Still, at least it was all worth it when we got to Zanzibar, right? Well it’s certainly a beautiful island, its capital Stone Town a fairy-tale tangle of tiny lanes and sultans’ palaces, its north and east coasts an unspoilt Indian Ocean idyll where (then, at least) there was no electricity and a fisherman would wander up to you while you ate your breakfast mango to ask what you wanted him to catch you for lunch. But – without my glasses now, remember – those delectable beaches were deadly, and I soon waded the wrong way and onto a sea urchin, whose spikes broke off in my foot and forced that rapid abandonment, even five days later, of our ill-fated attempt on Kilimanjaro, back on the Tanzanian mainland.

After that we returned to Nairobi, where those ladies of the night, utterly undeterred by Ellie’s presence, tried to accost me in every bar and club we visited. And then – unrelated, I promise – there was the bit where I attempted to murder my main squeeze.

The anti-malarial drug I was taking, Lariam, was apparently well-known for its psychotropic effects, but who reads all the small print on those folded up bits of paper in the box, right? If I had, I would have known that the pills “may cause paranoia, hallucinations, severe anxiety, yada yada…”). And, sure enough, one night I became convinced Ellie was the embodiment of all evil, some form of walking Satanic avatar in fact, and had to be destroyed.