Wanfala samting...

The second installment of Les Viajandos Barones was meant to go here - an altogether bigger, brighter and better version of Part One in Oz. Unfortunately, something has happened that means it will now be some time until you all get to see my little sis sweating it out under the bright Solomon sun; or brighter still the sight of my padre's white English knees.

That something does at least mean that I am now writing this in a slightly more interesting location than the usual sofa in my house. It is 7.30pm of a Tuesday evening, I have just finished playing tennis, and I am now sitting in one of the little makeshift huts scattered around the 'taon graon' for Women's week. The chicken is barbecuing, the frest coconut is sweet, and from the speakers on the main stage I can hear the voice of Sharzy singing "no matta wea iu stap, me still lovim iu". For lack of paper I am scribbling this in the white spaces of a leaflet advertising 'GPW Enterprises', which tells me the company is "A local business run by indigenous people helping our people to make money out of their minerals and lost treasures" (the first person to guess what they sell will receive a Sharzy CD straight from the Sols).

So what has happened that leaves me blogging in these circumstances?

The first sign that something was wrong came a few Friday nights ago when Fiona and I returned from a CBSI fundraising 'drink, dine and dance'. As we crawled up in the taxi and pulled into my garden, Fiona's typically Solomon eagle-eyes spotted my front door was slightly ajar. My first thoughts were "I didn't leave the bloody door open did I?". Fi's somewhat more accurate thoughts were "There's someone in your house". Sure enough when I leapt out of the cab and shouted an indignant "oy", there was a pause of one second, two se.. then out of the door like a hound from hell came flying a figure leaping over my porch rail, into the bushes and was gone. Since he wasn't carrying anything I was hopeful at first that we might have got back in time, but no such luck. Aside from a floor splattered with blood from cuts they must have sustained squeezing through the tiny hole they'd made where they'd cut away the iron bars, my laptop, DVD player and camera were all gone. They'd even taken a couple of kitchen pans (dirty at least, saving me a bit of washing up). But worst of all, they'd found their way into my fridge and taken a bottle of Mango fizzy drink... though were kind enough to leave the second bottle for me.

But joking apart, losing my laptop is an absolute bitch, and one which means I won't be writing in the immediate future. Writing by hand is great for the fact that can sit in more interesting settings, and some of what's going on around you absorbs into your words. But I'm afraid it's just too much of a chore to write by hand, and then just type it all up again. Plus, writing by hand you tend to end up pouring out a mundane stream of consciousness, as demonstrated in this sentence. I could write on a computer at work, but I never have time. There is also the possibility of using an internet cafe at the weekend, but weekends are... well weekends, and should not be polluted with computer screens and the like.

But hey, every cloud has a silver lining the saying goes, and now I'm looking forward to getting a replacement laptop when I go to Singapore in a couple of weeks. Once my family get the holiday pics posted out to me I will chuck on a few, so you can see what an amazing time we all had. But the rest of the goings-ons over here in this laptop-less period I'm afraid will be unrecorded and lost to time. It was sad to see my family leave, and the first week back at work was a little flat. But things soon picked up, and since then there's been loads going on: staka 'go finis' parties, an amazing 5-dives-a-day diving weekend, not to mention regularly falling drunkenly asleep on the sofa as I try to watch the Rugby World Cup through the night. Oh, and a curious incident of a dead dog in the night. But the less said about that the better, as I'm worried that the grave dug under my washing line just ain't deep enough.

Anyway, to those still loyally checking this stagnant website, thanks for thinking of me and persisting. I'll write again from Singapore in a couple of weeks.