Kathmandu, 1975

Ganga Lodge

Kathmandu

11^th August 1975

Dear Mum and Dad

Have just spent a week with a Yugoslav and a British lad and Colin, trekking in the Himalayas. A really interesting experience, as we were very lucky with the weather, and saw the mountains a couple of times early in the morning. The day Everest appeared though, I was too buggered from the previous day’s climb to take a ten minute walk to the ridge to see it. In all, we climbed up and down with packs for 7 days, from 4,000 ft to 8,000 ft. All the way we passed porters with loads suspended from their heads, no shoes on, carrying supplies to the mountains from Kathmandu, and firewood back. Sometimes they asked us how long for a particular distance: “how many days from Nargakot to Temberleng?” Us: “Five”. Porter: “Me – three.” And they’d all laugh uproariously, delighted by the slow tourists.

Often we were stopped by these people for medical help, which was a “white man’s magic” and a mystery to them. The first time was after we had crossed a river five times in one afternoon, and were pretty tired and wet. We administered mercurochrome to a healing wound, and our friend beamed proudly when he saw the bright colour on his chest. Another time we washed down a little girl with rashes and scabs, which were from wearing dirty clothes and not being washed. Leeches were a problem to us, as they put an anti-coagulant in the blood, and leave a spot bleeding for an hour or so. At one house we shared a room with a Baba (holy man) who constantly smoked a pipe filled with a marijuana extract, and who had lungs so filled with phlegm, he got up twice during the night to empty his spittoon. He was unconcerned by this though, and showed us his festering thumb, which he indicated hurt him right up to the shoulder. He needed a doctor, as I’d say he had blood-poisoning which would make his arm gangrenous, but he would never have made the 4,000 ft climb over the hill to town.

During our times away we existed on their diet of rice, dahl (lentil soup) and potato curry, so were quite glad in a way to get back to Kathmandu and eat at the Western restaurants here. It’s a really dirty town though, with few toilets (people shit in the street or in the courtyard behind their houses), and many cattle and goats wandering round the streets. Every time it rains (nightly) the unpaved streets become a sludge of effluence and mud, which squelches on to your jandals!

Thank your lucky stars there are no leeches to hamper the tramper in NZ. They climb into your boots and nestle between your toes and are unsavoury.

Tomorrow we fly to India (the roads have been washed out) and will go to Benares, which is where the cremating and washing in the Ganges takes place. I will write again from Delhi.

Love from Jill xxx

25 May 2014 Languishing in Hove

When I am in the UK I get confused about what day to put on the post. You see 25th May is mum's birthday (she turned 91 this year), but I called her the night before, being the next day in New Zealand. So when I do a post for 25th May, I suppose it has to be for where I am, which is here, but it is a bit difficult trying to sort it all out. So on the NZ 25th, being the Hove 24th, I called mum and we sang her happy birthday, Sally and Jacques and me. She loved it. The good thing about my mother is she always loves everything so it is a pleasure to do anything for her.

The day after mum's birthday it was still the 25th over here. Weird. I once thought you could travel in time by whizzing around the world eastwards, but now I know that wouldn't work, because I just tried it, and here I am the day after. Travel can be so illuminating.

We had a splendid breakfast with lots of coffee and nuts and healthy things, then randomly selected seven sisters to visit because they were close and looked interesting. We took a lot of photos and left only footprints, though I did steal a couple of stones (I always do) which I think the beach could spare. We walked along the top of the falaises and lay on the grass and watched the clouds and remembered our youth. The wonderful thing about the British is that they let you walk everywhere, and put signs around so you know where you can go. There were people walking all over the place with packs on their backs and emergency rations hanging off them. They are very intrepid over here.

Now I have to report how Jacques saved my life. 

 He noticed that the left rear tyre was a bit down (not depressed in an emotional sense, but down none-the-less) so on the way home we stopped to get it pumped up, and the fellow who did it said it wasn't safe, and I should get it fixed. So my afternoon entertainment included trying to get my telephone to work so I could have conversations with Mr Budget about the car. I won't drag you through the details, but it seems Mr Vodafone won't let me buy a bundle of data over here, but I can still send and receive communications with the outside world at an inflated cost when I can't find a wifi connection. Back to Mr Budget. He put me on to Mr AA, who put me on to Mr Express Tyres, who asked questions about the car and tyre, such as did I have a spare (no) and was there a tool kit in the boot (yes) and what numbers were written on the side of the tyre (DOT 7GUC P57) and then what other numbers were on the side of the tyre (215/40R17 87W). Then he came and changed it for a nice new one, and showed me where the old one had melted on the inside, and confirmed it was not safe and could have blown out any time.

Let me tell you about the motorways over here. They are four lanes wide and you can't just sit in lane, because cars feed in from the left side all the time, so you have to move to make room for them and then you get squeezed in between huge artic trucks and it's very scary! So to have a blow out when stuck between big trucks would not be nice. So thank you Jacques. Not only that, Sally and Jacques put red flowers in my room! They are always very good to me.  I attach a photo of the flowers and the view from my window at their house.

PS Many of the photos are by Jacques, but not the one of him.

Tomorrow's post will explain driving under the Thames, finding Ilkley, and seeing Deb. I am only a day or so behind, but it may seem longer if you are in NZ, but it's not real, it's a function of the time thing.

24 May 2014: Hovering in Hove

You will be pleased to learn I got on the plane okay. It's now the gorgeous next day and I am watching the sea from Sally and Jacques' place at Hove, having survived the haul over here. We flew over South West Canada (sort of Toronoto, Montreal then Hudson Bay areas) and I tried to give the pilot a note to drop out the window for Rosie, but he said it was too cold to open the window. Then we went over the southern tip of Greenland, which was just amazing - huge ice floes, and lots of mountains and glaciers and snow, but no sign of habitation - probably a tad cold for farming and fishing so until someone finds oil or gold there it will hopefully be left alone. I am not so worried about global warming now, as we can all move to Greenland and live there - there's heaps of space. I will speak with my people about buying some land there.

I didn't get an upgrade on this leg but slept quite well. Watched the Railway Man and more of Sherlock and entirely forgot to update my presentation for the conference, so I had to do this really this morning as it was due today. Phew.

It was a bit nasty driving down here. It took an hour to collect the car, and Mr Budget felt so bad about the queues and delays he upgraded my booked tiny little car for 100 GBP for the entire week, to a nice Audi with bells and whistles. Once I figured out how to turn off the bells and whistles (the noise was irritating) I headed for Hove, accompanied by my good friend Francoise the GPS.  Unfortunately I had forgotten to see how the demister etc works, so once on the M25, which was very busy, when it started raining, the car fogged up inside and I couldn't see anything. I slowed down, which provoked lots of flashing lights from those behind, so I wended my way to to the slow lane and started playing with the knobs and buttons. The radio worked well. Eventually the road both in front and behind became apparent again, but it was a bit unpleasant in the meantime. When I arrived at Hove I was jubilant - the sea appeared at the end of the road and I started singing joyfully about how clever I was, turned left, then left again (I knew where the place was), and eventually found a park and arrived at what looked like their door. As I wasn't sure which button to press, I pressed all four, and held them down while I said 'hello Sally, it's me, I am here.' A man who was not Sally came to the door and said Sally did not live there. I asked if he had seen a Frenchman around (Jacques) and he looked puzzled and said no. I didn't believe him, but he asked me to show him the address I was looking for, which I did, on my trusty red device. By the way, my device is still not communicating with the outside world, as I haven't worked out how to buy a data bundle. The nice man pointed out that all the doors in Hove look the same, and I was in the quite the wrong street and at quite the wrong door. Sniff.  He was right, I was wrong, not surprisingly.

Several streets later I found another very similar looking door (he was right, they are all the same) with many more buttons, but this one had a 10 on it, so I pressed that and found Sally!  She answers to ten. I attach

evidence of our next few hours.

23 May 2014: Auckland to Buxton sans hat

Oh dear. A blank bloggy page. Such a long time since I did this but tis important to keep the waiting world appraised of my travels. Or maybe apprised. I never know which. One seems something like a word that a real estate agent would use (as opposed to the artificial estate agents, but I digress already), and the other like something jammed in a door. I will go with the agency one.

I climbed aboard the silver bird on high last night in Auckland and oh joy was upgraded to premium economy, which mean I could stretch my not very long legs right to the back of the seat in front. I did not sit next to a large person, nor a smelly one, and watched The Book Thief (cried only twice) and a Sherlock episode.  I can't believe someone will want to know this, but apparently the world is so large that somewhere in the world someone will, so I am telling you now. Is it you?

I attach a photo of my adventure. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of my seat, so here is one of a forest at Raglan instead, just next to Mr and Mrs Blue's house, aka Lynne and Mike. Mike can play the guitar. He is very famous in Raglan, and Lynne can sing and play the flute. She is also famous. If you know them say hello from me.  Oh - that was exciting - I just got the photo to move to the left of the page, but every time I write something it slips down a little. Bother.

Oh - just worked out how to write below a line. You have to put the line in first.

I am in the Koru lounge at LAX, which is travel-speak for The American airport on the west coast of the US of A that everyone has to go through to get anywhere useful.  Life aboard the plane was pleasant enough, but on arrival at the US of A we were greeted by A Cathay Pacific girl wearing an Air NZ uniform, which was very confusing. I asked her what to do next, as usually we are just told what to do in the US of A, but this time we were all left to our own devices (all puns intended). It was frightening. There were two queues everywhere I looked, and lots of fierce looking people of all weird shapes and sizes. I joined one queue, then another, the changed my mind, and eventually found myself getting my pisspot stamped and welcomed to the US of A. Too late I thought, but pressed on to have my laptop and shoes inspected, my body photographed (they were not satisfied with my finger and thumb prints, and eye photos), and then my money pouch inspected. I admit, I do look a little like a spy/national threat/sweet little old lady.  A nice couple of Maori girls led the way. They were easy to follow as there are not a lot of Maoris here, and they had ample bottoms, but not unattractively so.

It is raining in London apparently. This is not good news, and I have to collect a very small car (providing I can provide all the right paperwork, which is always a worry), plug in Francoise my French GPS, and navigate to Sally and Jacques Hilton at Hove. Wish me luck. More later.

There aren't many people here - I had better go. Something is not right I fear.....

USA trip day one: 22 January Auckland to San Diego

As I have not kept a blog for a while (is 'keep' the right word?), I have decided to bring you up to date with my sublime and ridiculous adventures in San Diego this week. I am on holiday, which feels a bit weird, as I didn't work on my laptop during the flight, or at the airports. I just kept reminding myself that I am a real person with real holidays, and I am allowed to read books and do proper holiday stuff with my spare time. Well, after I have checked my work emails, that is.
My trip to San Diego is to visit the AUM friends that I mentioned in my Christmas letter last year. Some of them live in America so those are the ones I am visiting, but some of the Australians will be here too. A nice feature of Americans is that they have a very accepting nature and don't seem to mind hosting Australians. I flew Air New Zealand as I was away so much last year, this trip puts me in silver status which means a free upgrade (see my blog about when I got a free upgrade) and a visit to the Koru lounge with free chocolate fish. I hope my hair doesn't turn silver.

The plane was full. A bunch (note use of local lingo) of Rotary exchange students were in front and a 36 strong barber shop group (I thought they were usually quartets - my how things have changed) were to my right, all under 18 and apparently on their first trip out of town. One young island boy was clutching a large oak and metal crucifix, about 15 inches high. I guess it gave him some comfort to know that he was being looked after while away from his whanau. I watched a movie about Zuckerberg or whatever his name is and felt much better afterwards, as I now know I could not have invented Facebook as I am far too nice and as it happens, also not smart enough. I sat in seat 65B, right at the back, because I booked my seat only 4 weeks ago, straight after the Barber shop 36tet and the Rotarians, so I had to listen to the conversations of the people hanging out at the back of the plane all night, and I can tell you now that people don't talk about very interesting things while they are getting exercise on a plane. I guess they are too busy flexing and extending their calves. The best thing about the flight was that I got plenty of Lindauer with my evening meal (see photo), but the coffee was awful. I must write and tell Mr Air New Zealand to get some decent coffee. I didn't really get much sleep but it was okay.

Since my last visit to LAX they have smartened things up a bit. Perhaps they heard back that I have been avoiding America because the airport staff were so rude on my last visit. One of the barber shop boys took a photo and was hustled out the back and told that if he took another one they would confiscate his camera and send him back to NZ. Of course that made him instantly famous with the rest of his party but I did mention to them they should take the airport staff seriously because they can be quite mean. However, this time they weren't. They took my photo (my PR manager said it would be okay so long as they didn't sell it) and finger prints and I sailed through without having to tell them why I was visiting America or what my real job was, which was lucky, because I might have got one of them wrong.

If you want to go to San Diego by train from LAX, here's what you do. You ask someone what to do like this: 'How do I get to San Diego by train?. Don't be put off by the answer, which is 'There ain't no train to San Diego'. This just means your question has to be asked again. So try this: 'How do I get to the train station from here, so I can catch a train to San Diego?' The answer will be this: 'Go outside and look for a Flyaway bus - probably green. Catch it to Union Street Station - that's where the train to San Diego leaves from'. So that's what I did. The bus runs every half hour and costs $7. You don't pay the driver, but pay at the other end. When I got to the other end, the driver gave me a red ticket and told me to give it to the man in the ticket box, who would sell me a ticket, which could be used to get my bags back, which would be held as a kind of ransom. He told everyone this on his microphone because it applied to everyone - not just me.

Before I left New Zealand I had gone through my coin collection and gathered up a bunch (local lingo again) of American coins, which I felt should be returned to their rightful home. After all, what right do we have to hoard other people's property? However, the ticket box man was not terribly impressed when I emptied out a wallet full of quarters, but in due course he correctly identified 28 of them as American property, and gave me a ticket in exchange for them, which turned out to be the same value as my luggage, as I was able to exchange the ticket for my luggage. Americans love exchange games. Personally I think I got the better deal.

I was sorry my luggage had bad wheels, as I had to walk around the station, then underground to the ticket office. My red bag was in an Auckland bag hospital having its wheels looked at after its trip to the UK last year (which quite tired it out), so I had a boring blue bag from the luggage shop. Everything is very big here, including the walk at the station. At the ticket office I was asked for $21 and made the decision not to pay in coins which was probably quite wise. The woman asked me for ID and I made another good decision, which was not to lecture her about the freedom to walk around without ID as it probably wasn't her idea, but I did make a diary not talk to Obama about it some time. He really needs to attend to some of this stuff. She looked at my ID and gasped, then looked back at me. By this time I had noted that I was the only person in LA with grey hair, and was beginning to wonder if I looked a bit odd to everyone else. Hopefully my leopard skin harem pants helped me blend in. She said 'you're not a senior, you're under 62', and I confirmed that she was correct, but pointed out that I had not claimed to be anything I wasn't. Sort of. Then she charged me another $4 which I think was for being underage, but for all I know, it was for being a foreigner, or was perhaps a tax for having grey hair. My silver status was imminent.

Union Street Station is very beautiful - looks like a sort of 1930s art deco design, and well worth a visit which is good, as I had plenty of time to admire it, having arrived at the same time as a train was leaving for San Diego, but without me. I bought a postcard for my mother and enjoyed the station. In due course a lady with an important looking hat and driving a sort of indoor train thing arrived, and called for passengers for San Diego, so I fronted up, alongside a young man also heading in the same direction. The nice lady told him to wait in line, as she was just collecting people with disabilities, and then picked up my suitcase and told me to get up on to a seat. Grey hair was making a comeback. She drove four of us (and our luggage) to the platform, which was deserted, being far too dangerous a place for people to loiter on while waiting for trains. The others were old and infirm, just like me. Then (this gets better) she got my suitcase and told me not to go upstairs (double decker trains like in Sydney) but to follow her, found me a seat marked 'reserved for people with disabilities' and said 'sit there', and then she put my suitcase away. I tried to look disabled but wasn't sure what to do, so I just smiled happily at her. She put a green card in the slot above my seat. I this this meant I could work in America now.

The train took two hours, mostly going through city, with a bit of deserty looking country just north of San Diego. Sit on the right if you want to look at the sea and don't mind the sun, and get off at Solana Beach if you want to visit my AUM friends.

Day eleven: 10 May: London and thence home

St Pancras station looks like this from the air.
Showering in my 'hotel' (I do not use the word advisedly) was entertaining, as I had no towel, and in all the excitement of seeing Anna and Kieran I had forgotten to buy one. Okay, and I'm too mean to spend the money. Katy has since pointed out that I slunk through Richmond without visiting her, so now I am in trouble with all John's daughters. I will make it up on my next visit, by which time there will be more grandchildren to admire. But I digress. I was about to have a shower. The shower cubicle I selected was in a room with a toilet, rather than in a room with another shower, because I was keen to shower alone. I placed my toileteries on the toilet seat, there not being anywhere else suitable to put them, and ventured inside the shower, carefully stepping over some old soap left by someone else. I remained calm in the face of adversity, telling myself that a shower was a clean place, so it didn't matter if someone dirty had been in before me. It was slightly reassuring to think that at least no-one would have peed (shouldn't there be another 'e'?) in the shower, as the toilet was so alarmingly handy. I had to hold the shower head in my hand, as when it sat in its holster the water aimed directly at the wall in such a way I couldn't seem to get between the wall and the water. So I held it with one hand and with the other attempted to reach the soaps and shampoos on the toilet seat and generally make myself squeaky clean. And when it was all over I dried myself on my sarong. I have had better cleansing experiences than this.

I can almost hear Hong Kong Kate giggling as she reads this....

After the showering fiasco I packed up my bag and started to skid it down the several flights of stairs. Not surprisingly, a young man appeared from nowhere and offered to carry it down. I could tell by the state of the carpet other people had called him this way. Where was he when I checked in I wondered. Then he charged me a quid to leave my bag there for a few hours while I inspected London. I locked both my bags and tried to look menacing rather than ripped off, but I don't know if I managed it.

Last time I visited London Anna gave me a nice Oyster card to use, so the day before I had bought one of my own, as part of my new independent adult identity. The way I read the instructions it had a daily cap of about seven quid, so I paid ten quid for it, but then had to top it up with another ten. Turns out if you don't swipe it properly it charges you the maximum journey cost. I have never had a cheap card that cost me so much before. Finally I realised I could top it up with my credit card (as I was running out of cash), and stopped worrying and started living. So I stuck twenty quid on it, and there I was, all over London with my Oyster card, swiping in and out of St Pancras, in and out of Kensington and in and out of everywhere else for that matter. It was marvellous. I love Oyster cards and I visited all the undergrounds stations I could, riding up and down the escalators and generally having a good subterranean time.

The funny thing about London is that there is no agreement about which side of the road to walk on, because although the cars drive on the left, on the tube (I am au fait with the local slang now) they stand on the right. I couldn't work out why I should stand on the right, but did as I was told, but when I got above ground I was quite flummoxed because there were no instructions, and people were walking all over the place. I decided to walk down the middle.

I visited a church in St Pancras in case my ancestors' names were in the cemetery. One of these days I will get a surprise and actually find an ancestral name in a churchyard. My mother was a Browne, and so was her father and his father before him, who was born in Stepney, which is in Hackney (i.e. not St Pancras). But it was fascinating looking around the Eurostar station and seeing people arrive from France with their bagettes and cans of snails. It made me hungry, so I bought some wonderfully hot and strong coffee and some porridge at a Pret a Manger, which was one of the few places I could find a decent gluten-free breakfast.

Then I inspected Hammersmith where I used to live in Biscay Road, and where I heard Jethro Tull and Joan Armatrading play at the Odeon (not on the same day though) in the seventies. Let me just say now that the seventies were great, and if you are old you will agree, and if you are young you are probably listening to the seventies music, and still agree. Then I took the tube to St James Park and took the Birdcage walk to inspect Buckingham Palace, just after the morning guards had gone for an early lunch. There were all kinds of film crews and police around, so I guess they knew I was coming. Feeling a bit resentful, I swept my red cape around my shoulders, put my head down so they wouldn't recognise me, and wandered into the midst of it all. I avoided the horses by staying close to the fence. Turns out (as I discovered later) that Mr Brown (not my relative) had popped in to see the Queen and tell her he was leaving Downing Street because no-one had voted for him (sour grapes I guess), and Mr Cameron, just 40 minutes later, was on her doorstep offering to take over the reins of the country. Pshaw. If the British used MMP instead of FPP they might have had a government that had actually represented what the people wanted. As it is, they now have a well hung parliament, which on reflection is not such a bad thing for the British, and I'm sure it hasn't happened before.

All the excitement was making me tired, so I walked to Hyde Park corner to see Apsley House, which didn't really grab me (luckily), and then wandered around Park Lane and up towards the National Art Gallery near Trafalgar Square. Actually I can't remember exactly where I went, but I was getting pretty knackered, and my pedometer was showing about 30,000 steps, but I do recall going past where I had my first ever coffee and cake after a movie, somewhere near Park Lane, and noted that it was now a Starbucks. Eventually I staggered into the art gallery and up to Seurat's Bathers, but there were too many people with the same idea for me to enjoy myself. I took in a couple of old time favourites such as Picasso's Child with a Dove but I was just too tired. All that rice risotto at Horsley Park had left me in a protein deficit state and now I couldn't even walk around London. So I took a tube back to the hostel, got my bags, and went to Heathrow to unwind. I had a plane to catch and movies to watch.

After several hours of writing postcards, drinking tea, and recharging everything that could be recharged, I headed to the Emirates departure lounge to wait for my flight.

Here is how I knew I was nearly home: there was a guy strumming his guitar in the departure lounge of the flight to Sydney, women without make-up, and and ordinary looking people with faces like relatives heading home. I was very happy to be going with them.

Day ten: 9 May: Horsley Park to London

I had spent at least three hours on the internet looking for a nice cheap B&B in London and eventually decided it was a waste of my precious time, so put a deposit on a place with wifi in Bayswater. The wifi was quite an issue, as heaps of places didn’t have it, and some had it for a ridiculous add on price, while others had never even heard of it. Anyway, I consoled myself, Bayswater is a nice area, so it would be worth paying $100 for. Ha bloody ha.

Francoise directed me to what seemed like a very nice habitation, but on arrival I was told my room had been sold, and I would have to go to their sister place along the road. It seems the three hours on the internet was not well spent after all. Fair enough I said, but how was it that I could book a room with a deposit and not get one? Then I remembered my days as a hotel manager, and knowing the answer, decided not to push it. The sister place was such a close relative that I was asked to pay straight away, but in cash. That really irritated me, as I had fifty quid left for my last day and was planning to spend it wisely on visits to castles and lots of wine. Alas, I was forced to spend it on a lousy hostel, which is what my nice habitation turned out to be. Françoise and I walked to the sister hostel, then up three steep flights of stairs to my room, which turned out to be so far away from reception that wifi couldn’t get to it. In fact it was so high up I got vertigo just looking out the window. However, it had a bed and a basin, a mouldy patch in the corner of the room, and no soap or towel. Here's a review I found of it - it's pretty accurate. I found other reviews that were far worse but I don't want to depress you.

The West Two offers basic accommodation and the furnishings are old and tired. It is poorly maintained, facilities are poor and the atmosphere is depressing.

I sat down and wondered why I hadn’t gone to stay with my lovely cousins in Richmond and then remembered that I had decided to be an independent adult now, this being my third visit to London in three years, and it was probably time I tackled the place in an unsheltered way, on my own, paying for meals and beds and stuff and learning how to get around without advice (except from Francoise). But when I thought about it, I realised none of these features was offered as a virtue by either Socrates or Plato, so perhaps I could lean on rellies after all - just a little.

So I sent them a message to say I was in town, and if they had nothing better to do, I would visit them and return Kieran’s book, The Spiritual Tourist, a wonderful dissertation on various spiritual persons and their astounding feats and personal habits. Then I went and looked for the shoe shop in Kensington High Street where I bought some lovely black boots when I was 22 and lived here, but which finally fell apart at the Hamilton field days a few years back (the boots that is, though I was somewhat under the weather as well). Amazingly it was still there, but selling Mr Clark’s shoes. I also found a marvellous good food shop of several storeys, and was caught photographing the cheese room – apparently the market is so good the owners don’t want anyone to find out about it, and don’t let us take photos. So I can't show it to you. I promised not to. While strolling around Kensington I suddenly remembered my text to Anna, opened my phone, and lo there was a response from her saying to hurry around and say hello. So I scampered back to the B&B to get the book and asked Francoise to take me to Richmond, which she did. I think she likes Richmond.

It was wonderful to see them again, though I only saw two year old Bella very briefly, it being her bed time. However, I did get a chance to catch up with Jeanette, the mother of my cousin’s daughter, and we had a bit of a chat on Skype. It did seem odd that I had to travel to London to talk to her, as we both live in Auckland. She doesn’t see Anna and Kieran and Bella as much as she would like to, and even asked Anna to show her the new bump, which will in due course hatch as another grandchild. Anna and Kieran are very entertaining and welcoming. Kieran cooked up lashings of protein for me, which was a huge relief, as the chefs at Horsley Park thought rice risotto was an adequate evening meal, which I disagreed with, but couldn’t seem to do much about.

By the time I had quaffed a few glasses of wine (Kieran had to go for more supplies), talked to Jeanette, gossiped, mused and attempted to interpret various aspects of life with Anna and Kieran, I realised it was my bedtime, and I had to go 'home'. Kieran wanted to send me in a taxi, but I was brave and took the bus and underground, and in due course Francoise and I found ourselves back at the B&B. I had been clever of course, and asked Francoise to make a note of the location, so we had no trouble finding it again. I have my moments.

I quite like London. I lived there for 18 months in my youth, and was looking forward to seeing other places I would recognise, such as Hammersmith station, St Martin in the Fields (I was in the choir), Charing Cross Station, a number of pubs, and the National Gallery. So even though my ‘hotel’ was cheap and nasty, I was a happy camper and fell once again into a deep and meaningful sleep.

Tomorrow: St Pancras, Park Lane and the gallery, all on ten quid

Day seven: 6 May: Horsley Park

If you don’t mind sleeping next to a castle but not in it, Horsley Park was good. The tv worked, my colleagues from CHME were there to enjoy meals and drinks with, and I had a duty to perform. I include a photo kindly sent to me by a delegate who was with me during the castle's chapel inspection, a photo of the castle that I didn't sleep in, and a picture of the sort of room I did sleep in. Note the absence of castle windows, knights, and BlackAdder. The castle would have been more fun. In due course I entertained/bored (choose one) a selection of hospitality academics for 20 minutes with my paper, and some time later the conference came to a close. I am not going to tell you what happened in between because misunderstandings might arise about what we are supposed to do at conferences, and I wouldn’t want that. If you are really desperate, leave a comment, and I’ll direct you to some of my papers. They’re on sex and theft and deviance and stuff so you probably wouldn’t be interested anyway.