#181041 - Firstly, Fiona, who seemed to have lost about twenty pounds in weight in my absence making her appear drawn and skinny rather than the full-figured girl I first fell for, gave me rather a cool instead of warm welcoming home, and announced that she had got a great new job with an American publishing company and would be working in New York for several months, starting immediately; and secondly, and equally depressingly, a mere 24 hours into my leave I got a call from my ship's captain outlining the charming fact that in one month I would be skippering a motor patrol boat between the dangerous Iraq-Iran waterways for at least six months, and that as from the next day I would be on a three-week intensive Arab language course at a college in the West Country. Shssssh, I interrupted.