Hmm, yeah apple def. my favourite and what I would always ask for. I brought one back with me from Egypt in 98, but it's long gone now! There are a couple of places in Ed. that serve shisha - nice and chilled :)

faffing about with visas and uncertainty.

I hadn't been able to obain a Syrian visa in Cairo, so it was always going to be that way. I kinda liked it though, the uncertainty and unknown was also accompanied by a lot of spontaneity, and although I didn't fully realise it at the time, this made for a lot of interesting experiences.

Thanks Anj 😳 - I guess, starting from:

sadness and pain are the only real things that endure. The 'happy' ending is just an illusion, behind it the all-powerful Dark Meaninglessness.

...well, for md@barge, sadness and pain seem to endure only because they remain unacknowledged (and unprocessed)...bargetheyounger hasn't looked inside - look at how he writes, there's very little emotion to be seen....the poor guy's got it all bottled up inside, so he sees it as enduring :). For MDB, happiness in a certain sense may still be an illusion 😌, however, behind it all is the spectrum opposite of Dark Meaninglessness. The experience of this Bright Significance (!?) today is at least as intense as was the experience of its opposite in the past! 🕉