I was high in the sky. How many miles above the earth, 8 miles? That's what they say isn't it?
It may as well have been 800.
I had fallen asleep during a film on the plane. I decided, probably unwisely, to watch a film i had already seen. Submarine. The end credits were rolling. The song i adored, Alex Turners "Piledriver Waltz" was playing.
I had watched it in the cinema just two months previous. It was my first date with my boyfriend, but i was refusing to call it our first date as wehn i went on it i was still unsure whether i wanted to go out with him. In the end i went because i really wanted to see the film.
On the date we got into Cardiff station and i instantly froze. I grabbed my soon to be boyfriends hand, though at that point he was just called Jon. I was unable to speak until we left the station and i stopped.
"What's up?" he asked. Later he would reveal how happy he was as it was the first time i had touched him.
"James Dean Bradfield was there" i said.
We went back into the station and had a nice chat with the Manic Street Preacher front man. He asked about our summer plans.
"I'm going to L.A. to work" i told him.
Jon looked at me. It was the first he had heard about me leaving, but then again we weren't going out so i didn't need to tell him.
We went into a supermarket and i bought one of those cold coffee drinks. Jon said he didn't like coffee. This reassured me. I could never go out with a man who didn't like coffee. I knew i had made the right decision by not calling this a date.
But later. when we left Cineworld, I turned and saw he was sitting on the escalator tying his shoes. He looked so sweet and innocent that instantly i warmed to him. Despite the fact he was 8 years older than me he looked like a little boy.
The next day we went out again and later that night in Meze he asked me out, properly, because as i said seeing Submarine Was. Not. A. Date. This time i said yes wholeheartedly.
Now here i was, high in the sky, with the film of what i'm now calling my first date ending and the beautiful song playing, suddenly it hit me that i was going away for three months and there would be an ocean between me and him. How was i going to survive?