36 hours and 41 songs

(written 1:24pm Monday 17th July)

As I write this, I am 6 hours and 24 minutes into my journey to New Zealand. I am sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow searching in vain to find some careless soul who has left their Wi-Fi connection unprotected, feeling pretty sick and sweating fairly profusely. And I haven’t even got near boarding a plane yet.

Last night, mid-beer with my dad, I remembered something that, with all the excitement of going to see my boyfriend, I had totally forgotten to address.

I hate flying.

I also hate airports, crowded places, and the majority of the people I am currently sharing airspace with.

But I could deal with all of them, at a push, if you took the former out of the equation.

Short haul I can just about cope with. The tires have barely left the tarmac when you’re presented with your impressively co-ordinated meal (condiments arranged within mathematical precision in the coffee cup? A napkin that turns into a bin liner? Genius.) and, once that’s done, you spend half an hour trying to drink a cup of tar coloured coffee without scalding yourself (you will fail). Before you know it, you’ve just had a chance to decide not to purchase the mini toy aeroplane from the in-flight magazine that is supposedly a replica of the one you’re currently say on, except a lot shinier, newer and more stable.

But the last long haul flight I spent the entire return journey clutching fiercely onto either my dad’s or my mum’s hand (or occasionally both through a particularly bad spell) through 21 hours of continuous turbulence.

I hope whoever’s sat next to me won’t mind indulging a little hand-holding if it all gets a bit hairy.

You would have thought I would find some vague comfort in having a boyfriend who will eventually be flying one of these plane things. But for the past year I have been immersed in all manner of flight literature (I was a little disappointed when his copies of FHM were replaced with ‘Flight Weekly’ or whatever its called, and wouldn’t recommend it for bedtime reading) and stories which have done little to reassure me (I have discovered that having a pilot boyfriend is similar to losing a beloved pet – everyone knows a story about a plane disaster and are all to ready to whip it out, gory details and all, at any given opportunity. Light after dinner entertainment for The WebStress it is not.).

In trying to suppress my worry and sickness I appear to have adopted some sort of pseudo persona as a sort of coping mechanism. I have been obscenely chatty, confident and ‘lovely’ with everyone I have encountered today, rather than avoiding all unnecessary human interaction as usual. I have become quintessentially English since I set off this morning and have adopted an accent just shy of Received Pronunciation (this is quite a change from my typical hybrid of Home Counties with a dash of Cornish and Yorkshire colloquialisms and lilts thrown in. And yes, it sounds as odd as it reads).

So far this has resulted in one particular near problematic encounter. I befriended an elderly Kiwi in the baggage queue and, on replying that no, we didn’t know each other to the security guard, we were both subsequently pulled for security checks. Obviously a suspicious duo if ever there was one.

I have an hour to go until I board. So far my water spilt all through the inside of my backpack, I have eaten something that is clearly not agreeing with my digestive enzymes that have spontaneously all decided to go on strike due to high stress levels, I have listened to the 41 songs on my 256mb MP3 player 1 and a half times through (it may be tiny but it is indestructible, even for the clumsiest and most indelicate of hands such as mine), I am attracting fatty tissue just through the process of sitting and my hair has decided that the back of my neck is actually its conjoined twin and has decided to glue itself to my skin through the bountiful resource of perspiration that’s accumulated there.

Altogether, looking good.