Day One - The Start of the Nightmare/The End of the Nightmare

The time was 6am and I was awake and raring to go. My coach from Cambridge to Heathrow left at around 07.58am and on the whole it was a fairly comfortable ride down the M25 despite the fact that the whole coach smelled of burnt popcorn. I watched a Japanese man try and stretch the muscles in his back out for about 30 minutes and I listened to the Maccabees' new album, so all in all the start of the day was fine, I was in a swell mood and ready to get on the plane and get to Toronto delivering The Sun newspaper to Si. So I check in, and as I do this I find out from a rather pleasant chap on the Air India check in desk called Paul that my flight has been delayed from 13.40 until 20.20 that night. Total fail on all parts. Air India did in fact lay on a hotel for all the passengers of the ill-fated AI187 flight though, so for the majority of the afternoon I did these things:

- Watched Flog It!, Escape To The Country and Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.
- Had a free lunch, overloaded myself on Orange Juice.
- Used the toilet facilities because it had to be done.

Then, finally at around 18.30 a coach picked us up and dropped us back off at Terminal 3 and I went through to departures, treated myself to a Boost and some Volvic and sat down only to find out that the flight now wasn't leaving until 21.50, but boarding was about an hour and a half earlier so I wasn't too fussed. I people watched, read some of Homer's Odyssey and finally went to Gate 23. Here ensued more sitting, more waiting and general boredom, but I finally got on the plane and then, as if the day hadn't been tiring and annoying enough, continued to sit on the plane on the runway until 23.30 because there was approximately 4096 planes trying to take off at the same time. On the flight I actually managed to have a fairly decent sized sleep (which I was exceptionally glad of by the time I finally made it to Toronto), and I ate a bread roll and a Kit-Kat, I didn't hugely like the look of the curry that was offered to me. I mean I'm not one for stereotyping, but Air India did themselves no favours with the meal that they laid on. As I said, I fell asleep and by the time that I awoke the hostess' were handing out the Declaration forms, so I knew from previous experience that we weren't actually that far from landing. At this point I should probably mention that of about 250 people on the plane, I was one of about 10 caucasians, the rest being either Canadian-Indians returning home, or (more's the pity) loud Indians from Dudley/Birmingham/Wolverhampton/etc. Anyway, as I filled in my form the woman in front stood up and stared at me. She was probably around 50, looked pregnant but was just fat and generally scared the living daylights out of me. She kept staring and was standing right over me. Now, we are most definitely talking crotch-height here for me as I was sitting, and she, not once, not twice, but thrice times scratched her crotch right near my face and then started asking me questions in Hindi. Unfortunately my Hindi is not quite up to scratch so I put on my best blank 'I'm a Tourist' face and finally I got saved by the man sitting two seats away from me. This experience was terrifying.

By the time I finally landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport and had gone through Customs and located my luggage it was about 2.30am Canadian time. This made it 7.30am GMT, thus meaning I had officially been on the road for about 24 hours on a trip that should have taken at most around 14. I have never been more relieved to see my two best friends' faces then when I walked into arrivals last night. We got a taxi back to their appartment and sat up until about half past 7 this morning and drank and chatted and to be honest, that few hours alone made the hassle of the journey worthwhile. Today I think we are going to Honest Ed's to buy some cheap crappy clothes to lounge around in. The nightmare is over, let the games begin!