Status-Q

Looking back through some old photos from a visit to Russia about 11 years ago, I came across one that I took as a guide to the pronunciation of all those unfamiliar characters...

A couple of days ago we fired up our new barbecue for the first time, but, this being England, we had to wipe the raindrops off first. Weren't they pretty, though? My Australian cousins may scoff, but still...

If you click it to download the full-sized version, you may be able to make out a few self-portraits of the photographer.

Sing along!

Raindrops on Webers
and bangers on barbies...

My friend Hap and I drove from Cambridge to Grasmere today -- 280 miles -- using about a pint of petrol. It should have been all-electric, but we got lost trying to find one of the charging points!

You may or may not think that having to visit rather more M6 service stations on the way than one might otherwise do makes such a form of transport worthwhile. But I think you'd agree that paying about £1 each, to cross the whole country to a place where you can do this walk before dinner, is pretty good value:

What I like about this image is that, though it could come from various parts of the world, it very clearly is not in a British suburb.

The bus services that connect the little hill towns around here with the larger settlements on the Amalfi coast are quite remarkable. The bus drivers not only manage to squeeze their special, shortened buses through the sometimes tiny gaps on these small mountain roads with less than an inch separating them from the nearest wing mirror, but also to negotiate the tight hairpin bends without making the passengers feel sick. All the normal jokes about Italian driving don't apply here. I have nothing but admiration for them. The ticket pricing is also pretty good.

But there's a problem.

They're too punctual.

We missed the bus back up the hill from Positano this evening: we arrived about 30 seconds late and so had to wait another hour. But we had also missed the one going down in the morning, when we arrived about two minutes early, to see the bus just departing about two-and-a-half minutes early. We didn't want to wait for the next one, so we walked down by the steps. All 1700 of them.

What I want to know is, why can't they be more like other southern-Europeans and take a more relaxed approach to timing? Me, I blame Mussolini...

I've seen dozens of these little chaps over the last few days, but few that have let me get as close as this.

The view from our balcony just now. And yes, it really did look like this...

We've moved from a British coastline to an Italian one, for a few days.

"There's nothing quite like an out-of-season holiday town in the rain"