It is a breakfast meeting - something as alien to me as a paintball lunch or a judo picnic - and I leap out of bed and run to the bathroom to frantically take stock of myself. It's not great news. I look surprised and messy. This T-shirt will do, I think. I pull my jeans on, smear some wax in my hair and call the cab company down the street. I throw my toothbrush at the sink, grab a jacket, and nineteen minutes later I'm stumbling, bleary-eyed but minty-mouthed, through the doors of the hotel.

'Hey, I'm so sorry I'm late,' I say, finding the American man at his table, having just finished another meeting.

'I came all the way from New York and I was here on time!' he says.

I laugh at his joke, which I realise is funny because he only had to come downstairs whereas I had to come a lot further, and then I wonder whether I should explain why it is funny, but then realise that is why he said it in the first place, and so I just keep laughing.

'So you were out partying last night?' he says. 'I know what you guys are like over here ...' I laugh again, but I wasn't out partying last night. I was in last night, watching Celebrity Masterchef and eating a Nando's.

'Yeah,' I say, gratefully accepting his lifeline, and noticing just how nicely turned out and well groomed he is. 'It was a ... thing. Some big thing I went to. It was ... in London.'

He nods his neatly combed head of hair, willing further information from me.

'And I had a Nando's.'

He seems bemused, but it's enough. He claps his hands together and starts the meeting, but then a waiter is by our side.

'Oh ... sure, let's order,' says the American. 'I know what I'm having, how about you?'

'Um ... anything's fine,' I say, not wanting to be a burden, but when you've got a waiter there it's not really an acceptable answer.

The American graciously looks at his menu to take the pressure off me, and I'm just saying 'Bacon and eggs, please' when I notice the waiter raising his eyebrows at me and then flicking his top lip with his index finger.

Oh, God. It is the international sign for 'there's something coming out of your nose'. Oh my God. There is something coming out of my nose. There is something coming out of my nose at a meeting with an important and well-groomed American. One I was late for. One I'm wearing last night's clothes for.

I nod a quick thank you to the waiter and self-consciously bat at my nostrils just as the American looks back up.

'And I'll have the same,' he says, folding his menu and handing it away.