LITMIR.BIZ

      t was only a matter of time.

      I’m like the donkey in the Aesop’s fable who dressed in a lion skin and got away with it until the fox heard him bray. I’ve been waiting for six months for the fashion industry to realise I’m their donkey and chuck me back out again.

      I quickly put Wilbur on speakerphone, throw the mobile across my room and climb miserably back into bed. Then I pull a pillow over my head.

      You know what? I think I am just going to stay here. I’m almost certain that nobody will notice. I’ll be like Richard III, and in hundreds of years archaeologists will find my skeleton buried under some kind of car park, where future people keep their spaceships.

      Or jet packs.

      Or magnetically levitating transporters.

      Or flying bubbles.

      I’m just trying to work out if in 500 years they’ll have finally found a way to replace the wheels in my trainers with rockets when some of Wilbur’s nonsensical words start filtering in through the pillow. “Candle-wick.” “Rabbit-foot.” “Potato-nose.” “Tokyo.”

       Tokyo?

      I lift the sparkly pillow so I can hear a bit better.

      “…so there’s going to be a lot of work to do before you go … and oh my gigglefoot that reminds me you need to pick up some spot cream because we do not want any dermatological disasters like last time you went abroad, do we, my little Baby-baby Unicorn? Eat some more vegetables before you get there and …”

      The tiger beetle is proportionately the fastest thing on earth. If it was the size of a human, it could reach 480 mph. I’m on the other side of the room so quickly I reckon I would leave it panting and retching behind me.

      “Hello?” I pick the phone up, drop it and then grab it again and start randomly whacking buttons. “Hello? Hello? Wilbur? Hello? Are you there? Hello?”

      “Where else would I be, Owl-beak? This is my phone, isn’t it?”

      “What did you just say?”

      “Love bless you, Plum-pudding. I forget your family has a problem with earwax. I said, try and eat some more vegetables before you land in Tokyo, or Yuka’s going to kick off again and we all know what that means.”

      My entire body suddenly feels like it’s been electrocuted. Before I land in Tokyo? “I’m not fired?”

      Wilbur shrieks with laughter. “Au contraire, my petit poisson. Yuka has a brand-new job for you in Japan, and if we get moving I should be able to get flights sorted in time.”

      I stare at the wall in silence.

      I’ve been obsessed with Japan since I was six years old. It’s the Land of the Rising Sun: of sumo and sushi; karaoke and kimonos; mountains and manga. Homeland of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Studio Ghibli; of Hayao Miyazaki and Haruki Murakami. Mecca for geeks and freaks and weirdos. I have dreamt about visiting Japan ever since …

      Well. Ever since I realised it existed to visit.

      Oh my God: this could fix everything. It will be my New and Infinitely More Glorious Summer Plan 2 (NAIMGS2). I can make a brand-new flow chart. It’s perfect.

      And, yes, it might only be a temporary solution, but everybody knows that if you put enough temporary solutions together you’ve got something that lasts a very long time indeed.

      “YES!” I shout, picking Hugo up and giving him the biggest, most twinkly kiss of his life, right between his eyebrows. “When do I leave? What’s the plan?”

      “You leave on Saturday, my little Panda-pot. And BOOM!” he adds after another stunned silence. “Your fairy godmother strikes again.”