Aesop forgot this one

Too much like a flying visit, we're back to Hong Kong today.

This time I exit China splattered in half-digested watermelon, thanks to one unnamed daughter's explosive vomit at the back of the bus en route to the airport. As the watermelon drips off my hair, she regards me, and says by way of consolation, 'I feel a bit better now'.

I am resigned to it.

Last time I left China I was on a boat chugging down the Pearl River, nurturing the start of a bladder infection.

One day, I caution the little Grits, you will be on an eight-hour bus journey packed with old farmers spitting between the bars of the windows while clutching chickens and sugar cane. The bus will shudder to a halt after four hours for a comfort stop. Everyone else will wee sensibly in the open air by the roadside. You, effete foreigner, will shrink and whimper about privacy until someone tuts and nods to a hut. Inside the hut is a bamboo screen. On one side of the screen is a mud patch and a rudimentary hole in the ground. Do not peer over the bamboo screen to see what is making the snuffling and grunting sound. Pigs are easily disturbed.

The moral of this story is, when you have to let it out, let it out.

With the caveat that it is better by a tree than an upset pig. And a plastic bag rather than your mother.