In security

Back from Tenerife, I waded through nine hundred whatsapp messages on my work phone, mainly things like in-group-hugging emojis and emails saying "thanks Bev" sent to a hundred-and-twenty people as well as Bev, from people who, decades in, still can't work out the difference between "reply to" and "reply to all"; most of it is drivel, brown-nosing and empty-headedness.

At Bristol airport, the red light goes on as I walk though the body scanner and I am waved away from the queue. For some inexplicable reason, I seize a couple of seconds' inattention from the security guard to take my amphetamine out of my pants and into my hand, despite seeing the man before me being asked to show his hands to the guard.

First I have to lean on a foot-scanning machine one foot at a time; then I am pressed all over -- then asked about my left shoulder. "Turn round," he said. "Look, it's showing something in your left shoulder." I shrugged, and he waved me through. I was quite shaken; fortunately there are bars in airports.

We passed a very enjoyable week dancing and drinking at a hotel takeover where a couple of DJs I know were playing. We were in the Lads On Tour end of Tenerife: couples had late night domestics in the street, and the expats (or "immigrants" as they don't like to be called) indulge in a drinking culture that makes Glasgow look tame. A beautifully-situated beachfront bar was sullied by a party from Plymouth shouting their heads off, above which one woman, as if to settle the cacophonous argument, shouted "I've got cocaine." They were drunkenly happy and good-natured; just so loud.

Most of the time though, we had nothing to do with the sub-species of blob-like Brits, their ugly shorts, their swearing, and their inauthentic yelling at the giant-screen football, voices fuelled by the tasteless Mozambican Dourado lager which achieves equilibrium between quality and price -- being sold in one place, during the daytime, for a Euro a pint. We instead, were dancing with sociable and friendly folk on the hotel terrace by day, and in the nightclub after sundown, the windows open to the soft African air. We inadvertently caught one of our fellow party-goers, a chatty man from Belfast, in the background of a photograph.

Mel fitted in fine, chatting away, dancing, and making me not worry about her. House music for four days and nights would be a test for some, but we had several escapes, many of which involved patisserie; and on our last day, after the do had ended, we went to Santa Cruz, the capital, and had a look round the surprisingly lifeless old town, with its beautiful, abandoned nineteenth century houses.

And I am still wondering how the reggae bar downstairs, run by an amiable Senegalese fluent in four languages, makes a living from so few customers. One might be tempted to draw a perverse conclusion from the sign in the window saying "no drugs here."