Our time recently has been split between ticking off the various tourist sights on our itinerary and, in Brian's case, dealing with a recalcitrant accountant in the UK who has only just dusted off the accounts we sent him in October in preparation for filing them by the end of January. Naturally there are errors, questions and omissions all of which coincidentally appear to be not in our favour, and it is a little difficult to deal with them when we have a 13 hour time difference and the accountant rarely answers his telephone. He doesn't seem to have invested in any form of new technology, such as an answering machine. I suggest, on more than one occasion, that having a Scottish accountant may not be as cost-effective as it would at first sound, but Brian does not take my comments in the helpful manner in which they are offered. As a result of this silly man's incompetence I am forced to stay in a variety of shoddy accommodation that even Stalin would have found grim; our only criteria for reserving a room these days being the availability of wireless internet services; views, comfortable beds and an absence of small scuttling rodents being secondary to our quest to remain online just in case Mr J. McTavish should deign to honour us with an email.

On a break from the relentless worry about the ghastly consequences of filing a late tax return Bri downs a couple of disprin, totters from the room and we head out to Oreiki Korako an amazing place full of thermal hot springs, bubbling geysers and inexplicably hot yellow slimy water. It's a monstrously hot day and quite a trek to wander amongst all these boiling bubbling things. Brian stands well clear of the edge just in case I am overcome with an urge to make another effort to par-boil his lower limbs. If only we had a Scottish accountant along whom we could plunge into one of the seething crevices. We have, though, brought the video camera with us on our trip and Brian often unnerves me by switching into film director mode and creeping up behind me with the camera whirring away and expecting me to switch into instant Judith Chalmers. Instead, of course, what he has is a lot of (rare) footage of me looking hot, bothered, peevish and surly and certainly not at my best. I'm sure the charming Judith never had to put up with this level of amateurishness, humiliation and ineptitude at the BBC. And I bet she never had a camera thrust up her shiny nose just as she was about to lambast the cameraman for some relatively minor misdemeanour.

(If you don't know who Judith Chalmers is, she's the younger sister of Valerie Singleton).