a particularly slow cargo ship.

The Suitcase That Wouldn’t Go Away

Of course, while all this was happening, there was the small matter of unpacking.

Oh, the joy.

A mountain of washing.

Clothes that had spent far too long compressed inside a suitcase.

Things that needed sorting.

Things that needed putting away.

Passports to return to their proper place.

Travel documents to deal with.

Chargers, adapters and all those little accessories that had seemed so terribly important before I left.

Including the inflatable seat cushion and the neck pillow that had promised to transform long-haul travel.

I looked at them.

They looked at me.

We had nothing further to say to one another.

The suitcase sat there like a silent accusation.

Are you going to unpack me, then?

“Eventually.”

You’ve been home for days.

“Yes, thank you. I’m aware of that.”

I’d manage a little bit.

Put some washing on.

Hang it out.

Fold a few things.

Then I’d need to sit down.

Sometimes I’d look at the pile of things still waiting to be sorted and decide that they could wait another day.

After all, the suitcase wasn’t going anywhere.

And neither, for that matter, was I.

Back Where I Belong

So here I am.

Home for just over a week.

The dogs have settled back into their usual routines, although they still seem to be keeping a rather closer eye on me than before.

The ginger cat has completely forgiven me and is once again convinced that I exist primarily for his personal comfort.

The washing is gradually getting done.

The suitcase is slowly being emptied.

The passports are going away.

And the fog in my head is finally beginning to lift.

It’s been quite a trip.

I’ve travelled around Britain, revisited places I hadn’t seen for years, caught up with people who mean an enormous amount to me and made some wonderful new memories.

There were funny moments.

Sad moments.

Unexpected moments.

And a few I’d probably have preferred to avoid.

But that’s travelling, isn’t it?

You don’t always get to choose which bits become part of the story.

And now, after all those miles, I’m back in my own little corner of New Zealand.

With three dogs, one enormous ginger cat and a kettle that knows exactly how I like my tea.

For the moment, that’s more than enough adventure for me.

Although I have started looking out of the window again.

And I’m beginning to remember that there are some rather lovely places to explore without travelling halfway around the world.

But that’s a story for another day.

Let’s see where life takes me.