When we return to the Karawari Lodge we find a familiar person at the bar

Jennifer is doing what she does so well, ordering a beer. And sitting out on the balcony are Edward and Diana. We are delighted to see them and it seems the feeling is mutual. It feels as if we have been friends for years

They tell us that they are joining us on the Sepik River, but they also warn us of another couple who have been with them on part of their tour and they will also be joining us. Richard and Lois are a rather loud pair of Americans, and the abbreviated name for Richard describes him perfectly.

But the good news is that there will only be ten of us on the ship, which is designed to take eighteen.

Meanwhile we enjoy cocktails on the balcony of the hotel.

Jennifer, Edward and Diana have been there for a couple of nights already and are telling chilling stories of the huge bugs that are everywhere. The electricity is turned off at 10 o’clock sharp. Jennifer had a sleepless night the previous night. She had been woken in the middle of the night by a hissing sound. The room was pitch black. She could see nothing, but the hissing was very close. There was of course no light to be turned on, and the only way out of bed was to open the mosquito net, but that was the only protection she had. She lay awake all night, not daring to move, listening to the hissing, wondering if her last moment had come.

At six o’clock in the morning the power came back on. The light caste a huge shadow on the mosquito net. She fled her room screaming. Help was summoned, and the shape was revealed to be a enormous hissing cockroach. It’s legs had become stuck in the mosquito net, which probably explained why it had been doing a lot of hissing. It took two men to prize it off the netting, and another two men to prize Jennifer off the wall.

As Jennifer is telling this story a large bug drops from the straw roof directly onto Gordon’s arm. Gordon doesn’t like bugs at the best of times, and this isn’t the best of times. It is large, ugly and unrecognisable (the bug, not Gordon). The obvious response is to scream, but Gordon doesn’t want to be the stereotypical gay man. So he screams but in a very low register. It fools no one. He also leaps to his feet and throws his entire drink over Roger. That’s sooo gay. But fortunately it is beer so Jennifer is quite willing to wring out Roger’s clothes and drink the result.

Meanwhile, the staff set another beautiful table for dinner.and the eight of us spend a pleasant evening drinking, eating and laughing a lot. It is a great crowd.

Diana in particular makes for a fascinating dinner companion. She is beautifully dressed and turned out as usual. She sits upright, never letting her back touch the back of the chair. She has great poise. She reminds me of Nina of Nina and Frederick. Now that dates me! She is also double jointed.

But when you talk to her she has a mouth like a sailor (which of course she is,) and swears like a trooper. She is trying to work her way through all the armed forces. But what really endears her to me is her filthy sense of humour. And it all comes out of a completely unexpected package. Meanwhile Edward looks on with an affectionate smile on his face but joins in little.

As the evening wears on and the bottles of wine are replaced by more bottles, Diana reveals a fascinating history that explains a lot.

She was born in Scotland, but growing up a pretty girl, she knew her chance in life lay in London. As soon as her parents weren’t looking she got herself down to the big bad city and became a Bunny Girl. Hugh Heffner must have thought there was a bright future for a double jointed Bunny Girl

But Diana realised that there might be more to life if she could travel the world. So she became a trolley dolly, flying the friendly skies. And I suspect she found them very friendly

She found a yuppy husband to match her ambitions but although he was very successful, he turned out to be abusive. So she dumped him

Then she met Edward. The story at this point gets very vague. Edward is extremely handsome, charming and interesting company. But he reveals very little of himself. We do find that he is 67 and that he retired when he was forty. An achievement that I always find particularly annoying when it happens to other people. If it had happened to me, I would have loved it. He is vague about what he did, but mentions that he still looks for small IT start up companies to invest in. He gave up his American Citizenship to become British because the British tax system is so much kinder to him. Now Gordon and I have dual citizenship and we find the British tax system to be far more onerous than the American. But Edward clearly knows his way around the world of taxes, or rather the world of not paying taxes, better than we do.

We are just innocents in the face of what I am beginning to suspect might not be the most straightforward man I have ever met. As if to emphasize this, Diana tells us that they met when Edward’s Swiss banker introduced them. This raises several interesting points, not least of which is just how important a client must Edward have been for the Swiss Banker to offer his services as a dating agency. I am sure that is not normally part of a banker’s job description. Then of course there is the question of how the Swiss Banker knew Diana and how he knew she was willing to be introduced to a wealthy man with a secret if not shady past.

And the intrigue increases when an involvement in porno movies is very obtusely hinted at by Edward during a conversation with Roger. Of course hints that subtle could easily be a figment of Roger’s imagination. But when I put those facts and hints together with the knowledge that Edward and Diana spend at least nine months of the year totally alone, in the middle of an ocean, miles away from land, on a yacht with no crew, then I start to wonder what their reasons for that lifestyle might be. Well I don’t know about you, but my salacious gossipy juices are in full flow. If it weren’t for the libel laws this blog would be humming right now

The hour of ten o’clock is fast approaching when all the electricity gets turned off. So we return to our rooms and retire to bed. Most dream of being attacked by giant bugs, but I dream of the secret world of Edward and Diana. It’s the most entertaining night I have had since I “met” Laurence Olivier. But that’s an entirely different story