Sunday 11th November

Australia. I still can’t believe it’s happening. I can’t remember the last time I left Essex, let alone the UK, and tomorrow I’ll be leaving the flipping hemisphere.

Just a few weeks ago I was looking into mortgages and puppies and planning for the future. Even after the split, the idea of going backpacking on the other side of the world was as alien to me as car mechanics or cunnilingus. And then Bev and Rachel knocked on the door. I’d thought they’d come to see how I was doing, freshly single with a broken heart, but instead they were dropping a bombshell of their own. My bestest girlfriend, my drinking buddy, my shoulder, my rock and my confidant was there to tell me she was off to travel around Australia for a year. With Rachel of all people. It felt like I’d been dumped for a second time that week.

“Oh, don’t cry babes!” Bev had said, smothering me with what she refers to as her chesticles. “You’ll be fine! You’ve just gotta get back out there!”

“But we’re ‘Bev and Kev’! We’re a team!” I whimpered. “I need you!”

“Ah geez, snap aaht of it!” Rachel’s fake ‘Essex’ accent made me wince as she glanced away from her phone and joined the conversation. Rachel is always a tad louder than she needs to be and that voice never needs help to cross a room. She hadn’t even sounded like that until Katie Price did ‘I’m A Celebrity…’ and its as irritating as all hell.

“You’ll be better off wivout him, so dahn’t just sit there with a cob on. Do what we’re doing. Get away for a bit. Go to Oz or summit, like us.”

Rachel went back on her phone as thoughts raced around my brain. I couldn’t… could I? Who is going to stop me? I realised. We sat in silence for a minute longer.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I will!”

They both stared.

“I can’t believe it! I’m going to Australia with you!” I screamed.

Rachel was so surprised I’d taken her up on her offer that she put her phone down. No wonder really, I’d surprised even myself.

That was only a couple of weeks ago and I’ve still not got my head around the fact that I’m going. But what I did do was take out a second credit card, treat myself to one of them fancy new Apple phones, and prepared my pale English skin for the Australian sun by having a few cheeky sunbeds. Not that you’d know it, I’m still positively Daz-white. But I did learn not to fart in an enclosed environment with circulating air so it wasn’t entirely pointless.

I suppose I’d better email a few people and tell them I’m actually leaving!

4.30am – technically Monday. Four hours until departure

Can’t sleep. Who knows when I’ll be lying in this bed again? It’s making me feel a little nostalgic, after all it has seen a lot of action. Late night snacks and movie marathons mostly. For a Gay, I’m practically virginal.

My initial bed-based shenanigans may have been with the moist bikini-areas of lady-folk, but I’d never enjoyed them. It was never natural, just endured. Something to get through as quick as possible and with the minimum amount of gagging. Deep down, I always knew which side my bread was buttered, but I’d heard people say things like “it’s a phase” and so I planned on ignoring it until it was over. I didn’t want that life for me. I’d only ever heard bad things. It wasn’t until I turned twenty that I finally accepted that I was, in Rachel’s words, a ‘total bone smuggler’. By that point, I’d wasted several years of my life focussed on women, put myself through some pretty significant mental anguish and, through some kind of psychological association, developed a seafood allergy.

My existence developed glorious new meaning when I’d finally relented and discovered… well… cock, to put it bluntly. I’d given myself a thorough online education, then dived straight in with New York Nick, a one-night stand that lasted two energetic weeks whilst my mum was away on holiday. Then a few more brief encounters followed (technically they were boxer-brief) and then Phil walked into the bar. And we know how that ended up. We’d only chatted for an hour or so before he’d given me his number, so he must’ve seen something he liked back then. He’d been a bit of a sex-pest at the beginning, but I have to say there was something quite thrilling about being sent a dick pic whilst you’re sat watching the X Factor with your Gran. I got caught up in the whirlwind of it all and we were ‘official’ by the time we met up again the following weekend. Worst. Mistake. Ever. I think he lost interest almost immediately. The most excitement I’ve had since is down to eBay. I wasted nearly two years of my life to him, but the thing that gets me most upset is that I broke my promise to Gran. Not long before she died, she’d asked one thing of me.

“Don’t waste a single day.”

She’d been sat in her armchair, her favourite butterfly-covered blanket tucked tightly around her knees. Her hair was all messed up so we knew she was in a bad way. “Whatever you do,” she’d said, with sadness in her usually sparkling eyes, “don’t live the same year 80 times and call it a life.”

I hadn’t realised what she’d meant at the time.

“Life is like a toilet roll,” she’d said a few days later, just before she’d gone to hospital. “The closer you get to the end, the quicker it runs out!” She’d giggled then, despite her issues. My God, I miss her. “Will you promise me something, dear?”

I had taken her hand and nodded.

“Experience something new every day. Then, when you get to my ripe old age, you’ll have so many lovely memories to look back on and you can enjoy them all again and again.”

It was the last thing she’d said to me, and I feel horrible because I broke that promise. I’d shut myself away with Phil, doing what I was told. Well no more. Tonight, I am retaking that promise.

I will experience something new every single day I’m away.

And I mean it. A day without seeing something I’ve never seen or doing something I’ve never done will be a day wasted, and I won’t have it. Because I promised my Gran.

Suppose I better TRY and get some kip before I go.

SHIT! I HAVEN’T PACKED!