Ah dear friends. I am once more in harness and preparing to leave the country on a madcap adventure. This time, we are camel trekking in the Sahara. Like a great ocean liner through tough seas we will part the sands of the desert on a camel. Sleeping in a Bedouin tent we (I) shall feast on meat and swap coarse jibes with passer bys. The temperature will be a balmy 20 during the day, but plummeting at night.

I expect to be given foul food and told its a cultural delicacy. I will be regarded as a foreigner with money and filled into believing untruths. I might even be hornswoggled out of some possessions (it is a word, honest, look it up if you don’t believe me) but that’s just part of the fun.

If I come back with four camels and no Jo you know the bargaining went well with me.

On a health note, and as this is largely a blog about my cancer, I have been well since having a camera… Well you know.
I’ve had a sinus issue but it’s small potatoes, so I’m happy.

It’s interesting having an underlying medicinal condition that, as of yet, requires no treatment. People forget about it. Why wouldn’t they? There’s no external stimulus to remind them. Maybe forget is too much. More they don’t recall it but if someone was to mention it they would know it straight away. Even I’ve moved a little more towards that.

Except when I get Ill. Any niggles I get, would previously have been ignored. Now though it’s difficult to know how to react. No one likes the hypochondriac who complains all the time, least of all themselves (as they often genuinely believe they are Ill). And yet what if it is a symptom of something else. So I try not to complain and forget about any manifestations that don’t seem to serious. I can understand though, how people with cancer can worry and build up phantom pains, or slight tweaks to be big things.

All you can do is flag it up with the gp of its serious enough, or last a longer than a week or so, or otherwise just ignore it. If everyone went to the doctor with the slightest thing the NHS would be swamped. But if you wait too long when it is serious…

It’s a real bind. I guess I recognise a cold, sore throat and sinus problem for what they are. After all I don’t want my doctor to think of me as a time waster. I will need his help at some point in the near future.

Anyway a bit of a ramble there, but it was just something I was thinking about in the last week. For now I am considering the flight, and then nine days with no work to do. It’s been a hectic week leading up to it, and no
doubt it’ll be busy when I get back, but for now… To Morocco and the desert!