I suffered from severe + violent indigestion for most of the night, followed by the recurrence of an upset stomach in the morning. I seem to have been affected by this on + off for the past 2 or 3 weeks, + it’s faintly worrying in case I have something a little more serious than the run of the mill trots. Sorry to be regaling you with these tales of woe regarding my stomach – not the stuff that great travel books are made of, I’ll grant you, but an important aspect of our daily life.
During the morning, however, it made little or no difference – the rain just poured down. We occupied ourselves in preparing + eating a breakfast feast, comprising the fried up remnants of last night’s meal, together with a couple of fried eggs. Even in my debilitated state, I was not able to resist such a meal… tho’ I can’t imagine it did me any good. (It was fried in Blue Band margarine, a substance I have grown to detest – evil, greasy stuff.)
The rain stopped at around midday, but I felt rather worse if anything (the result of over-eating?) + returned to my bed, where I was soon fast asleep. Val went for a walk on her own to a couple of points out to the east – pleasant, she said. I’d planned to go with her on one more short walk to the west, but by the time she had returned + woken me, we discovered it was already 6 o’clock. There was still just about time, but a grey drizzle had begun again, so we wrote the idea off.
We invited Cliff to come round + share our dinner, + had a pleasant enough evening, tho’ the cuisine was hardly haute, + not even all that tasty by our usual standards. Still, we played chess before + dice after, had some tinned pears from the cuisine for dessert, + finished off with Milo + biscuits, all in the most civilised of manners, seated out on the veranda. Almost colonial style, except for a marked absence of alcohol. The mosquitoes were ferocious tonight however – the rain had cleared + there was no wind – so we were driven to the canteen. At 10.30, we were able to watch the News in English. Nothing of note seems to be happening in the world at the moment (tho’ I don’t suppose they’re likely to cancel the News) but the programme was worth watching if only because of the extraordinary intonations of the newsreader – a weird combination of Oxford, American, Indian, spiced up with some concoctions of his own.
What with the weather and my own debilitated state, not much to write about, though Val did get out for a bit.
