Actually, it was rather annoying: even when I was sitting on the side of the pool in Sicily, knee deep in cold water and in the shade of a tree that may have been a palm tree and may have been a banana tree and may have just been a tree, watching the sky with a copy of American Gods on my lap, all I could think about was how to blog it all.

I'd hate to put all that thought to waste, so I suppose I'm still blogging.

(It's almost as if I see everything as being made valid only once it's been posted. Which reminds me of an argument, actually, that I really need to lose. Do we actually have any right to space travel? Do we even need the right to? And the like.)

But, yes: the house, to clarify, had a pool, and also a pool table (and a massage chair and CCTV and a steam shower and and and) and was rather like someone who had never seen an expensive home but had read a description of one had designed it. The decor, see, didn't quite fit with the fact there was a pool table. Nor did the fact that the room I shared with Sean had neither A/C nor a window, despite the fact that every other bedroom had both. I sound bitter, but we're talking thirty-one degrees on a cool night, and my room's unopenable high-up block of glass that lets in light also let in the last of the sun.

While I'm complaining, actually, let me say this: eighty-four mosquito bites.

But apart from that, yes, it was good, it was good to watch the pile of books by my bed (eleven) shrink to none just as it was good to watch the moon rise over the ocean and to see, ha, yes, a meteor and also! My God, there were bats. Awesome, I do think.

But this could easily become a very very very long post even if I decided not to actually talk about any of the ruins or the food or the people or the, Christ, the politics. And god knows I mostly wasn't thinking about any of that: just blogging, and wondering what e-mails I was missing and whether I'd ever be able to swim properly and how long my freckles will stay out for and whether I really missed lurpack more than the internet and whether I really missed the internet more than, say, London itself, or my bookshelves or, you know, gaming, or, hey, any fellow human beings?

Or debate club?

(It is good to be home. It is very very good to be home.)