Suzanne Harrington: I realise that coming back has been a terrible mistake 

Coming back from three months fannying around Thailand with your laptop feels like recovering from a brain injury. You have to relearn the basics from scratch

When you land at Gatwick, you cannot access a trolley without a pound coin. Unless you have a pound coin on your person — which is unlikely, if you have arrived exhausted in the middle of the night from Sydney or Shanghai or San Francisco — you will have to drag your luggage unaided across miles of airport floor. File picture

If coming back from a fortnight in the Med can give you the post-holiday blues, then coming back from three months fannying around Thailand with your laptop feels like recovering from a brain injury. 

You find yourself having to relearn basic skills from scratch. Like how to get dressed using long-forgotten items — socks, coats, jumpers. How to make your own bed. How to boil a kettle. How to do these things from your current position of crying under a blanket.

All of this while remembering that when you come down for breakfast, it’s unlikely there will be a buffet banquet of elaborately arranged tropical fruits and fresh juices laid out for you, or anyone asking you how you’d like your coffee. 

There will be nobody to magic your laundry away, handing it back in a few hours, folded with origami precision and scented by sunlight — for a quid. Nobody smiling at you all day long, shouting cheery greetings, asking if you need a tuktuk or a massage or both. 

Instead, just the sensation of having had some kind of terrible stroke that has left your capacity for joy completely paralysed.

You’ll have to relearn not just how to open brown envelopes — an ankle-deep pile will have amassed in your absence — but how to summon even the vaguest of fucks in response to stuff like overdue insurance quotes, a leaky gutter, a missed mammogram. Inflation rates. Bank statements. Changed bin days.

I should clarify, I have not been staying at the White Lotus for the past few months. You don’t need to in Thailand for someone to present your morning mango in decorative symmetry, or freshly squeeze your lychees. 

Even in budget places, someone will have folded your towel into the shape of an elephant and stuck a tropical flower on top. Rooftop pools come as standard. You can go snorkelling all day long off remote coral islands so perfect they look fake, lunch included, for the price of a Dublin sandwich.

But we invariably have to come back. My partner has been sending me WhatsApps of howling wind and rain, accompanied by what he calls ‘pep talks’: “You’re going to be freezing and skint and miserable, and everyone is catatonic because it hasn’t stopped raining for three years.” 

He meets me at the airport with a blanket, a mango and an air of grim resolve. The mango, a lovely touch, has flown more budget air miles than me, and is just as drained.

By the time I emerge to meet my mango-clutching partner, shoulders dislocating from hauling bags through passport control, I realise that coming back has been a terrible mistake.

When you land at Gatwick, you cannot access a trolley without a pound coin. Unless you have a pound coin on your person — which is unlikely, if you have arrived exhausted in the middle of the night from Sydney or Shanghai or San Francisco — you will have to drag your luggage unaided across miles of airport floor. 

This is because Gatwick Airport views international passengers disembarking from the other side of the world as the kind of people who’d nick a trolley from their local Lidl. Welcome to Britain.

By the time I emerge to meet my mango-clutching partner, shoulders dislocating from hauling bags through passport control, I realise that coming back has been a terrible mistake. But it’s too late. We drive away in the rain, but only after he has paid the equivalent of a banging Bangkok night out for an hour’s airport parking. I feel concussed.