“Have you heard of Blue Ice?” I asked.

“Yes,” said John. “When waste matter is ejected from an aircraft toilet at extreme altitude it can freeze and fall to Earth, impacting at high velocity and causing property damage or even death.”

“That’s right,” I said. “…And then it defrosts.”

“H’mm?” said John”

“Yes,” I said. “And our campsite appears to be directly under the flightpath, so I hope you’ve brought a shower cap.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course. John doesn’t talk like an encyclopaedia - which is why his actual answer was far more graphic and utterly unsuitable for print. Our location was accurate enough, smack-bang beneath the intersection of some aeronautical highway and cowed by the threat of an ignominious death by poop-popsicle saturation bombing.

Morning came. We were shaken out of our tents by the chainsaw bawl of a major road and screaming jet engines overhead. Then, at 7.00am, the campsite owner kindly fired up his metal fabrication workshop.

“It could be worse,” said John. But considering the wall between the toilet cubicles and the communal food preparation area didn’t reach the ceiling, allowing an unfortunate intermingling of odours from both sides, it seemed it couldn’t. I imagined my return home and my fiancé’s face as she asked me if I’d brought her anything…

“Yes,” I’d answer. “Cholera.”

Y John has rabies.