Finally ill

So for my entire holiday I seem to have avoided all tropical diseases: hepatitis, malaria, yellow fever and that common travelling illness I can only begin to spell (and end) - begins with d, ends with a, there are a number of other letters in between and you have to go to the loo a lot if you have it, you know. BUT, I have now come down with a cold, a common cold. I feel rotten, and want everyone to know about it. It´s putting me right back in the zone for London and work.

I´d be in bed but I don´t have one so I´m bugging you instead. I have to be at Bogota airport at 7-something tonight which gives me several hours to kill. Bought a pirated The Killers album which should ease the pain somewhat. Regretting my choice of a James Joyce out of the book exchange as I suspect it´s going to require a slight degree of concentration. [I didn´t get "Finnegan´s Wake", might I stress, which remains firmly on my list of "Things I´ll only ever read if I´m sadly crippled somehow", along with various other stuff like all long poems especially, "Paradise Lost", and anything by Proust or an ancient Greek. I did once, in the post-GCSE summer, make a start on Homer´s "Illiad", but somewhere into page 2 decided to play Rollercoaster Tycoon instead, and that was that. No, it´s short stories - "The Dubliners" - actually, so I ought to be able to manage.]

My night in Caracas is shaping up nicely. Not. I have spent large amounts of money and time on phoning Venezuela and failed to arrange a single ounce of acommodation. I arrive at 00.05 and know for a fact that the tourist info office closes at 00.00. We´re unkeen to get in an un-prearranged taxi at the airport, notorious as they are for containing knife-point style muggers("We" being me and the camera) so I´m facing the prospect of two nights sleeping in a chair. But maybe I´ll be lucky and the crash will happen sooner rather than later so I never actually make it to Caracas to deal with this.

Anyway, looking forward to getting back to London and opening all the presents you´ve all sent to Ealing following Mon´s excellent lead. Hope there´s some champagne and proper cheese in there. If so, I´ll be much less grumpy, and worth seeing again.

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