The Return

"All good things must come to an end".  Personally, I think this saying is rather unfair, and often inaccurate - after all, just because something is good doesn't mean it should therefore be time limited.  Unfortunately for those of us who aren't millionaires, holidays are one thing that do tend to fit into this category.

I was welcomed back to London with some typical British weather - cloudy, rainy and a chilly nine degrees - I could feel my tan fade and recoil from the grey skies.  As the Piccadilly line got gradually more packed with commuters heading into central London for work, reality began to hit home.  Fortunately I had a few days respite in which to recover (and cling onto the last remnants of holiday bliss) before going back to work.

My flight got in around 7am, and at 4 in the afternoon, jet lag (or possibly sleep deprivation) hit.  I battled through until 8, then headed to bed and crashed out for a solid, blissful nine hours.  Even when I woke early I refused to get up until the vaguely reasonable hour of 6.30am at which point my belly was demanding food.  After about four weeks of little exercise, it was time to discover just how much fitness I lost, so I headed to an exercise session in the park - this is the first (and most probably the last) time I have made an 8.30am session on a Saturday morning!  It felt hard - not so much physically, but I felt totally drained of energy.  Still, I figured any exercise was good and it would help get my body and sleep patterns back to normal.

Oh, how wrong I was.  I headed to bed early again, and woke just after midnight for a call of nature (and to let in my housemate who had forgotten his key...), then went back to bed.  And from then on, I tossed and turned.  My stomach was saying it was starving, so I got up and ate - it said it was still hungry, so I ate again (honestly, I'm sure eating your way through jet lag is not healthy).  I surfed the net for a bit, then tried again - and miserably failed - to get back to sleep.

So here I am, at 6.45am, awake and bright as the proverbial button.  I suspect at some point today I am going to crash, and getting through until this evening without sleep could be the biggest holiday challenge yet...