Kenya 1st 12 hours

I feel like the bit part that's left the play forever. I wish I were going home with Mum and Jamie, where my story is. This is someone else's and it's frightening.

I'm waiting at the cafe at terminal 4 with Jam and Mum. I have a bottle of coke and a glass of wine. The coke, as I'm feeling a little queasy after a seeing-off/birthday lunch at Browns on the river. The wine, not because I want it, but because it seems absolutely necessary. At the moment I feel that this sort of decision is the kind that might make more sense drunk. Rosemary was right, this is not like me, at least not yet. Maybe my drunken alter-ego will actually end up responsible for something productive in my life.

I thus manage to induce myself leave Mum and Jamie outside duty free - in a slightly bemused daze of disbelief. Wine has turned my frantic 'What the fuck?!' question into a jovial 'What the fuck...” statement of acceptance/resignation.

I walked around duty free and picked up a bottle of Dewars, seemed legit. I conscientiously avoided the eyes of everyone. I'd peripherally clocked a few other people on the program whom I wish I hadn't already stalked, and would never admit having done so. I get a missed call from Douglas, the team leader, and assume that everyone had already met and I was running late for the party. It had to be now. I wish I was a more naturally social creature. I feel very scared that they would become immediately aware of the horrendous mistake they'd made accepting me onto this course.

I get to the gate and people are already boarding, but there seems to be no BK peeps in sight. Panic. Were they already on the plane? Was I in fact at the right gate (a mistake I had made before, my 16 year old self's New York adventure almost ending inauspiciously in Austin, Texas)? Or was this not even an elaborate prank or scam? I'm getting overly paranoid even for my standards.

My seat is a window as always, I HAVE to see take off and landing, I hate being sandwiched between foreign bodies, and I don't like to be easy to get at. Like a mafioso I also have to sit with my back to the wall in a restaurant. Like a mammal who's taken to the trees to while away the dangers of the night, I much prefer to sleep on mezzanines, sitting away from the aisle in a plane holds a similar degree of necessity for me. I've spied Douglas walking down the far aisle, my more extreme paranoia monster skulks off in defeat.

Two rather large Kenyan ladies sit in seat B and C to my A. They seem friendly enough but my heart sinks as I realise I already need the loo, not because it is anatomically necessary, but because the prospect has suddenly become all the more challenging. My heart sinks as they dive deep into intimate discussion about something which sounds both intense, intimate, and important. I shuffle around a bit and point my eye-line in their direction in as un-invasive a way as possible. They are utterly unresponsive, probably because they haven't noticed. I suck it up and eat one of these 'Oddities' I found in Smiths. It was salty and dry and helped. What's more they are all different shapes, literally cheaper than chips (in the American sense of the word crisps) only 100 calories, and even taste of cheese. So much bang for your buck!

I hear the younger of the two women next to me talk to her kid on the phone, my heart immediately warms, she is lovely and motherly. I soon realise that their reluctance to move was rather more to do with the fact that the dimensions of Mrs C did not bless her with excessive mobility. The fact that neither went to the toilet once on the 8 hour flight meant I eventually forgave both of them for their inertia, especially once I had discovered that they did not mind me vaulting over the top of them in order to escape my seat. My friendly feeling towards Mrs B increased still further whilst we were commiserating over how uncomfortable we both were. She confided with an awfully pained expression that she was suffering from trapped wind, news I received with sympathy and some degree of alarm. I suggested that a walk down the length of the plane might be just the thing to help.