I BLAME the jetlag. Well, when you're standing outside your house, clutching a fish and chip supper - taste buds on full alert - it's distressing to realise you left your door keys on the kitchen table alongside a half-consumed bottle of duty-free Chardonnay and a slice of defrosted Co-op cheesecake.

If jetlag's not the culprit, then it's certainly time to face up to the fact that your brain is going the same way as the mushy peas nestling beside your ferociously fried, vinegar-soaked haddock.

OK, you've been back in the country for a week but that's irrelevant - jetlag can take two to three weeks to clear, or so the experts say. And I believe them.

Ithink I lost the plot somewhere between Heathrow and Brighton's Pool Valley Bus Station. I left the coach in a daze and had to be reminded by the driver that I'd left my coat and an unfinished Stephen King on the seat (glad he didn't look under it and find the debris I'd left there).

Things didn't improve over the next seven days. On Monday I caught the London Bridge to Littlehampton train which stops at Brighton's Preston Park. It stopped at Preston Park as usual, but Ididn't. Fast asleep in a corner, no doubt with mouth agape and snoring at full throttle, I woke just as the train was about to pull away from Hove station.

The following night I ran a bath, filled with bubbles and foam, went to answer the phone and half an hour later heard the overflow mimicking Niagara. Midnight is not the ideal time for lifting a sodden carpet and discovering drops of water coming through the kitchen ceiling.

On Wednesday, now jetlagged and suffering from sleep deprivation, I grabbed a pair of my normal black tights from a bunch in a drawer. Half-way to the station I glanced down at my scurrying legs and Mon Dieu! The legs were purple. Somehow a pair of weekend-activities-only tights had infiltrated the nine-to-fivers giving me the appearance of someone who'd been wading thigh-high in Ribena.

That night I locked myself out. And when you are a middle-terracer, you know you have what could be big problems.

Afriend once told me how she had returned to her parents' middle-of-terrace home after a very late party and when her tentative taps on the front door had failed to wake them, had barked through the letter box to alert the family dog, who was slightly deaf.

Having no dog, deaf or otherwise, in fact living alone except for a couple of plastic goldfish and a variety of household goods in need of repair or replacement, my only hope was the neighbours.

One lot, house lit up like the QE II, were obviously at home and when I knocked and asked if I might climb over their garden wall and into my back garden, were kind enough to offer me the use of their stepladder.

"Thank-you and goodnight!" I called and went into the kitchen. Or I would have done if the door had been unlocked.

Fortunately, or foolishly, I'd left the kitchen window open (to help the ceiling dry out) and managed to wriggle through it.

The next morning I discovered my fish and chip supper, or what was left of it, outside the front door. And oh, yes, I'd laddered my tights - the purple ones, of course.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.