January 26th 2009, 03:30

This time next week, we will be on a plane going to Nairobi. I’m a teensy bit of a nervous wreck. I have cried at Holiday Showdown, The Dog Whisperer (which isn’t as good as It’s Me Or The Dog) and tonight I almost entirely dissolved into a pool of salt water and phlegm during Deep Impact. Hopefully, it’s the lariam. I don’t remember feeling like this when I was doing it ten…

January 26th 2009, 03:15

Today, we decided on the name for our blog. I rejected all of Alex’s ideas and he rejected all of mine, except one: losingluggage.com. Our agreement was sublime, not only that, the name was available. The satisfaction of coming up with something that no one else has is primal. Fifteen minutes later and it was ours and we had a nice big tick on our to do list. The first person to hear the name for…

January 26th 2009, 03:10

It turns out that we’ll have to fork out as good as 500 quid on pumping ourselves full of tropical diseases in the name of modern medicine in order, they tell us, not to die during the trip. Hepatitises A and B, yellow fever, typhoid, cholera, meningitis and rabies for starters. The guy makes it difficult to tell if he is ripping us off, deliberately anyway, by disguising his calculations with a cloak of…

January 26th 2009, 03:08

The plan is that this will be transformed from a boring old Word document into a blog. If you’re going to do anything in life, it seems churlish and secretive these days not to broadcast it to the whole world. It all seems terminally modern to me, and I’m quite pleased that, as far as Word is concerned, blog isn’t even a real word. That’s one thing Bill Gates and I can agree on.

January 26th 2009, 03:01

Perhaps unusually, I’m beginning my travelogue from my desk at home. Having told everyone our plans for the next year (top three comments so far: “That’s going to test the friendship”; “Don’t get pregnant”; “What if I die?” Thanks for that, Mum), and after all the calls made and emails sent to travel agents, and having attended nearly all of Alex’s leaving dos, as far as I’m concerned, we’ve already started.…