(Sorry for the paucity of updates, but-- what the hell am I talking about? I'm not even slightly sorry. I've been busy and you're not important. Deal with it. Here's some of what you missed while I was doing grownup things...)

The Flight

It was only a short journey. There were no hitches to speak of apart from my setting off the metal detector at Stanstead Airport. I was duly separated from the rest of the herd and frisked. "What's THIS?" demanded the security woman, minutely examining a bottle of black nail varnish which I'd had in my coat pocket.

"It's my nail varnish," I explained. She unscrewed the lid and peered inside, with a distrustful Hmmmph. The bottle seemed to be a source of some peturbation for her. Admittedly it was the right shape for a bomb, being spherical and black, but the lettering read "Spectacular Nail Varnish" rather than "BOMB" and the whole lacked the traditional fizzing fuse. (My silver mascara was also solemly opened up and inspected. I'm obviously going to have to invest in some non-scary cosmetics for the next time I travel.)

Anyhow, nothing else untoward happened and me and my suspicious toiletries were soon on our way to Cork.

My first ever night-flight rocked. Take-offs are one of my most favourite things in the world in space anyway, and when you add watching the city lights drop away beneath the plane you get an extra dose of super wrongly dark. The clouds were like long smudges of charcoal, the lights were twinkly orange like little embers, and sometimes the angle of the plane and a thick bank of cloud would conspire to create the illusion that there was a city in the sky. All the time I lived within her clutches London never looked pretty to me-- although she has some fine features, the overall look is ugglesome. Now at last I found her lovely, her flaws erased by darkness, distance, and water-vapour.

The flight got in five minutes ahead of time. When I finally dragged my luggage into the Arrivals lounge, Mandy was there waiting for me.

More soon.