or at Moussa’s tailoring atelier, where I am trying to finish off the last orders to send off Down Under, which we were not able to finish in Djenne because of incessant power cuts.

The evenings are spent having fun with the Bamako diplomatic crowd in the company of my hostess Anne Maria. Last night we went to a lovely Thai restaurant and I finally met someone from the British Embassy. You might recall that my relationship with the British Embassy has not always been plain sailing, and it has been particularly strained since I attacked the last British Ambassador in a letter for not doing his job properly. He said he was not allowed to come to Djenne for security reasons: the Foreign Office told him he could not travel. I wrote back saying that I thought it was his job to tell the Foreign Office whether people were allowed to travel in Mali and not the other way around.

Anyway, that one is gone now. And the new generation has arrived in the shape of Adrian, a darling thing of not even thirty, fresh faced and fresh out from working at the Ministry of Defense. He is the second in command and Philip, the ambassador is just a little older and very nice too, so everyone tells me. And there was Stephanie, the bubbly and lovely second-in-command at the American Embassy.

So, another fun evening at the end of a gruelling day...