Let’s do this together

I look like hell because I’ve just got back from holiday.

The third-degree sunburn and weeping mozzie bites have now started to heal and my body has adjusted after having three breakfasts a day from the buffet. However, I’m still waking up, starving, in the middle of the night because of the five-hour time difference.

Saying that, I had an incredible week in Puerto Rico, but I almost didn’t make it home.

“Er… Houston, we have a problem,” is what I like to think our United Airways pilot said when he called air traffic control in Texas to tell them our flight was two hours late to leave on Sunday. Which I completely understand – I had trouble tearing myself away from paradise too.

Having resigned myself to missing our connecting flight home to London and seeing more of Houston than I’d originally intended, I started making a list of all the people I would have to call to explain that I would be back a day late – from work to The Dark Lord, who I know was looking forward to getting me home, if only so I could find her missing school tie.

She called me twice while I was away, both times about missing items of clothing. I basically paid £20 in international mobile charges to tell her to look on her bedroom floor.

But miracle of miracles, United managed to hold our onward flight and my group were allowed to leg it off one plane and run for the next gate with our Duty Free bags, travel pillows and headphones flailing behind us. The entire stopover in Houston actually amounted to seven minutes.

When we piled into our new seats, the entire passenger list of the 787 was staring at us with pure hatred. I had to check my inflight dinner just to make sure nobody had tampered with the chicken in grey sauce. Although frankly bodily fluids would probably have made very little difference.

It was also a full flight and I was wedged in the middle seat between two Americans who had their dinner and fell straight asleep, leaving me unable to get comfy and clambering over them to use the loo. I tried reading, watching movies and staring at the flight tracker, willing the damn thing to fly faster, before passing out briefly sometime around dawn.

My fellow passengers carried on sleeping and, then just my luck, woke up right in the middle of that scene in the House of Gucci, where Lady Gaga and Adam Driver are going at it like the clappers on a desk.

Oh the shame – the Americans must have thought I was a tardy, fidgety, sex-mad limey with a bladder problem.

Anyway, I finally got home 26 hours later, feeling woozy from jet lag, to find The Dark Lord had left the freezer door open all weekend and next door had hired the loudest builder in the world to hammer at their window frames just to keep me awake from a post-flight snooze.

Just as well The Dark Lord came back from school looking for her holiday gift as I was passed out on the sofa. Napping is a serious risk now – I could be asleep for anything from 10 minutes to six hours.

I’d brought her back a rare green parrot soft toy from the rainforest. “Thank you, he’s brilliant. I love him,” she trilled – and promptly named him John.

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

Please note, if you send us photos of your grandchildren, we’ll also need permission of one of their parents to print them... Thanks!