Nearly a year since I wrote about a trip

It has been nearly a year since I wrote a single word about travelling anywhere. Trip reports, once a labour of love, seem to have become a thing of the past. They were never especially well-read, but I liked being able to record what I had done, where I had been, and ground them out regardless. Then something changed, not sure what. I still have this vague notion that the death of Photoshop on my main PC is to blame. I refuse to enter into a subscription model, there are enough of those in my life, and so I just accepted that that was that and largely stopped editing my trip photos. And so trip reports stopped. I still get around of course, I just don't bother telling anyone about it. Who wants to hear about other peoples' holidays anyway?

Well.

Last night I was plagued by a party and a mosquito. The party, largely outdoor based, was at one of my close neighbours and started around lunchtime. At 2.15am it was still going strong. Mrs L regularly sends me Victor Meldrew memes as I descend into churlishness, a reminder of what I could become, and so I don't suppose I should begrudge anyone a party. I hope they all had a nice time. It sounded like it. The mosquito I have yet to settle the score with, it continues to elude me. All I know is that any appendage that I poked out from under the covers to try and cool down on what was an oppressive night was immediately sucked dry. The bites on my right elbow are particularly impressive, and somewhere in this room a bloated mozzie is struggling to sleep comfortably. I know how it feels. Despite a less than good sleep I found myself awake at 6am. I could have gone birding, but I am still building up to that after a week in Brazil. Nobody should feel sorry for me, but going back to patch birding after spending time in the Tropics is extremely difficult and I'm not ready yet. 

So what to do? Well the last trip I ever wrote about on here was Madrid in August of 2023. I shouldn't even have been in Madrid for any length of time, but in order to ensure that I did not miss a flight to Colombia in the face of a UK air traffic control implosion I made the difficult decision to skip returning to London from Switzerland (where I had been at the time), and instead go straight to Madrid where my flight to Bogota was leaving from. Although this gave me a day in Madrid, it also meant leaving my birding camera behind in London. Ah-hah! No photos to edit! Well, fewer photos to edit - I did have a camera, but it is very small and not conducive to blasting out thousands of images. Maybe this is the ideal place to start? Should I? The post will be read by fewer than 100 people, not a good use of my time - I should go and hunt down that mosquito instead which will be very satifiying although perhaps rather messy...

And so picking up from exactly where I left off....