I am just over weight, only a few kilos, but enough to cause me trouble if someone wants to cause me trouble, say, the person on the check-in desk. Long gone are the halcyon days when I used to put all my dirty underwear at the top of my rucksack, turn up at the airport and, when they objected to my overweightedness, start unpacking it all over the floor by the desk amongst the feet of my co-passengers. I never got very much of the stuff out of my bag, it was just too horrible and degrading for the humane staff and they would stop it and let me on the flight. But air travel is not the frivolous pursuit it used to be and I am, by nature, rather rule-abiding and cautious... so I'm worried.
The departures lounge at Heathrow Terminal 3 is bustling... no... heaving, and lots of folk seem very excited about the swanky outlets selling all kinds of brands that even I, who have had no TV since the analogue signal was turned off nearly a year ago, recognise. However, I am to be found in Boots The Chemist buying painkillers, throat sweets, cold remedy. It would seem the stress of preparing for this trip has finally got to my immune system.
And yet I am agonising in the shampoo section. Mark - one of our hosts on this trip, the man who is planning the gala opening night of the show in Cape Town, he who was my sister's best friend - has asked me to bring a particular shampoo and conditioner from the UK. He has also asked for tea bags, tea bags with actual tea in them as opposed to the neutered ones he finds in his local Cape Town shops - I have three quarters of a kilo of those on board already. The tea bags are not the problem: I am agonising about risking the weight of the hair condiments when I try to get onto my flight.
Of course I'm already through check-in, but that's just for the long haul journey, I have to make a domestic flight from Johannesburg to Durban tomorrow, where the tour begins, and I'm at least seven kilos over for that. Mark says he will not actually expire if I don't bring his hair products... but would it make that much difference?.... In the end, fearing what might befall me in Joburg, I leave with only my selection of drugs. Looking back I should have simply grown a pair, but I'm proving, yet again, what a wuss I am. I'm such a wuss.
I am such a wuss I've been in a state of high-anxiety about bringing the show to South Africa for about two months. It came upon me all of sudden and has stayed with me, migrating from one problem to another in my fevered 4am brain, night after night, waking me early, reaching its peak over the Christmas period, making me snappy and even less reliable than usual.
So why am I doing it?
Like so many things in my life, the opportunity presented itself and I said yes... and then thought about it. If I think about anything I become very unlikely to risk, which is why I should've bought the hair ablutives and worried about the consequences in queue for the domestic flight. As it was I was worrying the whole restless long haul night about being overweight anyway, I knew I would be, and it would have only been a few more grammes. Stop and think and you will sink: that should be my motto. More thoughtlessness required.
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