As with tradition my final meal last night has given me the ‘shits’. After two nights travelling with little sleep, dehydrated and tired I arrive back at Victoria Coach station ahead of my night bus back to Newcastle. I am feeling unwell, vomiting and getting very hot sweats and shivering. I am just thinking cerebral malaria. I decided to get on the bus but after half an hour the London lights and swerving through the streets make me vomit, shake and sweat uncontrollably. A fever rises from my feet and ends in my head. It lasts about ten minutes. The Chinese tourist next to me is looking very worried. I ask the driver to drop me at the next services which he seems very happy to do. We call an ambulance in advance to meet me there. It is past midnight and a motley bunch of people are in and out of the services. None look as rough or as dodgy as me. The services night manager asks me to sleep on the floor as the CTV cameras will see my feet on the seats and get him into trouble. The emergency services kept ringing me. ‘Is the patient conscious? Yes it is me and I am. This information drops me down the list for sure. The ambulance finally arrived three hours later after a very busy and messy Saturday night. We go back into London somewhere and A+E is quiet so I get seen quickly. I get my blood tested for malaria which was my fear but no sign of that they said. By 7 am I am discharged, find my way to Kings Cross on the tube and begin to feel a lot worse as I have to pay £138 for a single train to Alnmouth. That is more than I have spent on living over the past three weeks. I am back in three and a half hours.

The hospital rings the next day to tell me I have ‘some friends in my stomach’ called Campylobacter that will leave in due course with no special treatment. Not sure if that is a new one to me but doubt it with my history. A week later I get a letter from the Principal Environmental Health Officer in Northumberland saying that he had been informed by Dr Simon Howard, Consultant in Health Protection, Public Health England Centre in the North East that I was suffering from the above said infection of the digestive system. Symptoms include diarrhoea, stomach pain, flu-like feeling, headaches, high fever, nausea and vomiting. Yes that explains the hours after I left Heathrow. It is very contagious and please wash your hands a lot is the advice. People criticise the NHS but my experience apart from the ambulance delay was brilliant. It is great to be back and share my story with Cath, Joe and Leo. Thanks Malawi for a brilliant visit and thanks to all the friends and family who supported me. The Alnwick Lions and Rotary Clubs supported a local man helping people a long way away but it made me feel part of and proud of the Alnwick Community in Northumberland.