Saturday 23rd Jan

In the morning when I went to check up on Ben and Rahul they were still not too well. The fever had gone, but neither of them could keep any solids or liquids down so we left them in bed.

From 9am to 2pm I didn’t get a minute’s break. Such was the popularity of our stand that we were surrounded by hundreds of visitors the whole time, all shouting questions one above the other! Midway through any explanation more people invariably turned up and demanded that you begin all over again. I tried to call the hotel to see if B and R were feeling any better but there was no answer. Balarko, shaking and dripping with sweat, declared that we were doing absolutely fine without them and we could definitely man the stand all day with just the three of us. The experience really harked back to the year when I worked in Le London Pub, with shifts that were 8 hours on end and no break, a massive crowd clamouring around shouting things, and various customers wanting to take photos of themselves with me.

At 2 I persuaded one of the Techfest staff to watch my demo for me and sneaked off to have a quick sandwich. When I re-emerged ten minutes later, I had never been anywhere near as happy to see Ben and Rahul. Poor boys had stuffed themselves full of immodium and staggered on in to help out, allowing the rest of us to take breaks. I had a nice time chatting to a beardy santa type who’d brought a robo-lobster. As I was leaving, one of the other exhibitors asked my age, which surprised me somewhat.

We had some dinner back at the hotel – Japanese, my gut is now too sensitive to withstand any more Indian food and Ben and Rahul managed some soup.

At about 11.30pm I took a taxi to the airport. It took ten minutes to get there as the Intercontinental is very near, but there was a half hour traffic jam within the airport itself. I learnt about the imminent planned hijack of a plane flying the Mumbai-London route from the chatty taxi driver. He also enquired as to my age.

Inside the terminal building was reasonably chaotic, as people from each queue cut in front of the other queues. It also took ages to get through all the rather heightened security (although I do see the necessity under the circumstances).