And so it begins...

Usual practice for fashion month, if I'm organised beforehand, is to book a week's holiday for the end of it

Usual practice for fashion month, if I'm organised beforehand, is to book a week's holiday for the end of it. It's something to look forward to (when the endless parade of jumpsuits - surely they can't be coming round again? - and apartment-sized handbags get too much), although, again usual practice, is to then sleep all the way through it.

This year I decided to go on holiday the week before. It's a more expensive way of ensuring I'm tanned (and I'm not exactly model-sized thanks to all the ice cream), but I have banked plenty of sleep hours and have my suitcase-pulling (read: dragging) technique down pat.

In-between landing at Gatwick at 2am this morning and leaving from Heathrow at 7am tomorrow, therefore, I have unpacked (very small suitcase) and re-packed (very large one). Swapped sun lotion for foundation, and the bikini for an array of different dresses. I have attempted to wear in a new pair of heels by blasting them with the hairdryer and then walking around in them wearing two pairs of walking socks. (It doesn't appear to have made much difference – one shoe is still cutting off the circulation in my little toe – but I live in hope that eight hours in the hold of a large aircraft might miraculously make them grow by half a size.)

To get in suitable 'fashion month' mode, I also managed to meet my sister at the Electric cinema in Notting Hill to watch Coco Avant Chanel. It put the repacking part of the day back by a couple of hours, not only due to the running time of the film, but because it made me question just about everything in the to-pack pile (watching Audrey Tatou running around the French countryside in Breton T-shirts and men's tweed jackets can have that affect on a girl – suddenly my New York city chic wardrobe looks far too try hard, but there absolutely wasn't time to go shopping along with everything else).

Finally, I have wrestled with my very sweet and very pink new laptop, which the kind people at Dell have loaned me for the month. Actually the easiest part of the day (finding my Oyster card at the bottom of my knicker drawer where I'd hidden it in case we were burgled while on holiday actually took longer), the whole setting up process took only one call to my Dad (a record on my behalf when it comes to anything technical, we both agreed) to ascertain that the Word-type programme pre-loaded on it would indeed work in the same way that normal Word works on my work computer.

So that's it, just need to find some polish so I can paint my toe nails on the plane, fish out the dollars from the bottom of my sock drawer and then it's New York here we come…