"Jungle Love It's Driving Me Mad...It's Making Me Craaaaazy"

The fat baby also has a hardcore Kindle habit like 'Mama'

We're now at that awkward point in the trip when we've just cruised past the half point mark and are beginning to feel that sickening onset of despair that we have to leave here in l0 odd days (sigh).  Neither the husband nor I feel the least bit inclined to return back to London in January, nor face the veritable mountain of commitments which hover there silently, waiting to pile onto our world weary shoulders upon our return.

How quickly and easily we've shrugged off the perma-chilled shoulder-shrugging shivering and damp murkiness we left behind, and have embraced the easy going luxury of hot sand, warming sun and plentifully plump exotic fruit salads on demand - for less than the price of a bar of chocolate.

My oft-neglected (and far too grand) collection of sunglasses have at last had the airing they deserve, and are a staple in the light black backpack I carry around here everywhere.  I'm even (almost) getting used to the cold showers and the fact that no matter how hard I try, I always fall asleep with my toes grinding into bits of sand in the sheets.

The children are of course in heaven here - fat baby especially.  He simply cannot believe his luck in that every day begins with 'tookies' (biscuits), is punctuated with banana milkshakes, and ends with a chubby hand grab through the ever diminishing container of miniature chocolates we brought along (to rid our future beer and naan bloated January selves of temptation upon return).

Egg and Dumps also love the fact that 'school' here consists of weekly 'play days' and contain a generous amount of just messing around and learning at their own rate instead of a state implemented, pre-subscribed schedule of learning.

And 'Dada' and I?  Well that's easy.  Dada loves the freedom to rev up his beloved Enfield and take off whenever and wherever the mood strikes (which, in exactly twenty minutes, is going to be he, our pet Cory and I motoring through the jungle to a tiny hidden 'jungle bar' - little more than a makeshift table and chairs serving warm Kingfisher to rowdy males since 1997!)

As for me, I'm ever so glad to be rid of kitchen duty for a time.  And dishes.  And laundry.  And school runs.  And....you know....pretty much everything that normal life involves.  I'm bored of being bored if you catch my drift.  I want - no I need - my life to feel exciting on a daily basis.  I love being 'anti-schedule' and just going with the flow...drifting through each day indulging various whims, reading (A LOT), listening to music, going for walks, staring into the sea and sorting things out in my head...you know:  basic navel-gazing activity probably best suited to someone in their twenties just out of uni, but there you go.

I suppose it doesn't help that I'm currently reading one of the best books I've read in awhile:  The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  Great holiday reading in that it's an addictive escape for your head - and not unlike a good drug in that it's impossible to think of anything else but escaping back into the story, even as soon as you've put it down.  Read it...you won't be disappointed.

It occasionally explores the existential musing regarding the futility of modern life and the breathtaking speed at which our primarily unsatisfying and slightly disappointing lives whisk us through childhood, jobs, babies, buying houses, holidays, old age, death - all the while distracting us with the minutiae of acquisition, debt, paying off that debt, more acquisition, etc. explaining that brilliant quote about how the majority of men live lives of quiet despair.

Now that I think about it, perhaps not the best subject to be immersing myself in at the halfway mark of our holiday when these thoughts already lurk at the back of my adventure-hungry brain. Too bad I can't stomach the likes of Jackie Collins or chick-lite fiction anymore.  A bit of harmless bonking and pointless intrigue?

Naw...I'm a hardcore angst kinda girl like it or not.  Who also hears the call of the beer jungle.

Bye for now :)