Further well wishes come flooding in.

Elena, former employee of MCS is saddened by my apparent oversight in excluding Russia from my planned itinerary. Well Elena, I hold the lifestyle of Mr Tony Soprano in high regard and may pop across the (not so) iron curtain for a few days and see what i can dig up.

Mona, current employee of MCS has dreams of flaunting her thang in and abouts a Tuscan villa in sept/oct... We will without a doubt find Florence's equivalent to the Supper Club and pretend that we are colonial marauders here to pillage all the stocks of spansih sherry this tiny municipality has to offer.

Mona an invaluable resource of the world's best bars has been unearthed, memorise it - and then eat the website.

Yet another MCS employee Agatha has hopes of high drama when she does the Contiki thing in late May. No doubt by then Contiki will have changed their itinerary to include drive by's of the bar I am propping up - so no doubt ag, I and all the other horny bastards aboard the contiki bus will catch up and share tales.

Thanks for all the good wishes people.

Nobody has offerred me a Tuscan villa jjjjjjjjjjjuuuuuuuuust yet but

Josie suggests I rock up and demand to see the accounts at the cafe zizzi in London,.. i think she may be onto something, as they seem to be popping up all over the UK,..

Old friend, celebrity impersonator Mr K Katsieris (who works in an office) has passed on this very sound advice;

1) Stay away from home-made hot lookanika from yugoslavia.. they are real arse burners
2) Goats milk tastes like shit no matter what country you're in!!
3) If someone comes up to you and says "Sucky sucky long time" I think you've gone treking a little too far east
4) "Threating to violate their family" is a means of getting from point A to point B in a taxi while in Greece for under $50

To boldly go where just about everyone else except me has gone before!

There comes a time in every man's life where he has to go out there, face his fears, throw himself headlong into an adventure which will take them to places they had not dare dream of.

For many this occurs during O-Week at university, when the nice chick adroned with the ample bosom whom you have been chatting with whilst looking oh so suave and sophisticated (in an undergraduate kinda way) hands you a leaflet letting you know when the next Christian Union meeting is.

Others break free from the ties that bind early in their 20s and leave ma and pa behind to boldly enter the share house and find out what it is like to live in a house whose refrigeratory device carries 6 peoples names written on 6 different milk cartons and each one of the 7 days past its presonal "best"

For I however, for I do things in ways that others do not... For I ... I thought it best to wait until aged thirty and five before leaping headlong into the bosom of my heritage and embracing the opportunity to walk around an entire continent, my most prised posessions strapped to my back and enter small cafes and places of beverage worship and utter imappropriate phrases to locals thus giving them the opportunity to guffaw.

and lord knows how rare such opportunities are in life.

Today, armed with nought but my good name and hefty visa card credit limit, i did enter the Carlton Flight Centre and within its walls did i commence the negotiations of a worldly contract that would transport me bodily towards my loinage. And within this centre of flight, aided by my trusty and loyal customer service representative i was provided with hefty brochures outlining ways i can part with local currency for exchange of lodgings and transport in the mutterland.

I am choked with fear and images of foreboding but I must go on, as the tickets are ... non... re ... fundable.