I watched 'Withnail and I' last night, and discovered that I'm not as proficient with English humour as I thought I was. While my Pommie friends were laughing away, all I could do was to keep my eyes open and listen to their explanations of why this part was so funny.

"So what's a toilet trader?"

Two hours before that, I was at the beach celebrating another guy's birthday, who at age 25, seemingly has the mental capacity of a 12 year old. His social contributions amounted to repeating other people's sentences, and his indecisive demeanour drove us mad. At one point, ordering beer became an exercise not unlike the planning of economic reform in Argentina.

Six hours before that, I was entertaining the idea of suicide, as the cockpit temperatures rose above 50C. At 500' above the ground on one of the hottest days in the world's history, I could barely contain the contents of my stomach from surging upward onto the face of the windscreen.

One day before that, I was planning my supposed four day stress management session in Melbourne for Christmas. It would have been a nice little trip, if it wasn't for the fact that my buddy had his leave cut short. Behind schedule, they said.

Oh well, at least Lord of the Rings is coming...