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We arrived back in the sandpit on Sunday, but it’s taken me until today to resurface – because, despite there being a tiddly three hours’ time difference in summer, I always develop a flu-like case of jet lag when travelling eastwards (pathetic, I know!).

My pilot DH has to put up with me lamenting about needing to sleep, but never at the right time (at bedtime, I’m bog-eyed with a fidgety wakefulness for hours), and believe me, he shakes his head at me, absolutely dumbfounded that anyone could be so utterly *hopeless* at jet lag.

While this should only apply to mums travelling back from the US or Canada, with an 8-hour-plus time change, it's not far off.

She’s travelled back from the US. I have no excuse.

“But I think I was still on a mid-Atlantic time zone after the US,” I protest, with a yawn. “You have to fight it,” he responds, at a loss.

And so it goes on: me plodding through the day, which has a surreal, otherworldly quality when you’ve just landed in the post-apocalyptic 43° heat of the desert, and unable to sleep at night; him business as usual despite having flown to six different time zones while we were away.

Aside from the insomnia (which the kids also have. Ugh.) and the wading through hot treacle, the other thing about arriving back in Dubai after a long period away is the brain dump that takes place while travelling. Simple things, like the route to your local retail centre, making a packed lunch, or locating the cupboard in which mugs are kept, require deep thought, while grocery shopping feels like a thousand-piece 3D puzzle.

Still, even though I drifted onto the highway today in a daze rather than into the supermarket car park, and have climbed the staircase a total of eight times tonight to soothe the two riving insomniacs upstairs, it feels good to be home.

EDITED TO ADD: At 11.30pm and decamped to the children’s room with my laptop, I can now say, hand on heart, jet lag is the SCOURGE of summer travel. Sigh.

I flew back to Dubai with the boys on Thursday, on what we call ‘Daddy’s airplane’. Except DH wasn’t flying it, and nor was he on it.

BB and LB are good at air travel really, and I guess for a 3 and 6 year old, they could be classed as frequent travellers, but there are certain inevitabilities about flying with small children.

They needed the toilet just as the food arrived, and also the moment the seatbelt sign came on; they couldn’t get comfortable despite being pint-sized; they weren’t hungry when given their meals then clamoured for food later on when there was none. They wriggled, fidgeted, got bored and LB kept bumping the seat in front.

Brilliant, brilliant idea

As we boarded the full A380 at Heathrow, LB asked a flight attendant if we were going to space. “Too many people today,” he told her, as though he commuted the route daily. But not funnily for me, he didn’t sleep a wink, preferring to give me the Spanish Inquisition over whether there were owls chasing us (it was mostly dark) and would they get chopped up in the engine?

For my part, I ruefully turned down an upgrade (it was only for me, not the kids!), I entertained two energetic boys for seven long hours, rummaged around for missing items, let the 3yo sit on my lap for as long as was tolerable and made multiple trips to the loo.

But, you know what, it is getting easier. Each year is a little better than the last, and when I think back to last year’s long flight with a tantruming two-year-old, playing tray up/tray down, light on/light off and ding the flight attendant, I realise we’ve come a long way, even if it’s still really tiring.

Thanks to an iPad loaded with games, there were even some moments of quiet reflection, when I looked out the window at the ink black sky and the airplane’s shadowy wing. I found myself thinking about the gleaming metallic finish, the gentle, sloping contours, the speed it was capable of, and its ability to transport me from the sights and sounds of Seoul to the sunsets of Long Island.

So, was I appreciating DH’s airplane in all its gigantic glory?

Well, if I’m honest, I was thinking about my new beautiful, super-speedy MacBook Pro laptop, which I bought in England to bring back to Dubai. Love it!