Anxiety attack

Weird. I was driving to work this morning (well, loosely morning I guess - went to a gig last night and got a bit sloshed) and there was a film shoot in the street. And there was a london bus stop there, the sight of which briefly shorted out my hung over brain. Lucky for them the heatwave has ended and today looks like a typical London smoggy glum afternoon. Speaking of which...

THE HEATWAVE! Oh. My. God. The last two days have been insupportable. The temperature climbed towards 40 C in selected parts of downtown. Last night sister and I had to chill out on the balcony after sunset as the inside of the flat was just to hot to exist in. Today it's 'only' 26 but the heat still lingers in certain sheltered spots such as, for instance, my bedroom.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Addis for the annual cuckoo's nest that is the African Union heads of state summit. I've collected all the information I could from the organisers but nowhere on the agendas does it actually say WHERE the summit is in the city or, for instance, where to pick up the press accreditation badge that I may or may not have succeeded in securing.

I always get like this before I travel. This is what we do in my family. We worry. About everything that might go wrong, and things that won't but are worrisome anyway, and things we can do nothing about, and my sister is the worst because she even worries about not being worried.

I worry about, in no particular order:
- Will I have time to change money before I arrive in Addis (maybe the ABSA at the airport will have computer problems, or a lack of currency. And somebody told me last night there are no ATMs in Addis)
- Will I get a visa to go into the country (I am attempting to get one at the airport, which should be ok in theory but oh my so many things could go wrong, better bring an extra 100 bucks in case I need to bribe somebody. And will the visa window be open at 10 pm when I land? Oy vey!)
- Will Somali terrorists bomb the Livestock Research Station where I will be staying? Maybe they're over the Sheratons...
- Will I end up getting ANY material or run round like a headless chicken like that time in Brussels when I was there to cover a competitiveness council and returned with jack?
- Will the face page on my passport break off (the Swedish ones do. It's a problem)
- Did my flight, in fact, leave today? (You'd be surprised...)


You'd expect me to be able to resolve most of these with a simple phone call but to that I say: Come try live in Africa!!!

Hopefull, though, it will be fun. I'm meant to be meeting Calestous Juma, Harvard professor extraordinaire, in Addis to do a profile for The Guardian. He's there to deliver the keynote speech. He's a great supporter so it will be good to see him and get the gossip from the closed sessions over whatever drinks they serve in Ethiopia.

I'm also feeling pretty accomplished because I did three movie reviews for my friend Tracey's lifestyle magazine. They'r only 100 words, which is a real challenge. Try summing up Truffaut's Les 400 coups in 100 words!