(This may seem a tad confusing; I wrote this before we left for Malawi. We are now back from Malawi.)

Oh dear.... I haven't maintained the blog. The shrubbery is out of hand, the letter box is jammed open
with junk mail, the lawn needs mowing... How did this happen?

You know well enough.

What? Is it because... the internet has been down.

That'll never fly. How do you explain the multitudes swarming from Sandy's computer every day?

Then... It's because I've been overworked – I never had a chance!

Mmhmm? Again I fear I shall have to draw a comparison with your mother who has been getting up at 4am to work on cases. How come she has the time to make blogs?

Ah... That's because... Homoeopathy is an unskilled labour! She, uh, has plenty of time to make blogs after finishing all those easy-peasy homoeopathic things she gets up to at ungodly hours.

Considering that the majority of the people who used, read your blog (and I say used for I suspect they've all ambulated off elsewhere in search of more active updates) are homoeopaths and friends and relatives of Sandy; a homoeopath, I suspect you may want to re-hash that statement.
Right. In which case I havn't updated because I simply haven't got round to it.

Closer... But perhaps too complimentary. Try rephrase that.

Ok. I don't know. You tell me.

Easy. You've been too lazy and procrastinated and done something else each time your mind wandered to the thought of doing another blog.

Never! It's not in your province to speak to me like that! I shall discontinue my conversation with you!

Fair enough. Why are you talking to me anyway?
I'm not entirely sure. Who are you?

Not completely certain myself. I think I may have manifested in your brain so that you have more reason to ramble.

Ah. What does that imply?

Don't know. Is this perhaps getting too meta? Should we move on?

Good idea. What have I been up to....

Summary of Unwritten Blogs

In the time that it's taken to to get around to another blog I have...

Taken 2697 photographs,


Recorded enough video to really bog down my computer.



Driven past fields which smell of treacle. (They burn the stumps of the sugar cane to clear the field for the next planting)

Felt quite ill.

Got 99% in a homoepathic course in Malawi.



Filmed far too many chickens. (There's something very compelling about recording chickens.)



Tried and failed to figure out how to play Bao

Had a christmas day swim.



Ran out of Jaffa cakes



Been harassed in a bus station, greeted a roadside monkey, eaten an apple in a bus station while anticipating the beginning of a on a tiring, beautiful, eventful and colorful bus journey, tried and failed to capture the amazement you get when you realize those clouds are actually a mountain on camera, lugged camera equipment along – hurrying to catch up, overtake and film groups of homoeopaths as they storm towards a clinic, and waited for half an hour for someone to exit a building so that I may film them only to watch in horror as they carefully left by a different entrance and then ducked down out of sight of the camera; apologizing for nearly getting in the shot of the nice empty door I was obviously so transfixed upon.

All in all; It's been a helluva a time.


We're going to squeeze a little bit more helluva juice out of Africa before we leave though; in a few days we're taking another bus journey down Tanzania and into Malawi to teach the next course to the students there. (interesting that I've never referred to the Malawi course on this blog before; but this will still make perfect sense to you considering that Sandy keeps her blog up to date and has already talked about it.)

So... another two exceptionally long bus journeys, and another ten days of slowly carrying the camera equipment up the hill in the sunlight. Strangely – I'm rather exited. If not at the bus journeys; at the idea of getting back to that town full of extraordinarily friendly people. Where vendors don't shout their wares in an incomprehensible din but rather proffer them and make a sibilant “sss-sss-sss-sss” noise (which, not only can you hear it over the noise of many people talking, doesn't piss you off as immensely as the methods employed by someone who thinks that the way to get you to buy their things is to shout at you, grab your arm, and insist, nay, command that you visit their shop.) So.. That'll be nice. (It's a sure sign a ramble has been too rambeley if you have to read back over to see what the point you were making is.)

Right. A swarm of flying sanguine collectors are indirectly insisting I conclude this blog and get inside the net of my bed. Tara.


[The program I used to get a handy chart of my computer space is called Win-Dir-Stat, or Windows Directory Statistics.]