poised to flee

Gawsh. There's that weird way where a complicated trip hoves to on the horizon for months, as a sort of substantial and slightly threatening mirage, and then suddenly the cats are all over you in generalised insecurity, the netbook contains one and a half finished papers and about twenty different maps to various hotels and universities and medieval abbeys, the suitcase is straining at the seams, there are evil little Clexane syringes in the hand luggage, and the Evil Landlord is tromping around the house preparatory to shunting you off to the airport in the next hour. I have a sort of generalised sensation of "eek". Also, excitement. Also, irritation, because Lufthansa, bless their lack of traditional Teutonic efficiency, won't let me check in online, and I'm terrified I'll end up without an aisle seat, climbing over my compatriots in cattle-class hell at two-hourly intervals until they rise and slay me. I am prepared, if necessary, to wave doctors' letters and weep gently.

I am, however, getting better at this travelling thing. The thought of all the public transport connections between me and my first paper (car to airport, plane to Jhb, plane to Frankfurt, plane to Brussels, tram to station, train to Ghent, tram to hotel, walk to venue) is not in fact inducing panic. I have grown as a person. Also, I am prepared to embrace, regardless of expense and with a sense of wicked self-indulgence, the creed of taxis if pressed to it.

I shall see my mother, post-Nesbitted, in about a week. I shall see the London horde, post-mothered, in about two weeks. I shall see the internet again in just over a day. Excelsior! My banner with a strange device reads "PERAMBULATION".