Itching and Twitching

So back to the blogging it is. I make no apologies for the distinct lack of irreverent musings on the goings on of our UK life, but an artiste cannot force her creativity (which is another way of saying I’m a big fat slacko). But as of today I have a new resolve to recount all the happenings of life in O-Fo to all you folksies from far away. This new resolve is not only account of the fact that I have quite a few adventures to ramble on about (probably too many actually), but primarily because it is has become “properly cold” outside (or as we Australians would say “fucking cold”) which means that alternative outdoor activities are becoming decidedly less appealing.

Also I really wanted to tell you all (i.e. brag) about the fact that I saw Sir David Attenborough talk this week for free, live in the flesh. My hero (well isn’t he everyone’s?). He spoke for one thoroughly entertaining hour about Birds of Paradise and how they helped Alfred Wallace develop his theories on natural selection, giving anecdotes of his expeditions to find and film them and then had the auditorium laughing at videos showing their crazy courtship rituals. He also answered questions, including one about what his future travel plans were, to which he responded that he had already been to several countries on four continents this year including both the South Pole and the North Pole. And I thought I was a travel bug! The man is 84 years old!! May he live to 120!

So speaking of travel bugs (I hope you will appreciate the beauty of this segue way in a moment) Cam and I just got back from another little sojourn; a week in beautiful Portugal. Now don’t get me wrong - this was a really good week and we had a fun time – we swam and surfed and got to see some of the Rip Curl Pro (i.e. Kelly Slater, Taj Burrows and Co surfing) and visited castles and ate amazing seafood and were treated to lots of delicious food and great wine (Vinho Verde is my new favourite white) by my lovely family in Lisbon and Porto. But it would have been a brilliant week if it wasn’t for two little bugs. The first bug was a cold I caught before we went which meant that I was snotty the whole time – but that was ok. The second bug was terrible. Actually it was an army of bugs – bed bugs! Eeeeek! These things are horrible! I hope that none of you ever get eaten by them (they do actually live on human blood) – especially if you’re as sensitive as Campbell. Poor Cam didn’t believe me when I said that I thought the bites on my arms were bed bugs (there were only a few at this stage) and offered to take the infested bed for himself. Alas, the bugs, now invigorated from the previous nights helping of Shelly blood, feasted on the poor lad. And unlike me, his histamine reaction made all the bites go from red and incredibly itchy, as they were on me, into these huge ugly welt things (If you want to know what they look just Google bed bug bites). Anyway he looked a bit like a leper and was a bit mopey for a few days, and I’m sure he scared off a few people in Portugal, but all is well and healed now (at least the leper impersonation and the mopey part, but the spots are still kinda there, 2 weeks later, nasty nasty things).

Since my last blog post we have also managed to enjoy another little weekend travel adventure abroad, visiting ol’ Stefen in Germany a few weeks back. Although it was a truly rapid 2 ½ day visit, it was a blast and probably quite an authentic German experience. There was lots of beer drinking, lots of eating of really great bread and weird salty pickled fish (much nicer than it sounds), a bit of dancing to bad 80’s music, and some smoked trout by a bonfire. Sehr deutschen Ich glaube (or something like that).

Read the rest of this story here:
http://thetravelaffair.net/affairs-of-the-heart/twitching/
http://thetravelaffair.net/affairs-of-the-heart/catching-the-travel-bug/