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Thursday 10th January 2013

But I wrapped a towel around my embarrassment and opened the door. It was one of the other guests. She was, I think, German, but was not, alas the "I have a fish" lady (who has been much too quiet for my liking recently and not even wrongly shrieked that she has a fish for days now). She was asking me something about my bathroom and a gecko. I had to double check that my towel hadn't flapped open. Behind her was standing a member of staff wearing something that roughy approximated to a homemade Ghostbusters kit - some kind of tank on his back with a nozzle. I managed to work out that the woman was asking if there was a gecko or small lizard in my bathroom. She was quite urgent about it. I was pretty sure that there wasn't but went to double-check. I wouldn't have minded if there was a gecko in my bathroom. I am on holiday, in a tropical climate and such things are normal and quite charming. I was guessing that this woman was staying in the room next door. Our open roofed bathrooms adjoin. I guessed she had seen a gecko in her bathroom, freaked out, called in this man to dispose of (or murder) it but the gecko had now disappeared and she was guessing that it had absconded into my bathroom. But possibly she was just a passerby who had seen a gecko running around and wanted it destroyed by any means necessary. Or maybe the Cruella of the lizard world, needing tiny lizard pelts for a coat. I could see no gekko, but even if I had I wouldn't have said anything. I am a visitor here. This is the gecko's home. She left disappointed and possibly afraid.

Later on I did see a gecko, which was so tiny that it was ridiculous that it might have caused such a fuss and nearly caused a German woman to see my acorn. It's on the wall outside my shower right now. I am not going to call in the Geckobusters. I am going to let it live. I hope it understands not to try and escape from this sanctuary.

Why are Germans so keen to kill things?

Someone should look into that.

More reading in the sunshine all afternoon, though really quite shocked by how many days have gone by. My brain seems keen to get back into work mode, though I am trying to stop it. Today as I considered the fact that there are apparently 17 billion earth sized planets in the Universe (or maybe it was our galaxy - either way it's quite a lot) and carried on reading about history, it struck me that if there is a central universe wide news service (like the international and national ones we have) that probably nothing that has ever happened on this planet has made it on to the main bulletin. We might think there's been a big news story, but in Universe terms even the most incredible thing that has happened here is like the most boring story on local news. I think that maybe the day that the asteroid hit the earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs there might have been a mention and maybe occasionally we're the funny item at the end of the news "Meanwhile on earth, some talking monkeys invented flight - look aren't they cute, thinking they're clever." But Douglas Adams was right I guess, if we're mentioned in the history books of the Universe at all ti will be an entry of one word, maybe two. We get excited about so much and yet in Universe terms we've done nothing.

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