Been away from the old blog for a while due to the manic rush everyone has a few days before you leave for a holiday - all in an effort to get up to date before the plane leaves the runway. It's always futile as you come back to even more work and hassle, but we do it all the same.

Have to say that I have had the Holiday from Hell. Cape Verdi is supposedly the hot, hip and happenin' place to buy property at the moment. Here's my adive: DON'T! A friend recently purchased an apartment and gave it to us for a week free of charge for our honeymoon. All started to go wrong at Gatwick when we boarded, sat for an hour then had to get off as something was 'malfunctioning'. A six hour wait in quite a pleasant departure lounge I have to say and then we were off.

The apartment had no electricity on arrival but it was soon sorted. No gas and when this was sorted it leaked so we couldn't cook. There was inadequate netting against mosquito's, no air conditioning and then 2 days in - no water as the salination tank had a problem! After 3 days we decamped to a hotel run by Italians who had disco music blaring poolside all day and continually tried to get you 'involved' in games.

I got a stomach bug and my partner - a cold. probably all day to stress. The island [Sal] itself is barren, dirty with one or 2 OKish restaurants and nothing to do outside of water sports. It's one huge building site at the moment and when it's fully developed it is going to be an enormous, ugly concrete jungle. OK, OK, I know it is bringing money to an island that badly needs it but there should be a limit to the development but of course because greed is the motivating factor, the westernisation will be limited.

I have come back ill, tired and sad that there are very few places in the world left to explore where original cultures prevail.

I am off to the movies now to loose myself in the new Bond movie and David Arnolds score.

Hope you are all faring better.