The Trip, final part! On neuroscience and just not knowing.

By now I have covered most of the gist of the meeting. I have left out the emotional back stories (they are for their owners to tell and honestly a lot of them are much more full on than mine!) and I haven't covered the more remote aspects, the 'what-ifs', such as the need for more counseling available to mothers with young children diagnosed, or what we would actually want to have available in the way of drugs, if the possibility arose. The interesting thing was that none of us would have it taken away. Cured. Rid of. We were all interested in symptom alleviation, of course, even when we stick religiously to our diets symptoms still creep in. I, however, was not the only one to say that if I didn't have this lurking in my system I would be the size of a house. I am grateful to my LPLD. Stockholm syndrome? Maybe, but there are worse ways with dealing with a lifelong dietary prison guard. I was asked by the company hosting the meeting to write a letter to my LPLD and I couldn't do it. I have never given it enough fuel to become a character in my life. It is part of me, like my uneven front tooth or my fat knees. I can't write to my knees. I have been asked again to write this letter, though, and I think I have found a way round it.

I would like you all to meet Eddie and Freddie. They're shy, so they have asked for no pictures, but I will talk them round. Eddie is one of my favourite people. He is a fat molecule. He loves me. He calls to me across rooms and from supermarket shelves, from under hot lamps in cafe counters and from restaurant menus. He doesn't mind rejection, he's like a dog. He keeps coming back. And he's a friendly little thing; you will find him in all sorts of guises in the vast majority of food. Sometimes he's roughing it in his leather jacket in a hamburger, sometimes he has his best suit on and is using his pseudonyms, Omega 3, Essential Fatty Acid, or just simply Good Fat, sipping champagne and looking like someone Daddy would approve of in a mackerel or a bottle of Extra Virgin olive oil.

And, boy, do I love Eddie. I love Eddie in ice cream, smooth and suave. I love Eddie in garlic butter, spicy and strong, ruining me for other people until I can clean my teeth. The problem, however, that I have with Eddie, is Freddie.

Freddie is a poor old thing. He is not quite right. He is an enzyme. It's not his fault, poor guy, it's Gene's. Gene is the one with the instructions on how to make a Freddie and they are, hoo boy, wrong. Wrong. Freddie's job is to convert Eddie into little mini Eddies that can travel around my body and do all the marvelous things that Eddie can do. Freddie is just so bad at his job that Eddie rarely, if ever, gets what he needs. So he rides around in my blood, turning it thick and goopy, settling around my organs and lining them like the cars of caring parents lining the school at 3.30pm on a rainy day. Nothing can get in or out and if something does it is likely to get run over by a passing red blood cell grimly squeezing through blind in its attempt to deliver oxygen to starving cells. He overloads my pancreas, causing it unknown stress that will probably lead to a breakdown in not too many years. He can even squeeze himself up to my skin and sit in little blisters of fat, sunbathing whilst he waits for a let up in the traffic that means he can get out, out, out. An evacuation bus will eventually come and on he will pile, Eddie after Eddie, ready for exit. He doesn't like the ride, and when he finally escapes he is noisesome and smelly and in need of a bath. Freddie is eternally apologetic for all of this and tries his best, the love, he just is not up to the task.

Freddie and Eddie get revenge on Gene! (Sorry, I just could not resist.)

So it is Freddie, in his distress, and Eddie in his exuberant rollercoaster ride through his life and mine, that I would be writing to. And I feel sorry for Fred. If he worked as he should, then sure, I would have a less destructive relationship with Eddie, but really, Eddie is not the sort of chap one invites to one's cousin's christening. Fred is doing me a favour. Of course there are complications, the tiredness, the brain fog, the skin problems, and the deficiency in fat soluble vitamins. The social issues. But I have all my limbs and all my friends and what do I have to complain about?

Since I have been on this diet proper I have learned about cells. Brain cells (grey matter) are largely composed of fat. The synapses that transmit the chemical impulses that power our thoughts and emotions are sheathed in fatty acids. A low fat diet such as mine impairs brain function. I am intelligent, don't get me wrong, but on a day to day basis I struggle with forgetfulness. I cannot remember stuff. Important stuff as much as simple stuff. I'm sure that I've spoken about this before, but the impact that it has had on my life through the long years is profound. I couldn't remember to take my birth control. I can't remember to make sure the kids have a shower often enough. I can't do prolonged discipline on the kids such as grounding for a week because I will forget they are grounded. If someone calls to ask me to pick them up at a specified time I have to make sure that I don't let them off the phone until I have written it down because by the time we have finished the call I will have forgotten. Thank goodness for this meeting, because all my life I have felt guilty about forgetting the important things. I have felt like a failure. Now I understand why. This doesn't change anything, of course, except the way that I see myself and my attitude towards the problem. Nothing much!

Now I am not a doctor, but as I understand it the very membrane that makes up our cells is largely compiled of fat. (I use the word fat to mean everything under the umbrella, fatty acids, lipids etc). I will be the first to admit that my cells seem fine. I do not appear to be falling apart, and I only mention this in relation to skin cells. Since I have been on this diet (and another quick recap - I have only been seriously on this diet for the first time in years for the last few months) I have noticed a problem with my skin. It was explained to me in terms of the fatty element of the cell membrane maybe giving me problems retaining moisture in my skin. This could be entirely possible, but the newest research seems to point to the fatty elements that make up the outer layer of the skin actually having a 'first responder' role in dealing with infections. They keep those bad germs and pathogens at bay whilst they wait for the white blood cells to arrive. Skin deficient in these epidermal lipids is prone to, in particular, atopic eczema. Which I have had in spades these last few months. I have finally found a cream that claims to replenish the lipid layer. The ingredient it uses is triglycerides. I am of two minds, my whole aim in life is to keep triglycerides down, surely lathering them onto every inch of my body is not going to be helpful in this respect, but since using it, in a matter of days, my redness and itchiness has virtually disappeared. So, I shall just have to keep an eye on the triglyceride count in my blood!

Well, that's that then. I flew home, totally knackered but with a new intent. What Eddie and Freddie need is a marketing campaign. Most of the really horrible symptoms, some of which I have not even mentioned, occur through mismanagement or misdiagnosis. When we go to a doctor, we usually have to explain our problem to them. Hence this blog. We universally agreed that having this disease is 1000% times better than not knowing we have it. Not knowing the symptoms. So share the hell out of this post and all my others. If it finds one person that recognises themselves in my writing or on the LPLD Alliance website, NORD website, RDUK website or the RareConnect forums then it is worth it.

The Trip, part 4 - On expectations versus reality

Hello once more. I don't like feeling rushed about writing and therefore I have not posted recently. If we're going to be honest, I have not done much of anything but rush around in a tizzy not achieving things lately. I can never even get to the computer lately and when I do a thousand things (and I really feel I am not over stating that one) seem to need my attention. I have not even been able to keep my food log going and, well, we won't talk about what kind of meals have been served up these last few weeks!

It has been over a month now since my visit to England to meet my new friends in suffering and it seems like such old news now! I think that I have captured the general feeling of the trip so far in my previous posts, so I shall dive right in. Firstly, you need to know that I can't go into detail (hooray! I hear you say...) as I have to respect the privacy of the amazing people that I met. What I can tell you is that I learned a LOT about my condition and my future. This has had a big impact on how I am living my life now.

It was with some trepidation that I made my way down to the dining room that we had to ourselves. I now had on a beautiful dress borrowed from a friend as I was very unsure as to the poshness level needed here. My favourite high heels and a soft shawl round my shoulders and I reckoned that I looked the part. It was certainly an improvement on what I had arrived in, which was now sulking in a corner of the bathroom where it had been thrown in my hurry to get into clean water. As I stepped into the corridor I could see someone just calling the lift. They spied me and made motions to indicate that they would hold it for me. I scampered down the hall, employing that half run, half tiptoe kind of gait used when one is dressed nicely, in a nice establishment, and is trying to run whilst looking like one is daintily meandering, wafting scent and appreciating art. In short, I looked like a wally. I arrived at the lift, pleasantries were exchanged, and the nice lady said to me: Are you Katie?

How did she know? Was I inadvertently wearing my church warden name badge? 'Yes,' I ventured back, and stabbed in the dark. 'You must be Jill!'

She was, indeed, Jill, who had organised us all together for the trip. This was our first time speaking and apparently I am just like people imagine me when they read my posts. Well, I guess you can just call me Ronseal, because I do exactly what it says on the tin. My favourite part of the whole adventure, I think, was at the end of the meeting, when the executive from the pharmaceutical company hosting the event shook my hand and said 'Thank you so much for coming, Katie, your energy has made this fun!' Which is a great compliment, really, when you consider that a fair amount of the conversation of the day was on the subjects of diarrhoea, vomiting and childbirth, along with not a few tears!

My main aim in coming to this meeting had been to get everyone's tips and cheats for getting enough energy to get through the day. I had expectations of wonder foods that I had missed, or some sort of supplement that would help. I was disappointed. Although everyone presents a little differently, there are a number of symptoms familiar to a lot of us, and tiredness is a biggie. It seems that if we 'cheat' and eat over our fat levels (which are different for different people. Mine is actually one of the highest at 20g per day), if we are able to do so without hospitalisation, although we get enough energy in, as most of it is gained through fat (fat gives 30kJ energy per gram, compared to protein and carbohydrates 17kJ and fibre's paltry 8kJ), we still can't access it. Even if we get enough through the other nutrients, there is such a buildup of fat, like a bottleneck at a busy junction onto the motorway, that our body shuts down extra processes to concentrate on clearing the traffic. Fat molecules need to be broken down into smaller fat molecules to be used by the body, and our bodies don't do this properly. It's a bit like none of the cars on the motorway letting the guys on the slip road in, and everyone just sits there until an opportunity arises. One of the doctors present explained this tiredness to us by saying that it's like the feeling you get after a big Sunday roast, and all you want to do is sit down and sleep it off. Well, that. But ALL the time.

If we are good and keep our levels low, then we simply do not get enough energy in. Protein is usually associated with fat. With the exception of beans and pulses, it is found mostly in animal products. Even low fat animal products are generally higher fat than we can deal with, except white fish. Carbohydrates are found in fruits and veg, although in veg, in quantities too small to be of use. And of course, most of the fruits carbs are sugar. When I first started logging the diet earlier this year, I was having tea with sugar, cereal with sugar, fruit drinks... and keeping the energy to maybe 3/4 recommended daily levels (not including deducting for exercise). At this meeting, I learned that diabetes is a common symptom of LPLD. Diabetes, or rather the methods employed to process sugar are closely related to those for processing fat and cholesterol. The pancreas is the key player. In our case, our pancreas is constantly under stress trying to keep up with the fat processing. This makes it vulnerable to breakdown, resulting in diabetes. In my particular case, it is no small miracle that I haven't already contracted it, as I have lived a sugarful life for over thirty years. Much sobered by the prospect of not being able to eat fat or sugar, when I returned home I had to make the difficult decision to cut out as much sugar as possible in the hope that I can stave off the seemingly inevitable for as long as possible. I am in no way eating as a diabetic yet, but I have adjusted a lot of what I eat to try to achieve more realistic sugar levels. This is a problem as a) I am not good at it. And I live in a country not set up for it. and b) I now only achieve energy levels of maybe 1/2 to 2/3 the RDA.

And all the others are in the same boat, and there's nothing to be done about it. One lady explained it well by telling us that she would happily make up schedules and set tasks for the day or week and then when she woke up that morning, she would just know that it wasn't going to happen. It's not even the will to do it that's missing, you just know that you physically can't. I have days like this when I have to. Sometimes, you just can't say you just can't. This leads to 'brain fog', which I will cover in another post. On the plus side, it's now official. I can stop and sleep when I need to without feeling guilty. I also do stop and sleep, whereas before I would maybe sit down in front of the TV for an hour or so. This, of course, never helped, as I don't need relaxing, chilling, time out, I need sleep. So now I have made the bedroom a pleasant room to spend daytime hours in, not just a place to go at the end of the day. And I go and sleep when I need it.

So, that got all serious pretty quickly. Back to silly walks please. I am off to pay attention to my overflowing inbox and maybe listen to a few more songs. We are planning a wedding blessing (I might have mentioned this ;) ), and we just can't settle on a soundtrack. Next time, cognitive impairment and cod carapaccio. Stay tuned.

The Trip part 3 - On credit cards and chauffeurs.

Hello boys and girls, long time no see. Easter has been upon us and I have been flat out with holidays, visits, Easter services and annual general meeting reports. Plus I actually have to let my son on the computer occasionally, although he has made this easy by adopting a protocol of sleeping all day and computer-ing all night. But at last term time is nearly upon us again, sleeping schedules are being knocked back into shape, homework is being trawled through and most of the reports are done. I can blog again.

I left you all hungry in Amsterdam. Now all is left is to board the last 'plane to Heathrow, which was by far the scariest. I do not like flying much to begin with and this journey didn't help. In the last flight I was in seat 21A, the window seat, right on the wing as I have told you. This time I was in 18A, so boarded with the hope that I would have a clear view. Nope, this 'plane is smaller, so I am right over the wing again and get to sit and watch the landscape swirl by as the 'plane does gentle acrobatics in the air. At one point the land underneath the tip of the wing was flying by backwards as the bit under the window slipped past forwards. We were literally turning on a wingtip and I could have done without it. A slight delay at Heathrow meant that we circled round, to add to my joy. After landing and another marathon journey to a parking slot we were in the building and on UK soil.

My paperwork tells me that I am to be met by a driver. I am to be one of those that have a man waiting for me at the gate with a sign with my name on it. This is a little (read, a lot) out of my usual daily routine and I am feeling quite lightheaded. I scan the crowd as I exit customs and there he is! A very smart gentleman in a suit is stoically holding up the printed word 'BODSWORTH' and I point delightedly at him, grinning. I negotiated my way to the end of the railings, after going straight up to him and realising that something had come between us, and we shook hands. He identified himself as David and asked if I had any baggage. 'No,' I reply, 'Just my rucksack.' The rucksack in question was a giant black Hello Kitty bag with multiple pockets, wheels and an extendable trolley handle, unusable by me as it was designed for a much smaller person. David, the perfect gentleman, took if off me and hoisted it up onto his shoulder. Did I mention the glittery zips? As I scurried behind him through the throng, I couldn't help myself. 'Suits you, sir!' I gleefully shouted over to him. He looked back and winked. And we were friends.

The journey from Heathrow to the St Pancras area took longer than the one from Amsterdam to London. I was the perfect tourist, staring out of the windows with my mouth hanging open. I have been to London plenty of times, although not for a few years now, but compared to my adjusted idea of metropolis (a 20 car traffic queue is something to write to the newspaper about), it is just all so big and busy. I love the life of central London, I love the arquitecture and the opportunity, but oh my word, you can keep the traffic. The car was wonderful, buttons all over the place, which I didn't dare push. Under the seats and the door pockets were all lit with a purple glow and I briefly wondered if this wasn't all an elaborate alien abduction. Upon arrival at the hotel, we were greeted by an Eastern European woman with sunglasses and a black trench coat. A microphone jutted out from underneath her hat. Careful negotiation on David's part eventually got us entrance to the front drive so he could drop me off at the door. 'It's like a Bond movie!', he cheerfully comments as he opens the door for me.

The hotel was beautiful, but I was already feeling a little out of my depth before even entering the front door. I took a deep breath and stepped forward. I reached the reception desk without being asked to leave, which frankly amazed me. Everyone there, and it was a huge lobby, people sitting around and people striding purposefully from one great wooden doorway to another, everyone was immaculate. High heels and grey suits abounded, with one particularly gorgeous bunch all dressed up in tailored coats and coiffeured hair looking like they had just stepped out of the 1940's. I, in contrast, was still wearing the beat up discarded old trainers that I had found under the car seat that morning when forced to walk to the airport. I had brushed my teeth in the airport loos and the most attention my hair had received was a distracted thought on a plane that I hadn't brushed it that day. I had thought back to the toothbrushing, where I must have looked in the mirror, and come to the conclusion that as I hadn't specifically noticed it then, it can't have been that bad. Oh, and don't forget the Hello Kitty bag. I walked up to the reception desk and waved my paperwork at them.

In a cool, professional tone of voice that I found rather hard to hear, the receptionist asked for my credit card to cover 'incidental costs'. I do not have a credit card, I inform her, would a debit card do? The look of shock on her face was priceless. No credit card? I feel a bit smaller. This is helped by the fact that the desk is obviously designed with 6" stillettos in mind and I am on tiptoes to comfortably lean on it. After her hesitation, she confirms that a debit card will be fine. 'As long as you're not going to empty my account!' I jokingly say as I find the card in the debris chocking up my purse.

'Oh no, it's just a token amount we take, madam, £100.'

I stop and look at her. '£100?? Gosh, you'd better take the other card then!' I stammer, giving her the one for the savings account. Off she goes with it. A minute later, she is back. 'I'm afraid that we don't accept Maestro, madam.'

I look at her once more. How can they accept debit cards but not Maestro? 'Well, what can we do then?' I ask her.

For the first time, she looks a bit uncomfortable. She decides to go ask her manager. As she is about to walk off I ask her if she would like me to just give her the cash. She brightens up. Yes, cash is acceptable. I ask where the nearest cash machine is and she directs me to the train station. I have to go out of the back way to the hotel and negotiate two floors of train station before I find a cash exchange desk with an ATM. Wincing, I pull £100 out of my account, knowing that the exchange rate is not going to be favourable and that they slap a charge on top. As I return to the desk clutching a wad of notes that look like they've come straight from the 19th century compared to the monopoly money of the euro I wonder if there's any chance that they will give it back to me in euros when I check out or whether I will have to put it back in my bank account in sterling, paying more fees and charges.

Finally I am checked in, and I head upstairs to my room. It is now 5.30pm and I have been travelling since 6.30am. I have an hour and a half until the welcome dinner, so I run a bath as hot as it will go and sink into it with my book. I am absolutely shattered, but so excited to meet my fellow sufferers. Roll on dinner!

The Trip part 2 - On 'baragens' and baguettes.

Upon arrival at Faro airport I was greeted with a blast of warm air as I went through the doors. I stopped for a second and lifted my head, considering just stopping there for the hour or so that I had until boarding. I was far from cold after the walk to the terminal, but there was something just comforting about heating and I had had a reasonably stressful morning so far. With two flights and a trip across London still to go that day, a bit of time soaking up the heat seemed fair...

Straight in front of me was a queue. This was difficult to miss as the construction work appeared to have turned the terminal into a giant cardboard box park. Every pillar was surrounded by a (probably plasterboard) box and more 'boxes' nestled against the edges and corners everywhere. Last time I had been in the airport, the departures area (Faro is not big enough to boast such a thing as multiple terminals) was a large hall in the form of an 'L'. This time an odd sort of claustrophobic bigness pervades the area as you can't see two feet in front of you, but all those corners and corridors must go somewhere...

Departures was empty apart from this queue, so I got on the end in the assumption that it must be for my flight. I have not flown by anyone but EasyJet for some time and was not at all sure what the procedure was for posh non-economy flights. I spent some time debating whether to put my Hello Kitty backpack in the hold or not, but I had a connection to make and no idea how that all works. Based on the fact that I was only staying one night and if they lost the bag, or transferred it to Timbuktu, I would be home again probably before they even found it, I decided to keep hold of it.

Soon I was through to the departure lounge. I had a window seat and was quite excited about being childfree and flying by day. I was on seat 21A and imagine my delight when I finally sat down to discover that I was staring out over the wing. My trip was therefore spent craning forward to see as much as possible in front of the wing, or twisting backward to look out of the window behind me. Another flight might not have been worth the effort but I always find flying over Portugal enthralling. As we left the ground I was struck, as always by the beauty and the character of my adopted homeland.

Faro is the biggest metropolitan area in the Algarve, and the administrational hub. It is the district capital of an area that covers 5000km² with over 450,000 inhabitants and 10 million tourists visiting every year. The population is 47,000, roughly equal to Inverness, Scotland. As I looked down upon it I was fooled for a second by the marina. The marina and the boats are a significant part of the town centre and it looks like it's quite a size before you remember that the boats in it are all fishing boats and dinghys. The marina is accessed by going under the railway line so only the small stuff can get in.

We were quite low as we flew over Olhão, another fair size town by Algarvean standards. The tiny white chips of houses cluster together, looking rather like God dropped the chalk when he was designing the land and it shattered, leaving crumbled debris and a smudge of chalk dust. Further up and further in the ripples start in the landscape. We don't have anything quite as grand as a real, rocky mountain down in the Algarve, the highest point is a mere 900m, just about poking through the southernmost clouds, but the land just kind of crumples up, culminating in a modest ridge across the northern border, separating us from the vast empty flatlands of the Alentejo. The picture that comes to my mind is of a silk scarf, carelessly dropped to the floor and falling in mini peaks and troughs until it flattens out at either end. The hills look smooth enough to stroke from my lofty vantage point.

Now we were high up and moving fast. I spent my time marveling at the 'baragens', the huge (by Portuguese standards, anyway) dams built across the rivers to water a growing population. My eye would follow a snake of blackish blue along until suddenly it got wider, as if a bit had got cut out when turning the page from one map to the next. The smooth ribbon becomes a monster with fingers probing and prodding the hills around it. Squat and wide, long and twisty, they sit over the landscape like a fungus, swallowing up roads and villages and making fan shapes like coral under a blue sea of sky. We finally made it to a snowy topped mountain range which research tells me was probably the French/Spanish border. After that the clouds took over and I saw no more until the Netherlands.

Wow, how different that was to the scruffy Iberian penisula. The land stretched uniformly to the sea with no natural boundaries in sight. Neat, straight roads ran to tidy towns. At the coast the land just ended in sea, making me wonder what makes the sea stop? In all that flatness it is hard to imagine that the river mouths and the ocean itself are more than 3 feet deep. The land looks somewhat like a cake baked in the oven, risen, leaving slight irregularities in height and shape, then carefully sliced just above the top of the tin to create a smooth plane on which to place the icing. I felt untidy just looking at it.

Amsterdam loomed, neatly, on the horizon. My excitement grew as we neared landing. Soon I would be in the Netherlands! I zipped up my bag and expectantly waited for the doors to open. And waited. And waited some more. It had just got to the point where I was wondering if we had actually landed at the wrong airport and were simply driving over to the next one when we finally started slowing down. I disembarked without drama and arrived in the airside lounge at Amsterdam Schipol. I was pretty hungry by now and set out to find a sandwich.

Eventually I gave up. There were a lot of beautiful shops, all neatly named for what they were selling. There was a 'Toys' shop, a 'Souvenirs' shop, an 'Electronics' shop, you get the picture. For this country gal from the very end of the known world, it was a bit of a culture shock. I browsed the toy shop (a lot, no, a LOT, of Miffy in various guises) and the electronics shop, in which there were bargain bins full of carelessly chucked boxes with (I'm sorry, I have to say it) neat signage advertising 'two for €49!'. My idea of a bargain bin is the eight square acres or seemingly so that the local supermarket dedicates to crates stacked in huge islands flagged '1€', 2€', right up to 10€ in the far distance. What I could not find (apart from change from a twenty) was anything useful to eat.

You may remember that I am on a diet. Being that I was on my way to a convention revolving around this diet, I thought I had better make a fair shot at sticking to it whilst away. Unfortunately, apart from a food hall taking up the entire upper floor, there was nothing for me to eat. The 'Food' shop boasted racks of cheeses, shelves of caviar, fridges full of carapaccio cod, smoked eel and deli sausage slices. All looking rather delicious, but the few things that I could actually eat without regretting it were out of my price range. I had two extra rolls stashed in my case that I had bought at Faro and I had been hoping to find something to stick in them, but the best compromise that I could find between expense and fat content was beef jerky. I would have been quite pleased about this, only the packet appeared to have five potato chip sized slices in. For +3€. I almost made it to the till with it, when I decided that I could just get a sandwich upstairs. 

This is not the easy job you would think, as I need something with a low fat filling such as ham. No sausage, egg or cheese. No tuna, chicken or seafood as it will inevitably come swimming in mayonnaise. No butter. No wholemeal bread. As it happened, I didn't get as far as looking too hard, as the signs above the baguettes wanted +6€ for one and the meals at Burger King were all at least 8€. I can get dinner out for that at home. In the end, I was so fed up with it all that I decided I wasn't that hungry anyway and I would go do the crossword puzzle. An hour remained until I could board the next 'plane.

The Trip, part 1 - On sandbars and sunrises.

Well, hello again from the Other Side.

He he, how dramatic am I? Actually not as much as it sounds. I have had an extremely full weekend, parts of which have exhausted me, made me feel very uncomfortable, relaxed me in ways I didn't know I needed and made me think about my whole life and realise that I have to face some choices in my immediate future.

For those who didn't know, I have been to the UK this weekend. I have attended a Patient Expert Advisory Meeting, so there. There is material for multiple entries flying about in my head, so I will start with the Travelling.

My weekend started on Friday afternoon, with me stuffing my daughter's Hello Kitty bag and a sleeping bag into the back of my Corsa at 4.40pm, only ten minutes after the scheduled time. I had let my son in the house upon his return from school and he was happily surfing the net, which would be where he would still be when my husband got home an hour or so later, in spite of me telling him in no uncertain terms that he was to load the dishwasher before then. My daughter would be walking home from school at 5.50pm for only the second time. A note had been written to my husband apologising for not managing to cook the dinner and pointing him at the correct recipe for the ingredients I had at least managed to buy for it.

I was off to Faro, around an hour away by car if you didn't use the motorway. My friend was in hospital there and I thought it would be very convenient if I went to visit her that evening and then kipped in the car. My flight was at 9.20am, which meant that I should be at the airport by 7.30am, which would have meant leaving the house at 6.30am. Inspired by my husband's boys night out the week before, where he had slept it off in the back of his great big 4x4 wagon before driving home the next day, it all seemed like a bit of an adventure, really. So that is what I did. My friend was pleased to see me and the fags that I brought with me, and after the hospital finally kicked me out, I went over to the shopping mall for some food and a wander round. Armed an hour later with some ham, rolls, Coca-Cola, gummy sweets and a bottle of water, I returned to the car.

Faro sits on the very bottom of Portugal, on a delta of the Rio Formoso. The airport is built rather optimistically at the edge of the river itself, where it starts its uneasy transformation into sea proper. The only thing past it is nature reserve consisting of a marshlandic fight between land and water and at the very edge, a sandbar stretching out along the outer edge of the coastline. This sandbar is accessed via a straight, flat, road lifted a foot or so out of the grassy war land culminating in a straight, flat, bridge over the last stretch of undeniable waterway before the beach itself. The sandbar is almost surreal in its holiday feel. It is basically a strip of sand with a narrower strip of concrete stretching along its centre. The concrete has a road cutting it in two lengthways and houses, bars and apartments crouching along the boundaries either side, half on the beach itself. The third class of man that Jesus apparently forgot to mention in his housebuilding lecture was the greedy man, a group comprised of the real estate agent and the tourist, so desperate for that proximity to paradise and the resulting riches that it seems a good idea to build half on rock, half on sand, out on the 400m wide first barrier between the Atlantic ocean in all it's glory and the flat marshy mainland.

I was headed for the car park, right as you come off the bridge. It is frequented by the Algarve's favourite tourist, the campervanner, and surrounded by restaurants and cafés. I parked under a streetlamp, ate my ham rolls and hopped over the seat to ensconce myself in the four season professional sleeping bag that we had bought some years back whilst living in a tent for a while. I set the alarm on my phone for 6.45am, just to be on the safe side, and snuggled down.

The next morning I awakened at 6.30am. I had forgotten that it's hard to sleep past a sunrise when in a car. I quickly donned a top and reluctantly undid the sleeping bag to let my legging clad legs out into the morning air. It was a little on the nippy side, I may be in Portugal, but it is only March and I'm on the coast. I reach over to grab the keys, and in one fluid motion, exit the bag, step over into the front and slide down the driver's seat whilst putting the key in the ignition and turning it. Nothing happened. Perplexed, I turned the key again before my eye fell on the lightswitch. I had left the headlights on last night and now the battery was as dead as the proverbial dodo. 'O bother,' I thought. 'That's inconvenient.' I looked around at the closed campervans and the deserted cafés. 6.30am on a Saturday out of season is not a good time for muscle-clad Mediterranean men bearing jump leads. My phone had run out of battery in the night for some inexplicable reason and who was I going to be calling anyway? I still had to be at the airport in less than an hour and no-one that I knew was going to be getting to me before that. I stepped out of the car and regarded the mainland. I could just about make out the air control tower and I knew that it was walkable. I just didn't know how long it would take. I went round to the other side of the car and pulled the bag out. As it came I noticed a pair of old trainers under the seat. The sole had worn through and they had been replaced but, I thought, they were still an improvement on the high heels I was currently sporting. I changed into them and hefted the bag onto my back. At least I was only away for one night and had packed accordingly.

Before I left, I stood on the beach, staring out across the sea to the south. The sun had just risen and the sky was pink. The sea was the colour of white under a UV lamp in a nightclub and, still as glass with just the occasional swish of a wave hitting the beach, it shone brighter than the sky. For that second, I felt connected to the earth through the sand that I could feel in too much detail through the thin soles of my red shoes. I turned, and after a last check that all the doors were locked on my unfortunate little car, I started out for the mainland. As I walked along the road, across the bridge and towards the odd coastal forests that abound in that part of the world, with sandy floors and trees with ball-like leaf formations on the branches, the rising sun was in front of me and to the right. Its reflection shone up from the water and the island beach seemed to float on the pale surface. There were no sounds, no traffic, no people, and slightly unnervingly, no 'planes. For a moment I was looking in the face of God and He was looking back, gifting me this time of communion with Him and with the the world that He gave us. This was the calm before the storm and I held on to the feeling a few times in the next couple of days.

It took me about 35 minutes to walk back up the road to the airport. The road is, as said before, straight, with only a few gentle curves to accommodate the end of the runway. After I reached the land proper, I could make out a trail along the edge of the tarmac and I knew that this was a well travelled route by foot and that I would be fine. I eventually came up to the roundabout that marks the entry road to the terminal. I dashed across the main road, ignoring the cyclists' bridge with it's eight shallow ramps leading up and down either side, which I'm fairly certain would have doubled my journey, and trudged across the car parks before finally finding the entrance amongst the fencing and boarded off areas of the reconstruction that has been going on for years. I was ready to fly.