A day of rest

I am sitting on a fog-bound beach on a picnic rug where the visibility extends to five metres. I can just about make out the children who are instructed to make trails in the sand with their spades so they can find their way back to Mummy Camp. I am cold, miserable, and have had a terrible nights sleep thanks to the lack of any light-stop curtains on a bedroom with an east-facing window, and the attentions of a magpie that has been jumping up and down on the caravan roof since the early hours.

Dig calls me on the mobile phone. He says he is sitting by a volcano in the Philippines and has had a lovely lunch. I say that sitting on a fog-bound beach in the cold with a headache and the certainty of a swelling on the brain which may yet lead to certain death is much better.