Tallinn; Thursday August 28th

Erg. We wake after about 6 hours sleep, both with head aching, bleary baggy eyes, and a firm desire to get back to sleep asap. We’re going to totter off to brekkie, have an actual meal, and then resume slumbers.

In a tiny, tiny concession towards the possibility of maybe an inkle of a zephyr of birthday-ish nuance, I am wearing my red cat socks today. Thanks sis! They’ll get a serial outing - a starring role at breakfast, then a stagger up to the Old City later on when we attempt consciousness again.

Today not really brought to you at all, yet. But M has just returned from a wee forage amongst the natives, and given me a cable to connect to the free interwebs in our room. I’m not putting an exclamation mark in, I don’t have the energy for raised eyebrow/pleased smile/cor lummy yet...

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Breakfast - back to the land of the buffet breakfast - muesli, fruit, juice... toast! Fibre!!! BACON!!!

M is eating very cautiously, having been told to eat a light, low-fat and low-salt diet for the time being. This is our normal food approach, but when travelling can be very difficult to manage - especially low-salt. We’ll see. He’s been surviving on porridge, soup, black tea water, and the odd bit of white bread, so for him to see such exotica as scrambled egg, tomato, apple juice makes it an exciting brekkie for him, too.

I can’t connect my laptop to the web in the room, cos you need a USB port to plug into this lil Airbook (for the cable), and I posted it back to Australia several countries ago (Bergen I think). M saw someone webbing in the foyer, so maybe there’s WiFi here, or at least a terminal down there we can use. One way or another (someone wrote a song about that in the 80s, I think it was Debbie Harry, the rest of the line is “I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha” and indeed I will, but not the way she meant!)... aha! I’m up to exclamation marks. Better get me some more pillow time before I get carried away and actually wake up...

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Aahhhh... sleep. Good stuff. Right up there with coffee, cats, and purrfume... I feel so much better I decide I should stay in bed and finish my book - and put the heatpad on so I can cook my stiff, sore back. Isn’t it a coincidence that today it’s sore? Surely nothing to do with the change of routine from lots of walking, to sitting in a bus thumping along a Russian road for several hours, not enough knee or shoulder room, and a certain amount of unavoidable suitcase-lifting? Nooooooo....

I’ve got Tom Waites on again, I’ve nicked M’s pillows, and my book is having a happy but plausible ending. Purrfume, a decent dinner and !!!! an opera tomorrow night, are in my near future. Yes, birthday celebration part 1 is under construction - M found info about an opera called ?, written by an Estonian composer who used to be a rock star. How can I possibly resist? [Seeing as Arvo let me down, I’m just doing the next best thing.. and we have Arvo on the dear little iPod, so I’ve had some ‘Fratres’ to wake me up earlier.] I had a bit of trouble getting brekkie, cos the buffet was in a darkish corner of the breakfast room, and I was NOT taking off my sunnies for anyone. A shaft of sunlight on the luggage room under my eyes might have frightened the natives. It’s a mercy thing..