If I do get home, I'm going to give it to you and then you'll understand how I ended up in deep space when I said I was going pond dipping in the Lake District.

That's why I'm recording this on my Draxphone. Plus I think if I stay awake I might have an idea. I can't get comfortable in sleeping bags because they're always too small for me. When we got the manoeuvre just slightly wrong – just slightly enough to make us completely doomed – they all screamed for about an hour and then they dozed off. Can you believe that, by the way? We're in a rocket, spinning hopelessly out of control and into Forever, and what is their chosen course of action? A nap. They already told us that if it goes wrong they're going to deny all knowledge of it. Unless you get this message you won't know about this because we're on a secret mission. I've got this mobile phone with me – because it had pictures of home on it. It rolled out of orbit, wrecking all the communication equipment, and now we're very lost in space. Anyway a few hours back the Infinite Possibility was supposed to complete a routine manoeuvre and basically it didn't. Would he know the way to the toilet block on his first day at school? When no one had told him? No, I don't think he would. If you were tall and you made a mistake – even if it was only your first day – you got, 'You should know better, big lad like you.' Why, by the way? Why should a big lad know better just because he's big? King Kong's a big lad. If you were taller than someone, you must be older than them. In St Joan of Arc Primary the teachers seemed to think that height and age were the same thing. It's not like I had to try very hard, is it? Everyone always thinks I'm older than I really am, just because I'm tall. To be fair, everyone lies about their age. I sort of gave the impression I was about thirty. I'm about two hundred thousand miles above the surface of the Earth. I'm on this rocket, the Infinite Possibility. To be completely honest, I'm more sort of in space. Mum, Dad – if you're listening – you know I said I was going to the South Lakeland Outdoor Activity Centre with the school? To be completely honest, I'm not exactly in the Lake District. No manned rocket has left Earth's orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The rocket entered high orbit and then disappeared into 'deep space'.

Today Nasa and the Russian Federal Space Agency both confirmed that a rocket did take off but denied it was theirs. Yesterday the Internet was alive with rumours of a secret manned space mission. A rocket, launched yesterday from a private site in northern China, is missing along with its crew of five.

Liam digby cosmic