How to look good on coming through baggage claim after a 26 hour plane journey (someone please tell me)

It is now under three weeks until I land in Auckland and my boyfriend sees me for the first time since April 12th.

I have sent him a few carefully selected photographs (with continual thanks to the joy of digital photography and the honesty and patience of my SP who has the ability to tell me how truly awful I can look without resulting in the usual trembling bottom lip that is usually the compulsory response to such frankness, and to this date has never seen fit to get back at me for the awful graduation photo I managed to take of her family in which I lobotomised her dad's head).

But bar them, his last memories are most likely of a rather alcohol riddled, bread overdosed, pale to the point of transparent and, lets face it, a little bit on the 'healthy' side of 'in proportioned', girlfriend.

And when he next sees me I will have endured a 4 hour coach journey, an excruciatingly long wait at Heathrow and a 26 hour flight. And, I think it’s safe to say, I won't be looking my peachiest.

Now, after camping in the lakes for a mere 6 hours this weekend, I woke up near strangulation by my own hair and severely close to needing to be decontaminated. And I showered and straightened my hair just 30 minutes before we left Manchester.

Even Mitchum-so-affective-you-can-even-skip-a-day isn't going to help me out on this one.

I am, like any seasoned traveller (and Glastonbury veteran, who has managed to endure up to a satisfying 4 days in a row without washing, where I've discovered your hair manages to reasonably effectively cleanse itself in its own grease, and you actually begin to hallucinate that your body odour closely resembles a field of clover, although that may have not necessarily been a wholly organic thought process) taking a great deal of baby wipes.

And facial wipes. And deodorising wipes.

But, as I found out from a total of 36 hours in the lakes (and one 50p shower), they just don’t really cut the mustard and you feel, lets face it, a little bit wrong.

And my hair, well, that’s a whole other story. Approximately 12 minutes after straightening my hair, it will return to its puberty days by exploding into a mould-textured fuzz and, while one side of my hair will behave itself and curl under, the other will flick violently out in the same direction. Tying it up is sadly not an option as even the kindest of alcoholic retailers have been inclined to question whether I am even old enough to be allowed out on my own after dark. With my hair down I am able to vaguely masquerade the unfortunate youthful looks I have been granted. Up, my baby-face (now adorned with the first sighting of wrinkles) has nowhere to hide and no big sister to make it look grown-up by association.

I can attempt some sort of crumple-free-sweat-reducing-yet-sexy-and-alluring clothing. But I’m not promising anything.

I guess that means I’m left with only one option.

So, in my ever valiant quest to Reduce Back Fat and Gain Abdominal Muscles I am attempting to embark on a reasonably sadistic exercise routine and healthy eating campaign (note the 'attempting': I am writing this post-gin-pre-soya-desert, which incidentally I discovered today bares a terrifying resemblance in texture, colour and, most worryingly, taste, to the lentil and vegetable soup I had for lunch).

So today, after 2 months of relatively intense training where I lost around three pounds, and four days of consistently not exercising, which I seem to have regained those pounds plus several buddies they thought they'd bring along for the ride, I have achieved one run (which has regressed once more to a kind of lollop) and attempted half of Jordan's exercise routine.

I think by now I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of all things aerobic, especially when it comes to televisual delights.

I have been exposed to the grating delights of Rosemary Connolly (a good one for really fat people, as she gives ‘low impact’ walking alternatives which are barely above watching the damn thing from an armchair eating a packet of crisps), Billy Blanks Tae Bo (which I’ve found after several sessions he has a tendency to not do the same amount of repetitions on both sides, which can lead to an unbalanced, undesirable outcome) and a £5.99 pilates video hosted by a woman with the most offensive fringe I have seen in recent years (the cost speaks for itself regarding the quality of that particular routine).

But I never expected to be experiencing the delights of exercising in front of a shocking pink dance studio embellished with the words ‘Jordan’ in silver writing, with a pair of enormous breasts giggling gleefully in front of me while I’m trying to master an uppercut.

But the workout, all things considered, wasn’t bad. It was actually almost enjoyable, as exercise goes. I am sat here aching to a satisfying degree (although that might be because I’m perched dangerously close to the edge of the chair as the wheels beneath me are attempting to make a bid for freedom in the opposite direction).

And the best bit about it all was that she whinged all the way through.
And I barely broke a sweat. Well, obviously that’s not technically true, I did exude a fairly hefty amount of perspiration, but in the grand scheme of exercise induced ‘glowing’ I was doing pretty well.

So if the video’s to be believed, I will have achieved Katie Price’s figure (minus oversized breasts) by the time I leave on a jet plane in a few weeks.

I didn’t hang around to watch her ‘diet hints and tips’ at the end, which would have probably informed me that this workout was accompanied with a daily intake of a single lettuce leaf and 27 bottles of bloody Evian in order to achieve her pre-wedding figure.

But ignorance is bliss and a bean dessert calls.