A Flight With Mario

Technically the first post is not Annie Vs London - it's Annie Vs Late Night Flights That Are Delayed, but it's the start of me leaving my parents behind.

Last night I flew from Malaga to Gatwick, but on the way I picked up a guy called Luke. Luke was 24, living in Marbella but flying to London to recruit for his business. We got talking when I thought I'd missed my flight because I was being dozy and started running for the gate - he let me go in front of him and then realised I was on his flight. We talked in the queue about not much, and then I looked at his tattoos.

Luke looked very similar to a friend of my brother's, so I was interested in whether the stories behind his tattoos were equally as wacky as I knew they would be had they been on the friend. He told me about all of his tattoos, which were stamped randomly all over his arms and collar bones. The most interesting were the five Mario Mushrooms he had on his forearm - the story was less so. "I woke up one day, looked at the Mario Mushroom sticker on the back of my phone and thought 'I'd like to see his face for the rest of my life', so I got five of them".

The other tattos were: a treble cleff on his collarbone, his first tattoo and paid for by donations at a music festival on his 18th birthday; an assortment of coat hangers which had no explanation; an old wind up telephone on his forearm with the phone unattached and found on his shoulder - again, no explanation; a heart on his wrist which an ex paid for, and he then transformed into an 'apple' once they broke up - the similarity evaded me; and an Oscar Wilde quote.

He had three dogs - a chocolate laborador, a laborador mix and a chihuahua that he had recently adopted. After a short attempt at teaching him Spanish by having him read Harry Potter - to the annoyance of all the other passengers on the plane, as his accent was awful and he kept yelling words he thought he knew but he did not - we boarded the plane and went to our separate seats. Before we parted, he turned to me and said quietly "You always meet people twice" and that was it.

Bring it on London.