y New and Infinitely Inglorious Plan (NIIP) is now as follows:

But when I come out of the flat I see Wilbur, leaning against a lamp-post, talking on his mobile phone. His voice is quiet and his shoulders are slumped. It’s as if all the bright colours have been drained out of him.

And suddenly I can’t face him.

I can’t face anyone at all.

I’m not proud of what I’m about to do next, but I do it anyway.

I pick up my suitcase so that the wheels don’t make giveaway squeaks. I tiptoe awkwardly behind Wilbur. I turn the corner of the street. I put my suitcase down.

And I run away.

All right: technically I wheel away.

I have no idea where I’m going. I’m just pulling my suitcase in the opposite direction to the flat.

I keep my eyes on the floor, and I walk. I walk and walk and walk in the hope that if I walk fast enough, far enough, I’ll discover exactly what it is I can do to make everything slightly less terrible.

By the time I’ve calmed down enough to take in my surroundings, I’ve managed to meltdown all the way into the heart of Tokyo. There are brightly coloured lights everywhere: flashing on the streets, climbing up the enormous buildings, soaring into the sky. Ten-metre televisions are yelling from the corners, hundreds of people are swarming everywhere and every three seconds or so there’s a high-pitched bird peep, followed by an answering peep from hundreds of metres away.

I am totally and utterly lost.

With a different type of panic setting in, I desperately try to find my bearings. There’s a Starbucks, some kind of enormous train station and the biggest zebra crossing I have ever seen running across five different roads. It’s so big that everyone has to wait on the pavement, and – when the peeps start – simultaneously scramble across the road in a vicious star shape: criss-crossing and bumping and shoving.

It’s like a huge computer game testing coordination and timing, and I know from harsh experience that I have precisely neither of those things.

I wait six entire crossing cycles before I can find the courage to step out and then take my deepest breath and start pulling my suitcase across. There isn’t much time: when the beeps start speeding up, you have ten seconds to reach the other side before the cars start again. And they will start. I’ve already witnessed at least two people put their hands out and physically push against car bonnets to stop themselves getting run over.

Getting hotter and hotter, I desperately try to manoeuvre my way across but my suitcase keeps getting stuck, people keep pushing me, blocking me, physically holding my arm so that they can go in front. By the time the beeps start speeding up, I’m only halfway there. And I can’t turn back because that would take longer and then I’ll just have to do it all over again. Somebody shouts something in Japanese at me, and I realise – to my horror – that I’ve stopped, frozen on the road like a terrified rabbit.

My heart is hammering, my eyes are starting to fill up.

I’ve managed to take a bad situation and make it a hundred times worse, all on my own.

Well, me and the Tokyo road planners.

I’ve just begun to start running to catch up with the people ahead of me when I hear a whoosh.

The world spins around.

And the road jumps up to meet me.