The weather today is hot and humid. I am in Singapore, with Geoff, on my way to Australia. The first time together, without Anna and Hugo.

We have travelled to the Equator in a ‘tin can’ in the sky. Have you had the dream where you can fly like an eagle? When Geoff dreams, he is like an Avatar – he can just effortlessly launch off a stable platform and glide, adjusting his path with a subtle change in body direction. No such luck for me! I have to flap and flap like a helicopter until enough energy is generated for lift off.

It is extraordinary that humans (or ones that can afford it) can fly around the world today. And that is a point in itself. In the 1950s and 1960s, plane travel was reserved for the jet set, super rich. It took a number of days with multiple stopovers to reach the Orient from London. Now, if you have tons of cash, you probably will turn left to first class. Otherwise, you turn right, passing through rows of, often empty, business class seats, until you finally make it to economy. That is where we always head. Business class tickets for all four of us on a regular basis over the years would have amounted to the equivalent of the cost of a house.

The first couple of times we flew to Oz, with tiny children, we flew all the way through, with an hour stopover somewhere. The equivalent to hell on earth. In those days, there were screens that would lower down from the ceiling and play one film for all. The children were too small to see the screen. We switched to Singapore Airlines, as they were one of the first to install screens in the back of the seat in front. On yesterday’s flight, we had touch screens, giving us a choice of hundreds of films and television shows. No need for handset controls. Such progress over such a short period!

Geoff and I flew the children to Sydney via Singapore on one of the earliest Airbus A380 flights. When we saw the gigantic aircraft I froze with fear. I just couldn’t believe that it was capable of becoming airborne; it was on a massive scale. As it happened, all the technology went AWOL and there were technicians running around like headless chickens trying to get the inflight entertainment to work.

Although flying conditions have improved over the years in terms of the quality of the food and entertainment, the routine is still the same. Your seat area is initially spotless. You store the things you will need during the flight in the pouch in front of you: books, reading glasses, antiseptic hand wash (nappies and wipes when the children were little). Then you check out the films you will watch. Maybe mark them with an asterisk. Then you study the menu as if you were in a Michelin star restaurant and resolve not to eat all the extras like ice creams and cheese and biscuits and to drink minimal alcohol.

Fast forward to the end of the flight. You are distressed at the pale and bloated face staring back at you from the filthy toilet mirror. You have eaten everything on offer, the full monty. You just resisted licking the little rectangular plastic plate after your main course. You consumed alcohol, not just water. You are so sleep deprived by the end that you are almost insane. When you leave the plane your area looks like WW3.

And then balmy, exotic Singapore. What a relief to get off the plane. Feel human again. See the exotic frangipani and bougainvillea lining the motorway. I have stopped off in Singapore 27 times since I married Geoff. Our first trip Down Under was via Bangkok, Thailand: noisy (an overload of traffic on the river and roads) and smelly (of humans, spices, food and sewerage). The locals tried to sell you anything they could: a suit or dress in twenty-four hours; gems (we bought a Ceylonese sapphire for a song); exotic fabrics and pearls. I had never seen humans with missing limbs, begging on the side of the street in rags or women enticing men to come and join them ‘inside’ for a sexual transaction. It was out of my comfort zone – off the radar.

Singapore was a different story. It is where Geoff learnt to swim 60 years ago at the Tanglin Club and Orchard Road was actually full of orchards: of nutmeg, pepper and fruit plantations, not a shopping mecca. It is where I marked my children’s growth from baby to adulthood, like marking their heights on a doorway.

Today, we will swim and try to feel human now that day is now night and vice versa.