There is, of course, a fine chalked line between brilliant and nutty-as-a-fruitcake. We all approach that line from different directions. I sauntered through old Tom Foolery`s back paddocks and found myself there, gazing across the chalk dust but unable to take that last decisive step to brilliance. Far more people approach it at speed from the other direction – by first being a genius then realizing there is nowhere else to go. A year ago I was contacted by a university we shall call “#$$%&’= and invited to speak to its students about the jolly life of a writer. Having declined with great haste, I was told that an influential figure at the university (whom we shall call Jim) was a great fan of my books and would be thrilled to receive a personal email from me. I wrote in the guise of an Eastern European prospective mail-order bride, hoping it might show him what a mistake it would have been to shut me in a room with a load of young people. To my horror he wrote back in kind, making enquiries about the dowry and my breast size. Thus began one of my rare successful relationships. Over the year I got to see his live fried chicken and Coke taste test, learn how to cheat at final exams and discover through e-DNA testing that I was Jim`s long lost love child. So it was with trepidation that we decided to add one more dimension to our relationship by meeting for lunch in DC. The venue was Cafe Milano, so famously Italian that the hide of Pavarotti was pasted to the ceiling above our table. Fearing that there would be no place for Ray, me and Margaret took a spare chair from home. The surley waiters didn`t see the funny side. Jim did. Jim and his lovely partner, Ann saw our chair and raised it with a stuffed donkey. I thought it was a gift and proceeded to put it in my back pack. Jim and Ann were as appalled as Margaret would have been if they`d attempted to stuff Ray in their handbag. Siesta the donkey was, of course, a lunch guest.

So began our meal overlooking the deleted chalk line. Between them, Jim and Ann have more degrees than Celsius.They advise God. Great minds travel to earth for their counsel. So it`s only to be expected that this couple should travel internationally with a suitcase full of Beanie Babies. It`s no surprise that when Bill Clinton once reached out to shake Jim`s hand he should instead be snapped in a photograph with a pink koala in his mitt. And who else would arrive in Delhi with 47 monkeys in their luggage? Margaret, Ray and myself have never been so outclassed at lunacy. Our chair gag looked lame. We knew then we would never be granted even temporary visas for the far side. I wrote to Jim and thanked him for the funniest lunch we could remember. But he was at breakfast with the Pope. I did however get this reply from Siesta.

Hi, hi! It’s me, Siesta the donkey. I roused myself from a sound sleep to go meet this writing chappy. He seemed a little confused; sometimes, thinking he was actually in Spain or something, but my humans said this was what happened when famous writers are hauled fro and to all over the world to greet their adoring fans. And I wasn’t sure he was a *real* writer because he didn’t seem to drink half enough to get into the kind of stupor you’d have to be in to spend all that time writing a book and everything. But my major human, Ann’s her name, she thought he was just fine and she was really glad to hear that Dr. Siri is coming back soon. We went right home and looked him up on the Internet to make sure that he has a ticket to come and see us the minute he’s released. (I guess that means he’s been in prison again.) Anyway, hi hi, this is me, Siesta the donkey, very proud to have my own guest paragraph in this nice blog! Thank you, Mr. Writing Chappy. (??-ed)

Parents of America. Your children are in safe hands. What finer way to end this series of Awesome Vacation blobs? Thanks for reading them. I`m on my way back to obscurity so perhaps you`d all be so kind as to remember me once a year the way you do Jesus. Sayonara.

The Washington DC Metro is so uncompicated even a country boy like me can master it. It was there to greet me beneath the belly of Ronald Reagan and, half an hour later, there I was popping out at the zoo near (not in) which my friends reside. Even though they knew I’d spent the previous two weeks on book-related events, Margaret and Ray decided it’d be fun to take me to a bookshop on my first evening here. But, I suppose Politicas and Prose isn’t just any old bookshop. It’s the District of Columbia’s Mecca for thinkers, book lovers and people who just love to hog the microphone at question time.

I can give you two examples of the high standards P&P sets itself. Firstly, the event we attended last night was the launch of The Quest by Pullitzer Prize winning energy guru Daniel Yergin. The audience was salt and peppered with genius. Secondly, my book was on the recommended reading table just inside the front door. If that isn’t class I don’t know what is. I signed their stock, pretended to understand what Yergin was talking about for half an hour, then went for a beer with Ray.

We’d been at the event because Margaret is an ace researcher and she’d done a last-minute photograph search for Yergin. Her favourite was the portrait of Hugo Chavez wearing a beret and holding a parakeet…wearing a beret. Yergin gave margaret a well-deserved credit in the book. He’s an all-round great guy, they said. P&P doesn’t invite just anyone to give a talk so when the manager asked me if I’d be kind enough to come back for an event, Margaret fainted right there in the store. We had to bring her around with a pint of Old Rooster. When I announced my retirement from book tours she reminded me that I wasn’t nearly famous enough to start acting fascinating. I was far too obtuse for that (I had to look up obtuse). Only great writers could fade into obscurity and still sell books, she said.

When she wasn’t looking I kicked her cat.

You can see how silly it is to name airports after real people when you substitute your own name for theirs. ‘I was stuck in Colin Cotterill for two hours last night.’ ‘I flew into Colin Cotterill from Eric Stone.’ ‘Colin Cotterill is closed due to heavy rain.’. In fact they sent me to George Bush which, given my relationship with the family, was a cruel twist of fate. It’s way out of Houston and there’s no public transport so the taxi fare could have fed a family of eight for a month down on my gulf. Luckily the driver was Etheopean so it was a bit like donating to Oxfam.

Minotaur put me up in a very swish hotel called Zaza. It’s very dark and the waiting staff parade around in little black dresses. But only the women. It is working a little too hard at appearing ‘hip’ and I’m a firm believer that if ‘hip’ doesn’t come naturally…it isn’t. The ‘do not disturb’ sign says, ‘I’m busy putting on my makeup’. Not funny. Not hip. But it does have a very cool buffalo skull on the front of its shuttle bus. Hip. It’s in the museum district so I am surrounded by potential culture. But first I have to do something about my new elbow. Two days ago my left elbow inflated. It’s as if a new limb is attempting to grow out of it. But at the moment it feels squishy like it’s full of cottage cheese. This morning I headed off to find an upper extremity doctor. This is a medical hub and there are micro-specialists. Ear, nose and throat are three different buildings. The left elbow clinic was recommended to me by a retired doctor who attended our panel last night at Murder By The Book. More of that later.

People don’t walk in Houston. When I mentioned to the concierge that I might stroll down to West Holcome he suggested it was the equivalent of walking to Mexico. i was there in half an hour. But as i neared the clinic I remembered Sicko, the movie, and that people go bankrupt in this country paying medical expenses. I’d left my credit card in the hip hotel safe and I had barely $300 in my pocket. Would it be enough? Would I be turned away because I had exotic medical insurance? Would they laugh at me because people don’t use bank notes any more. Perhaps they wouldn’t know what they were.  I was so paranoid by the time I sighted my destination that I turned round and headed home. My elbow will have to wait til I get back to Bangkok. They’ll jab a nail in, drain out the cottage cheese into a bucket and stick a bandaid on it. A dollar fifty.

But I digress. This is all about Murder, the best events bookstore in the country. It was me, Stuart Neville and Jim Benn. Three little authors from Soho are we. Jim’s a really old person so they couldn’t hear him at the back especially beneath the whir of his respirator. Stuart’s Irish so we’re all waiting for the dvd version with subtitles to see what he said. So it was up to me to carry the show and win the audience around as always. McKenna was so pleased, she and her mum took us out for Mexican food afterwards at the Tiempo. I’m told the food was very good.  I can vouch for the beer.

Next stop…DC.

Beale Street, the traditional home of Memphis blues music, is a short noisy road with police cars at each end and, that night, a very white couple performing ballroom dancing to a bemused black crowd in the street. The warning sign tells tourists they may not walk dogs or reptiles there. It didn’t say anything about tangoing. I think the dancers were tourists. Most of us were.  I doubt there were many locals. My faithful sidekick, Eric, and me was checking out the live vibes. We heard a pretty good Johnny Cash impersonator, some Sly and the Family Stone, and at least one Elvis tune, but not a hell of a lot of blues. ‘Tourists tend not to favour it’, a barman told us.  Of course that wasn’t true of me and Eric who’d been driving along to blues road music the whole way from St Louis on old route 61. Finally we found a little place with a Haight-Ashbury flower child lead guitarist, a displaced Japanese housewife base, a comatose drummer and a feisty old lead singer wiht a harmonica and a tip bucket. They briefly made some real music and we were saddened when the set ended and the bucket came around. We didn’t stay out too late because we had a platinum tour pass for Graceland the following day. We needed to be at our freshest.

It was peeing down with rain as we drove along Elvis Presly Boulevard, passed the Heartbreak Hotel and pulled in to the only parking lot i’ve ever seen where handicap spaces outnumbered regular. If you come from Europe where the sink unit is a short poney ride from the lavatory in royal bathrooms you may decide that the Graceland Mansion…isn’t.  A long snake of devotees with headphones shuffled through little ol’ rooms barely the size of my mamma’s lounge.  The legendary jungle room was no more bizarre than most Chinese living rooms in Thailand. Apart from a whippet in an Elvis waistcoat and an Aussie DJ who’d gelled what was left of his hair into a sad coiffe with drawn-on sideburns, the crowd lacked colour. But perhaps that  was just the rain. There were sincered tears at the graveside and a Japanese wreath dedicated to Mr. Elvis Presery, and bunches of soggy hand-made flowers. There wasn’t anything nearly tacky enough to buy in the thirty-two gift shops and only peanut butter and banana sandwiches on sale at the diner. So we left empty handed with nothing funny to say about the place. We hoped our irreverance hadn’t stepped on His blue suede shoes.

And perhaps the highlight of our Memphis trip was last night at Ernastine and Hazel’s. Eric had heard it was a rocking little blues joint nowhere near the tourist traps (but watch your back if you walk there). So we moseyed on over. It was shut. Or at least the lights were out, the TV was on and the barman had his feet up. “Aint much goin’  on here on a Mondee,’ said he.  But in twenty minutes we had the TV off and were pumping quarters into a juke box voted ‘the best selection in Memphis’ by the local newspaper. We got a guided tour of the upstairs brothel (decommisioned in the sixties) and the hidden outback speakeasy. We spent the night swapping stories with the bar keep over a few ales. That…was the Memphis we’d been looking for.

Next stop…Houston.

I got an email today asking me if I’d like to add three inches to my penis. But honestly, who needs a 27 inch penis? Yes. You’ve probably suspected I’ve become really cocky since i started to see myself as an ‘International Guest of Honour (They call it honor but since they’re American) at Bouchercon. It’s so tempting to see yourself as bigger and longer than everyone else but that’s only because you never have to undress. Once the rumour (aka rumor) has been circulated, nobody actually looks beneath your clothing. If you strutt enough they believe you’re somebody.

After my Lost People of Amazon panel on Thursday I was on a high. Everything worked. Lot of laughs. Great people on the panel. Great audience. I was Errol Flynn. Only natural that everything should go flacid from there on. On Saturday they had me sitting between Laura Lipmann and Sarah Paretsky with a bunch of geniuses discussing social politics and law. Like having a Teletubby on Hardtalk. It was the type of panel I could have contributed more to by being in the audience. Intelligence isn’t my strong point. I didn’t get any of it: neither the jokes nor the questions. I said ‘Um’ a lot and it soon became apparent to the moderator that i was a potted plant. Never – as they say – again.

It occurred to me I might have exceeded my maximum warp speed and hit overburn when I took a nap at 4:15 that afternoon and woke up at 4:15 the next morning. Apparently nobody had missed me. I had a cup of tea. Watched Almost Legal Babysitters On The Job on Pay-for-view and went back to bed again.

It appears that some unknown from Thailand won the Shamus Award for best original paperback for Asia Hand while I was unconscious . Some fellow called Moan or Mower or something. It’s quite common knowledge you just have to hand over a few dollars and you can get an award in this country but, bloody well done, CG and I am NOT carrying it back with me.

So, a double for Thailand. Despite my trumpeting, this has been a humbling few days for me. The organizers might think they were just flying over some sweet young country boy as an exotic addition to panels but it’s been a defining moment in my career and I can only thank the organizers for choosing me. A postumous hug for David.

Next stop, Graceland.

Yelling at people in a bar all night naturally leads to . . .

CGM Editorial note: at this point the transmission with Cotterill’s space capsule was terminated. We are looking into the wiring. But that may be a clossal waste of time as he likely passed out after finishing off the last of the tiny bottles of whiskey in the hotel room fridge (leaving the bill to be sorted out by the organizer of Bouchercon). His reputation as a deep space traveler is the main reason he was invited as the International Alien of Honour. St. Louis discovered that our Colin specializes in delivering the complete UFO experience. Elvis we pray for you as what is about to descend on Graceland is beyond anything predicted in the Bible.

There was a man called Geoffery Sparks. Although his name was unknown for most of his life, his familar face confused people up and down England for many years. He, it was, who appeared in a suit and tie with the England world cup winning team on the pitch at Wembly Stadium after they’d won the final in 1966. He, it was, shaking hands with the Queen as she congratulated the performers at the Royal Command performance. He, it was in the group of politicians with the chancelor who held up the 1969 budge briefcase. His face was everywhere. Geoffery Sparks was an interloper. An imposter with the balls to look like he belonged in all these places and it was only afterwards that people looked at the photos and asked, ‘Who is that with the Beatles?’ When he was seventy he announced to the world who he was and staged a traveling exhibition of his photographs.

I am foreign guest of honour at the Bouchercon Mystery Writers convention in St. Louis. It is, of course, a great honour. It’s just a step down from being crowned the Great White Overlord of the Universe. I flew into St. Louis on Wednesday and have been drinking ever since. I managed to stay sober long enough to attend the Honoured Guest panel on Thursday. There were three other Great White Overlords: Robert Crais, Val McDermid and Charlaine Harris. It was there that I recalled Geoffery Sparks. I saw people nudge their partners and mouth, ‘Who is that?’ After an hour in that company I was asking the same. Once Val had brought down the house with her penis-choking joke I knew I would be way out of my depth for the next five days.

There was a good turn out for the S.J Rozan Colin Cotterill one-on-one. They let me show photos of jimm Juree’s home town. It distracted people’s attention away from the fact that I have lost the ability to speak in public. After fifty minutes or umming and ahing I found a long line of people wanting me to sign books. That’s when I first learned that some people had traveled across the country JUST to see me. I might travel a couple of hundred miles to meet Lucy Liu or see the Victoria’s Secret Road Show, i doubt very much whether I would drive overnight to see me.

Night in the bar. Drinking to forget…my performance.

A sticky table at the Salsa Cantina but an ideal view of the action on the Strip. I went for a walk today way down Tropicana (it looks nothing like the orange juice) to the Pinball Hall of Fame. It was even more of a blast than The Atomic Research Museum – yesterday’s highlight where they let visitors handle objects contaminated in the atomic tests. But not even that shrivelling feeling in the fingers could outdo today’s visit. I love pinball. Some of my most romantic college moments happened on or around the pinball table in the bar. It’s where I learned a delicate touch on the flippers and how to curb my my violent streak just short of a ’tilt’.

I had a tear in my eye as I rode the Adams Family Freak Box, won a bonus on the Kiss Guitar Crazy and spent the last of my quarters on the Wild Mr Wolf Pool Table Blast. The bells and buzzers accompanied me back to my jock days.
They’ve been having storms here. This morning the airport was flooded. It’s good weather for walking on empty sidewalks. There is the mirage of distance in the desert of Vegas. Even the cab driver, Abdul mentioned it on the drive in.

Wherever you are the casinos look so close you feel you could toss your wallet and hit a crap table. But you walk and walk and you never get closer. There’s always one more block. Thailand makes Adidas-like shoes which are reknowned for falling apart in the heat. They shed their soles like snakes stepping out of their skins. Three intersections from MGM Grand I was flapping along like Chaplin. I’m in the Salsa because this is where my left sole fell off. I still have two virtual miles (18 actual miles) to go to my hotel so I’ve stopped for stimulation.

The Flamingo is my elderly, 50′s retro, tacky home in this bizarre place. My room is a brisk bicycle ride from the elevator. I have a splendid view of the multi-storey car park which explains why I got such a good deal with Agoda. Everywhere is crowded on the strip like Central Station with slots and beer and two-feet plastic glasses of margarita.

Hello Kitty is out front on the sidewalk making a killing. Whenever a Japanese makes a V sign she wrestles the hand down and reprimands the owner. I like that. I’ve counted six Elvises, two storm troopers, one Jack Sparrow and a Bart Simpson pass in the last hour. I think Sheffield must be lacking something because every second accent I hear is English. They shout at each other because they’re still under the impression the Americans find their accents cute. This was true in the seventies when I hitchhiked across the country but no longer applies. We’re just as annoying as everyone else now.

Hello Kitty appears to be throttling a four-year-old whose mother failed to put a dollar in Kitty’s purse. Two ageing burlesque queens are attempting to pull her off. The panhandlers are colorful but the vast majority of tourists here are white and ordinary. The women look like Jennifer Aniston off her diet and the men are all carrying extra pounds in sympathy. There are sugar daddies, folks who have ‘had work done’, polite African Americans who seem to be overcompensating for the vagaries of the Hood, and old-timers drunk in charge of mechanized wheelchairs and … my word. i don’t know who’s inside that big pussy head and that long lilac gown but he or she sure has an attitude problem. Hello Kitty just kneed some drunk in the groin for squeezing one of her eight nipples. Mothers are covering their childrens’ eyes. Now this is entertainment.

I’m back on-line. I have 476 unread emails from Bouchercon. St Louis next stop.

I’ve got a virus in my boot. So said Mr. Kim the computer guy. It probably dropped down there from my nose. He said it’ll cost me $2,456 to fix it. This is Vegas. I talked him down to eighty rather easily so I get the feeling it didn’t actually cost him anything to repair it. He probaby turned it on and it worked. Sharing my virus with my boot did however clear my sinuses. I am now fit for sin city.

Last night I caught the Blue Men show. Three gentlemen covered head to foot in blue paint. I was left with the impression that audiences in Vegas will watch anything on a stage. I’m sure the elderly ladies in front of me didn’t enjoy the gunk spurting chest wounds, the head thumping drumming, or the audience mocking. But, to a granny, they agreed, “That was some show.” Not one of them prepared to admit the emperor was butt naked.

On my sinful agenda for Vegas was a flirtation with a leggy showgirl. In my mind I would buy her small glasses of ginger ale masquerading as fifty-buck cocktails, get mugged walking her to her Chevy and be beaten half to death by her wide-receiver fiance. It’s another one of those life fantasies like rescuing a crippled German shepherd from a burning building but not surviving yourself. But showgirls are all in shows and the Burlesques don’t start til ten. My bedtime. So last night I watched Friends and went to sleep.

In the daytime all the showgirls are asleep. I walk around the casinos and watch the daylight beer drinkers pump twenty-dollar bills into the slot machines, waiting for excitement to drop like quarters into a metal tray. Those were the days. I discovered, as I blew $2 of my own in under a minute, that there is nothing inately stimulating in throwing money away. I later had a similar lack of feeling as i dropped my left over yen into the toilet. Tomorrow I shall stand at the poker and roulette tables and study the faces of the losers there.

So it is my second evening in Vegas. I am booked to watch Cirque du Soleil – Love. Have you noticed how prices go up the more French words are used? As soon as a hotel has a concierge you know the bill going to hit le roof. There are currently four unique Cirque de Soleil shows around town, each more Frenchly daring than the last. I am well enough now to drink again.  I am in a genuine Italian out (in) door restaurant, pre-show, in the evening shadow of  a huge Italian fountain beneath a huge fake unmoving cloud-filled sky. I’m on my third Samuel Adams Octoberfest and feeling frisky. The table in front of me just filled up with three absolute babe Muslim girls with nothing showing but heavily made-up faces through which to squeeze all their sexuality. What are they doing here? Since when did Vegas become the next stop after Mecca? Isn’t makeup decadent? Aren’t there rules? They’re with their mother. They aren’t showgirls but I can’t resist the temptation to brazenly flirt …with the mother.

The Moore bloke said I have to include some tenuous book-related content in these blobs so here it is. I went to Barnes and Noble at Mission Center to sign my books today. They didn’t have any. A whole shelf of Alexander bloody McCall Smith but not one CC in the place.

Wait. Did the mother just smile back?

The 12:30 train to Bellingham up on the Canadian border was a bus. Confusing, considering I’d booked it through AMTRAK (as opposed to AMROAD) and the word ‘bus’ didn’t appear on the on-line ticket. But the bus was waiting there on time beside track 2 of the Seattle train station. It was a painless two-hour journey, mainly because the A/C was on ‘arctic’ so I couldn’t feel anything. At Bellingham train station there were no taxis so I wheelied my wheelie bag down to the old town and into the Village bookshop. It was one of the nicest bookshops I’ve been to. Great cafe on the top floor. Despite being in the boundocks they had my books on sale so I signed them and had a chat with Claire the bookseller. She explained that taxis only came out in public if you phoned for them, which she did. An hour later a dazzling yellow cab pulled up with a huge driver.
After a nostalgic canine night with the dog in the next room pining for its kennel (Pets Welcome at Rodeway Inn – I wish I’d brought the gorilla) it finally barked with joy when its owner led it out to the SUV at six. I daren’t email my pack there are hotels that allow dogs. What chaos that would be. But all this pettery meant that I was on time for my flight south. My mum was concerned that I should be flying on September 11th but I assured her there would be no safer date. Everything with a uniform was at the airport; postal workers, bank security guards, girl guides. They were all out. My passport was checked three times. My wheelie bag was ravaged and dismantled. My Calvin Klein hairspray was confiscated and detonated a safe distance from the runway. And my shoes were completely disinfected – not because they were dangerous but because they smelt bad.

We had a lively crowd on board because we were headed for LAS VEGAS (which everyone over here seems to call LOS VEGAS). I was splat in the middle of a row of MI(N)LF housewives most of whom had escaped from Canada without their husbands. They were hitting the pay-for beer in-flight and being naughty. It was like a whole aeroplane full of Thelmas and Louises. They all cheered when we took off. Cheered every time the pilot and stewardess mentioned LOS VEGAS on the intercom. And they brought the fuselage down when we landed…after four bounces…in LOS VEGAS.

Yes folks. I’m in LOS VEGAS. My laptop is at the Korean Take-away and Computer store down on Flamingo East. The prognosis isn’t promising. I’ve already blown two-dollars fifty on the pokies. There are leggy showgirls all around. So stand by for the next episode of Colin’s Awesome Vacation.

I woke up this morning and it felt like the bed was tossing and turning beneath me. But that was because the bed was tossing and turning beneath me. A barge built like James Gandolfino had just passed by and left my bedroom in its wake. I’m on a houseboat on Portage Bay, Seattle overlooking the University of Washington. Even at sunrise the boat crews were paddling by looking hopefully at their cox. (Lucky this isn’t a radio broadcast). As the sun rose, young temptresses in various states of undress punted past my window on paddle boards. Day trippers stopped and took photos of me probably not to realize I was THE Colin Cotterill until later when they got home.  A little earlier, Lizzie my web mistress jumped off the roof. Luckily she landed in the water. She assured me it was clean enough to drink but there are a hell of a lot of ducks out there and I don’t see any ducky Porta-loos lined up on the shore.
At last it isn’t the 7th anymore. The 7th was an endless day that started for me at 6am in Tokyo and ended four weeks later here in Washington. I was always one step ahead of the International Date Line. The slight chill I picked up in the sub-zero A/C of Surat airport had become a throaty rasp at my annual medical in Bangkok and an ornamental nose fountain by Tokyo. I picked up some heavy-duty antihistamines in Japan which sucked all the liquid out of my body and left me a crispy flake of ex-Colin on ANA seat 7A. (“Just add water and watch it retain its normal shape.”). An Indian meal and a couple of beers with Lizzie (her dinner, my breakfast) didn’t help. So when I went to bed last night on the endless 7th my condition was critical. The chances of me making it to the 8th were remote. Any women reading this wouldn’t understand just how severely the common cold can ravage a man. It’s different for us.
Bravely I hit the bookshops today, Elliot Bay and Seattle Mystery and mustered the strength to sign my books there. This increased the odds of customers buying them by about two percent. But it did mean the shops wouldn’t be able to return them to the publishers. Let’s all give a cheer to the Indys.
In sympathy, my HP Mini crashed today. It’s 6 months old and this is its second disaster so don’t buy one. It has limited my ability to communicate so don’t be surprised if this is the last installment of Colin’s Awesome Vacation. Of course absence might also be a result of my death. It’s evening now and the cold has a grip on my life. I’m making the most of these last few hours by raising a glass of red (fruit, so technically medicine) to the passing pleasure boats and the glorious night lights that decorate my bay. They aren’t as soothing as my Pak Nam squid boats but they’ll do. There are supersized ducks at my feet waiting for that moment when I keel over and drop my crisps (potatoes, so technically herbs). Farewell world. May the blobosphere be with you.