August - the final month of the short South African winter and I can feel the dread of the approaching summer turning the blood in my veins to ice; in fact it simply fills me with incipient hysteria: if summer turned the blood in my veins to ice my problems would be solved - well - in that regard anyway.

I'm not well; quite what's wrong with me I don't know: as all my sources of transport appear to have gone awol I've been unable to get into town and see the doc, but today - thank God - I feel that there's life in the old girl yet! The symptoms have been similar to tick bite; nausea, appalling head-ache, complete loss of appetite and NO DESIRE TO IMBIBE!!! Pain in my chest and down my right side, a cough that wouldn't quit and an inability to do anything but sleep. It's five days since it began so for the first four I was pretty rough and today is a definite and huge improvement. Perhaps it is a mild form of tick bite, or perhaps having had it once very seriously, it means that any future attacks will automatically be less intense. Must check with the doc when I finally locate someone to drive me into town.

My friend Martin came to stay with me the week before I became icky; in fact I became icky the day he left and I had been feeling so lacking in energy all the time he was here that I was obviously building up to it, so to speak. Poor Martin! He journied all the way here from Edinburgh and didn't get to see so much as a mongoose. Because of the dogs we couldn't go to Kruger which would mean staying away for a couple of nights; we discussed day trips to places that were closer and although there were a host of choices, it was five days before we left the veranda. And then we only went to the Lodge for a cocktail. He arrived with a streaming cold and feeling very poorly, so I gave him hot soup, lots of honey and lemon and popped him into bed where he remained until noon the following day. No, he didn't! We drank about six beers each, talked non-stop and finally hit the hay around 2.45am. He did appear at noon that afternoon, feeling very fluey so he wasn't really firing on enough cylinders to do more than lie in a lounger, drink endless mugs of tea and read a book.

That became our routine for the first four days. I was also on the veranda in a lounger, drinking endless mugs of tea and reading a book. We'd take the dogs for a walk around four and by the time we'd returned ...read more