Write off
JAMIE: ....and I was right, something was very profoundly wrong. If any of you have had acute food poisoning then you are more than uncomfortably aware of the shot in the stomach sensation you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy. A best friend though? Perhaps. And so it was with nervous anticipation that I ceremoniously handed the feather and quill over to Nicholas Chapman, now a year older. Will I regret such a leap of faith?
NICK: Awaking on day three of any four day holiday with James J McDonald to find him ill from food poisoning should be considered a most singular event, a rare break in his own irrepressible matrix. In the best of people (and we are) it evokes a mix of fraternal sympathy and inexplicable, exhilarating relief if, like every single other person in the world, you find his Duracell-powered lifestyle - whilst 'inspirational' (cf. day 6) - mainly exhausting (cf. every other entry).
However, such affliction also brings risk.
Risk that he will not pull through, you ask, head sympathetically inclined? Sure, but small enough - on most occasions - to be discounted.
Risk that he will become a needy little wimp crying for his mummy, you enquire, flashing an unusually cold smile? As above, loyal reader.
Or risk that he will over compensate for his illness by pleading that you take him cliff jumping with all the excitement of a redsetter before a walk?
You got it.
So, Will and I - practised in the art of portraying stillness in movement; total monotony in an excess of activity - did what you should all do in this situation: we looked right in the eye of his Monty Python Black Knight within, and we went back and we finished him off. How? Well it goes a little something like this:
Powerless, helpless, furious.
The early and probably most effective blow to any hope that he could keep up was when he saw us performing a pretty vigorous work-out on the terrace to the mellifluous tones of Snoop Dogg and his own particular brand of materialistic hip hop. Slaked in sweat, we invited him to join. Of course we did. An involuntary decline.
Strike one.
We then proceeded to knock up a 6 egg omelette stuffed large with high powered cheese and oily tinned tuna. We offered him a wafer thin slice. Of course we did. An unwilling, tight-lipped, slow shake of the head. Were those beads of sweat gathering on his top lip?
Strike two.
We finally invited him to join us as we hired some jet skis to speed across a pretty rough sea at some 70 kmh to a highly recommended restaurant famous for its seafood risotto, the exact same meal held responsible for his food poisoning from the evening before. This time we had to post the invitation under the door of his bathroom where his majesty - enthroned - had taken up his sceptred residence. We interpreted the sound that greeted us as an emphatic victory.
Strike three. He was out, but of course so were we, utterly exhausted by trying to outmaneuver a self-proclaimed bed-ridden "40% McDonald".
In turn, Jamie was quietly confronting the full spectrum of his own responses to this illness. These ranged from the frustration of a committed diarist when denied the opportunity to update his loyal readership, to the unspoken but barely concealed excitement at the prospect of a zero calorie 24 hours which his time in New York has taught him to cherish.
From a gut busting de Vito to raging bull de Niro in just one day?
Surely de rigeur for our Da Gama of the internet age?
Find out tomorrow, dear readers
De rien.
Nick de plume.
JAMIE: God, I regret that. A de-main.
A palpable sense of relief as Chapman and Gresford celebrate having no itinerary. One would almost think they poisoned me, Mr Poirot?