95 octane unleaded

Oh where, oh where is the petrol to my car? Oh where, oh where can it be? There's a fuel shortage in Cape Town. I had to roll down the hill, petrol gauge beeping, and cross my fingers that one of the downhill garages would have my type of petrol. The third did. Don't quite know why there is a shortage - can't have anything to do with the middle east as Nigeria is practically alight with oil. But maybe they don't want to supply the neo-colonial southern neighbour?

Reminiscing about the summer house

Meanwhile, this place is cold and rainy. But nobody had tried to break into my flat, or my car, while I've been away. So that's good. A kind mechanic even fixed my slightly broken windscreen wipers free of charge. Still no sight of my sofa, however, which now brings it to 8 weeks delivery time flat.

I might come back to London for a flying stop at the end of October. That is, if the Royal Society feels rich in conjunction with a meeting they are hosting of African learned societies and academies. On the way back I'd likely pop to Alexandria for a large meeting of policymakers and scientists. I'll go looking for the library, although they all reckon it's at the bottom of the sea. But just one forgotten manuscript under a cracked bit of two-thousand year old pavement? My hopes are high.

Met another younger cousin in London (she's usually in Canada - my, we're a globetrotting bunch) and she joined a last stand barbecue on a Shoreditch rooftop as the heatwave came to a close and the rainclouds rolled in. Ten brave souls and a bottle (or three) of rhum, aye!

Some photos from the barbecue.

The cousin is the blonde one with the pout in the second picture.

Malou (far left) is still a contender for the 'darkest person north of the Sahara' award, more than two weeks after her sojourn in Croatia.

The host and hostess with the mostest.


Farewell to London, and Sweden from the far side of the world, across deserts, jungles and seas...