A Born Again, A Mongoose, & A Very Hot Sausage

So I have returned from my trip to Fiji. And I would wax lyrical about how relaxing and rejuvenating it was, except that I am delirious with exhaustion, having had to wake at the equivalent of THREE AM yesterday to fly home, then having been woken up again super early this morning by THREE KIDS (my god, do I really have so many? I had forgotten....).

However, I can still share with you the highlights of my holiday:

1. NOTHING. Yes, doing nothing. I slept, a lot. I lay by the pool. I sat on our balcony. And when that all got too draining, I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling (and no, I wasn't even having sex at the time). I wanted to remember what it was like to do so much nothing that I got bored. And you know what? It's FANTASTIC.

2. Meeting Langdon, The Born Again. By the pool the first morning, we were devastated to miss out on a Pool Pod to laze in all day. (You needed to wake at about 4am to secure one, which is what my husband did on subsequent mornings.) Then - like a vision, a prophet, Zac Ephron's younger brother - stood Langdon, The Born Again Christian. He offered us his Pod; he had no use for it anymore, he insisted. We were overjoyed. Langdon's halo of golden hair glowed brightly in the sun. My husband and I retreated humbly to the glory of the Pod. Langdon tried briefly to convert us, but whilst we were grateful for his offering, our choice was clear. If being Born Again meant having to relinquish a Pod, we were better off staying as we were.

3. Meeting a Mongoose. Well, I didn't so much as meet it as cross paths with it. And to be honest, until a kindly Fijian man explained what it actually was, I thought it was just a squirrel. But I have never seen a real mongoose before, so this was a most auspicious occasion. It was a fine specimen of a mongoose, too, as far as I could tell. Brownish. Smallish. Squirrel-like, as I may have mentioned. And fast. Highly recommended. You know... if you like that sort of thing.

4. Airplane breakfast. My GOD but I love those meals. So convenient, so nutritionally balanced, so carefully packaged, so much fun to eat. And my meal was hot, instead of luke warm, which was a fabulous change. In fact, it was searing hot, so hot I could have burnt my mouth on the boiling sausage and sued. In fact, maybe I did burn my mouth on the sausage.... it feels a bit tender.....

5. Coming Home. Nah, just checking to see if you were paying attention.