Communiqué to M’s friends

Dear Friends of M,

Before leaving on this trip, I heard vague rumours of your concern that I would be dragging M from one fleapit hostel to another, spending the occasional night sleeping under a bridge and only eating berries plucked from trees and whatever we could find crawling around under rocks in an endless quest to spend as little money as possible. I would like to assure you that this is not the case. In the last week we have done the following:

A meal and bottle of wine at “Trader Vic’s”, a restaurant in the InterContinental Hotel in Muscat.

A tour of the desert, just for the two of us, in an air-conditioned 4x4

A dolphin watching trip.

2 nights in an apartment hotel in Dubai (this picture features only one of five rooms)

Total cost of above activities: Enough to gain us super-quadruple-platinum membership of Amex

Total cockroaches spotted: Zero.

I’m already starting to think of applying for jobs and preparing myself for the end of the cash reserves although hopefully your fears will have been allayed, at least for now :)