October 2nd

Surprisingly lively considering the lack of sleep, I leave most of my fellow passengers as they head for transfer flights while the few of us who are ending our journey in Korea make our way through passport control. It’s quick and uneventful and before I know it I’m standing with my all worldly goods alone in Seoul airport. I have the feeling that I’m in an airport – nothing more, nothing less.

Following instructions received in an 11th hour email, I change all my money into Won, find a pay phone and dial a number. The man on the phone is expecting my call and tells me a taxi – his wife - will pick me up outside Gate 8. She arrives promptly, says very little. We pick up someone else – an ex-Scot-now-Kiwi who has a few days stop over before continuing on home. He tells me we are being taken to a hostel near the airport, which is as much as I know about anything so far.

The hostel is lovely, and I have the five-bed room to myself. I take a much needed shower and return to Errol’s room to take him up on his promise of a tour of the local shops. He’s a friendly old ex-seaman from Aberdeen and we stroll about in the warmth of the early evening swopping stories. Back at the hostel we share a beer and smoke a few cigarettes before I return to my room and slip between the first clean and comfortable sheets I’ve seen in a few nights. The taxi driver told me someone would pick me up at 7am, so I need the early night.

October 1st

I wake up early and forgo a shower in the dysentery filled bathroom. Despite having more than twelve hours to kill before my flight, I am not tempted to linger. I arrive at Heathrow armed against inflated airport prices with breakfast and lunch bought from a bakery at Earls Court before I left. All there is to do now is wait.

As soon as the check-in opens I’m there, second in line. Waiting, waiting, I’m fighting off fear and nervousness. I’m not concerned about the flight, or the unknown future, but after five long months of battling with paperwork, of hitches and delays, I’m worried that this might never happen. I recheck my passport, my ticket, my visa. I re-weigh my luggage – exactly 20 kilos, right to the gram and still I worry. It’s my turn. The cheery woman at the check-in hands me my boarding pass without further ado and I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m on my way.

The plane is amazing, enormous. This isn’t your Easy Jet or BMI Baby. I’m given a seat with a family of five ex-Brits-now-Aussies who are returning home after a family visit. The mother of the family shows me the ropes – how to work the television built into the seat in front, where to plug in the headphones, when to expect food and drinks, the purpose of the little bag of goodies given out by the flight attendants.

We chat for a few hours, enjoy the free drinks then I watch ‘Sex and the City’. I doze through ‘In Bruges’ as it’s already eighteen hours since I last slept, but despite the cosy blanket and little pillow provided, I can’t manage more than fifteen minutes sleep at a time before I’m woken by some announcement or random movement. The time flies remarkably fast anyway

September 30th

I’m sitting on the bed of the cheapest, nastiest hotel room in London. If my arms were only slightly longer I’d be able to touch all four walls. Not that I’d want to touch anything in here that I didn’t have to. The shared bathroom next door will not be shared with me as the last occupant clearly had a serious gastro infection and an inability to flush. My suitcase remains firmly shut, wedged between the end of the bed and the wall. Even if I wanted to risk hanging my clothes I couldn’t as there isn’t enough space between wardrobe and bed to open the door, and I suspect the door would fall off if I attempted it anyway. I crawl across the bed and cautiously push open the narrow, rotten window frame and light a cigarette. I doubt very much that the smoke alarm works, or that any of the hotel staff are familiar enough with English law or the English language to tell me that I can’t smoke in here. In the few minutes it takes me to finish a cigarette I watch ten Tube trains pass by my window on the short over-ground stretch to and from Earls Court station

Last minute decisions rarely turn out well, but I wanted to spend one night alone before I head off on the next part of my adventure, not knowing when I might next find some solitude. And, at last, this is my final night under European skies for a while, because in the middle of my passport is a shiny, new visa and in my hand is a one way ticket to South Korea, departing tomorrow evening at 9:30pm from Heathrow.

After thirty depressing minutes, I call my nephew Farren, buy some beer and snacks and take the tube to his student flat, planning to return only when I am so tired I could sleep anywhere. This place qualifies as ‘anywhere’.