Tomorrow morning at 4am I fly to Bangalore and my yoga retreat. I am not travelling with the wife of the Swiss ambassador this time so have taken the precaution of upgrading myself for a cost of around 100 euros. This is not something I would normally do, but my husband told me to. And as I am a very obedient wife I followed his instructions. So although flying at that hour is terrible; it is made a lot less terrible by the thought that I will be in sitting in the part of the plane I normally only look longingly at.

Tomorrow I start in earnest on finishing the novel. I have worked out that if I want to finish it while I am there I need to write 5,000 words a day. Between sleeping, yoga, chanting and chatting to my friend Carla this may prove tough, but I will do as much as I can.

As I now live a life with no expectations (yeah, right…) I am not expecting anything at all from my trip. I will just go with a Zen attitude and accept whatever I find. Except for the business class flight and lounge of course – that had better be damn good. But if it’s not I can always blame Rupert….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010