A land of mess and stress and bad smells.

I am in England again, quel surprise! But only for 3 weeks. Or thereabouts. But the tale of how I came to be in England deserves a telling as it was une grande drame!

I left Mount Holyoke at 9:50am on Tuesday morning, on a bus bound for Hampshire College. At Hampshire College I leapt off said bus and leapt onto another bus (actually there wasn't a huge amount of leaping as I was carrying a 24.8 kg suitcase plus a rucksackfull of books and a laptop case full of computery goodness.

The second bus took me to Northampton where I got off the bus and wandered for about 15 minutes until I arrived at the Peter Pan bus depot, which was NOT very easy to locate. It was now approximately 10.30am. I was due to catch the 11.35 bus to Springfield. When I arrived at the bus depot there was a sign informing me that my bus would probably be at least half an hour late. More likely to be an hour late. Oh thrills. The joys of missing my flight were starting to run around inside my Brian.

I also had the wondrous experience of watching a documentary about a plane crash while waiting for the bus. The side of the plane ripped off and people fell out and were mangled in the engine. It just so happens that I have never been particularly fond of flying, and this emission did nothing to calm my fears.

When the bus did arrive (only 10 minutes late!) we were all bundled on board by the driver who had not taken his happy pills, and we were off. There were about fifteen people on the bus, so I was able to take up lots of space and sit and panic about the fact that I was probably going to get lost in New York and not catch my flight and die etc.

When we arrived at Springfield, I was able to stay on the bus, and the same happened when we arrived in Hartford as well. So, alas, I stayed on the bus until we came to a stop in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.

I then located the subway, and even managed to buy the right ticket and get on the right train, and wasn't mugged on the way, which surprised me. I sat on the train for most of my life (i.e. an hour) and then a nice person who understood my bemusedness told me when to get off. Which I did, bought a ticket for the AirTrain, and climbed aboard. There was a minor panic when someone told me that it wouldn't stop at my terminal, but it did. Panic over.

At the airport I had the privilege of being the awful person who has to rearrange their baggage at check-in because it was too heavy. A couple more of the beast books made their way into my hand luggage and I was set. I found my gate in the airport and collapsed in a large and bookish heap of death.

Our flight was delayed as they needed to move another plane away from the terminal and move ours in. We boarded the plane about an hour late. And then were fortunate enough to be able to sit on the plane for four hours while they de-iced it. I was fortunate enough to be seated next to someone with bad flatulence. After four hours of not really knowing what was going on, we left, and six hours later arrived in London.

During the flight I had such privileges as eating 'chicken' and pasta, i.e. cat and pasta. Also, I was able to experience losing all feeling in my backside, which was rather bizarre and unpleasant. I got off the plane, collected my suitcase and located Daddums. And then drove home and ate real food!!