Amaze-balls...

I don't know why I have just used that ridiculous made-up word.  I have tried to resist it, but resistance, as they used to say on 'Allo Allo, is futile.  Hell, I don't even know why I just quoted 'Allo Allo, I was never a fan.  I think it's safe to say I'm tired.

All I really wanted to do was show you these photos of my amaz-ing holiday.  I hadn't had a proper holiday in years.  I mean a holiday where you do absolutely nothing except sit in the sun and read and eat and sleep.

My friend persuaded me to go to a lake in Thailand, which has, like, totally NO internet, NO phone reception, NO electricity and NO flushing toilets.  Call me old fashioned but I do like a flushing toilet.  Nonetheless what this place lacked in plumbing it more than made up for in beauty:

I lived in one of these huts, and every morning woke up to this view:

And while there was no hot water in the shower, you could just jump in the lake where the water was oh so warm:

I don't really want to talk about the trauma of trying to go to the toilet in the middle of the night;  I'm saving it for the new book; suffice to say, your options were:

pee in a pot in the dark (and risk missing the pot and pee-ing on your own floor)

try and cross a rainforest in the dark to reach the loo (that doesn't even flush) with only a cheap Argos own-brand headlight to guide you, and get attacked by fearless and slightly terrifying macaques like buddy here, in the process:

 or pee out the back door of your hut in the dark, and fall in the lake and drown in your own pee, which is not the way I plan to leave this planet.

So I didn't pee for a week.  Well not at night, anyway.  But I did read a book a day, including two that I loved: Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy - which is a very dark, very funny book that made me realise I can probably get away with far more rudeness and darkness in my writing than I currently employ.

And The Elegance of The Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery.  I'd tried to read it a while back and couldn't get into it, but with the benefit of not constantly checking my lack of emails, I had the headspace to concentrate, and I loved it.  A great, great central character.  And I found myself learning lots of new vocabulary too.  (And not, I hasten to add, words like amaze-balls.)

On the plane I saw three good films.  Again, I know I'm late to the party but anyway: Moneyball, Thirty Minutes or Less, and Horrible Bosses.  The latter two are dumb as hell, but they're my kind of dumb as hell.  Thirty Minutes or Less stars Danny McBride basically playing Kenny Powers again, who I

in a really messed up way.  And Horrible Bosses stars Jason Sudeikis, aka The Hair from 30 Rock, who I also want to get with.

I then undid all the good I'd done relaxing in Thailand, by haring off to New York for 40 hours.  Long story.  Well short story, but I'm fresh off that plane, so will post soon, with some good food pics.