f4f3 | Ketchup 1 of n - I went on holiday and all I brought back was this sense of whirling dislocation

Lots of catching up to do... Holiday to start with.

The plan was simple: one week, in the sun, all inclusive, under £500. However, there was so much bullshit around where I would fly from, what the single supplement would be, when could I go, that I just froze in the headlights. Which is where the incomparable

jen_c_w came in. Not only did she find me a choice of holidays, sheleft enough in the budget that I could travel via Gatwick, and was a truly awesome host from Friday till Sunday night in that there London.

We did fantastic food, a fizzy wine tasting, the frankly magnificient Late Turner show at the Tate, flabergastingly good cocktails, semi-raw slabs of meat from a burger van (apparently this is not to be confused with the burger van outside the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow, but is actually a hip metropolitan thing. And the burgers were amazing).

I was sorry to leave London on Sunday night, even if it was to start my holiday.

The Ibiza portion of the holiday was pretty much a mixed bag. The hotel was fine (once they let me in: I had the usual first night nonsense of being put in a hotel next door because they'd overbooked, but was able to parlay this into a free room upgrade for the rest of the week). I'd expected it to be noisy, which it was, but not to the extent of it being a problem (until the night before I was leaving in the early morning, and could really have done with a few hours of sleep).

I spent most mornings by the pool, reading, and then spent most of the afternoons by the pool, reading. Usualy I'd break the monotony before dinner by taking a coffee to the back of the hotel, overlooking San Antonio bay, and reading.

No doubt I could have had a week of carnage (all inclusive drinks, from 11 till 11, and, of course, I'd bought a bottle of malt in duty-free) and, no doubt, a few years ago I might have. But as it was, I spent a lot of time (you guessed it) reading, a lot of time walking, and a little time just relaxing under a Bo tree. Or it might have been a pine.

I'd arranged my flights back to build in an extra day in London (well, an extra 12 hours) and I spent that mostly with

khalinche , discovering marvelous pumpkins and walking through parts of London I was silly enough to think that I knew. She has the same infectious joy in showing off her adoptive city that I have in showing people around London, and I had a great time. And she made sure I was well fed. That led into an unplanned boozy afternoon with a friend of mine from the Isles, and her new partner. I was the slightly bemused and completely fascinated dumbest person at the table, and it was only reluctantly that I made it back to Victoria by 7, back to Gatwick by 8, and back to Glasgow by 11. Before midnight, I was in my own wonderful bed for the longest sleep I'd had for 10 days.

Yes, a Curate's Egg of a holiday, but I needed it.