Time waits for Norman and I am not he ...

"Time time time, see what's become of me ..." A wibbling, dribbling wreck cast upon the still ticking ruins of an horological blow-out.

Yes, it didn't wait and I am here once more with the cranial excretions of my fast decomposing mind.

Cameroon creeps ever closer and in 24 hours will be approximately 7 weeks away ... that's to say 49 days ... *gulp* to coin a phrase.

How do I feel. Remarkably composed at times; intensely excited at others. Trepidation, anticipation, anxiety, and a peculiar desire to run around screaming, allied with an understandable wish to stop time ... 'tis a queer frame of mind but I guess it's only natural.

Back in July, as I pressed the innocuously labelled "submit" button on the VSO webpage, how was I to know that in less than 6 months I would be here, and I don't mean Birmingham. The 'here' of now is as diverse as my diet in two months won't be. Not that I can really grumble as this is something I've always dreamt of doing and feel so incredibly priviledged and honoured to have been accepted to do that it still seems a little unreal.

Yes, it's self-inflicted as is the impending separation from everything and everyone that means anything to me ... it's going to hurt in all those parts you don't want to hurt. Yes I could avoid the hurt but that wouldn't be me.

The unpredictable looms, and it is wrapped in its multifarious, malformed and malcoordinated limbs that I am casting myself. Unpredictability is at the heart of what makes me tick and if two years enveloped in it's uncomfortably clammy grasp doesn't keep me going then ...

2 years isn't so long in many ways but it is an awfully long time in others ...