"Bin ere before? We luv it, it's our fiff time", said the guest next in line to register at the hotel we had just arrived at, adding "the staff are luvly, and the beer's real cheap".

I was tempted to see if they knew which country they were actually in, but held back.

Tunisia's like that, operating on two levels, one as a "holiday destination" for the "sun, sand and cheap booze" set, and secondly as a North African country with one foot in the past and enough sights to keep even the antsiest-pantsiest amongst us occupied.

It really all depends on whether you can actually be bothered to move away from the pool.

Anyway, if it's a tan and cheap beer your after, why not see if the British Legion (a services club) can rent you a room to install a sun lamp?

There's no denying that the sun and sand are superb. I've just got back from a week there when Spring temperatures were a gorgeous 25C every day, and the white sandy beach at Port
El-Kantaoui stretched all the way back to Sousse, some five miles away.

However, there's only so much relaxation this lad (and his ladette) can stand, so get your sandwiches and vacuum flask ready; this could be a long one!

TUNISIA WHERE IS IT?

Just before we went, an Australian colleague of my wife's said "Tunisia? I've got NO idea where that is."

So for him and a few others, here's a brief description.

Tunisia is "third country from the left" in North Africa. These three, including Morocco and Algeria too are known as The Maghreb, i.e. the west in Arabic, I believe. Both the city of Tunis and the country itself are called Tunis in Arabic.

It is a smallish country with about the same area as England & Wales, and two coastlines, the north and the east. Its other sides are landlocked with Algeria and Libya. Its northern coastal regions are fertile, looking in Spring at least, much like the South Of France or southern Spain. Two hundred miles south it's a different story. Here we find the third largest salt flat in the world after The Great Salt Lake, Utah, and one near Timbuktu.

An hour's drive further south, and you're in the Sahara itself, and this really is the sand dune variety of desert, not a rock plateau, which would be a real disappointment to a lot of people.

(Pauses for imagery: shades of yearning for a Carlsberg in Alexandria whilst pushing a WW2 army ambulance up a hill, or staggering into the Officer's Mess in Cairo and announcing in your best Peter O'Toole impression "I've TAKEN

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