The Croatia Epilogue

Rudely awakened at 7.30am, we were on the road an hour later. How Filip managed it is beyond me but anyway - he did and we arrived at Zagreb airport just over three hours later in lovely bright warm sunshine. I tried to get on the net but there appeared to be something wrong with my T-mobile dongle. I received a text but then couldn't respond to it for some reason - I put it down to some international variable or other and thought no more about it. My voice was very croaky indeed and I had a gig to do when I got back to England at Big Night Out on Shaftesbury Avenue. We made the short flight to Split where we had a "let's have a look at what you could have won" moment when we espied the Dalmatian coastline from the aircraft windows. It looks spectacular. The second flight was fine and when we got off the plane at Gatwick Sully and I ran past the assembled crowd of returning pensioners to get first in line for customs. A rare treat. I was through and on a train to London by 4pm. I took out my laptop. My T-mobile dongle remained useless. I tried to make a phone call. Still nothing.

I didn't try again until St. Pancras International and the phone would still not work. I called T-mobile to discover that my account had been blocked by their fraud squad, alerted to a suspicious amount of internet usage in four different Croatian cities over four consecutive days. I was told I would have to wait seven working days to get my account unblocked. As much as I don't mind this rule (it safeguards my account, after all) I do get rather pissed off when I am chastised by my phone company for not telling them I was going abroad. It is not a jealous lover trying to watch my every mood and it surely should not be that hard to just send a text or make a quick call themselves to find out who is using my phone (me).

The gig was fine (fortunately) and I eventually got home around 11pm, exhausted. T-mobile called the next day to apologise and unblocked my phone (So thus cannot really be faulted in any way, shape or form, really). I also went around to see my mother to show off my partial suntan and left promptly to go down to Portsmouth to perform at their (relatively) new Jongleurs show. I drank about eight litres of water and scoffed a whole packet of Menthol Eucalyptus, did the gig and then staggered bent-double to the gents where I thought I was going to collapse under the strain of my terribly stretched bladder. No visit to the toilet has ever gone so well. This really was number one.