Can we make a dinner from items pocketed and preserved from the breakfast buffet?  Or could three of us share a single “eat-as-much-as–you-like”  buffet.  This place is Swiss and excellently clean and ordered, but the prices are a bit too Swiss for our budget.  Suggestions from readers welcome – (and preferably from real tried & tested experience) – how could we fund more luxury holidays beyond our budgetary means?

We are in a hotel at the exact spot where Moses baptised Lot on the Dead Sea.  It is extraordinarily posh and refined and beautiful.  Pathways of polished limestone run between the different buildings, fountains sparkle and tinkle and refresh the air, bougainvillea blossom adorns the hedges along the paths and golf buggies whisk the clients silently around the resort.

Outdoor pools and spa treatment centres offer alternatives to the real deal of bobbing in the act5ual Dead Sea.  The large infinity pool gives a view over the Dead Sea and directly to the cliffs of Israel.  Verdant palms are dotted around the poolside with plentiful sun-loungers to enjoy the special UV-free sunlight of this zone.

Around the water, recline the beautiful people, with large blue & pink & orange drinks in tall tulip glasses, talking into mobile phones in matching bright neon colours and toting designer branded bags and watches big enough to sink a battleship and glitzy enough to run a solar generator.   The bling is blinding and they drink and talk and smoke elegantly all round the pool.  There are babies and toddlers and small children and bigger children, but only those over 14 smoke.  There are mums & daughters in one-piece neoprene head-to-toe modesty swim suits with green go-faster stripes and nose-clips and gigantic dark glasses; they look like extra-terrestrial zombie frogs.

I am sorry to avow that Christiane & Rose have been fighting again.  They were politely queuing at the spa treatment centre to book themselves a massage and manicures when two big fat blondes from a Moscow gang jumped in front of them to try and get shiatsu treatments.  Christiane & Rose wrestled them directly down to the marble floor to demand respect for Peckham, but the older Russian pulled out and handgun and my girls just had to back off.  And then, would you believe it, the same problem arose poolside.  We had peacefully taken sun-loungers near the pool-entry first-aid point when a small Byelorussian crime family just nabbed all the sun loungers directly in front of us, and blocked the view.  Chris took them on: there was kicking and punching and scratching and hair pulling but in the end I had to declare them the winners.  Some young guns in dark glasses from Kuwait, with unbuttoned T-shirts tried to help us, but it was “smoke in the eyes” all over again.

Any heroes of the Libyan revolution with injuries or medical needs can get unlimited treatment and care and recuperation & convalescence in Jordan, paid by the Libyan government afterwards.  There are 48000 heroes of the revolution here, many of them on convalescence with their families.  I was thinking this represents several regiments of heroes all away from their mother country.  It may make it easier for them to bear the homesickness.

Tomorrow Chris & Mark & Rose go Egypt!  I really must apologise for the mistaken, misleading and downright wrong information conveyed in parts of this journal, as well as for the confusion and lack of clarity & purposeful narrative in the blog from this country.  We are going to make a big effort to focus and prioritise in the next country and to write prose with purpose and meaning, so I earnestly hope you will see some improvements soon.  Many thanks to the people who have commented, corrected and offered suggestions to raise the lamentable standard here.