London to L.A.

Going to Heathrow to get a flight sucked arse, give me Gatwick every time. But we got to stay in one of those insane airport hotels which are like little separate 24 hour universes. If I’d wanted a Costa at 3am and not minded a 3 hour journey to get there, it would’ve been ace.

 

If you’ve ever watched a good disaster movie, you’ll know that it’s bad news to fly on a plane when there are nuns onboard. But we flew Virgin, so inevitably there were two nuns sitting near the back and I spent the whole flight convinced something would go dreadfully wrong. Luckily these two nuns bucked the trend and we were OK, although just as we took off, that other plane from Beijing crash-landed and they shut Heathrow, so maybe the Nun Aircrash Factor sometimes has sends its effects out to a distance. They were classic nun stereotypes: an old wise nun and a nervous young one who would’ve probably been dead hot if she was allowed to wear some lippie. At some point, absent-mindedly worrying about the nuns, I actually opened the door on a woman in the loo, who’d forgotten to lock it. She didn’t have her bits out or anything, I think she was just finishing up. She had a baby as well. I briefly imagined how cool it would’ve been if it had been one of the nuns. How often in life do you get to witness a nun taking a dump, if you’re not Russell Brand?

 

We were accidental vegans on the flight, so our food wasn’t very nice, even though Virgin do relatively tasty airline food. Everyone got veggie options but we got eight different salads and no fat. I was fine, feeling noble, til I noticed most meals had a mini Gü chocolate pudding, while we got some chilled grapes. When the next meal came I rebelled in desperation and asked if there were enough spares for me to swap my vegan meal for a normal veggie one. “No problem,” said the stewardess and promptly dropped a second tray of food onto my foldout table, without taking away the original one. Score. Now I’d got two meals, one vegan salad wrap and one veggie sandwiches which included a chocolate cookie. Obviously, Rifa immediately looked at the cookie ingredient list and spotted powdered egg to taunt me with, which, after that Jamie Oliver programme, gave me severe pangs of guilt as I ate it all up.