Dear Frances Gibson

OK well, I would wake up most days and tell De Campo there isn’t a cloud in the sky and she would say yes there are, just look over there and to the West there would be lots of them. Holding hands in the ocean on our last day, I said look honey, it’s just you and me out here and five seconds later, she was covered in jellyfish stings. Luckily we met some heart of gold locals who ran a bar up the road and helped De Campo get well medicated. We tried most of their booze and got beautifully drunk. They cooked us a dinner of prawns and delicious red curry. After dinner we went inside a straw-hut, style bar played pool, listened to ZZ Top and met a little puppy named Poo-Poo, who was busy torturing a frog.

The next day we flew to Bangkok. The marketplace was profoundly exotic and pestilent. Miniature turtles for fifty cents and baby vultures at huge discounts. We bought four of each (with the intention of cross-breeding them) plus a fruit bowl, some salad forks, a pepper grinder and some brilliant three dollar t-shirts.

I returned to work yesterday to find out my ‘out of office assistant’ was out of its head: “I am away from 14 August - 28 August. I will be back in the office answering messages on March 6.” HA, I wish.

On my way to work this morning, thinking about how gruelling it is to be back there, I caught an amusingly hostile cab exit as I transferred trams at the corner of Collins and Spring. The cab was on a slope and at an awkward angle causing the door to heavily swing back into the passenger, a horrid young lady, who repeatedly kicked the door causing it to swing back nailing her harder and infuriating her more each time. Forced down she held out her foot to steady the door and once under control, she clumsily staggered to her feet. Eager to get the last word, she kicked the door several more times, and to the joy of everyone watching this rude display the door responding by giving her a most forceful bash, knocking her back into the seat. I felt sorry for the cab driver who at this point probably thought he was stuck with this revolting creature. After I heard her scream in agonising defeat, I turned the heavenly Camera Obscura up on my IPOD and scooted away in a fit of giggles at such welcome suffering.