Thursday 5 June (16 days to go) Friday 6 June (15 days to go) Saturday 7 June (Two weeks to go!) 10 a.m. Sunday 8 June Monday 9 June (12 days to go) 8 a.m. Wednesday 11 June Thursday 12 June (9 days to go!!!) Friday 13 June (8 days to go) Saturday 14 June (One week to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Sunday 15 June Monday 16 June 8 a.m. Tuesday 17 June Wednesday 18 June Thursday 19 June 8.30 a.m. Friday 20 June 8 a.m. Saturday 21 June 9 a.m. Sunday 22 June 8 a.m. Monday 23 June Tuesday 24 June Wednesday 25 June Sunday 29 June Tuesday 1 July Friday 4 July Sunday 6 July Monday 7 July Tuesday 8 July Thursday 10 July Sunday 13 July Monday 14 July Thursday 17 July 6 p.m. Friday 18 July Saturday 19 July Sunday 20 July 9 a.m. Monday 21 July Tuesday 22 July Wednesday 23 July Thursday 24 July Sunday 27 July Wednesday 30 July Saturday 2 August (my wedding anniversary) Wednesday 6 August Thursday 7 August Friday 8 August Saturday 9 August. LA City Raiders against LA Galaxy!! LAX Airport TRACIE MARTIN’S GUIDE TO LA - what to see, eat, and visit in the city of Angels . . . About the Author About the Publisher
Sunday 25 May 3 p.m. – I think. Los Angeles
Good heavens, doesn’t it take a long time to get from Luton to Los Angeles? I mean, a really long time. I left on Thursday, for God’s sake. Thursday! Can you believe that?
One of the cleverer footballers at the club told me that it would be a twelve-hour journey, but he was clearly lying through his pearly white, dentally reconstructed, gold-capped teeth. The flight may have been twelve hours, but the journey sure as hell wasn’t, it took days!
Now I’m finally here – lying on a plump white leather sofa in my gorgeous new, bright and airy Hollywood home, surrounded by my family and a large collection of brightly coloured airport shopping bags.
Right now it’s midnight in Luton and I know that all my mates will be enjoying the last few drops of their Bacardi Breezers in Spangles wine bar, singing footie songs and snogging the face off the nearest bloke. Hovering over them will be a tired barman and an angry landlord ready to wrestle them out of the door and onto the cold, hard, vomit-coated pavement of Luton High Street. Ahhhh … what fun. It’s strange to be so far away from it all, lying here without a care in the world, with the blistering LA sun streaming through the windows and warming me from head to toe. What a journey I’ve just been through. Honestly – it’s been such a traumatic few days. As I lie back, relaxed for the first time in ages, I feel myself drifting slowly off to sleep … What a journey, what a journey, what a journey …
The day before
Heathrow Terminal Four
I confess that I’m not much of a traveller. You’d look at me with my fabulous clothes and my sophisticated air and think, ‘Gosh, she’s cosmopolitan!’ but the truth is that I start to get the shakes whenever I leave the Luton postcode area. As far as I’m concerned, travel is all about getting on the train to Liverpool, going into Cricket and buying a vast amount of tight pink clothing, glittery accessories and must-have handbags, then getting back on a Luton-bound train as quickly as possible.
So I’m not all that used to airports, and I certainly had no idea how many things there are to do there, like rushing into Boots and buying more miniature toiletry items than you can reasonably get through in a decade, as well as stocking up on medical supplies for the flight in such quantities that you could open a small on-board hospital.
Then there’s queueing. Oh, yes, you wait in queues for all sorts of things at airports – for people to check your ticket, your passport, your bags, coats, pockets and even your shoes.
Yes … your shoes!
I kid you not. And they don’t just check to see whether the shoes are genuine Louboutin or this year’s Gucci. No, get this – these people are looking for an altogether more crazy concept in shoe wear … they are checking to see whether anyone’s shoes have bombs in them.
‘Can you get shoes with bombs in?’ I ask, all excited. I mean, if anyone knows shoes, I do. I’ve seen shoes with buckles, bows, glitter and sequins … but never bombs. Imagine that! I’ve always fancied myself as a blonde bombshell and now I could do the look head to toe.
‘Have you ever found any shoe-bombs?’ I ask, but the uniformed lady just shakes her head mournfully, and I’m overcome with a feeling of total admiration for the way she fearlessly continues to search for the perfect pair of shoes – making everyone in the airport remove theirs and causing utter turmoil in the process.
‘Good luck!’ I say, blowing a kiss as she pushes my shoes through the machine. ‘Really hope you find some.’
Her brave battle reminds me of my own search for Marc Jacobs pink-and-white diamond-encrusted wedges a few years ago. I found them eventually, after hiring a team of crack shoppers and personal stylists. I turn to tell the shoe-bomb lady about this, in the hope that it will encourage her, but as I do she emits a loud scream, four people dive to the floor and someone falls to his knees and starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
‘Seize that woman,’ says a small burly man in an ill-fitting jumper, rushing to the lady’s side and pointing right at me. He hits a big red button on the machine and screams for assistance.
‘Help! Help!’ he cries, in a not altogether masculine fashion. It reminds me of my husband Dean when I last took him to the dentist.
Shoe-bomb woman howls as a major alarm wails through the airport, and people in uniform come tearing across from all directions, many of them armed.
‘Oooo