How to eat a sandwich

 There is only one satisfying way to eat a sandwich, as everyone knows. One must nibble around the edges until one creates a perfect circle.

 Then the lovely moment arrives when one chomps into the circle and creates the crescent, which become a moustache of course. This moment always has the potential to irritate people I have noticed. People finds one quite silly at this point. But not one's real friends. They understand. This moment sorts the wheat from the chaff.

 The friends that stay with you even when you repeat this every lunchtime, they are the ones worth keeping.

 Now, there is another important matter I would like to discuss regarding eating habits. It concerns the Pain au Raisin. I have noticed that one can tell a lot from the way people treat  a Pain au Raisin, and here again one can come across the most disturbing habits, which , I believe, tell volumes about people's psyche.  I have gone into many a cafe and ordered a Pain au Raisin and  when the waitress brings it out, she has massacred it by cutting it straight across its lovely curly body!

  Obviously there is only one way of eating this delicious French invention: one has to uncurl it bit by bit until one reaches the lovely heart of it... the sheer insensitivity of some people dumbfounds me.

And yes, I am still crawling around on my hands and knees on the Auckland floorcloth... and it is beginning to get the better of me.
My lovely God children have now left me to go to university.
I still haven't written that blasted  speech for the Private View at the British Library of the Djenne exhibition next week... it is beginning to stress me out. And I have just been asked to speak on Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday! And it is live. I hate that sort of thing... But can't very well say no I suppose.
Mali is booked.
Leaving on the 7th of October....
LATER:  Just about to try and write that speech... and of course I am very happy about this event at the British Library and even, I suppose about the radio interview- but only lacking in confidence.