As we speak, British meteorologists sit muzzled in dark corners, frothing at the mouth desperate to be the first one to bark out the phrase ‘It’s going to be a scorcher!’

The country has had enough of snow and eternally losing one glove. United, the women of Britain, stand, and boldly declare ‘Be gone wretched black opaque tights! I shall not look on you for at least three months, for my pallid, veiny legs are free! Summer is here and I DON’T NEED A FRICKING CARDIGAN!’

Because everyone loves Summer don’t they? Or so you’d think… I have a confession – I am a Summer Scrooge. I hate it. I hate the sweat moustaches, I hate the wasps, I hate the teenage girls who don’t have cellulite yet do have hotpants.

Every year I try to get on board with our most hallowed annual event, and every year, as I witness the afternoon sun glinting off my knee stubble whilst lost in the panicked thought of, ‘Shit, I forgot to put on deodorant again’, I realise that I’m not cut out for this season.

For starters, Summer, like your first teenage boyfriend who makes you do things in car parks you aren’t quite ready to do, is so manipulative.

Summer sweet talks us into wearing things with spaghetti straps. Summer pressures us into waxing things. And most upsetting of all, Summer guilts us into eating salad instead of PIE.

And the anti-pastry rule is just the start of the commandments when it comes to eating. Summer demands we ‘picnic’ because NOT sitting on some brown grass next to a bin in a weird side saddle position so people can’t see up your skirt, nibbling something lettucey would be a waste of this opportunity to worship Summer’s *cue Louie Spence hand clicks* fabulousness.

And if, when you do stand up you can manage to walk, seeing as you now have two dead legs, Summer then forces you to pretend to be pleased that some arsehole has bought along a Frisbee.

‘Amazing!’ you yell! ‘I LOVE Frisbee!’

No you don’t; only Labradors and weird male philosophy students like Frisbee.

I know my opinion is controversial because when I tell people that I prefer cold weather they look at me like I’ve said ‘YUCK, an orgasm’. But you know what, I don’t care. Me and my opaque tights are just biding our time, waiting to get back to our one true love, Winter.

Winter, with his sexy greying hair who whispers in your ear that he loves you just the way you are. He doesn’t care if you’re pasty, or stubbly or rarely seen without a hot water bottle tied around your middle with a dressing gown cord like a cosy suicide bombers vest.

The only commandment he makes, is a thing of beauty and wonder. ‘Thou shall eat pie. Lots and lots of pie.’

Thank God it’s Christmas in eight months.

As we all know at events like this, your outfit is king. Make sure you invest time in finding the perfect ensemble by enlisting the services of a stylist.
OR Go shopping by yourself spending two hours in Wagamama reading spy fiction and eating edamame beans while repeating the word “edamame” quietly to yourself in a generic American accent because it is a funny word, before realising you haven’t bought a dress. Spend 30-40 minutes in three shops before you declare you have looked EVERYWHERE IN LONDON and therefore settling for something in the Warehouse sale because 1) it’s in the sale 2) it kind of gives you a waist and 3) it’s in the sale.

Make sure when the day comes, you can get ready in a relaxed and timely manner so you really enjoy the experience.
OR due to your housemate aka mum deciding to have the bathroom done, go round to your sister’s house for a shower. Make sure you take your own towel and toiletries because “It’s not a bloody Travelodge”. When you get there, make sure your nephew throws fish pie at you before you climb into the shower to find there is no hot water because your sister forgot to put the immersion. Waste 20 minutes waiting for the water to warm up by asking your nephew to make animal noises and confusing him by saying ‘giraffe’ and ‘triceratops’. It’s also key that your nephew bursts in when you are towelling off and says ‘Your rudie is funny’. Drive home with wet hair and mild anxiety about your rudie. If you see someone you used to go to school with, ignore them.

Book a hair and make-up artist to make sure you are at your glamorous best.
OR decide tonight is definitely the time to try applying fake eyelashes for the first time. Spend 25 minutes gluing your left eye shut before You Tubing a ‘how to’ video where a teenage American girl simultaneously annoys, patronises and educates you. Swear a lot and put on too much eyeliner in the style of Avril Lavigne when she was going through that cross phase.

Make sure you book a sick ride to drop you off.
OR take up your mum’s offer of dropping you off in the family Toyota estate. After all, if you move your dad’s golf clubs and ignore the trodden-on pink wafer biscuits your nephew has thrown out of his car seat, it’s really quite plush.

When you arrive on the red carpet, be professional.
OR remember half way down the carpet that you have forgotten to pull down the thermal vest you put on under your dress, meaning that it is clearly visible from the back. Walk sideways like a crab in front of all the scary photographers ensuring the vest stays a secret between you, Mark and Spencer. Style it out like you are being playful and doing a very long grapevine step that people did in aereobics classes in the 90s. The photographers will not care because they have no idea who you are and will call you ‘Ella’.

Phew. The hard work’s done now, so relax and enjoy the night mingling seamlessly with all your contemporaries.
OR continually exclaim loud variations on the following ‘THERE’S IAN BEALE. THERE’S MARK WRIGHT. THERE’S MARK WRIGHT’S MUM. THERE’S MARK WRIGHT’S DAD, before going up to Sheridan Smith and telling her in one constant, ginny breath,
“OhMyGodILoveLegallyBlondeTheMuscial!ItotallySawItThreeTimes
AndYouWereAmazingAndILovedTheDogsAndYouHaveNiceHair
AndIReallyLoveLegallyBlondeTheMuscialIHaveHadQuiteALotOfGin
IAmGoingToGetMoreGin!IWillLetGoOfYourArmsNow!IReallyLovedTheDogs!”

Leave graciously.
OR Steal someone else’s cab, get home, make a cheese toastie which you forget to eat and will find in the morning. Go to sleep in your thermal vest and have weird dreams about Ian Beale and your rudie.

Australia is just wonderful. If you haven’t been, DON’T. Save yourself the heartache you experience on return. Especially if you’re Northern. I’m finding the transition hard enough and I’m from the nice bit of the UK, but YOU guys would be searching for the painkillers and whisky before you’d passed the first sign post to Birmingham.

The reason I was Down Under over Christmas was due to the fact that I have chosen an Australian life partner. So incidentally, has my sister. It seems my mother severely underestimated the effect long term exposure to Neighbours and Craig McClachlan can have on impressionable young girls.

So Sydney was my adopted home for a few blissful weeks where I spent much time observing the natives. Here are some insider Antipodean facts for you:

1)    Australian people don’t see shoes as mandatory, particularly on children. Everywhere you turn there are shoeless kids running around like human veruccas. I even saw GROWN UPS wander round shopping malls sans footwear. Imagine that. The only adult in the UK you see without shoes is Diana Vickers off of the 1987 Xfactor and she only does it because she’s totes a free spirit. These Aussie shoeless souls were definitely NOT free spirits because they were usually drinking slurpees from 7 Eleven.

2)    While shoes aren’t de rigueur in Aus, they do have some other stringent sartorial rules which unfortunately, I learnt the hard way. Imagine my despair when I turned up to a bar in my favourite muscle shirt at 6:03pm and saw the below sign. Until that moment, I didn’t know it was possible for deltoids to do a sad face.

3)    Australia uses jigsaws to lie to their children about animal behaviour. From my experiences gained by watching ‘The Really Wild Show’ I’m almost certain no cat has hatched out of an egg and then embraced two things that are very much below it in the food chain. He may as well have his arms around two zinger burgers.

4)    As you can see below, Aussies like to put sheep placenta on their faces. Placenta. Of a sheep. Needless to say I didn’t buy any. If I wanted to slather my face with something weird and slimey that another mammal has excreted from their body, I’d just motor boat Dr Christian from Embarrassing Bodies.

5)    Sydneysiders like you to admire their bridge, which I think is weird. Essentially, a bridge is just a road on stilts. Sure roads are great; I wouldn’t be where I am without them, but I’ve never been on the M25 and thought to myself ‘That flyover would look ace on Instragram’. But you gota do what you gota do, so below is the obligatory selfy. (I’ve got a picture in front of an brilliant roundabout but I want to stagger releasing such gold into the world.)

I have loads more of these mind boggling facts but writing about Australia just makes me miss it even more. There’s only one thing for it – I’m going to watch Bondi Rescue, stroke my muscle shirt and find the afterbirth of a sheep. Bonza.

But I’m still one of you though guys! Sure, my toiletry bag is superior to yours, but I’m still normal. What I’m trying to say, is that in my previous life when I had a grown up job and a vague chance of ever getting a mortgage, I flew to places for work and amassed a large amount of air miles. And much like money and bowling shoes, you cannot take air miles with you. So when I had to book a flight to visit absent boyfriend in Russia, I decided to splurge.

I splurged on the face of Economy Class and it’s plastic cutlery. I splurged in the eye of the nominally increased legroom of Premium Economy. And best of all, I splurged long and hard all over the flat bed of Business Class, because when I splurge, I. Do. It. Right.

(…And also because there were no other air mile flights available so I basically had no option. If I’m honest, the splurging was non-consensual.)

So here is the story of how I was made to feel like a movie star. (By that I mean ‘special’, not under sudden pressure to lose two stone and marry Tom Cruise.) I’ll do it in bullet points because lets be honest, the splurging paragraph was painfully laboured:

* I arrived at Heathrow and approached the ‘First’ check-in section so I stopped to take this photo. The man on the right of the photo is telling me to stop taking photos.

* After playing it cool at the check-in desk by saying “ARE THOSE REAL FLOWERS?” (they were), I was fast tracked through security. Never has the bit where the lady in the uniform sweeps her hands along your underwire been more thrilling.

*I then went into the Concorde Lounge for some breakfast. It’s like Giraffe, but for people who matter. Below is my table, complete with a rosemary plant. Special people like fresh herbs with their Special K.

*After spending lots of time putting things in my bag (magazines, biscuits, waiters), it was time to board my plane, where I was greeted by name and asked to turn LEFT. ‘LEFT’ MOTHER HUMPERS!!! And below was my cabin. MY cabin. All to myself. ‘Cos no other bastard was as important as me /stupid enough to waste all their air miles on a four hour flight.

*I settled into my seat and ingratiated myself seamlessly into the First Class experience by asking the stewards insightful questions like “ARE THOSE REAL FLOWERS?” (they were) and taking photos like this.

*This is my area, by which I mean my seat and not my vagina. Those are my FREE slippers (I smell them sometimes).

*Table cloth. That’s all I’m saying.

*After this I was too drunk to take more pictures, so I fell asleep. On my bed. A bed. IN THE SKY. And when I woke up, the air steward had covered me with a FEATHER DUVET. It was like being cuddled by a cloud.

*And then we landed in Moscow and I queued for an hour at immigration because I wasn’t special anymore. Sometimes I wonder what will run out first, the special memories of that special day or the shit load of biscuits I nicked.

The festival was brilliant and uplifting but also awful and bone crushingly horrific all at the same time. Very similar to the act of child rearing, I imagine. Just when you think you’ve successfully placated a tantrum in Tesco, the little brat takes its trousers off and shits in the biscuit aisle.

So after a month of no sleep and audiences as fickle as a Natasha Giggs in a room full of men with the surname Giggs, it was only right that I took some time out in the form of a holiday.

So did I jet to Barbados for sun, rum and a passionate but fleeting affair with Michael Winner? Hell no – not after last time.

Maybe Marbella then, to hang out with some of my kinfolk posing on the Essex Riviera? No way – there’s no way I’m wearing a bikini with that fox Nanny Pat around.

No, in fact , I went to a holiday home three miles west of Norwich accompanied by my parents, my sister, my brother in law and my nephlettes. (NB: ‘nephlettes’ is a word I have created to refer to a mixed group of nieces and nephews. I’m pretty pleased with it.)

And the glamour doesn’t stop at the ‘Norwich’ name drop my friends, oh no. Due to the fact that there were seven humans and two bedrooms, the sleeping options were somewhat limited. But as my family love me dearly, they kindly managed to rustle me up a spot. I was informed by my darling sister ‘The baby’s in the living room so the sofa bed’s out of bounds. You’re on the floor in the hall.’

THE HALL. The picture below shows my plush dwellings.

Now I don’t mean to come across like a diva, but even Anne Frank had access to an actual bed. All I had was access to the post when it landed on my face. And on that point, IT’S A HOLIDAY HOME, THERE SHOULDN’T BE ANY POST.

I never did decide what was the best bit of bedding down there; was it sleeping underneath a curtain of coats or maybe the exciting threat of giving myself concussion on the radiator during every nocturnal duvet readjustment? Gosh it’s just like a holiday version of Sophie’s Choice.

But all in all, I had a wonderful time with my family. The memories of the holiday will live long in my heart. Maybe even longer than it takes for the scabs from my ‘Welcome’ mat inflicted facial carpet burns to heal.

I am fully aware of the process involved; I choose from the menu, I tell the waiter my choice, the waiter brings it to me, I eat it. This procedure has always, and will always be the same. So why then is the whole process so often such a shambolic experience?

It’s all downhill from when the waiter asks ‘Are you ready to order?’. So often at this point, I am genuinely taken a back.

‘How strange. A little man with a notebook has crept up on me and is asking what I’d like to eat. This has caught me most unprepared’ I think.

In reality, of course I am ready to order. I also know that everyone else at my table is ready, seeing as I’ve just spent seven minutes discussing the merits of getting a pizza over a pasta (the fail safe reasoning ‘But you can make pasta yourself at home, you can’t with a pizza…’ will undoubtedly have been used.)

Yet suddenly, in front of the man with the notepad, it seems confusing and rather presumptuous for me to jump in and answer for everyone else. Cue frantic mutterings around the table of ‘Are you ready…? I’m ready, but are you ready?’. Then as these mumblings begin to crescendo, someone in the group feels compelled to take charge. They grab hold of the situation by boldly and solemnly declaring that ‘Yes…we are ready,’

That person is now The Leader of your indecisive dining quiz team. If this were University Challenge, they’d sit second from the right. They shall forever more (until you pay the bill) be your spokesperson.

But then there comes the minefield of ordering. The quiet chaos continues. Who goes when? Who orders what if you’ve decided to pair up and go half-and-half? And who, in a pure state of bewilderment, will unleash the most desperate diner plea of all; ‘I still don’t know what I want… I’ll go last’?

Once again it’s down to The Leader to bring things into line. They do this by decreeing who shall be the first to place their order, by saying a name in a questionning tone.

For example: ‘Gemma?’

And so, as they go round the table, like a teacher with a register, it is ensured that all this wayward group shall eat tonight. The Leader is a hero.

All that leaves is the tricky ‘water’ conversation to be negotiated. It’s up to The Leader to specify that you’d like tap water rather than bottled water, but in a way that suggests a communal environmental conscious as opposed to sheer cheapness. Once this is done, you can all breathe easy until the food arrives.

But by then, at least 40% of your group will have forgotten what they ordered, which rises steadily to over 85% if you are in a restaurant which uses a foreign language.

‘Pizza fiorentina?’ barks the nice man holding the giant plates.

Once again his sudden appearance creates confusion. The blank faces around the table suggest that being presented with food in a restaurant is the last thing that was expected to happen. And so begin the discussions of who the fiorentina belongs to.

Whose is the fiorentina? What is a fiorentina? Is it a flower? Where are we? What was the question?

If Alzheimer diagnoses were based on menu choice recall, it would suggest that there are many young dementia sufferers amongst us. But don’t worry. The Leader will rectify the situation by embarking upon a spectacular directorial performance.

‘Right, the fiorentina has got an egg on it. Who ordered the pizza with an egg on it? Liz? That was you. And Sam and Matt, that’s your spaghetti with and pizza to share. Juliet, you’re back on Weight Watchers, that’s got to be your salad…’

Before long, everyone will be tucking in happily. You have nearly made it through the whole evening. But there is still the last remaining hurdle. The biggest of all.

The splitting of the bill.

When it arrives, the little silver tray is passed around like a crap game of pass-the-parcel. But instead of music cueing the stops, its journey only ends when The Leader pulls out their phone and opens the calculator app. (Along with losing memory skills in a restaurant, it’s also mandatory for people to loose all sense of basic maths. Even The Leader can’t be expected to calculate 12.5%.)

After eight separate card transactions (no one ever remembers to bring cash) and the printing of sixteen bits of paper, all that’s left is for one or two people to quietly whinge to no one in particular because they paid the same as Gemma who had a steak, and then the whole experience is complete.

The Leader leaves content, happy in the knowledge that when needed to, they stood up and were counted.

Everyone else leaves thinking,

‘What is Dave’s problem? Bossy prick.’

Some people say that we shouldn’t fan the flames of this whole debacle, because it’s obviously just one of the below:
1) A ploy by the Mail to drive up the price of their online ad space.
2) A deliberately provocative piece written by a journo who fancies being interviewed by Schofe on This Morning.
3) The work of a genetic hybrid created in a lab out of pearls and Hobbs casual-blazers by Jan Moir in order to offer a new Mail hate figure to the UK.

Whatever the true aim of the article, what has gotten my goat about it all is how some people have written off the whole backlash against Samantha Brick as simply ‘women being bitches’.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know ‘bitch’.

I have laughed at dodge haircuts. I have pointed at bad shoes. I have called my sister’s engagement ring ‘sweet’.

Like I said, I know my ‘bitch’.

But me thinking that a person (who writes about how they cannot wait for old age to come and gobble them up into invisibility so they can at last gain some respite from the bottles of champers incessantly being sent to their table) IS A BIT OF A TIT, is not bitchiness.

In this case, it is good, solid fact.

Me thinking she’s a tit, is not me-as-a-woman, bitching about her because-she-is-another-woman.

Me thinking she’s a tit is me recognising that there are some people in the world who should think before they write articles in national newspapers where they come across as a BIT OF A TIT.

My distaste for her conceit and the resultant sympathy she bizarrely tries to elicit has nothing to do with both of us having ovaries and everything to do with her being a PERSON who is A TIT.

It isn’t hard to imagine that the reason she hasn’t ever been asked to be someone’s bridesmaid is nothing to do with the jealously and fear that she suggests her friends bitchily harbour against her, but rather because her friends, like 95% of everyone else, also think, that as an actual HUMAN, Samantha Brick is A BIT OF A TIT.

She is a woman yes. But first and foremost she is a tit. And this, THIS my friends is why she is being picked apart. So you can take your lazy dismissal of ‘bitchiness’ and shove them up your bum.

Unless of course you are so blinded by my own crippling beguiling cotequettishness that you fancy buying me my train ticket, cos if that’s the case you can call me what you want. Those travelcard badboys are priecccccey.

ps- sorry for the overuse of CAPS LOCK and the word ‘tit’.
Tit.

It means I’ve spent a fair bit of time lately meeting the brave folk of Britain who want to challenge POD for a ‘makeunder’. They have, without exception, been great fun to chat with, but as you can imagine if you’ve watched the show before (i.e., ALL OF YOU) pre-overhaul, 90% of them look like they’ve rolled around in furniture varnish before jumping into a well of glitter (in a manor very similar to preparing a breaded chicken escalope).

For the palest Essex girl this side of Romford, this has been somewhat of an education.

It’s actually proved a little shocking to me how so many of these girls and guys seem to be dependent on their tan and eyelashes etc to make them feel presentable and then in turn, actually able to leave the house. It’s become a pattern that some of them just can’t seem to break out of, so I’ve been intrigued to catch up with them all to see for myself if they have been able to keep their new, more natural look.

When they have, and they tell me how the experience has impacted positively on their life (and the colour of their towels and bed sheets) I have been genuinely chuffed.

Gosh, that was serious wasn’t it. Sorry. Quick, I’ll lighten the mood. TITS. WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH TITS, HEY?

The production team I’m working with are super good craic and I’m learning lots about telly. Like, the sound-man has told me that if ever I need to mic up people doing nude ice-skating, just whack the mic pack in their hair. You couldn’t BUY that sort of knowledge.

With all the travelling I’m doing for the show, I’m also learning how to make myself feel at home in hotel rooms very quickly. This is achieved by losing my eyelash curlers immediately and drinking tea while listening to Dolly Parton on Spotify.

I have also started rating hotel rooms on how luxurious I deem they are. I’m thinking of setting up an accommodation guide to rival the AA’s. Although I think I need to raise my 5* rating requirements as so far I only have ‘Must offer a shower cap and room service staff who don’t judge harshly when they deliver a guests starter and main course, that is actually, two puddings.’

It was at this point that I realised I appear to have stolen the life of a 14 year-old girl. I imagined that somewhere in the country at that very minute, a very confused teenager must be in the midst of an ironic game of table tennis in a overpriced bar in East London, as someone called JJ asks her how much of a dent she’s made in her student loan repayments.

This game of Freaky Friday has happened because I have moved back into my childhood home. I’ve been there since Christmas because my partner decided that our relationship was clearly going so well, that the only option he had was to take things to the next level. No not by proposing, but by moving to Russia. ALONE. Such larks.

But as one of my friends said to me, ‘Russia? A land full of predatory prostitutes and limitless vodka; what could go wrong?’.

So out of the nice flat in London and back to the mother ship I have come. It’s weird timing, what with me diving into the comedy world. On one hand it’s a terribly exciting bit of my life, full of potential work projects and tantalising grown-up meetings, then on the other hand, rarely has a day passed in 2012 where I haven’t heard ‘ELEANOR. Small bowls go in the BOTTOM of the dishwasher.’

In fact, I have learnt that the dishwasher is a crucial part of family life in a way I hadn’t appreciated before I left home. After a thorough scientific study, I have learnt that my mother’s mood is directly proportional to how loudly she unloads the crockery from the depths of its wiry skeleton.

Two or three bangs of china on china: proceed with caution but so long as you don’t interrupt The Archers, you should be OK.

Four bangs or more: RED ALERT. YOU SHALL NOT PASS. DISASTER HAS OCCURED (90% of the time, the disaster is Sky Plus related. Incomplete recordings of shows about fat people, or shows about dancing prove to be the most disastrous. If it’s deleted something about fat-people-dancing , RUN LIKE THE FRICKING WIND).

So it’s taking some getting used to. Not because my parents are anything other than wonderful housemates (Sky Plus dependent of course) but basically, because it’s not normal for 28 year-old people to live with their mum and dad. Unless you are an Italian man. And I am definitely not an Italian man, because I hate both olives AND infidelity.

So here I am, a grown woman trying to work out exactly what I want from life all in this strange domestic setting of arrested development. But I have promised myself that I will not let this odd happenstance affect my progression through life. No, I will strive forward to independence, soldiering a path on my own two feet towards a future full of fulfillment and success! I AM WOMAN. HEAR ME ROAR.

…But not right now, ‘cos Dad’s just said dinner’s ready.

‘Wow Ellie, you must be a hoot at dinner parties with interesting nuggets like that,’ you may be thinking. But, with all due respect dear reader, up yours. Cos a comic never driving on a motorway, is like a new member of a university rugby team never having to put a cherry up his arse and run naked through campus, yelling ‘I’VE PUT A CHERRY UP MY ARSE!’ It is a necessary right of passage.

Read any life-story of any comic and they’ll mention late night drives back from a gig in Hull via their favourite Little Chef on the A1, or how the Watford Gap Services South Bound have really improved over the last few years.

So due to a combination of a lack of motoring anecdotes in my autobiography (working title ‘No, I’m not Steve Tyler, I Just Have Big Lips’) and also because I now live in the silly suburbs, I had no option on Wednesday but to motorway it for the first time in ten years . No more trains for me. No, the only way I was undertaking this perilous journey through country riddled with savages, namely, Rochester, Kent, was by car.

To prepare, first, I created a mental list entitled ‘How I will attack this journey head-on’. But ‘head-on’ seemed like an unfortunate choice of words, so I changed it to ‘How I will get to Kent without causing death/ grievous harm/the voiding of my parents car insurance’.

The list was as follows:

1. Buy sat nav
2. Drive awesomely to Kent and back

The reality was more like this:
1. Buy sat nav.
2. Change sat nav voice to an Irish man called ‘Daniel’ who sounds like he has good geography but also twinkly eyes.
3. Plug in destination and watch demo of journey .
4. Start panicking when Daniel says I have to go over a big bridge.
5. Turn panic into crying when Daniel mentions entering a tunnel .
6. Shout loudly (using a niche child’s song reference) ‘I just want to go on normal roads! Why do I have to go over things and under things? What is this? A FRICKING BEAR HUNT?’
7. Realise I have to leave immediately to get to gig in time.
8. Tell mum I love her. Get in car.
9. Pull onto M25 with heart pounding at a rate only previously experienced during the climax of the ‘The Cube’ McFly special.
10. Notice I have been driving for 20 minutes and haven’t died.
11. Relax and find myself overtaking a lorry and saying ‘Well, hello fifth gear!’.
12. Realise I am a bellend.
13. Get to gig and tell everyone about my accomplishment.
14. Realise no one cares, so do gig, drive home and write a blog about my adventure in the hope that in written form, it will be more impressive.
15. Realise ‘Driving to Kent’ probably isn’t going to fill up a chapter in my autobiography.
16. Put sat nav in cupboard and book train tickets.
17. Think about how much I’ll miss Daniel’s voice telling me to ‘Perform a u-turn when possible’.