Niki

'It was like so embarassing, yeah? My Gucci bag emptied all over the belt. They stopped it you know? I'm like soooo red. This really old guy, like 40? Pawing through my things? My BCPs, and my morning afters, in case, you know, I forget. Everyone forgets, right? Too much Wicked or Aftershock in the club. Ha-ha! Last time.... MMMMMmmmmm! Anyway, it's not as if they would have stopped me if wasn't for the fucking jar! And why was I carrying it? Like, it would have been easier for mum, she's old. Not so weird in her bag, is it? But no, Niki, as usual has to do as she's told. The guy looking through my stuff, he's, like, Asian, you know. Not Sikh, I know Sikhs from back home. Tiff and I go across the river out to Southall sometimes... dreamy boy on a stall in the market. Tried to sell us material. As if? Sewing? It's what your Granny does, innit? Asian boys... So different, you know? That colour. Looking down, it's so shocking against your skin. Jimi and I, well, whatever Mum and the family say, I don't care. One thing, when the dogsbody on the conveyor looked in the jar, laugh? I'd have changed my knickers, if – well you know, it's a holiday, innit?

'So we gets through in the end, after funny looks from the security types and a search - and 'course dirty looks from everyone else in the queues. Still they were looking, weren't they? Then it's onto the plane. Some hard faced bitch wouldn't give me a voddy tonic, but mum bought me one, eventually. Just one mind, but I swigged my duty free when she went to the bog. She's so thick, my mum.

'Crap flight. I had to sit next to someone's Grandad. Smelled a bit; old. Showed me bloody photos of some shithole his daughter and grand-daughter live in. Very pleased with them, he was. If it had two bedrooms, I don't know where they were. Miles from anywhere it looked, in a row of twenty houses just the same. Catch me somewhere like that. I don't thiiink so! The old fart asked me where I was staying, I told him I didn't know. Started to give me a lecture about the 'Real Spain'. I said I'd been to Torremolinos, last year. He said that wasn't Spain, I said whateh-vah! And read about Colleen's colonic in OK.

'And we get off, get the bags. Mum leaves me the heaviest trolley. Sooo typical. At least I knocked someone out of the way with it on the way through customs. Almost made it worth the naus.
Then we gets outside. Loads of people on the pavement pushing, shoving, a few dishy looking cabbies smoking, looking cool. Suddenly mum's waving and screeching 'Vic.' A bored looking old guy saunters over, shabby clothes, shabby life prob'ly. I still can't believe it's my dad.'