Stardate end of August (alright, beginning of September you pedants). Bri has finished work to concentrate on sorting through his mountain of clothes in order to select the 55 most precious t-shirts that must accompany us on our travels. That and read copious volumes of medical dictionaries so that we can be taking the most up to date malaria prophylactics known to man. I appear to have made a classic schoolgirl error in going for the elephant sized economy take-one-a-week version, as Bri smugly wasted no time in telling me. They are taken by the British Army and probably contain bromide and something to keep the bully beef down. So now I have to go back to the doctors and get another prescription for some dainty little pills that cost about $5.42 each. And we have to take one a day for about 3 months. crumbs, there's my souvenir budget out of the window, no more carved elephants or chunky indonesian jewellery. Bad luck girls.

This weekend we also celebrated Brian's 50th, yay. I'm horrified to discover I'm living with a man now considered eligible for the Saga mailing list. I've been tipped off by some of my even older friends that 'they do a good deal on insurance'. Sadly I was quite excited by that fact. sigh. Time to go on holiday. Where was I? oh yes, Brian's birthday, low key. As you'd expect from the prince of understatement, but a jolly good time was had by both of those lucky enough to be invited. Apologies to the rest of you but there was no more room in the phone booth.

Only 5 weeks to go now, a list of things to do, but hopefully time to fit in some exercise (to hone my beach body of course) and some culture (so my brain doesn't turn to mush from reading too many trashy novels while lying by the pool/on my sunlounger/at the sandy beach listening to the gentle crash of waves on the turquoise shore). See what I mean? Too many junk novels already.