Our trip is wonderful and we remind ourselves daily how lucky we are. But will it surprise anyone if I admit, nine months in, that travelling around the world for a year with my husband, an alpha male who has purposefully cast himself adrift from his high-powered, highly paid City career, and three boisterous, unschooled young children, is not always as perfect an adventure as it looks on paper?

Here’s why. Leaving behind the testosterone-charged, high-adrenaline atmosphere of a City job is not easy. Bumbling along for months with your young family doesn’t always provide enough daily excitement to be a substitute for that jokey, macho, self-confident world. Mindless pottering cannot, sadly, give one quite the same buzz or provide the same amount of mental stimulation.

Parenting is slow and steady, sometimes boring, often tiring, ultimately rewarding, but sadly lacking the big bang of a year-end bonus. The tiny emotional rewards that children constantly bestow make this job worthwhile for me, but this may be something that Nick is not yet programmed to appreciate and perhaps never will be. I don’t blame him for that; we are different, after all.

Leaving behind a career is one thing, but having no idea of a substitute is unfortunately another. How do we live? The temptation to return to the City to cash in a bit more is almost overpowering for Nick at times, particularly as the memory of the misery of much of it fades away and stories of huge bonuses reach our distant ears. Fiddling around trying to earn a bit of cash here and there is not very appealing.

Where do we live? Being thousands of miles away from family and friends has no real advantage for us — we all miss them far more than we expected to. Would living somewhere such as New Zealand, where we are now, with lovely sea views and a big house, no need to work much, or to do anything more significant than swan about, really make up for the diminution of those relationships that we have spent half a lifetime establishing?

Perhaps, although memories of the London congestion charge, which still stirs anger in us even from this far away, stealth taxes, the grey climate, and high property prices should give us pause for thought before we decide to return.

We have full-time charge of these three lovely children. There is no school day, ever, to give us a chance to pause and take stock, and this school holiday is a year long. We do not have a moment together in which to discuss our future in any meaningful way. Our every sentence is interrupted, our every train of thought broken by one simple demand or another, nothing serious, just ordinary kid things.

This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, what an extraordinary privilege to spend so much time together as a family. On the other hand, perhaps a little time apart would be productive.

The children, of course, are having a ball. They don’t worry about the future, where they will live or even where they will be staying tonight. Their lives are simple and almost perfect. A few more friendly children about would perhaps be nice, but this is by no means crucial — they have each other and they are a great team. An hour a day of school work? Well, it certainly seems to be worth an almighty battle, but they do realise that they are better off than they were before.

How do we find the answer? I am afraid to tell all those of you who dream similarly that it is far from easy. No single place is perfect. We are not going back to our life in its old format — that we do know. But we do have to find a workable alternative. This still is a fantastic, amazing adventure, which we never want to end, but it has raised issues that we didn’t expect.

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