My thesis is starting to coagulate, slowly, at the back of my mind. I catch frequent glimpses of the edge of it emerging and feel it lying there at the very limits of the known world like Australia on an old map, amorphous and incomplete, a temptation and a terror. (Terror Australis) It is guarded by sea monsters that rear their unrealistically long necks and bare their nightmare teeth when I turn towards land, hissing at me as I make for the shore.

But I am entering the territory of total panic where doubt is not an option, the zone of compulsion where there is no choice but to proceed, sea monsters in hot pursuit and an unmapped coastline veiling its face behind the white spume of the shorebreak ahead. Arriba!