Another long journey through the searing Sahara on Sunday. This time there was every good reason to look out of the truck window. We shook rattled and rolled through an alien landscape of wind-scoured rocks bigger than houses and eroded into extraordinary unearthly shapes.
As I gazed, my mind strayed to the poor sods going, at that very moment, to their factory-offices by Tube in the steadily increasing gloom and dampness of the English autumn. With the same to look forward to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And the high spot in life's petty pace is the weekend trip to Tesco.
I also thought guiltily of my (business) partner Robert working away on behalf of us both. He is doing some modelling - financial not fashion. Meanwhile I am scratching insect bites in interesting parts - of the globe not my anatomy.
The sun hammers down, the heat radiates back up from the sand, and a puddle of pee evaporates within a minute.
That night we camped out in the desert. We've all seen the night sky before, but here it is like a static stellar fireworks display. I couldn't identify a single constellation or even one of the unfeasibly bright planets, but just like an opera in an unfamiliar language it didn't spoil the show.
Fearing another fitful night, I went to my tent at 9.00pm - and slept like an overfed tomcat. To someone who usually lives with the unending roar of the Great West Road, the silence was almost tangible.
By morning the air was tinglingly fresh and so I waited for the sun to climb a little in the rose-pink sky before trying out my camping shower. This clever gadget is filled with water then hauled up over the branch of a handy tree. I looked around. Hmm. Sand, yes. Sky, yes. What else? Nothing. Plenty of it. The lone and level sands stretched far away.
Carefully away from the sight of the ladies - whom I would not wish to offend nor disappoint - I held the device above my head first with my left hand then with my right. And it worked. Sort of.
What I had not reckoned with was that some of the ladies had business of their own in the morning desert, which required them also to withdraw some distance from our camp. They politely averted their eyes as they passed me, thus missing something which I am unqualified to evaluate.
Later, approaching another oasis, somebody I took to be a camel breeder had devised an amusing sign to make the nature of his enterprise clear to the illiterate and perhaps foreigners. I don't want to go into details, but it seemed to me that the uppermost camel was smiling. Repressed society? There goes another pre-conception.
Another night, another oasis. More hot springs but no little boys, and no officious beardies.
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