Though it was only a short 6.5 hour flight from Ottawa to London, I managed to sleep most of the way, thanks to sleeping pills. I was stirred out of my deep sleep when the drinks trolley passed and then quietly pleaded for my dinner, which I didn’t really need, but ate anyway. The chocolate cake was good. It was like a dream feed, with me shovelling the food in and then instantly falling back to sleep. I woke up again when the banana bread breakfast came by and we landed. I still felt like crap when we got off the plane.

We landed at Heathrow around 10:00 and then walked miles to border control. As I had a British passport, I abandoned Glen to the foreigner line and went through the e-passport service. I was through in less than a minute. I collected our bags (we’d gate checked them needlessly; there was still plenty of room in the overhead bins), changed out of comfy pants into jeans and then waited for Glen. He took forever! My plans of getting into London quickly to collect the key and get to Jackie’s were shredded.

Eventually he came through and we walked more miles to the Heathrow Express, boarded it, arrived in Paddington Station, recharged our Oyster cards, then caught the train to Earls Court (actually two trains because we got on the Circle instead of the District) and then the Piccadilly line out to Hammersmith. It was at this point that I realized we could have caught the tube from Heathrow direct to Hammersmith and probably saved some time and hassle. Never mind.

We then caught a bus and walked to Dan and Amy’s to collect the key from Dan. We were then going to take two buses to Jackie’s but we’d had enough by that point and hailed an Uber car which drove us the rest of the way. We just about fell asleep in the car. Once we got to Jackie’s, I had managed to copy the alarm code down incorrectly so that started it alarming much to my horror. A quick call later and I had the right code and the house was quiet again.

By this stage it was sometime after 1pm and exhaustion had claimed us. I know they say to stay awake so you can get into your normal routines but we had plans in the evening and we wouldn’t have made them if we didn’t have a nap. We climbed into bed and slept until 6. It was wonderful, in only the way a forbidden nap can be wonderful.

My alarm went off, we stumbled out of bed, took our time getting ready and headed up to Leicester Square to meet Charlotte for drinks, dinner and dancing. We put our name down at a Vietnamese place and went to Village, a gay bar that had gogo dancers. We stayed for a little while, had some drinks, then continued our catchup as we walked to Pho for dinner.

We had a lot to talk about and compared our situations, as Charlotte and Joe are returning to Australia in a few months with mixed feelings. The food was really tasty and filling. We stopped for ice cream afterwards, then went to Old Compton Road and got a wristband for G-A-Y at Heaven (which we didn’t think was going to be open).

We walked to the club, getting in there around 11pm and had more drinks, found a good spot on a balcony and danced for a few hours. The music was pop, with three rooms remixing the songs in different styles. I preferred the main dance floor with its more techno beats. The club continued to fill up and, as I had remembered, the crowd was a happy one, more interested in having a good time than posing.

We stayed until 12:30. When we got outside, the line — which had been nonexistent when we arrived — was now extending down the street and around the corner. I wondered what we were missing out on and whether we should go back in. We decided against it though.

We walked Charlotte to her bus stop, said our ‘goodbyes until next time’ then caught out two night buses home. We arrived an hour later, glad to tumble into our bed.