‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,’ John Lennon once said. I thought of this saying when the customs officer impounded my passport (my claim that I had lost it in March had clearly not been revoked by the British Consulate in Amsterdam as they had declared even though I had since taken numerous flights – ‘At least you didn’t land in a Thai jail,’ one friend said) when I arrived (after a delayed flight) at Heathrow for my weekend (plus two unexpected extra days) in London. Actually, the truth is that even though I am in my thirties I burst into tears and phoned Hot Danish. This is my punishment for omitting to tell my mum I was coming over to the UK is what I actually thought (after worrying when I would get my passport replaced, when I would get home and how expensive this inconvenience would be).

‘The thing is that I didn’t have time to see my mum,’ I told Liz over dinner (I was 20 minutes late) at Brompton Asian Brasserie. Liz didn’t say anything. ‘And she would have made me feel super guilty.’ Mum puts all of my weekend-away plans in her diary so she doesn’t call me and worry about where I am (she and her neighbour are probably the last people in Europe to use a landline socially – they call each other several times a day to say when one of their cats are out in an effort to avoid their cats from fighting). I had given Hot Danish strict instructions to answer the landline if I was out and tell my mum (she is the sole reason we had the line installed) that I was out with friends.

The quest to replace my passport led me to the wastes of nondescript England (to steal a phrase from my friend Monique) – to a city of kindly souls who called a cab for me, passed a tissue when I cried over my impounded passport and who directed me to the nearest Starbucks. It was also the place of cheap shops (even French Connection looked like it had a different range compared to its other stores), fast food chains, a man screechily playing the bagpipes on a street corner and lots of bad teeth and bad hair – the man who served me in the passport office (and handed me a tissue) had what look like mud smeared on his head (I have no idea what it was).

‘Did the landline ring?’ I asked HD when I finally returned (two days late and much unintended spending later) home. ‘Just as I left to come and surprise you at the airport.’ Hot Danish has recently made a valid point that I keep remembering the bad things he does (or the things he neglects to do) and not the good things so I didn’t ask him if he took Mum’s call. I’ll call her this evening…