Over the last five months of travel, I have mostly been myself, but I’ve begun to get used to having a few aliases. In Canada, when we were filming with the BBC, we’d asked Amanda from the BBC to confirm our accommodation bookings, so that we had hostel rooms in the same town as the crew. (Normally we wouldn’t book rooms ahead, as we’d just turn up and see what we could get!). The side effect of this was that all our bookings were in the name of Egbujo. After the second time we realised, and began checking in as the Egbujo-but-Fleming-really family.

Then in Australia, while travelling in the camper van, we’d been using the campsite discount card which came with the van – in the name of Mrs Gill Bird from Canada. Unfortunately the handwriting on the card was so bad, that we ended up being booked in as the Bird family, the Biro family and the Biko family! It also meant that where we used the card, we had to pay with cash, otherwise there would be the mystery of the Biko family (“Didn’t speak like a South African did he?“) using the Fleming family credit cards(“Do you think we should call the police?“). At the last site we visited, the receptionist was very curious about our accents (“You don’t sound Canadian…“), and why my first name was spent with two L’s (“Normally Gil is spelt with one ‘L’ for men…“).

But now the van’s gone back, I’m my own man again – I’ve even got my own campsite discount card in my own name. I can go around the rest of the world as Ray Fleming. Mmm, perhaps hiding my identity again would be a good idea…