I'm being held prisoner in central London by the volcanic eruption in Iceland. The family's private jet is grounded until the cloud of ash floating over the UK clears, which means my stay is being prolonged indefinitely. Apparently the same volcano's last eruption (during the 19th century) lasted for two years, so the outlook is grim. I'm severly tempted just to cut and run; I have an interview on Wednesday for a teacher training course, and I could probably tell the family that I need to get home in order to prepare for it. This wouldn't even be that much of a lie, but I would feel guilty about abandoning the other staff members in the house.

My job has well and truly devolved from teaching to childminding. Over the last week, much of my time has been spent keeping the son out of the kitchen, where he would otherwise run riot, slapping the butler's head to try to make him drop things, screeching demands for ever more elaborate sandwiches in the chef's ear and generally being as obnoxious as possible. The other staff members work longer hours than me and have more responsibilities, so unleashing this force of extreme nuisance upon them because I can't be bothered to babysit anymore seems a bit unfair. On the other hand, the possibility of spending a day in the spring sunshine without once being shouted at by a twelve-year-old is becoming too much to resist.

Earlier in the week he elbowed me in the face while attempting to perform a wrestling move. I got a nasty split lip to show for it, a souvenir battlescar of my time with the family. That evening we ate dinner with his parents, who did their best to ignore my swollen and slightly bloody lip, even though I was sure they knew where it had come from. Proof, if any were needed, of their absolute refusal to acknowledge their son for the hooligan he is.

It's not all been random violence though. On Wednesday, I got to go to Disneyland! Eager to take advantage of all the culture and fun London has to offer, the kids had the bright idea that we should jump on the Eurostar at King's cross and head to meet some of their friends in Paris. The trip cost just over a grand (I know this because it was left to me to buy the tickets up front) and they were only in the park for about 6 hours. This would have been a lot worse but for the fact that when you're incredibly rich, you can pay someone to take you to the front of all the queues! I was shocked.

Quite a different experience being in a theme park when you don't have to queue. Whether making it to the end of a walkway that seems to snake around the ride endlessly creates a sense of anticipation, or simply renders you so bored that a ride in a shopping trolley would seem fun, things don't quite feel the same when you're let in a back entrance by a man in a Disney suit. We went on space mountain three times, and by the end it was a total snoozefest. I thought this could just be me getting older and becoming too mature for theme parks, but apparently not - on the way back I asked the son if he had enjoyed his day, and he told me it was "boring as shit".

Mild knobby faces, bad teeth and gentle manners

My last hour in Jeddah was spent in complete panic. The family's office mistakenly cancelled my outward journey instead of my return journey (which had been arranged before I quit) and I had to queue up to buy a new ticket. This took ages, and I left a wake of disgruntled tuts as Airport staff rushed me to the front of all the queues and on to the plane. The last Saudis I saw would have seen me as a disorganized, self-important infidel, sweating quite a lot and mispronouncing the Arabic word for 'sorry'.

It's good to be back in the UK, although slightly punishing. I was reunited with alcohol (and friends) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and by Easter Sunday my perma-hangover and acute sleep deprivation combined to make a full-on cold. Nevertheless, I'd arranged to meet a guy living in the Surrey Downs who was going to sell me a new bike, and so at about midday my Dad and I set off on a journey into the leafy heart of the homeliest county.

Before we left, I happened to look at Simon Reynold's Energy Flash blog (I've just started reading his book of the same name) and saw this incredibly timely post quoting George Orwell on returning to England after being in a foreign country. I read Imagined Communities when I was in my first year of University and have since blocked all nationalist/patriotic thought from my mind with liberal zeal, but in the face of a beautiful spring day and a village like Shere, how could this be maintained?

Shere: 'classic'

I'm not saying I'm going to start going to the last night of the proms, or even that I think 'Englishness' is a particularly meaningful quality that has any value, but it's hard not to see the avalanche of differences between Jeddah and Surrey as forming what could be described as national characters. My mind links the smooth curve of the sword on the ever-present Saudi flag with palm leaves and Arabic numbers, forming an aesthetic that's wholly distinct from the untidy verdancy of English lemonade-bottle countryside. Unforgiving desert seems to match Islamic asceticism and self-sacrifice in the same way that grey drizzle feels appropriate to a nation of sarcastic grumblers and introverts.

If you start thinking about it enough (too much), the animals of England even seem to 'belong' (in a non-biological sense) and share in this nebulous, half-defined character. Clearly, a childhood spent watching The Animals of Farthing Wood and Watership Down has permanently infected the way I think about the wildlife of the English countryside, but even this doesn't explain away the spectre of Englishness - these were programmes written and produced in English television studios and shown on English television while I was a child in England. The fact that I think of foxes and rabbits as speaking amongst themselves with polite English accents is itself a result of a style of anthropomorphism peculiar to English kids' TV programmes that I was exposed to.

Differences in climate, wildlife, clothing, religion, infrastructure, architecture, history and language hit you hard after even a relatively short absence. It would, of course, be impossible to build an accurate and coherent narrative from the infinite differences between Saudi Arabia and England. And yet your mind can't resist the temptation of giving your experience a name, or even of feeling some kind of affection towards the country that you've just created in your head.