The Travel Diva

Learning to fly - and other human rights - Cindy-Lou Dale

2011-07-17T05:57:00.000-04:00

Learning to fly - and other human rights - Cindy-Lou Dale

The mile-high club

2009-07-14T05:23:00.002-04:00

A few years ago I flew in a twin-prop 16-seater plane when it got lost in bad weather and could not find the airport. For 40 minutes we flew around in a perplexed manner, occasionally dropping through the low clouds which I could not help noticing, we shared with many mountain tops. Eventually, the pilot got his bearings and put us on the runway with a decent so steep that I sometimes still sit upright in bed at 3 a.m. in recollection. I vowed then that I would never fly in another light air-craft. Then 2 years ago, I did just that - almost but not quite ahead the biggest tropical storm I ever hope to experience. I vowed then that really, absolutely and under no condition would I set foot in a light aircraft again.

Then, a few months ago, I find myself 400 km into bandit country in a charter single prop plane above a 3rd world country. It became evident our pilot could not see, putting his nose to the glass, looking for the tiniest bit of visibility. I could not understand why he did not put on the windscreen wiper. I then looked more closely and I glanced across at the other passenger. We shared a single telepathic thought. Actually two thoughts – there’s no windscreen wiper and we’re all going to die. It appeared that he could - out of the side window - get a very rough fix on our location, but only very rough. Twice he banked sharply, as if swerving out of the path of a big building. This was rapidly becoming worse than my worst nightmare. Then the rain came with wet bullets being shot at the windscreen. For one long minute we flew along a seemingly straight line, continuously descending. When we were some small distance above the ground, there was still nothing to be seen in front of us, I was comfortably certain we were going to die in the next few seconds and then bang (and I use this word advisedly of course), there it was, the runway rushing towards us at a ridiculously accelerated speed. The pilot tilted the plane and landed hard and slightly off centre and for a long frightening moment it seemed he could not keep control and that he would hit the grass and we would disintegrate into a million pieces. But he managed to hold it steady. After a small eternity we came to a stop just outside of a hanger. Then, I had the sudden and overwhelming urge to drink my body weight in alcohol. I am naming my first grandchild after that pilot.

And I can tell you this for certain now, however many years are left to me and wherever fate takes me, the only way I will ever be killed be a light aircraft is if one falls on me.

New-age health check for pets

2009-04-07T01:22:00.006-04:00

There's a new holistic approach to pet therapy - an alternative way of scanning your pet's health, via a sample of it's hair. Although this in no way based on conventional medicine and/or treatments it promises to warn of health issues your pet my be experiencing and suggests alternative treatments. Is this legit or could this be another scam?

I'll be investigating this over the next few weeks and plan to write an article based on my findings. Do you have any pet therapy experiences you'd like to share?

African Taxis

2009-02-06T08:08:00.002-05:00

Travelling from Dar Es Salaam, heading north to Kenya’s main port, Mombasa, the roads were pitted with ruts and potholes, littered with dead animals, washed out in places. On the outskirts of the city, pedestrians would cross the highway from one slum to another, wildly inebriated. Finally, I was on the last leg of my journey to Nairobi, Kenya’s modern capital. On route, I encountered salesmen touting for business at the roadside and was somewhat bemused at the sight of a man selling second hand toilets. Following four days driving (from Cape Town), I was desperate to stop but had one more challenge to face before arriving at my hotel.

Nairobi’s traffic was insane - thousands of people milling about, goats herded across busy roads, yapping dogs wandering the streets, chickens darting here and there and the world’s most aggressive, selfish drivers who clearly considered being overtaken by another vehicle as a personal humiliation and would not stop to let other vehicle pass as this undoubtedly would constitute lack of resolve. They were oblivious to the world around them and no doubt considered their vehicles as their own "private" territory - a sort of mobile plot of land. Some motorists had farm animals as passengers inside the vehicle, whilst the human passengers were forced to partially sit inside opened windows, holding on to roof racks, where more people were hanging on. One old African man that pulled up to beside me (on the wrong side of the road), was arguing with his pig, which sat on the passenger seat.

I soon learnt that if an oncoming driver sees you indicating to turn into a side road and flashes his lights at you, it does not necessarily mean he was giving you way to make the turn as evidently, in Nairobi speak, it translate to, “I'm coming to kill you!"

When relaying some of these horrendous driving experiences to the hotel’s check in clerk I soon realized he was not joking when he boasted that his son was a matatu (taxi) driver. I had been warned about them at the border post. The check in clerk took great pride in telling me that for his son, a successful day's work was measured not merely by the amount of money made but also by the number of laws he broke without getting caught.

The following morning I took great pride in summoning up the steely nerve necessary to ensure that a hovering matatu did not squeeze into the space in front of me, which in Nairobi’s terms, would be tantamount to failure. I drove away childishly triumphant.

Vengeance is sweet

2009-02-05T15:03:00.001-05:00

About 15 years ago I worked with a German in Nairobi. Herman Schmee was his name. Short, squat, rotund and greasy, he looked like a troll. He was a creep—and he had a thing for me, the kind of thing which, till this day, gives me the shivers.

Nairobi is not the kind of place you’ll find much of in the way of luxury, so I am certain you’ll appreciate why I cherished the Swiss chocolates my boss brought me from his European trip.

I unwrapped the beautifully presented red-bowed box and hid it in the bottom ‘personal’ drawer of my desk. I treated myself to only one chocolate every day. After three days I found eight chocolates had in fact been removed, but I could only account for three of them. I knew who had taken the rest, of course, but would have difficulty proving it: Schmee the Shmuch! He was always scratching about in my office, but he hadn’t reckoned on me knowing. He had recently gotten hold of my ‘little black book’ which I left at work by mistake and called all the phone numbers listed next to the male names, asking how they knew me and if we had, at one point or another, had a relationship. I found this out because he had called both my brother and my cousin. So, with this still fresh in mind, a plan of action began to form. I put the box of chocolates in my handbag and spent the rest of the day planning my revenge.

After I left the office, I stopped off at a pharmacy and a grocer and then went home and spent the evening making chocolates in a special mold I had picked up at the store. I made only almond flavoured soft cantered ones, like those he had selected. I was rather impressed with my chocolate making skills and put them in the box that came from Switzerland. The next morning I put the box back in my personal drawer.

I checked after I returned from a meeting and discovered four chocolates had been lifted. I did not have to look far to see the culprit, you see Schmee sat in the area outside my office, his desk facing my door.

Within 15 minutes I saw my recipe was taking effect. I had dosed the soft almond centres with concentrated laxatives.

With four chocolates in his stomach, Schmee had consumed the equivalent of 12 doses of laxatives and every few minutes he’d dash off to the loo. After about an hour he was sweating profusely and looked quite frantic.

The following day, I asked him what it was he had eaten that could have caused his distress… and offered him another chocolate. He fled.

Got to love the British Government

2009-02-02T11:34:00.003-05:00

Bankers are counting their losses but we’re all paying for the risks they took. In the UK (pop. 52-million) unemployment is dangerously nearing 10%. There are more ‘For Sale’ signs up that lamp posts; home repossessions are running at +100 per day; 45% of UK households have negative cash-flows. Every 5 minutes someone is going bankrupt; our consumer debt tops £1.4-trillion – more than our entire GDB, and the highest in Europe.

Thankfully our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, promises British jobs for British workers; then promptly okay’s an Italian company bringing in Italian and Portuguese staff to work on a £200-million UK contract. No wonder our skilled workers are angry.

And as for overcrowding the country with more foreigners - do you have any idea, other than in a vague theoretical sense, just how desperately jam-packed Britain already is? Did you know for instance that to achieve the same density of population in the USA you would need to uproot the entire population of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado and Texas and pack them all into Iowa?

Do I have your attention now?

Then you’ll appreciate my angst at learning the British Government estimate that by 2019 there we’ll have 65-million people living in the UK; and a further 5-million by 2031. Statisticians say at least 70% per cent of the population increase over the next 20 years will be attributable directly to immigration.

Whilst on the subject of immigration: more than 605,000 people immigrated to the UK in 2007, and in the last quarter of 2008 there were near 29,000 asylum applications; and the number of illegal immigrants is estimated to be in excess of 244,000.

Our Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, admitted that more than 11,000 illegal immigrants have been cleared to work as security guards; further still, hundreds of illegal immigrants (including suspected murderer and criminals) are working in UK care homes, entrusted with caring for old and vulnerable people (some paid £3 an hour - just over half the minimum wage of £5.73). The government’s solution? Threaten illegal immigrants via text message!

We live in a United Kingdom that’s no longer united. We are muddled. And this must surely be the only country in the world that sees its national flag as a symbol of oppression.

We Brits are sleepwalking into a population, environmental, and financial nightmare that’s only just begun.

Bad like news, like

2009-01-28T04:01:00.001-05:00

We, the sag-brained British public, take a special delight in wallowing in disaster. Baghdad, bomb, insurgents, helicopter, bomb, George Bush, bus overturns, flood, earthquake, bomb, fire, ravages, price increase, industrial action, superbug kills, Darfur, economic crisis, war crimes, judge wrong, cold front, Gaza, refugees, killer flu, police brutality, Rumsfeld, Home Office balls-up, bird flu, price slump, more Home Office cock-ups. Did you know it’s possible to record TV news on say Monday and play it back on Thursday without having to be aware that any time has passed? Any day you like, fully transferable news from Tuesday to Friday, or any other day. It’s all bad. Good news is non-views.

I’m not expecting nor would I especially care for a permanently grinning newscaster with endlessly joyful stories delivered through pursed lips, but a little more levelling out of the eternally sour news would make a pleasant change. But I suppose this is the job of the news editor: giving the viewing public what they want. Evidently, we have an insatiable appetite for all things bad.

In the five minutes of headline news I caught this morning I wanted to weep for democracy, which is slowly being strangled by our soft-centre British government who clearly have more gross national product that common sense. The news camera focused on parliamentarians – a snarling, scowling, bad-tempered, ungracious, vicious clutch of people, most of whom could curdle milk at a hundred yards. The subject under discussion was how the government could bend and twist the democracy under which we live.

Then the news switched to local county news.

Where did it come from? American hip-hop? Rap? Slough? Almost everyone is like-ing and yeah-ing away, well, like mad really. And with ‘I mean’, it has become an infuriating, almost-conjunctive inserted at very odd places in speech, meaning utterly bugger-all and making the like-er sound like some kind of agitated insect. I watched one such individual, admittedly a brain-challenged teenage witness to a train wreck, being interviewed on the BBC!

‘And I was like, standin’ there by the like crossing, like, with my like mate and the, like, train was, like comin’ down the, like line, too, like fast for the, like, driver of the, like car, to like move away, like.’ This twerp had no idea what he sounded like, and the interviewer stood there vigorously nodding his head in agreement. ‘So I was like, yeah, and he was like yeah, and I was like so, and he was like no, and I was like no way.’

I found myself watching the news the same way a hypnotised rat watches a snake, like.

Growing old

2009-01-20T18:18:00.005-05:00

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

'How old are you?' 'I'm four and a half!' You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

'How old are you?' 'I'm gonna be 16!' You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life !You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. You become 21. Yesss!

But then you turn 30. Oh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He turned; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

You become 21, you turn 30, then you're pushing 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you reach 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You make it to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you become 21, turn 30, push 40, reach 50 and make it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you hit 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you hit Wednesday!

You get into your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you hit lunch; you turn 4:30; you reach bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; 'I Was just 92.'

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. 'I'm 100 and a half!'

Absurdities

2009-01-19T03:25:00.002-05:00

The apparent increase in our standard of living stands in direct proportion to the absurd things which are there to make us pay for being better off. Like the manufacturers of motor vehicles that make cars capable of eye-watering speed, while the government imposes ‘safety cameras’ to stop them going fast. Or teachers who are absolutely not allowed to punish children by hitting them, on pain of prosecution, while children are allowed to kick, spit and hit teachers half to death, with impunity. Then there’s the government pouring billions into education-education-education while the standard of literacy and numeracy drops steadily and growing numbers of first-year university students are found to be functionally illiterate. What truly gets my piddle in a froth is the train system: more and more people use more and more trains, while the trains service steadily becomes less and less reliable, less and less comfortable, less and less pleasant as an experience. These are just few of the issues crowding my mind in the early morning hours.

In the 21st century, where everyone is busting a gut to be more structured, more rational, more organised, more scientific and more logical, we seem to be descending into disarray, chaos, irrationality, disorganisation, religio-superstition and illogicality. What clever homines sapientes we are.

Football

2009-01-19T02:48:00.006-05:00

I have a problem accepting that groups of people gathered together for the purpose of playing a game with an inflated sheep's bladder can be considered business.

If there's a sportsman in the news, having been caught fighting or fornicating in the wrong place, you can be dammed sure it’s a footballer. If there's outrage at the language being used by a disgruntled player who is spitting and shouting at the referee, a footballer will be doing it. If there is a witless teenage jerk that’s paid a king's ransom per week and flaunts it in the most vulgar and flamboyant way possible, it will be a footballer. If there's mass open-air sex among members of a team who've just scored a goal, that team will be playing football. If a team member is knocking himself out, giving an award-winning performance, rolling about in feigned but convincing agony in order to persuade the referee that he has been most foully fouled, it will be a member of a football team.

And the hooligan supporters. They make the case for bringing back conscription better than anything ever did. In no other sport, not one, is there a problem with spectator-supporters having to be corralled and separated from one another in order to avoid inter-fan mayhem. In no other sport is there a problem with players of off-white skin-colour being taunted and insulted on a regular basis, or having coins, bottles, false teeth, fruit, eggs and other highly inventive abuse chucked at them by snout-faced, shaven headed pond life. At no other sporting event is it necessary to build fences to keep fans and players apart. Only football needs that.

There's nothing wrong with football that a complete change in the nature of its players and supporters wouldn't cure. But there's a fat chance of that happening.

The worrying thing about all this is the fact the footballers become role-models for the youth of the UK. How could they not be? They play a game for shed-loads of money, achieve fame, become celebrities, pull birds/blokes, behave like brain-damaged Nazis and get away with it. Who wouldn't want a piece of that?

Hyenas

2009-01-19T02:20:00.005-05:00

They piss me right off. Groups of people who arrive at restaurants, half sozzled, who then proceed as quickly as possible to fill up the other half and then start braying, yelping and hooting at the top of their obnoxious voices, like hyenas at a kill.

The women are the worst as their laughter is pitched higher than the men, and they laugh at absolutely anything and everything. The waiter arrives to take their order, all he has to do is stand there and the female contingent falls off its chairs in drunken hysteria. Then one of the party recounts the latest unfunny episode about Mr. Nobwick in accounts, and they all go off into paroxysms of forced mirth, banging the table and one another's shoulders.

Usually the parties are groups of people From The Office. Recently I endured a couple of hours of this torture while ten or so teachers - teachers! from a pre-school shrieked and gabbled - letting of steam, no doubt - following a term spent teaching intelligence-free children and agro from shaven-headed, pierced and tattooed parents, so fair enough. But also enough to cause me to adopt a new rule when booking a table.

Killjoy? Nah. It's just that noise pollution is a particular hate of mine, and I don't care if it’s made by jack-hammers, kids, idiots playing music in cars, mobile phones on trains - or hyenas in a restaurant. Or indeed, music in the same. But don't start me down that road...

Misty

2009-01-01T10:50:00.003-05:00

While standing at the kitchen sink peeling vegetables for dinner, I gazed out of the window across our beautifully manicured lawn and considered Misty in quiet amusement. Misty, our oldest moggy, sat under the trampoline with the newest addition to our feline family -- four month old Minnie.

Minnie was watching Misty in wide-eyed admiration as he ate grass. She was clearly receiving a beginners’ guide to projectile vomiting as soon enough Minnie tried it, but her first attempt did not stay down nearly as long as Misty’s. This reminded me to do a quick fur-ball and grassy wet patch check around the house before our dinner guests arrived.

Misty often throws up in unusual places, including the kitchen counter tops, the hob (especially if something is cooking on it), under the dinner table, outside the bedroom door (however, he usually reserves that one for the middle of the night), on the stairs, and on the sofa. Once he caught me off guard by throwing up on the kitchen chair, the very chair I pull out and sit in when I come down to put the kettle on in the morning, still half asleep and semi-dressed. He has also been known to leave deposits inside shoes, handbags, slippers -- basically anything that looks like it may be a container, on one occasion even the biscuit tin got it!

Our dinner guests arrived and all was going well until Misty came skidding into the dining room and bulleted on through to the lounge where Pepper, another already highly strung moggy, was peacefully sleeping. Misty timed his arrival with the serving of my Quiche Lorraine and in one leap managed to deliver an Oscar winning performance and the grass he had eaten earlier, across Pepper’s head. This lead to a high speed chase around the house as Pepper fled in disgust, with Misty in hot pursuit, still retching over her.

My husband explained to our guests that Misty was sadly, a very misunderstood cat!

UKYouth

2008-11-12T06:37:00.004-05:00

I am one of the first to point an accusing finger of youth crime on, well... the youth. So I shouldn't be too exasperated when all we (in the UK) hear about today’s youth is that they’re no good.

It humbles me to say that I recently witnessed a little old lady stumble and fall in the street and was about to defend her when I saw a group of pikey’s approach her. Instead of mugging her (as I thought they were about to) they righted her, helped her with her bags and sat her on a park bench, then one of them hailed her a cab.

No good youth?

In London yesterday an elderly German tourist stopped a group of menacing looking youngsters, asking for directions. There were smiles all round and animated conversations discussing the quickest route and the best chip-shop in the area.

No good youth?

This morning I heard Alexander Rose being interviewed in BBC4. His a nineteen year old south Londoner who saw his friend Eugene Attram shot and killed by a gang in 2006; his cousin was stabbed the following year.

By using his skill as a graphic designer - Stop (Solve This Ongoing Problem) – he designs posters and T-shirts to promote his cause. He is also involved with the Battlefront project, in which young people use the internet to campaign about issues affecting their lives.

“I go round to schools and youth clubs talking to young people about the issues around gang culture. To make them think about what else is out there. To make them realise that they don’t have to join a gang or carry weapons. I want to raise awareness to educate young people to STOP carrying weapons. Friends and family members have died due to this issue. I decided I just had to do something. I turned to what I knew at the time, which was graphic design, and came up with a t-shirt design and a campaign called Solve This Ongoing Problem (STOP). I’m using positive fashion to fight the negative gangster image. I want to inspire others. I’m not special. Everyone can use what they have to do something. I’m telling you: positivity pays off. Talent + Belief = Success.”

Watch this video in which Alex speaks to a group of students at a local college.
The world is filled with upstanding young people like Alex. Let me be the first to turn the accusing finger at myself for prejudging them. It saddens me though that we (the media) don’t broadcast all the goodness out there.

Boozing

2008-11-04T06:47:00.003-05:00

Learning to drink was once a rite of passage, a stepped experience, a pathway from childhood to adulthood. Learning to drink had to be worked on because there weren't any drinks targeted at you. In other words, booze tasted pretty nasty and you had to acquire a taste for it, or face the embarrassment of ordering a Snowball, the 13-year old girls’ favourite consisting of Advocaat and lemonade. But you don't need to acquire a taste for alcopops with names such as Thickhead and Buzz; there's banana-flavoured Super Milch and Dr Thirsty's Strong Orange Punch and something worrying called Beetlejuice. None of these is less than 4.9 per cent alcohol and some of them - Strong Cider Shock, sold in a lightbulb-shaped bottle, or TNT, which looks like a stick of dynamite - are 8.4 per cent.

Alcohol does have an important place in society and brings many benefits. Over 90% of the adult population in the UK drink. The majority do so with no problems, most of the time. It accounts for a substantial section of the economy -- the value of the alcoholic drinks market is more than £30bn per annum and it is estimated that around one million jobs are linked to it.

We cannot cast blame of UK's alcohol problem on cheap booze or bars. We cannot point a finger at the drinks industry who encourages youth with cheap booze. It's not the media's fault either, nor the government. This is the result of a gradual failing of authority in the home, fuelled by the lack of discipline at school.

It may be time that we turn the accusing finger to ourselves as we have become a society lacking in family values and morals, one without discipline.

Where's the FAA when you need them?

2008-10-07T18:06:00.002-04:00

My mother's new carving knife

2008-10-07T17:50:00.004-04:00

Back in South African in the 70s my dad bought an electric carving knife for my mom for an anniversary gift. The carving knife dad bought was one of the first models - and rather formidable.

I have a clear recollection of dad donning goggles and heavy rubber gloves before plugging it in. When he sank the knife's blade into the beef joint it didn’t so much carve the beast as send pieces of it flying everywhere in a kind of fleshy red spray, before the blade struck the plate with a shower of blue sparks, and the whole thing flew out of dad's hands and skittered across the table and out of the room, like a creature possessed.

I don’t believe we ever saw it again.

Going without

2008-10-07T17:42:00.003-04:00

I'm married to a Brit, and I've learnt that Brits like to go without.

They are great at pulling together, particularly in the face of adversity, for a perceived common good.

They will queue patiently for indefinite periods and accept with rare fortitude the imposition of rationing, bland diets and sudden inconvenient shortages of staple goods, as anyone who has looked for a loaf of bread at a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon will know.

They are comfortable with faceless bureaucracies and tolerant of dictatorships.

They will wait uncomplaining for years for an operation or the delivery of a household appliance.

They have a natural gift for making excellent jokes about authority without seriously challenging it and they derive universal satisfaction from the sight of the rich and powerful brought low.

I doubt I'll ever be a Brit. It's not something that comes naturally to an African.

Model planes

2008-10-07T17:24:00.003-04:00

I found a small model plane my son (now at university) had put together some years ago. A masterpiece of patient, beautiful craftsmanship. One of the wings had come off so I found some model glue and set about repairing it.

The tube of glue by contrast was the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently I depressed it, it would burp out a pint or so of clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object – a human finger, the living room drapes, the fur of a passing cat – and become infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string results in the creation of more strings.

Within moments I became attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with the model aeroplane or the second world war. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it became just a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying.

Out here in the woods

2008-10-07T17:17:00.003-04:00

In a village nearby I was introduced to (let’s call them) the Higgins family - the bottom of the social barrel, slack-jawed farm hands, timber cutters, railway workers, road gangsters - or living off the state but always drunk on a Saturday night.

The men would beat their wives and children as a matter of course then went to church on Sunday.

There was another common thread in all of them – they were all missing their teeth. Now I know you’re thinking missing teeth means only one or two gaps, like a picket fence with a few planks missing, but you’re wrong. In these farming parts of England, having no teeth is your 21st birthday present from the family. All you teeth are taken out, except the big molars at the back. This way you’ll not get toothache when you’re on a far off farm. It also saves future costs. The molars stay in the back of your mouth for chewing meat.

“If you’ve got to spend money at the dentist it must be on these and not on the pretty teeth in the front. Then one day, when you’re rich enough, you can get false teeth to wear to church,” I was told.

The way of the world's media

2008-10-07T13:24:00.005-04:00

I find the media's Prophets of Doom so tiresome. BBCs Channel 4 news, with John 'tasteless ties' Snow as the anchor, angers me - especially when he flashes a satisfied snarl at the viewing audience. Though whether the grimace indicates that he's happy the world's falling apart or merely that he's pleased to convey disappointing news, I couldn't say.

But it seems that it's not only the BBC doing this. Its the printed media too - all around the developed world!

All the political correctness bullshit - it's no different to the school yard bully. They started the war on speed by going after lunatics who drive around at 130 mph and ended up nailing little old ladies doing 31mph. They go after people who hunt foxes but soon your dog will be prosecuted for killing a mouse. They put health warnings on cigarettes and now you can’t even light up in a pub. And for the social worker's there is no spirit of law, only the letter.

A great many earnest young men have been cropping up on BBC news wearing ‘I told you so’ expressions and explaining that we must stop driving cars and eating strawberries out of season. They say that man-made global warming is driving the weather nuts and that if we don't radically change our ways, everyone on earth will be boiled. Then a self proclaimed expert pops up saying that mans total contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions is just 3%, which might be enough to kill the world.

Or it might not. Nobody knows. But it seems rather silly to spend billions developing cauliflower powered cars when they might not make any difference and half the world is starving.

I try not to read the newspapers any more as all they report on is bad news. The media prefers to dismiss all the good in the world and focus on the one bad element. I fear the lunatics have taken over the asylum. The press sees terror and pain in just about every aspect of our lives today. Cornflakes will kill you unless an immigrant from Albania gets you first. Farmed salmon will rot your children’s eyes; genetically modified wheat will invade your garden and eat your pets; and God help those that don’t maintain an efficient oral hygiene programme because they’ll have killer mushrooms growing out of their gums.

Every single day there is a small piece in the papers that announced the introduction of a law banning something which you thought was harmless. I've had enough!

I want to live in a society that understands respect, where passers-by will intervene and not avert their gaze when an old lady is attacked by yobs, where corporal punishment exists, compulsory military service, where children call their elders Aunt and Uncle so-and-so.

Maybe I'm asking too much.

Assignment: South Africa

2008-04-04T17:49:00.003-04:00

The ultimate purpose of my trip to South Africa is to find words to the final chapter in my novel, but more importantly I want to see what television documentaries don’t show. I want to experience the country by not just driving through it but living in it and meeting the permanently disillusioned and hear endless white noise of promises that can’t be kept and statistics that mean nothing. I'll find a a place where optimism had been abandoned and hope is considered a dirty word; a semi-dark desert of forsaken dreams, where the downtrodden, cheated, beaten and enslaved are always the majority. I expect to meet liberal whites wobbling on the political fence, ready to fly off in whatever direction the wind blows; and look into the faces of people that seem displaced by their own homes, like refugees who are trying to flee their shelters; where everyone looks like migrant workers; sweat-stained, malarial, hung over, tragic, recently assaulted, scared from the accidents of life... but that was twelve years ago.

I don’t want to go back to the past to see if it still hurts, but I feel the need to revisit my roots just this once, to see the land that grew me; a land I recall of almost breathless beauty and of savage poverty; of screaming ghosts and sun-flung possibilities; of inviting warmth and desperate drought. Essentially though, it’s the dense smells I need to see again. The smell of Africans – soil on the skin, wood smoke, the tinny smell of fresh sweat, home brewed beer, burned chicken feathers and kicked-up dust. But who knows...

A walk on the beach

2008-02-14T06:23:00.003-05:00

Today was one of those rare occasions I took myself down to the beach for a brisk early morning walk. Most of England’s seaside towns are sparsely populated in winter and the wooden beach sheds beside the creaky old fishing boats, which are dragged up onto the pebble beach, were locked up till the weather brightens in spring.

The wind howled along the deserted coast, causing me to assume a stooping posture - similar to that of one shouldering a car up a hill. That’s when I spotted one of the beach shed standing open.

A man and a woman in garden chairs were sitting outside the shed, huddled in arctic clothing with lap blankets, buffeted by winds that seemed constantly to threaten to tip them over. The man was trying to read a newspaper, but the wind kept wrapping it around his face. They both looked content, as if they were on the Seychelles and were drinking gin fizzes under nodding palm trees, rather than sitting half-perished in a stiff English gale. They were content because they owned a little piece of prized English beach-front property for which there was no doubt a long waiting list and – here was the true secret of their happiness – any time they wanted they could retire to their little hut and be fractionally less cold. They could make a cup of tea, and if they were feeling particularly rakish, have a chocolate digestive biscuit. Afterwards they could spend a happy half-hour packing their things away and closing up hatches.

And this was all they required in the world to bring themselves to a state of near rapture.

Amsterdam and the unhappy hookers

2008-02-05T04:35:00.002-05:00

Nowhere else on earth will you find so many beautiful sparsely dressed women, of all ethnicities, shapes and sizes (as well as the odd male and transsexual), who blatantly display themselves behind windows, offering sex for money.

The Dutch are known for their practicality, open-mindedness and business sense. When combined with today's lax society, this culminates into a culture that attracts thrill-seeking tourists, thirsting after commercialized sex and soft drugs. From massage parlours to window prostitutes, brothels to fruit performers, live sex shows to ‘smart shops’ that openly trade in marijuana, the red light district of Amsterdam has it all.

Since being labeled a legal profession in 1988, the Dutch have installed a number of support mechanisms to maintain the health and social responsibility of their prostitutes who undergo mandatory AIDS testing every three months. Brothels and sex clubs are also regularly inspected. So, what has changed? How safe is the sex on sale?

Mariska Majoor, a former window prostitute, and founder of the Amsterdam based Prostitute Information Centre, reveals some concerns.

“Brothels have to conform to the same rules which apply to any business. The government is hoping to control prostitution and stop the exploitation of minors and illegal immigrants. As prostitution is now officially labeled as freelance work, which the tax department has taken a special interested in, prostitutes are now recognized as ‘employed’ and as such can apply for bank loans. However, none have been successful.

The rules the government have imposed are considered laidened with self interest.

“The regulations are only beneficial to the Government, like the taxes we pay. Surely we should also derive some form of benefit from this," she said.

"Prostitution was always legal in this country," explains Mariska. "It's the brothels that were illegal, but the police usually ignored them too, as long as they were quiet, clean and employ no underage workers or illegal immigrants."

Today, the city of Amsterdam has about 70 legal prostitution clubs that usually include bars, about an equal number of private bordellos houses and several hundred licit window prostitutes.

"The women in the windows have the highest incomes," states Mariska. "They sit in the windows so you can see what’s on offer and you can see them from the street." Much of the income from prostitution was tax free before Amsterdam legalized and licensed its brothels. "It was black money," says Mariska, or off the books. "Now, prostitutes must pay the 17.5 percent sales tax," she says. "There are two sales taxes. A 6 percent rate applies to basic goods like milk and butter and the higher rate is for everything nonessential. Condoms are taxed at 6 percent, but a prostitute's service is taxed at 17.5 percent."

"Then costs are deducted, like rent, and the net income is taxed again," she explains, "at rates up to 60 percent. Most women don't get rich. They average as much as a lawyer."

"Europeans are enthusiastic about this district," she reports, "but Americans are generally very surprised. They walk with their jaws dropping to their knees. Americans ask me if it isn't dangerous without a pimp. I ask “No, it's not unsafe, the government provides the protection; in the Netherlands, the government is the pimp.”

My tottering blue-rinsed neighbour

2007-12-01T09:37:00.001-05:00

I rang my neighbour’s front-door bell and patiently waited for the old dear to respond. A letter had inadvertently been put into my mail box meant for her. Mrs Rogers is seven hundred years old and permanently attached to an aluminium walker. She is stooped, very small, forgetful, glacially slow, interestingly malodorous and practically deaf.

Then I heard her car – an old Morris Minor – propelled by a series of blue explosions. I could hear her grinding through the gears trying to find one she liked. Every Tuesday and Friday morning Mrs Rogers heads off to the post office in her ancient car. The local villagers clear the streets at about this time too and those left out flee in terror before her as Mrs Rogers tends to create scenes reminiscent of the streets of Pamplona when the bulls are running.

She broadsided through her garden gate and came to rest an inch away from the chicken coop. Mrs Rogers, somewhat wild of hair, and her Zimmer frame inched towards me at the speed that ice melts.

“Ooooh, ‘ello luv,” she chirped. “Cuppa tea? Come on then...””

I followed her into her 500 year old cottage and shoo-shooed a chicken out the cat flap. Sitting in her tiny kitchen I quietly wondered what the future held for me as I approach my 44th year. Would I grow old gracefully or become an eccentric old lady, shuffling and wobbling and humming my personal Alzheimer theme tune.

Tea was served; Mrs Rogers and I sat grinning foolishly at one another.

“Go on then,” she said. “I won’t tell your husband.”

We grinned some more.

“Oh, all right then, only if you’re sure.” I sighed, taking out my pipe and packing it for a good puff. “I’ll let you have the first puff.”

She smiled sheepishly at me whilst I stoked my pipe.

At Starbucks recently

2007-11-16T17:09:00.001-05:00

Starbucks in London’s West End is always crowded and finding a seat is a challenge. Lady luck was clearly smiling on me that day as a space became available. I nodded in greeting at my table companion and then continued doing what British people do best – ignore one another.

I sipped my coffee and relaxed with a London Times. I unwrapped one of the biscuits I had purchased with my coffee and ate it. The gentleman across from me glared at me in disapproval. I ignored him but quietly wondered what he found so upsetting. I unwrapped another biscuit and again was fiercely considered, this time his glowering stare was followed with a huff. He got up, removed the rapping off my last biscuit, leaned towards me and slowly inserted the entire biscuit into his mouth. He then collected his overcoat and umbrella and stormed out.

I started after him in disbelief and asked the approaching waitress if she’d seen what just happened. She smiled and handed me a plate of cellophane wrapped biscuits saying, “… you left these on the counter.”

Europe, after a while

2007-10-22T14:32:00.002-04:00

You’d think that Brussels, Belgium has a lot going for it. It has after all more Michelin Star restaurants per capita than any other European country, it’s the briefcase capital of Europe, and it’s here where the richest countries in Europe enthusiastically cede their sovereignty to the EU, a body that appears to be out of control and answerable to no one. That aside, once you’ve done a couple of circuits of the Grande Platz in the capital and looked politely in the windows you begin to find yourself glancing at your watch and wonder if nine-forty-seven in the morning is too early to start drinking.

Being European demands that you drive a small car, live in a little house in an ancient town and love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic, law abiding and have drafty hotel rooms and cosy inviting places to eat and drink. This aside, you can never be sure of anything in Europe. When I first visited Europe I realised it takes a special kind of vigilance to make your way across a continent on which people voluntary ingest tongues, kidneys, horsemeat, frogs’ legs, intestines, sausages made of congealed blood, and the brains of little cows.

However, when I arrived in Amsterdam I was briefly cheered by its openness, its tolerance, its relaxed attitude to dope and sex and numerous other sins. But I found it oddly wearisome that the people of Amsterdam were rather stuck with their tradition of tolerance, like people who take up a political stance and then have to defend it no matter how untenable it gets. Because they’ve been congratulating themselves on their intelligent tolerance for all these centuries, it is now impossible for them not to be nobly accommodating to graffiti and burned-out hippies and dog shit and litter.

It’s possibly an inevitable part of life – like the weather in England and the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage, and their ability to go without, and the fact that they actually like their pleasures small.

Nothing about Africa surprises me anymore

2007-10-21T13:46:00.001-04:00

As the road to Mombasa uncurled before me I became aware of passing increasing numbers of pedestrians, striding of to somewhere beyond the horizon. Curiosity got the better of me so I stopped by a roadside salesman selling second-hand toilets and quizzed him. In the next village, which was near 12 miles away, he claimed there to be a tribal witch doctor that had “… powers when throwing of the lotaola”. He claimed the spirit of the bones spoke with the Sangoma and told him which potion to mix for his patient, who would dutifully drink this muti and supposedly be cured of AIDS.

As if sketched with the honest simplicity of a child’s hand, the road to Mombasa threads through a make-believe land of the most picturesque African villages, especially when passing through Tsavo National Park – one of the largest parks in the world. Here I encountered a group of Masai warriors riding bicycles; their tartan robes billowing in their slipstreams, spears clutched in one hand, and with the other ringing their bells in greeting as I passed.

Nearing Mombasa, as the afternoon drew to a rich, cooling, melancholy close I passed hundreds of cyclists. I paused at a busy cross road and was fascinated to see a cyclist in a giant bird costume passing in front of me. Strangely though, this vision evoked no reaction from the locals. The giant bird raised his fist at me in a black power salute.

From Morocco with love

2007-10-19T14:17:00.004-04:00

“Come,” Farid, an elderly Marrakech shop-keeper implored, “I make beautiful Berber.” Never one to stand in the way of progress on went a rich cocoa coloured dress edged with tiny silver bells, and to cover my hair a sapphire blue silk veil trimmed with the finest wisps of silver thread. Farid brought it together below my chin and twirled it up around my head, draping it rather seductively across my face, revealing only my eyes; I was further garnished with traditional Berber jewellery.

Time dissipated between dress changes and Farid's tales of his childhood caravan treks across the Sahara. His oyster eyes were enlivened and his leathery face beamed at his recollections; his hand regularly found mine when I understood his jokes.

The only dangers travellers face in Morocco's souks are irresistible sales pitches and charming sales techniques. If you remain disinterested you stand to pick up a bargain, particularly in the specialist markets deep inside the larger souks - the only place to go for a truly Moroccan shopping experience. If you don’t haggle they’ll think you’re rich and crazy which tends to spoil it for the rest of us who are poor and crazy.

Things I am not

2007-10-15T13:49:00.001-04:00

I’m into power napping. Be it on aircraft, trains or more recently, behind the wheel of my car, whilst waiting for the lights to change. Some people simply should not be allowed out unescorted and I’m seriously beginning to consider myself as being part of this ilk.

An incident I recall when travelling to London involved one such power nap. I’ll be honest here, one thing I’m not is an elegant sleeper (in fact I wish someone would be kind enough to discreetly cover me with tarpaulin). I startled awake, flailing wildly in the quick, gasping, suddenly alert way of all people who have lived through an African war. From my chin to my belt buckle I found myself mired in a cobweb of drool. Three people were gazing at me in a curious dispassionate manner. Instantly I recalled another public humiliation in Hungary - a public bus, me waking to find three snot-nosed open-mouthed kids staring at me. The memory of them fleeing in terror at the discovery that the dribbling hulk was alive immediately caused me to emit and insane chortle.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do (without any evident difficulty) that are pretty much beyond me. I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone looking for the lavatory in a cinema, for instance, and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a self-locking door. Whilst in NYC earlier this year I went through a spell of returning to the hotel’s front desk two or three times a day and asking what my room number was.

Something else I don’t do well is taking instructions from my GPS. Even if I’ve never been to a place before I am of the resolve that I know better, which of course I don’t and invariably leads to arguments.

Another thing is sophistication- I could never be accused of that. You have no idea how I ache to be suave - just once in my life I’d like to rise from a dinner table without looking as if I have the dogs dinner on my lap; or drive off in my car without leaving ten inches of coat outside. I cannot wear light-coloured trousers as I always find that at some point in the day I’d either have sat in chewing gum, brushed up ice cream or been splashed with motor oil.

But getting back to the power napping scene at the traffic light – I tried to explain to the policeman (a stick of a man that looked as if he’d not smiled since 1960), that I had not been drinking and that I was not driving under the influence of a narcotic drug. “On the contrary,” I exclaimed, “this is possibly due to caffeine deficiency.”

On second thoughts...

2007-09-26T09:11:00.001-04:00

“When travelling alone,” my husband warned me once, “you need to watch your thoughts.” I never quite understood this until this morning.

Well, I wasn’t travelling as opposed to waiting in line at the bank. For no reason I can explain, I began to think of a bloke I once worked with.

Geoff would probe his ears with straightened out paper clips - and I’m not talking mere caresses here, he’d really jam that clip all the way home, then twirl it between two fingers, as if tuning into a radio station. I felt certain it must have been excruciating but Geoff seemed to draw great pleasure from it. Sometimes his eyes would roll back and he’d make rapturous gurgling noises. Maybe he thought nobody noticed, but we all sat there, transfixed. Once, during a particular rigorous session, the paper clip all but disappeared and seemed as it if it might be stuck. A colleague from across the room cried out to Geoff, enquiring if it would help if one of us pulled from the other side.

I thought of this as I peered into the pimply ear of the teenager ahead of me in the queue and I laughed out load – a sudden lunatic chortle that startled me as much as everyone else in the bank. I covered my mouth with my hand but more laughter managed to leak out. The bank’s customers and staff glared at me.

It was only by staring at my muddy sneakers and concentrating very hard that I was able to compose myself, at which point I observed what could only be described as a cornflake peaking out of the bank teller’s nose.

British Elevators

2007-09-25T09:40:00.001-04:00

Today I reacquainted myself with what could only be

Britain

’s most ancient elevator.

It started with me fiddling uselessly with the elevator buttons which were obviously not connected to anything but my fraying nerves. After a few irritating minutes of me stabbing at numerous buttons then calling out to an unseen elevator person, the doors clanged shut.

With a sudden burst of vigour, the elevator shot upwards to the eleventh floor at such a speed I thought my face would peel away from my skull. On reaching the eleventh floor it paused tantalizing for a half-second, then dropped ten-feet, poised for another few seconds, then proceeded to freefall to the ground floor.

I emerged with what felt like blood trickling from my ears and wobbled back to my car with as much dignity as I could muster.

Driving styles

2007-09-24T10:15:00.002-04:00

My husband was left somewhat ashen this morning. There I was, test driving a new Chrysler 300D through the fetching English countryside - in an abundance of varying shades of green and dotted with small farms, where geese and chickens loitered along roadsides that seldom saw a passing car. I was so taken aback at some of the vistas I would crane my neck and turn around in the driver’s seat to better view it.

“I can’t quite understand how you’ve managed to stay alive all these years,” he piped up from the back seat. “You lunge around bends, mostly on the wrong side of the road then seem genuinely astonished to find a 40-ton truck bearing down on you.”

“There’s just so much to see,” I responded. “Anyway, this is why I have Penny-Lane (my teenage daughter) in the front seat.” Penny smiled brightly then continued to stare intently ahead. “You see Penny is my alarm device.”

“… your what?” my husband demanded.

As if on queue, Penny shrieked and I swerved out of the way of the oncoming vehicle at the last possible instant, I then hung out of the window shouting abuse at the passing driver before being shrieked back to the next crisis by both Penny and my husband.

“Like that,” I announced triumphantly.

A drive through England

2007-09-16T03:59:00.001-04:00

Driving from my home on the coast of SE England to Liverpool in the NW I felt certain there is no landscape anywhere that is more collectively valued, more visited, ambled across and gazed upon, more cleverly worked, more exquisite to behold, more restful… than the countryside of England.

Just beyond my front door is a handsome church that was built in the 13^th century - older than most of the buildings in Great Britain. It has been standing there, adding a little touch of nobility and grandeur to the landscape, for 800 years. If this church were in North America people would travel from all over to see it. And here it is just an anonymous country church, treasured by a few aging parishioners and one rather eccentric writer, and otherwise almost entirely unnoticed because it is just one of several hundred ancient parish churches in Kent.

Altogether there are twenty thousand ancient parish churches in Britain. There are more listed churches than there are petrol stations. Isn’t that an amazing fact? If you decided to visit one every day, it would take you 54 years to see them all.

Wherever you turn in the UK you are faced with marvelous and fascinating things – 19,000 listed ancient monuments, 600,000 archaeological sites, 100,000 miles of public footpaths, 250,000 miles of hedgerows, 73,000 war memorials, 6,500 noted bridges, 14 National Parks, more than a hundred Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, over 4,000 sites of Special Scientific Interest. You’ll brush up against some striking reminder of England’s long and productive past.

The McDonalds Finishing School

2007-09-13T04:22:00.001-04:00

I went to McDonalds yesterday to pick up a burger and fries for my son. Having recently moved across to the UK from mainland Europe I am accustomed to dealing with bilingual people. I now stood before a McDonalds employee - a young man who had evidently invested a recent pay cheque in a very large tub of hair gel, whom I doubt was even lingual. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

Not wanting to be insensitive, what with the UK being so ridiculously OTT politically correct, I thought he may have been hard of hearing so repeated my order, speaking a little louder and a little slower. But he continued to stare at me, his mouth agape.

I stepped back to look at the name of the food outlet just in case I’d walked in some kind of a health food joint, but no, there was the McDonalds sign. I returned to the counter by which point the McDonalds chap was digging in his nose. I asked him if he understood my order and proceed to outline what a hamburger looks like on the back of my hand. “To go,” I said, drawing little feet on it too.

He critically examined a recent rock dug out from the depths of his brain then proceeded to wipe it on the edge of the counter.

“Wazzat?” he said. “Duzwanthawhiffraaz…”

“I beg your pardon, could you repeat that?” I asked. “I speak English.”

With a sullen gaze and a long sigh he repeated slowly, “Duz-wan-tha-whif-fraaz!”

How I longed for a small firearm or perhaps a set of industrial tongs with which to clamp his reedy neck and draw his head close to mine.

“It makes no difference,” I said. I still only speak English.”

I stalked through the front door and went to Waitrose instead where I secured the healthier option of a lettuce and cucumber sandwich.

London City

2007-09-08T14:59:00.001-04:00

London is an exciting, fast paced city, cultured and storied, and speaks volumes in the fog threaded low-lit streets of Chelsea or Knightsbridge, where you’re certain to find a street you’ll want to live on, a pub you’d like to get to know, and a view you’d like to call your own. Old diners where you can just have a nice cup of tea and a simple bun; medieval apartment buildings where pools of warm light give tantalizing glimpses of walls lined with books, sills of sprawling pot plants, and decorative antiques; the market squares, slumbering parks and little temples of great shopping.

There’s something to be said about the spirit of a nation who prefers their pleasures small; like the old couple I spotted in St James’ Park, huddled in artic clothing in deck chairs, wrapped in lap blankets and being pounded by winds. The man was trying to read The Daily Mail, but the wind kept wrapping it around his face. Yet they both looked content, as if they were sitting in Kirstenbosch Gardens, sitting under a warm African sun, rather than half-perishing in a severe gale. They seemed content because they could pour a cup of tea and watch the swans - and if they were feeling particularly rakish, have a chocolate digestive biscuit. Afterwards they would spend a happy half-hour packing their things into a basket then hobble off to catch a bus. They wouldn’t dare think to grumble; it’s all so romantic and inevitably a part of being British.

Hit the ground running

2007-09-05T04:20:00.001-04:00

Two established homes, all polished and squeaky clean, everything unpacked, ironing done, husband despatched to Brussels and I’m back on the job tomorrow.

I’m researching an article for an international carrier’s in-flight magazine about visiting London (England) at Christmas. I’ll be staying at a gorgeous boutique hotel in Knightsbridge and will be visiting Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Harrods and several other unique stores in the most amazing city in the world.

When I get back I have a few days in which to write the article. Then I need to begin writing the article about the German castles trip, do a road test of a Chrysler 300 and arrange a trip to Iceland for Spring next year – in between starting my teenage daughter off at her new Grammar School, seeing my son off the University and having my long-standing friend from South Africa visit me for a few days.

For the love of my cats

2007-08-26T18:13:00.001-04:00

It wasn’t meant to happen like this but now I have two homes – one in mainland Europe and one in the UK. Picture the scene: France’s Pet Reception Area at the Euro tunnel crossing to the UK. My car is idling outside containing two kids and four cats – a predelivery to the removal truck arriving.

Frenchy looks at my cats papers and asks “… verr ur de udder pypers?”

“I beg your pardon?” I squeaked, both feet leaving the ground at once. “What other papers?”

“Du bluud test pypers!”

At which point I thought the ground would swallow me up. Not two years ago I wrote an article on the very subject and warned readers that in order to take a pet abroad there were various hoops to lump through, and to re-enter the UK, there were several more. One of them being a blood test required six months before the actual move date - and the one red-tape hoop I overlooked!

My husband, supervising the removal men in Brussels, became so distraught he resorted to the only way he knows how to cope and headed straight to the local pub, patiently waiting outside for them to open at 09h00. However, his sorrows could not be sufficiently drowned as after his first pint the bar's beer pump broke and sent him on his way to find another.

By the time I got home my husband had arranged an extension on our Brussels home lease, held back some of the furniture and a few boxes in order that he and our cats would have a place to sleep. The next morning the removal truck left for the UK.

Many who read this may relate to just how such a traumatic event could turn one’s life upside down. I don’t know what I would have done had my husband not been so resourceful.

We have now moved into my new UK home (my son returned to Brussels via the Eurostar to cat-sit) – all the boxes are unpacked, furniture polished and carpets cleaned. This afternoon I drove back to Brussels to spend a few days with my cats, an event that will now occur on a regular basis.

My husband recons I should start reading my own articles, and perhaps write another based on my experience. Perhaps this occurrence is still too fresh for me to see the irony...

In the name of art

2007-08-16T13:21:00.001-04:00

In one week I’ve been to Germany, twice in fact, on both occasions on assignment, then I returned home to Belgium for one night and have since been to the UK, also twice - to buy a car and jump through the various legal hoops assigned to those seeking to buy property abroad.

Tomorrow I am again re-returning to England to collect my new car. In between all of this I’m trying to write a features article, pack boxes, find a new school for my daughter in England, send my son off to read Aeronautical Engineering at university, cancel debit orders, close accounts with utility companies who claim they’ve never supplied me, have my mail forwarded to my new address, as well as research three article all due in the middle of September.

Strangely, I’m only mildly panicked… perhaps the proverbial pawpaw is still to hit the fan.

Over breakfast the other day

2007-08-10T02:37:00.001-04:00

A waif-like figure swooned by me in the hotel’s reception area, briefly compelling me to consider what I was about to consume for breakfast. I decided to forego a plate of cooked food, settling instead for coffee and a side plate of small cakes of rocklike consistency – you know, the kind you’d give to a budgie to sharpen its beak. One of these cakes contained sultanas, reminiscent of large fat ticks one finds on African cattle.

Being of the Dark Continent myself, and somewhat dim-witted, I like to dunk biscuits into coffee. I was never allowed to do this as a kid and when caught would get a smack on the back of my head. Thus, with some trepidation, and when I thought no-one was looking, this is what I did. At which point a large chunk of cake dislodged itself and sank like a stone then clunked on the base of my cup. Experience has taught me not to go fishing after it with a spoon as this creates the concrete mixer effect. After spooning out the sultana that had subsequently bobbed to the surface I drained my cup and was rewarded with a soggy mass of cake lying at the bottom which I spooned out and consumed.

“Lesi sidingakalo ba nambitheba” a deep throated Zulu voice behind me made an observation to his companion that this must taste delicious.

When Africans encounter one another on a foreign continent it’s a little as I imagine it must be when two Masons recognise each other across a crowded room. We exchanged a knowing look and a moment later were locked in an African soul shake, agreeing that only another African could truly appreciate the joy it brings to find an unexpected gift at the end of cup. My Zulu friend cackled softly as though the day was perfect and he couldn’t think of any place he’d rather be.

Its chance encounters like this that adds colour and spice to life, buoying one’s spirit.

The luxury of sleep

2007-08-08T19:13:00.001-04:00

Driving to Germany this morning was tough going. It was only a two and a half hours point to point trip but when you're falling asleep at the wheel and your passenger is fast asleep it can become hazardous.

After a day of driving to other destinations within Germany and photographing stuff along the way I collapsed onto my hotel bed tonight weary to the bone. In fact I fell asleep whilst downloading photographs. The bite of my egg mayo sandwich was still resting in my mouth when I woke with a start 20 minutes later when my daughter immerged from the bathroom.

Now, at 2 a.m., I've tired of making animal shapes against the wall, using the moon as a spotlight. My daughter's deep breathing is a little irritating, probably because I envy how she can fall asleep so easily, or maybe I find it annoying as I need total silence before I can even consider sleep; that and the fact that I've always got so much going on my mind, the least of which is sleep.

Then I got the book out I'm reading at the moment and was just drifting off to sleep when my daughter sat bolt upright in the bed next to me and mumbled something about Marilyn Manson and then promptly collapsed back onto her pillow.

Now the itching has started. When I get really, really tired I have imaginary fleas crawling under my skin and in my hair and no matter what I do or how many showers I take or water I drink, they'll only leave after I've had a few hours sleep.

It's going to be a perilous journey home, no doubt undertaken with all the windows open and Black Sabbath blasting the blurry eyed insomnia out of my head.

Doing it in the nude

2007-08-06T20:05:00.001-04:00

There's something quite liberating in nudity. I couldn't sleep so I crept downstairs, butt-naked to come check my emails and work a little more on the article I'm writing about NYC, then watched a bit of telly with a fresh coffee. A bright light sparked to life in a dark corner of my mind and instantly I recalled with startling clarity that tomorrow is trash day and the truck rolls up at 06h00. Naturally I slipped on my son's size 12 trainers (abandoned at the back doors) and dragged our two trash-cans out onto the curb… still butt naked. I stood around for a while and wondered if any of my neighbours were peering at me through their curtains.

I think it's time that I keep record of all the things I've done in the nude, other than the obvious, I regularly iron in the nude, I sleep in the nude, once I even cooked in the nude but don't recommend frying bacon… once I even dived in the nude and I often write in the nude (my cats don't mind) and now I do the trash in the nude.

Something I've always wanted to do is drive a car naked. I'm leaving for Germany on a cool assignment on Wednesday and wonder what my editor's view would be if I included a sidebar promoting driving in the nude. I'd better give that some consideration.

My daughter's trampoline is outside, and I've always wanted to… no I better not, I could do myself an injury. (Sigh)

NYC

2007-08-03T17:02:00.000-04:00

Just got back from NYC where I did a helicopter flip over Manhattan and Lady Liberty, did the limo thing to a couple of hot spots, went to several jazz bars and a hip-hop church in Harlem, did time in the Bronx, tour of the designer stores in the garment district and returned with flu.

For the past couple of days I've stayed in my crumb littered bed, surrounded by cats, paperwork, tissues and empty coffee cups. My son reckons I look like an old age pensioner, somewhat wild of hair and glasses sitting askew. I'm writing an article about mobile phones and how to not be taken for a ride by service providers when travelling abroad, a feature for an inflight magazine and a hotel review.

Neither here or there

2007-08-03T15:47:00.000-04:00

This coming Tuesday I'll be familiarising myself with Dusseldorf's architecture - driving a VW Beetle cabriolet - the harbour district has some awesome buildings which appear as if they've been snatched from a Salvador Dali's masterpieces. And of course, being Germany, I suppose I'll need to critique several beer halls.

From Wednesday till Sunday I'll be in New York City; and in three and a half days need to cover chess players in Central Park, the Russian Tea Room, a groovy tea bar called Tavalon, jazz bars in Harlem, the Hip Hop Church in Harlem, a helicopter flip over the city, the Hudson River and Lady Liberty, an Excalibur limo drive through NYC and an interview with NYCs Mayor to get his take on the city going green.

When I return to Belgium I need to pack my spacious home into a truck and move to England. Pack my son off to University several hundred miles away and on my daughter's first day at her new school I'll be in Austria partaking (and writing about) a motor cycle rally.

I'm really getting to old for this. My camera bag back is already aching at the prospect of schlepping it around NYC. If you'd like to tag along and experience just one day in a travel writers life you're more than welcome… just remember, you're carrying the bag.

In another life

2007-08-03T15:42:00.000-04:00

One or two of my editors have picked up on the fact that I'm pretty dangerous. Others cringe when they hear of the latest disasters I've unleashed on the world. My son reckons I'm not a freelance writer, more of a mercenary. It's somewhat troubling when I consider my previous life, when I was an elegant designer doll -- a picture of executive perfection in Gucci, Prada, Tiffany, Balmain; colour co-ordinated from head to toe with matching bag, shoes and gun holster. I walked like a run-way model and was refinement personified.

Then it all changed.

At some point in my life I decided that I no longer wanted to spend 2 hours a day pampering and preening myself - enough of the expensive hair, acrylic nails and YSL cosmetics. I donated it all to charity, invested in 4 or 5 pairs of jeans and comfortable shoes (okay, trainers) and unknowingly proceeded to transform myself from a self-obsessed individual to one that obsesses about the world around me (and wears the same pair of jeans for two weeks).

I was probably the most organised person on the planet. Now I'm surrounding by strategic piles of paper and chaos; every other week I'd be at the hair-dressers, now I go see my husband's barber maybe twice a year. The old me's car used to look like it had just been driven off the showroom floor. I don't know when last my car has been washed now - 2005 or 2006?

My husband reckons that perhaps I've begun to see what really matters; personally I just don't give a shit about glamour any more. And you know what, I look (and feel) a hundred times better for it.

But what I cannot figure out is where my common sense has gone. Please bear in mind that I've found my way across the Atlantic Ocean by navigating the stars and sailed single handed from Cape Town to half up the African continent … why then, after 4 years, do I still need to use SatNav to find my way around my own town. Why am I the one that get's caught out with a flat tire wearing a crusty old a dressing gown? Why am I the one that brings down the whole shelf of canned food in the store? And please God tell me why am I the one that finds the only toilet that's door needs to be held shut with my foot?

I would love just once to rise from a dinner table without looking as if an extremely localised seismic event just occurred on my lap; get into a car and close the door without leaving half my coat outside, wear light-coloured trousers without discovering at the end of the day that I have at various times sat in chewing gum, ice cream, cough syrup and motor oil.

Why the chicken crossed the road

2007-08-03T15:37:00.001-04:00

It’s one of those rare sunny days in Belgium. The air is fresh and heavily scented with Jasmine.

Early this morning Rosie (one of my cat’s) and I took a stroll down to bakers for fresh croissants’ - my daughter loves them. On route I passed one of my elderly neighbours who stood on his sidewalk staring fixedly at something in the distance. I enquired if anything was amiss. He told that one of his laying hens had gone walk-about and asked that should I happen upon her would I mind bringing her back.

When I stepped out of the bakery, with Rosie dutifully waiting by the door, I spotted the little brown hen across the road, crouched beneath a hedge. She was dozing in a sun-beam. When I crouched down beside her she opened one beady eye and considered me for a moment, then puffed her feathers and settled back down again. Evidently I held no threat to her. I swiftly scooped her up under my arm and continued on my way.

I seldom consider other’s perception of me and it’s little wonder that a busload of blue rinsed tourists slowed down. Evidently I was an attraction. I could just imagine how the tour guide described me. “… and this is an example of the local colour; Bertem’s infamous Cat Lady… today with a chicken under her arm.” I showed my teeth at the numerous flash lights and stalked off down the road with Rosie at my heels.

My elderly neighbour nearly cried when I handed him his little hen (who had dozed off under my arm). He made an idyll threat about putting her on the Sunday lunch menu next time she ran off like that. She instantly perked up and coo’ed at him, then brightly announced her return to the other hens who all dashed across welcome her home… and possibly to hear of her tales of adventure.

Grilled tomatoes and blood clots

2007-08-03T15:36:00.001-04:00

I follow a very strict diet when I’m not on assignment - green salads, green olives, tomatoes and rice cakes. When I’m travelling I need to forego my Vegan diet for sake of ease and practicality (and because I’m fanatical about cleanliness and don’t feel comfortable with strangers handling raw food I’m to ingest) and eat only cooked vegetables and bread.

On a recent trip to England I spent a couple of days at a B&B at a picture postcard coastal resort. The hostess could not come to terms with the fact that some people chose not to eat products derived from animals and every morning she would present me with a full English fry-up breakfast. It was a song and dance repeated each morning. Perhaps she thought I’d have a change of heart overnight.

Each morning I would stare with private disappointment at the offering, followed by a withering look which asked how anyone could be so lacking in fundamental human decency. She’d scoop the plate up and stalk off the kitchen, then moments later she’d reappear with a plate of grey salad with watery cucumber and mushrooms that tasted of old newspaper. Each time I poked it with my knife, it recoiled as if I were tormenting it. But, not wanting to appear ungrateful I rearranged a few leaves (to give the appearance that I’d eaten some) and leave the rest.

On my last morning my hostess triumphantly presented me with a new offering. My jaw relaxed and I believe I mewed pitifully.

“I can’t eat that,” I told her quietly.

In a voice heavy with pain and years of irritation she responded. “If you don’t require a fried tomato for breakfast you only need to tell me.”

I thought it was a plate of blood clots.

London: Interview with a male sex worker

2007-08-03T15:33:00.001-04:00

“Why are male sex workers largely being ignored by the media?” I asked.

“Maybe because most of the people in the media make use of our services,” he smiled.

“But the television media, producers, politicians – they’re all alike," Sven continued. "Following their purported studies, they produce documentaries that only serve to make the fat cats fatter and assist politicians in keeping the masses in place. What benefit has prostitution or the escort industry derived for from these television shows? We’re just considered another group of misfits to look down upon by those in society that are insecure and emotionally impaired.”

“Tell me about your work and ethics”, I asked.

“I get a little peeved when I hear people referring to escorts as selling themselves. The only way I could sell myself would be into slavery. I’m not a commodity. I provide a service by offering my companionship, and sexual skills. As you use your skill to transcribe this interview into an article I use my body as the vehicle for delivering my service. I charge £350 to act as an event escort and £750 for the full house."

“I’m morally neutral about being a male sex worker. It’s how I’m used that gives it moral value. Paying for sex presents no ethical meaning. It’s not good nor is it bad, it’s merely a deed. My boundary is that I only have sex with a consenting adult. Be they male or female.”

“How do you cope with this lifestyle,” I asked.

“I’ve been doing this for so long now there is nothing to cope with. This is my life. In the beginning it was rough and I spiked -- I needed to do drugs to try and forget but then I got over it. I realized it wasn’t my soul I was selling, just a service. Everything started to go smoothly from that point and I stopped taking drugs.”

We spoke of his clientele and I enquired about his ethics when called upon by heterosexual male he knows to be in a relationship.

“Most of the people that make use of my services are married or attached men. Some are heterosexual and a few are homosexual. Some want excitement, while others need a secret escape from outside their bonds. Some are straight first timers wanting to release their sexual fantasies. But regardless of what you many think, these acts do not threaten their private relationship. I think if supports it.”

“What about morals?” I enquired.

“I cannot dictate the morals of the next man -– that’s a personal thing and the client needs to deal with that. Sometimes it's more about balancing their sexuality, as all they need is to be intimate with another man as a therapy, without necessarily having a gay lifestyle.

“I do not rape or seduce my clients; they find me through my adverts or via the internet. We speak on the phone and set up a mutually convenient date. It’s all very civilized. I don’t chase after them or hang about in bars, hoping to turn a few tricks. I don’t get young straight guys drunk and then lead them into sin; on the contrary I’m a professional businessman.”

“What range of sexual favors do your clients expect?”

All my female clients like my Tantra Yoni massage, others prefer oral sex and some want penetration, most want all three. My male clients get the same as the ladies, only I won’t let them do me."

We spoke of religion and Sven made a few poignant observations about extremists’ opinions of sex workers.

“Imagine how much more screwed up society would be if we all followed the doctrine whereby sex is only permissible within the confines of marriage. What of those people who are incapable of having such a relationship due to their personal circumstances? Would it be more acceptable for that person to exploit or hurt another when craving closeness and take them by force? Where are the morals in that? Surely it makes sense to go to a professional?”

One of the other travelers in my family

2007-08-03T15:23:00.000-04:00

My husband replaced his Reeboks, which melted on his last trip to India, with a pair of Nike’s, but being considerate of his fellow travellers decided not to wear them on his recent flight to Mumbai because, as he eloquently stated, “…they smell like an Indian lavatory in the mango season.”

His decision did have a certain element of danger to it though – one of grip. You see, Jonathan likes to leave things to the last possible nanosecond; last passenger calls are usually attached to his name. Grip, he explained to the attendant at the boarding gate, was the cause of his delay. To quote from his email: “Most of the world’s major airports have highly polished floors so rubber soles are a must for sprinting across the terminal to make last minute connections. This is where I came unstuck - my leather soled boots fail the grip anything. Any effort put into forward motion is rewarded with the biped’s equivalent of wheel spin.”

I warned him about packing his camera bag in with his checked-in luggage, but does he listen? You see India’s customs scan luggage as you leave the airport and his bulging suitcase attracted some attention. The security guard pointed to the monitor which outlined his camera bag containing several lenses that did in some small way bear a resemblance to a series of small hand grenades all neatly lined up. To quote again from his email: “I mimed someone taking pictures with a camera - he seemed pleased. Emboldened by his initial reaction, I went on to mime someone zooming a long lens in and out. In hindsight, this was a foolish thing to do given the similarity of this action to the much used hand gesture employed by Europeans to signify that someone is a wanker.” Quite how he managed to get through airport security without experiencing some quality time with a rubber glove I don’t know!

Jonathan’s biggest concern, he later told, was that security staff would actually open his case and see the firewall he had not declared. I wonder how he would have mimed that one.

To be British

2007-08-03T15:22:00.000-04:00

It saddens me to say that Americans are constitutionally incapable of getting a joke, and clearly wit is not as venerated a quality in America as it is in Britain. Its not that there aren’t Americans with an active sense of humour, just far fewer and when you encounter one it’s a little as I imagine it must be when two Masons recognise each other across a crowded room.

So you may understand how it pains me to have to explain irony in articles I write. An editor across the pond recently asked me to tell of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had whilst travelling/doing my job.

I started the article off by telling of an experience I recently had on an aeroplane to north Africa. I leaned over to get something out of my camera bag and just at that moment the person sitting in front of me threw his seat back into full recline, I found myself pinned helplessly in the crash position. It was only by clawing the leg of the man beside me that I managed to get myself freed. The editor asked that I elaborate further – he didn't get it.

Another scene the editor could not grasp happened on a flight to the Middle East where I knocked a soft drink onto the lap of a Rabbi sitting beside me. The flight attendant cleaned up the mess, mopped down the Rabbi, then brought me a replacement drink, which I instantly knocked onto the Rabbi again. Till today I don’t know how I managed to do that. I only recall extending my hand towards my fresh drink and watched helplessly as, like some plastic movie prop, it mercilessly swept the plastic cup from my tray onto his lap. The Rabbi looked at me with a stunned expression and voiced a curse that began with ‘oh’ and ended with ‘sake’ and in between words I’d never heard a man of the cloth utter. "What were the words in the middle," the editor asked.

I always seem to have disastrous encounters with public toilets. Like the liberating experience I had in a futuristic, automated toilet at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. After feeding it the required coinage, the door opened automatically and I walked into a newly disinfected wet floored toilet. Actually, the whole toilet is decontaminated and dosed with disinfectant following each use, leaving a wet seat. If I could read French I might have understood the sign that explained what I was about to experience. It told that I had only ten minutes to ‘go’, after which the entire cubicle, and everything in it, is doused in green disinfectant then hosed with clean water – which is what happened to me. Then to add further insult, the door automatically opened, exposing me, gasping and spluttering, jeans and knickers around my ankles, to all of Paris. I kid you not, the editor asked why my pants were around my ankles.

My closing paragraph told how much I ached to be graceful and how I would love just once in my life to rise from a dinner table without looking as if I have just experienced an extremely localised seismic event, get into a car and close the door without leaving ten inches of coat outside, wear light-coloured trousers without discovering at the end of the day that I have at various times sat in chewing gum, ice cream, cough syrup and motor oil. The editor asked me why I would sit in such things.

And I quote: “Please explain what these things that happened to you actually mean”, he had asked. “My readers won’t get it.” Needless to say I withdrew my article.

Okay, so maybe this is an extreme case and I should not brush all Americans with the same tar brush, so I won’t, but I’m seeing this trait more and more regularly. Recently I read an American glossy containing a brilliantly written article, penned by a British author, which was littered with the editors bracketed comments throughout, explaining the irony.

Soul City

2007-08-03T15:21:00.001-04:00

It should have been a dead give-away of the pleasing experiences which lay ahead when the fresh faced doubleganger of NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) enquired politely if he may sit in the seat beside me on a flight from Newark to Columbus, Ohio.

When I looked out of the passenger window to survey the city we were about to land in, I was half expecting a little shit-splat town in the midst’s of cornfields and was thus taken aback at finding a city of white-collar workers as opposed to farmers pushing ploughs. In the few days I have been here I have found the people, like my new in-flight friend Jeremy, to be hugely polite, always ready with a big smile. In fact, these folk so impressed me that I made a note of their mannerisms:

Everyone respects everyone and show due courtesy to those doing a job well. Columbian's are a courteous, well mannered people like the world once was. These folk are genuinely pleased when you are satisfied with your experience/their service. This courtesy has a contagious affect. Coming from a somewhat aggressive society myself I found the kindness extended to me somewhat startling - even when I took my press badge off.

A city is a city is a city - mostly its only the language spoken that differentiates them, but here in Columbus I have found that the city draws its soul from its community - a cultural and arty crowd working together to put the city, already ranked No. 3 "Top Cities of the Future" on the tourism map.

Columbus - I city to die for

2007-08-03T15:20:00.001-04:00

I've recently returned from a fabulous trip to Columbus, Ohio, where I had a rather terrifying experience. I wanted some great cityscape shots before dawn and asked the hotel manager to arrange this for me. At 4 a.m. I was frog marched up to the roof by a little stick of a man, then climbed the ladder to gain access to the steel girders skirting the perimeter of the roof. Let’s just get something clear right now… I don’t even like being this tall, I don't wear high-heels, so standing on flimsy trimmings tacked to the roof of a sky-scraper ,with a strong wind encouraging me to fly, and nothing but a sidewalk 42 floors below, I became somewhat anxious. In fact, I started crying for my mommy. But I suffered for my art, rigged up my tripod and took some amazing pictures; I only stopped shaking after I had my 'aaaaa opena', which a rotund and busty waitress in a Creole kitchen thought I was in desperate need of. I shot of bourbon never tasted so good.

Pee-proof plasma

2007-08-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

Whenever I go off on a press trip I return home to find my husband has acquired another electrical appliance. A designer coffee peculator, new desktop, DVD… this time it was a plasma wide screen television with a surround sound system thing (and bloody wires everywhere!).

So now we need to find a suitable table to stand the TV on (no holes in the walls please) with shelves for the SKY satellite box and the two DVD machines; but the table needs to be covered on the sides and back, preferably with glass doors.

It’s not that we don’t have a nice TV cabinet - we do - it’s just not pee-proof. You see we have nine cats one of which has taken to pee’ing on new electrical items. We’ve lost three toasters, two kettles, an iron, two SKY satellite boxes – one was two-days old – my laptop, my husband’s desktop, my daughter’s desktop, my son’s printer… you get the picture. The problem is, we never get to catch the fathom piddler at it in order to administer suitable discipline. So you may understand why I’m so anxious to find a water-proof cabinet.

After traipsing around several furniture stores in Brussels we found two viable options but could find no sales assistant and was told that the sales staff don’t work on Saturday’s (shops are closed on Sunday’s here). This Belgian logic makes sense – after all, life in this country is so hugely expensive that both husband and wife need to work and as such, only have Saturday mornings to do their shopping, so why not run the whole show on skeleton staff. After waiting around for about 15 minutes (the manager was outside having a smoke break) I took him to the items we wanted, but neither product was in stock and if ordered, would take a week or two for delivery. We went off to another store on the other side of town and guess what, they didn’t have stock either! The stress of trying to find a business that actually wants our money is just too high, so we returned to the first store and placed an order. I just hope it gets here in time.

And if you’re going to suggest I get rid of my cats, think again. They’re all rescue cats and are like my children. In fact they’re more like children than my own children are, although my kids don’t go around pee’ing on things. Well, okay, there was that one time when Penny-Lane did a bag of potatoes in the kitchen, but she was still a toddler so that doesn’t count.

Perhaps I should investigate the disposable nappy option.

Crushing camera bag

2007-08-03T15:15:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I’m getting up at the crack of dawn for my 5km power walk in the woods, then it’s a two-hour gym session, an errand I try to do five times a week. (All the people I know barely drink at all, never touch tobacco, watch their cholesterol as if it were HIV positive, jog across to Germany and back about twice a day - all which guilts me into exercising as often as I can.) At 10am I’m meeting a European rock band to shoot an album cover.

It’s at times like these (and whilst on press trips) that I wish I could magically produce a camera assistant from somewhere. Someone who can swap lenses and camera’s, load the digital card content onto my laptop, be the spotlight for dark room shots, feed me grapes, and most of all, carry the darn camera bag. It doesn’t matter how much weights I push in the gym, it always does my back in. And it’s not as if I can leave any of the lenses behind either, I need to lug them all along, like a wardrobe on my back.

A few months ago, whilst looking for tulips to photograph in Holland my camera bag caused me to over-balance and I stepped heavily onto a wobbly drain, did a series of graceless pirouettes, spun across the road, smacked face-first into the side of a barn and, after teetering theatrically for a moment, fell forward into a bush of something foul smelling.

Sometimes I don't know why I bother getting out of bed.

Weird people and zombie spit

2007-08-03T15:12:00.000-04:00

I may have mentioned before that life without the direction of my GPS is hard; I lose myself at the first turn. I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone looking for the toilet in a cinema, for instance, and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a self-locking door.

Recently, whilst on one of my dawn forest wanderings I happened upon what was evidently an extended family of... well, lets just say this family tree had no branches. They are an indeterminate number of individuals, who live in a seasonal collection of shanty homes in an area of perpetual wooded gloom. They gathered near a water-well and watched my approach. I asked for directions and was met by flummoxed, dead-end expression that you have to be fourteen years old to produce with conviction. For a fleeting moment I felt concerned for my personal safety then realised it was only their zombie no-one-home looks that unsettled me. They were ugly too and really dumb and looked like the ate squirrels.

I stood around awkwardly for a while then decided to re-explain were I needed to be, speaking a little slower than I did before. An old man with a toothpick resting on his tongue sauntered bowlegged out of a shed and directed the crowd who were looking at me open-mouthed to hop onto the back of the pick-up .

He walked right by me, his sharp beady eyes never dropping his gaze for a moment. He removed the toothpick from his mouth and spat at my feet; but it wasn’t even like spit. It was more like the sort of thing a praying mantis would regurgitate on to its forelimbs and rub on to its antennae. It was lime green with little streaks of red blood in it and, unless my eyes were playing tricks, two very small grey feathers protruding from either sides. He grinned at me and strode off, climbing up into his pick-up and sped off in a cloud of dust.

I wandered around for a little longer then spotted a church steeple which looked familiar; I was home an hour later.

A lot of things about Belgium have started to unsettle me which is perhaps a good thing because I’m spending this weekend in Kent, the garden of England, house-shopping!

English countryside

2007-08-03T15:10:00.000-04:00

You've heard me complain about Belgian drivers, Belgian customer services… okay so, I've got a lot to say about most things in life, but have I ever got onto my soap-box about the rules and regulations surrounding property acquisition in Belgium?

In short the Belgian government will only consider giving you up to one third of your annual take-home pay (after they’ve taken off 52% tax) towards a mortgage loan. That’s right – one third! Which should just about cover an out-house. Then on top of that they add between 15- to 25% tax to the asking price. Then there’s stamp duty and solicitor’s fees... No matter how closely you cross your legs, you’re gonna get screwed – and you know how tight I am with money.

This past weekend I took a drive down to France and crossed over to the UK via the Channel Tunnel and headed to a very pretty area in Kent (the garden of England) to do some house-shopping. Soon I started losing the will to live after meeting numerous limp-wristed estate agents who all insisted on showing me totally unsuitable properties, even though they knew what I was looking for - perhaps they though I was some pleb and hoped to palm off a dud house. Then I met Emily from Your-Move: a tall, buxom lass with spirit and charisma who clearly enjoyed her job. Within half an hour she’d arranged to take me around to a view a few properties that were right on spec.

It was the third property I fell in love with - a substantial home in a small Kent parish which epitomised everything an English village should be, complete with an ancient smoke filled pub, a post office, a fish and chips shop, a village square, thatched cottages, an ancient church dating back to the 11th century, and a village vicar. I’d found exactly what I was hoping for and put in an offer which was subsequently accepted. So, once all the paperwork is out of the way, in about six to eight weeks I’ll be relocating to England.

I’ll need to keep an apartment in Belgium as I foresee returning on business regularly. But for now, I’ve had enough of the bureaucratic bull-shite. However, this does not preclude me telling you about customer serive in the UK.

Sex for sale, but at what cost

2007-08-03T15:09:00.000-04:00

Amsterdam: Nowhere else on earth will you find so many beautiful, sparsely dressed women, of all ethnicities, shapes and sizes (as well as the odd male and transsexual), who blatantly display their wares from behind shop windows, offering sex for money.

The Dutch are known for their practicality, open-mindedness and business sense and when this is combined with today's lax society, it culminates into a culture that attracts thrill-seeking tourists thirsting after commercialized sex and soft drugs. From massage parlours to window prostitutes, brothels to ‘fruit performers’, live sex shows to ‘smart shops’ who openly trade in marijuana, the red light district of Amsterdam has it all.

Since being labelled a legal profession in 1988, the Dutch have installed a number of support mechanisms to maintain the health and social responsibility of their prostitutes who undergo mandatory AIDS testing every three months. Brothels and sex clubs are also regularly inspected. So, what has changed? How safe is the sex on sale?

Mariska Majoor, a former window prostitute, and founder of the Amsterdam based Prostitute Information Centre, revealed some concerns to me recently.

“Brothels have to conform to the same rules which apply to any business. The government is hoping to control prostitution and stop the exploitation of minors and illegal immigrants. As prostitution is now officially labeled freelance work, which tax officials have taken a keen interested in, prostitutes are recognized as ‘employed’ and as such can apply for bank loans. However, none have been successful in their loan applications.”

The rules the government have imposed are considered ladened with self interest.

“The rules and regulations are only beneficial to the Government, like the taxes we pay. Surely we should also derive some form of benefit from this," she said.

It seems that all these working girls have accomplished is swap one pimp for another.

New world dawning

2007-08-03T15:05:00.000-04:00

Television news bombards us with images of destruction, famine, disease, and war. It’s constant and unrelenting. No wonder we despair at the future mankind is forging for itself, one filled with hopelessness and egotistical world leaders armed with nuclear bombs.

However, what television news does not show, is a trend in the citizens of the world who chose to no longer wait for governments to deliver of their empty promises and instead take command of what is in their immediate control, teaching other like-minded individuals by example.

As a reporter I travel to many developing nations, those with just emerging markets, and have seen this thread as a constant in all of them.

In poverty stricken Africa I met a Ugandan businessman who formed Rwenzori Coffee Company and empowered his farmers by teaching them how to tend to their plants and negotiate good market prices. Recently I met a group of Malawian coffee growers who were facing the near collapse of the industry and banded together to form the Mzuzu Coffee Company - now one of the most sought after coffee exporters in Africa. It only takes one person with foresight, a person who has lost faith in government policy and decides to take control of his own future, enhancing his community and benefiting everyone surrounding him. And in Sri Lanka I met a farmer who ploughs back all his profits into the community by buildings houses, schools, day-care facilities and clinics.

Last night I met another such man – a soft-spoken, unassuming fellow who saved more than 1,200 refugees from a bloody thirsty militia during the Rwandan genocide by turning his hotel into a sanctuary. He rationed food and swimming pool water (all services had been cut, including telephones and electricity) and without a weapon, single handedly defended his ‘guests’ by bribing generals, using his charm, business savvy and diplomacy. I am of course speaking of Paul Rusesabagina of Hotel Rwanda Fame, the movie which received numerous Oscar nominations.

People like Mr. Paul truly humble me and it gladdens my heart to see some hope for future generations.

Gun control laws

2007-08-03T15:04:00.000-04:00

I'm researching an article about gun control and made the following harrowing discoveries... perhaps there is someone out there that would find this of interest.

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20-million dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million Armenians were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13-million people were exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20-million political dissidents, were rounded up and exterminated.
Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, 1-million people were rounded up and exterminated.

That’s 56-million people in the 20^th.

It's now been 12-months since gun owners in Australia were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500-million dollars.

The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent; assaults are up 8.6 percent; armed robberies are up 44 percent.

But that's just one country - in recent years South Africa had its gun owners hand their weapons over to the state - and now South Africa has the highest gun crime rate in the world.

You won't see this data on the American evening news or hear President Bush, Governors or other politicians disseminating this information.

Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.

So the next time someone speaks in favour of gun control, please remind them of this history lesson.

Reviewing a Porsche & covering the Monaco Grand Prix

2007-08-03T15:02:00.000-04:00

Next week I’m driving to Stuttgart in Germany where I’ll be collecting a Porsche Boxster. From there I continue onto Lugano in Switzerland and then on to Monaco, where I’m covering the Monaco Grand Prix. It is one of the most outlandish, gaudy, politically incorrect, un-green and boorish settings on the calendar and apparently it's marvelous.

But I’m having a hard time getting excited about it. The trip there will be awesome – the scenery is spectacular but Monaco, Monaco - where aristocrats play the roulette tables, tax dodging millionaires throwing over-the-top parties on their super-yacht, newly lipo’d and botoxed super-models mooching around. I don’t know if I can cope with such pretentiousness. Then there’s all the testosterone in the pits with the self obsessed racing drivers.

Why is this still happening, Grand Prix’s I mean, in this day and age. I can think of a few African countries whose GDP is but a fraction of what one Grand Prix rakes in.

But I’m shooting my mouth off. I may still eat my words.

I have a job to do and God, it’s an awesome job. It does have it’s down sides though – like living in a $10,000 hotel room and walking around in the race pits and being seen (with a 70kg camera bag strapped to my back), trying to look impressed with the world in general and drinking Dom Pérignon.

I need a camera assistant – anyone offers?

A mindless wandering

2007-08-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

I’m not an outdoors kind of person. And no matter how much I protest, these seem to be the kinds of assignments editors are hell-bent on sending me on.

Camping for instance, I’ve done once in my life. Okay, twice if you count the time when I was five and my late-father put up a tent in the back yard then told me I could not come back into the house because I’ll get shot if I startled him or my mother. You see, back in the then wilds of Africa, my parents slept with a shot-gun on either side of the bed. Thandi, our house-keeper's daughter, and I lay whimpering all night listening to the bush-sounds. Our shrieks of terror did manage to frighten off a large animal that came sniffing around the tent in the quiet black hours just before dawn. Later our tracker told us it was a buffalo - one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.

The other time was in Mozambique when my then young son, Ashley, (turning 19 in a few days, whilst I’m in Monaco) and I were travelling to Malawi. I was woken by an unfamiliar sound and instinctively sat up into a spider the diameter of a saucer, dangling off the ceiling of our two-man tent. I screamed and brought my hands up to shield my face from the monstrous arachnid, then saw three luminous green slugs on the back of my hand. I began clambering out of my sleeping bag when I saw the faces of wild beast staring at us through the tent’s window flaps. Ashley and I were hysterical at this point and couldn't get out of the tent fast enough. When we settled down to a panic, I slowly became aware that there were people standing around us... and that I was butt naked.

I find the woods unnerving. The air always seems thicker in there, more stifling, the noise different. Some people go into the woods and never come out again, which is what nearly happened last week, when a local (American) friend and I went for our early morning constitutional and headed off into the surrounding farmlands.

“I have a very good sense of direction,” said Joy. “I can find my way around without a map,” which was rather comforting to know as I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper packet without a GPS.

We were so busy talking that we didn’t notice the direction we had taken and before we knew it, we were deep in a forest, with no idea of how to get out. We walked this way, then that way, over a fence and through jungle-like thickets. I had run out of Coke-Lite, I needed to pee and panic was frantically nipping at my heels. Then the flies found us. Bored with their aromatic cow pats they homed in on us (evidently the smell of fear is more appealing). If a fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging it.

Joy was somewhat bemused at me lost inside my own little buzzing cloud of woe, waving at my head in an increasingly hopeless and desultory manner, blowing constantly out of my mouth and nose, shaking my head in a kind of furious dementia, occasionally slapping myself with startling violence.

“Found it!” Joy announced. She had jogged on ahead to establish our whereabouts. I stumbled out of the bush near my home in the delirious stagger of someone wandering in off the desert in an adventure movie, sweat-streaked, hair akin to wind-blown pubis, mumbling uncharitable thoughts, and frothing little nose rings of Coke-Lite.

I joined the gym that very day. No more wandering in the woods for me, even those in my back yard.

Penis envy and other fast cars

2007-08-03T14:58:00.000-04:00

I'm not into material things (other than a good camera lense) and expensive sports cars possibly tops that list. However, covering the Monaco Grand Prix required a little pizzazz, or so I told myself. Hob-nobbing with the good and excessively wealthy required that I at least rock up in a decent set of wheels. This is what I should have stressed to the Porsche factory in Stuttgart where I collected my Porsche Boxster Tiptronic, maybe this would have urged them to provide me instead with a new 911 - you see the maid’s in

Monaco

drive Boxster’s! I was overshadowed by Lamborghini’s and Aston Martin’s, Ferrari’s… in fact, I felt someone intimidated.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need you to picture the scene.

I drove through Germany in a rather stately new Audi to pick up my loaner. Seat warmers, BBC radio, cruise control set to 180 km/h (and feeling like 60 km/h), roomy, loads of leg room. It’s a big heavy car that brings a certain message with it, one that says I’ve arrived.

I looked at the mid-engined Porsche in wonder and realised the luggage space area at the rear was perhaps big enough for my camera equipment and the luggage space in the front, under the hood, was big enough for my make-up bag. After repacking I lowered myself into the cramped car and assumed a lounging position (instant back-ache), my backside but a few inches off the ground. I prodded various buttons and eventually find the one that let the roof down. I slowly eased out of the main gates and tentatively touched the accelerator onto the motorway and an instant later I shot off at such a speed that my head become a howling sphere at the end of a whip-like stalk.

It takes a special kind of vigilance to make your way across a continent on which people voluntary ingest tongues, kidneys, horsemeat, frogs’ legs, intestines, sausages made of congealed blood, and the brains of little cows. Shared middle lane for overtaking is another such wonder that no-one told me about! I’d zip into a middle lane and was genuinely astounded that a 40-ton truck bearing down on me like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, felt he had right of way. I would veer out of the way at the last possible instant and then hang out of the window shouting abuse at the passing driver, before being shrieked back to the next crisis by my passenger.

That aside, my top cruising speed between my accommodations and the Monaco Grand Prix was around 220 km/h through tunnels and along the southern coast of Italy and the French Rivera. The acceleration of the Boxster is astounding, and the sound it emits is that of one very angry beast. What a rush!

I was planning on having a little maintenance work done on myself later this year – a lift here, a tuck there, but now I’m seriously considering doing the midlife crisis thing. But there again, that new camera lens I have my eye on needs a bigger car, something like the 911 perhaps. I’ll need to have a word with my man at Porsche about another loaner.

And the Grand Prix? Apart from being the most expensive F1 motoring event in the world, you’ll just have to wait and read the article I’m writing for Automotive Traveler.

Partially dressed musicians and a flash slave

2007-08-03T14:54:00.000-04:00

I met two immensely desirable men last night; one was the front-man for Wednesday-13, an American glam-rock outfit and the other Jyrki, front-man for Finnish dark-rockers, The 69 Eyes.

Jyrki, well rehearsed in dealing with the press, dutifully answered all the questions my daughter and I put together in the car as we raced across to Antwerp; and despite the message he puts across in his music he’s a stand-up gentleman.

My daughter knows what’s happening in the rock music world; I on the other hand know the opera and the classics. On route to the interview, she briefs me about the artist, telling me what fans want to know (and no Penny-Lane, that does not include where do you buy your underwear!).

Wednesday is luscious and thankfully he hadn’t dressed for stage yet. Well okay, he hadn’t put on all his make-up yet. Clearly he had not been informed of our appointment and was a wise-ass throughout the interview, sidestepping just about every question I put to him. What did not help either was the fact that his whole posse was present and he insisted on wearing his sunglasses. I need to see eyes – you can read a lot from the eyes.

Last year this time I was interviewing Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and here I am trying to transcribe interview notes with a man who wears eyeliner (badly) and who clearly did not want to be interviewed. Hopefully Rolling Stone will understand.

And when I tried to photograph them on stage I couldn’t get my flash to work! In the dark I could not see that some person of vision in my household had switch my Slave button to off, reducing me to using the Canon’s built in flash. Nonetheless, my subjects were delicious and look almost edible.
I wonder if Wednesday would let me drink his bath water.

Munich, beyond the museums

2007-08-03T14:50:00.000-04:00

I'll be in Munich tomorrow (eight blasted hours of driving) and last night did a little last minute research as to the places I need to see, experience and photograph (and no Max, this does not include erotic nightclubs). I'm slumming it for two nights at a superb 5-star hotel in the city centre and then heading to an equally gracious boutique hotel on the outskirts for my third night.

Other than old buildings and a thousand museums I cannot find a compelling enough hook to coax people to board a plane and fly thousands of miles to visit the city (as you may have guessed this is a commission for an international airline's in-flight magazine). I can see it now, panic begins to seep in, snapping at my heels as I frantically zoom around the city in search of something remotely interesting to photograph.

The last time I was given a guided city tour the only places I saw were museums. Even though the management of these establishments allow me to photograph stuff most magazine prefer not to print photos of art (copyright laws etc.) so I end up photographing a room full of dead people's things that are on display, or uninspiring shots of the museums lobby.

Frankly, visitors to the city, armed with sufficient brochures and guidebooks, can figure it out for themselves and don't need me guiding them. My job is to tell about a destination's interesting side and find that something guidebooks don't tell you. So, drawing from this experience, I explained exactly what I didn't want to see to the tourism authorities... there's been an ominous silence.

Not surprisingly the best places to find a good yarn are in the pubs, and this being the Oktoberfest capital, I'm certain I'll not struggle to find any suitabel subjects as they're the one's usually propping up the bar.

When I first started hanging around bars in foreign cities I could not understand why the management eyed me suspiciously, especially when I approached old timers and engaged them in conversation. Of course, I have now learnt to let the bar tender know that I'm press, and that I'm not cruising for a customer.

In Belgium I met an old man who was certain he was the reincarnation of Adolphe Sax - the fellow who invented the Saxophone. On the Isle of Man I met an old chap who spoke with the spirits.

Wonder what interesting character I'll be meeting on this trip?

Munich, the return

2007-08-03T14:47:00.000-04:00

I returned from Munich a day earlier than expected. If you're not looking at museums or churches, there's not much else to do, and with no festivals happening at the time of my visit, reduces the things to see still further. The tourist attractions close to my hotel in the city centre were all visited on the afternoon I arrived. This caused the representative from the tourism office much distress as there was nothing much left to show me.

I asked to be taken to a specialist clothing store and was told the type I was looking for did not exist in Munich. I asked to be taken to a beer garden where I could photograph the cliched German barmaid carrying a dozen beers and was told they would not pose for pictures, I asked to be taken to where the rowers were practising and was told there were none, regardless of the international rowing championship being held in Munich in a few months. After being stone walled on a few more requests we parted company and I went about sourcing my requirements on my own. I made a silent promise to never use a guide again. I cannot help but wonder if Tourism authorities realise the impact such off-handed and unprofessional guides like this could have on their city.

The saving grace on both nights I spent in the city were the two superb hotels I stayed at - the Konigshof Hotel and the Hotel Insel Muhle.

Driving on the German autobahns is such a treat, I wish highways around the world had this no speed limit policy. There is something satisfying about flying past a police cruiser doing 120 miles per hour... and being in the right.

I have just uploaded the photographs I took and am near done with the article. Tomorrow and Tuesday I'll spend researching my next assignment in the Moseline region which is where I'll be at on Thursday and Friday.

Life in the hood

2007-08-03T14:42:00.000-04:00

I took a walk to my village bakery this morning, in search of a couple of croissants. On route I passed one of my elderly neighbors stooped over a freshly dug mount of earth, poking at it with his cane. Numerous clucking hens gathered at his feet, scratching at the soil, ferreting for worms and grubs. One let out of whooping squawk and attacked something only she could see in the dirt, which caused the other hens to rush across in excited anticipation. Standing aside, regally surveying his kingdom was the blasted Rooster that insists sunrise is at 3am each day and whose announcement was immediately followed by a hundred baying dogs telling him to get back to bed.

A little further down the road I strolled past a row of uniform semi-detached double-storey stone cottages. The date inscribed above the main archway told they had been built in 1820. Faded red doors and peeling shutters closed off any views from the curb. I wondered after the interior of the faceless buildings and imagined dank and oppressively gloomy rooms, filled with ghostly memories. I could not recall ever seeing any activity at these properties and decided they were probably vacant. Still pondering over this, the whir of an electric motor sounded, the peeling shuttered garage door encased in the archway grinded and shuddered into life. It slowly lifted revealing an immense cobbled courtyard with a bronze four-tier fountain in the centre. The quiet within allowed the light trickle of water to resound off the high walls. Stained glass windows, depicting biblical scenes, overlooked the courtyard on three sides. Several stable doors stood open, revealing the rooms beyond. The door that caught my gaze I presumed was the entrance hall. It had a crystal chandelier of such immense proportions it extended way beyond the door frame. Behind the chandelier was an ornately carved grand staircase which divided on the landing, beneath a stained glass image of ‘Madonna and Child’, then spiraled in opposite directions to the floor above. The roof above the staircase was a massive dome constructed of elaborate wrought iron and glass, illuminating the sumptuous room below.

An ancient tractor came into view and stuttered across the courtyard towards the exit then passed me. The old man at the wheel tipped his hat at me and proceeded down the road aided by a series of small explosions. The garage door jumped and wobbled back down, closing off the secret world that lay beyond.

And to think my job takes me around the world to find interesting places to write about!

I quietly contemplated the unconventional and somewhat secretive lives of my eccentric neighbours and started thinking how transparent we foreigners must appear to them. I’ve lived in this street for four years and I’m ashamed to say that I don’t even know who my neighbors are; perhaps its time I remedy this.

Germany, take three

2007-08-03T14:38:00.000-04:00

Whilst goose-stepping around Traben-Trarbach with an utterly charming and elderly guide (with a rudimentary knowledge of English) we happened upon a little square with some historical significance. Fritz halted the party under a chestnut tree and proceeded explaining something when my eye was caught by a rotund little man advancing upon us. He held a tray with 5 wine glasses (the guide’s wife, Gisela, had joined us) and promptly proceeded handing drinks around. We spoke in numerous tongues about what I was doing there, who I was writing for... yackity, yackity, yack. My glass was refreshed and we yacked some more about restaurant business and Riesling wine.

It was at his restuarant my daughter, Penny-Lane, and I dined later that night.

The owner, Richard, promised an evening of local specialities which initially caused some anxiety when observing a fellow diner stabbing at something on his plate resembling boiled liver.

This was when I discovered two additional irritations I should add to my ever-increasing list of dislikes, you see when I see something standing askew or out of place my nerves cannot bear and I cannot focus until its been rectified. Last night it was the loud ticking of a clock and a heavy breather.

In between courses I mooched around the restaurant straightening all their picture frames, and when no one was looking I stopped the pendulum of the loud ticking clock and tried to ignore the breathing noises of the little pug-like man at the adjoining table. Eventually I became so distressed I asked if he needed a tissue to blow his nose. Evidently he took this as an invitation to converse and spent a good 20 minutes telling me about his grand home in North Carolina, his fabulous job, his three ex wives and how much he earns.

The food was thankfully very good. Desert though was a shock to the senses, a shock to the senses and had my eyes bulging; for a moment I thought I’d suck my face in. Ice cream, frothy heated through egg yolk, sugar, two shots of schnapps and some Riesling all poured into a tall glass. No wonder I was left gasping.

After two prearranged photo-shoots I drove home to the soothing sounds of Black Sabbath and Korn.

Saturday and Sunday I’ll write a couple of articles about this journey. Monday I’m researching my next destination and Tuesday I’m off to Italy. My contact there just called to tell me the front man for Simply Red owns a house on the island I'll be visiting.

A Tuscan dream

2007-08-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

There is an island off the Italian coast whose immense riches were known to the Mediterranean civilisations before Rome was discovered, where vineyards and chestnut plantations date back to the 14^th century. The Isle of Elba has tales which began when the story of mankind was still part legend, where historical events are evidenced by villages that even now cling to cliff tops, where castles and watch-towers stand in defence of the islands inhabitants from pirates of the past.

On Elba you’ll find traditional sun-leathered fishermen snatching a living from the waves, where ancient village squares lead off into echoing alleyways where washing is hung like banners between balconies, where shopkeepers gossip in doorways and children play; and everywhere there is the scent of lemon, honeysuckle and pine. Life has a stately lack of haste here, a different dimension even; a refuge from the 21^st century discovered by numerous celebrity island dwellers like Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, Sir Richard Branson, football legend Marco Van Basten and international best-selling author, Giorgio Faletti.

“Here man discovers the scent of colours, a new rhythm of life, where time and space belongs to your passions,” as local relic Carlo Eugeni put it. “Look,” he said, waving a hand towards a shifting mirror of water, “the fruit and flowers, she paints the landscape. This is why Elba she attracts people like you and me, the Rockefellers, the Duchess of Kent, David Niven, Winston Churchill and Pierre Balmain. The famous supermodel Consuela Chrispy, Errol Flynn, Princess Margaret – they all used to visit here regularly. And not forgetting our own Italian families of influence like the Agnelli’s of Fiat and the Berlusconi family.” He paused for reflection, listening to the seductive hush and suck of the shimmering expanse of water. “I visited Elba as a young man and I’ve never left.”

2007 thus far

2007-08-03T14:29:00.000-04:00

January I mostly lay low, doing research for upcoming assignments. Within a few days I broke my one and only New Year's resolution of less work more play and was back to grafting 18+ hours a day.

Since then I've spent a week in Sri Lanka on the Tea Trails and have written a couple of article for tea industry publications. I've spent a weekend in Berlin, Germany and come away with a different outlook on life and wrote two features about my findings there.

I'm currently researching the Isle of Elba in Italy and the Monaco Grand Prix which I will be attending later this year.

I have three featured and one column due and which I need to get done in the next couple of weeks; then I can spend some time doing some serious research into my most immendiate projects - Kenya and Japan; and learn to play golf (golfing forms part of the Kenya assignment).

Then somewhere in between I need to research two rock bands I'm interviewing in April (Trivium, 69 Eyes and Wednesday 13).

Anybody figured out how to extend a day yet?

My hate list is growing, and my cynicism with it

2007-08-03T14:02:00.000-04:00

I don’t do nice, I don’t do

Last year I arranged a trip to a distant land and dealt with a tourism official who did as little as humanly possible. She found a reason why she could not action any of the requests I put forward, which of course I ended up doing. The cumulative result being that I got published in numerous magazines and gave her country great exposure.

I suppose I should be grateful really - grateful to Bill Gates and Microsoft… and email. If email had not existed I’m certain I’d be in imprison for assault, murder even.

This is why I avoid human contact - I don’t even know who my neighbours are (and I’ve been living in Belgium for four years). I only come out of my cave when I need to travel, and then I put on a menacing snarl I’ve cultivating for years. It's meant to discourage other passengers from engaging me in idle conversation.

My nineteen-year old son stared at me in disbelief the other day, saying he wished I could see myself.

“You look like a mad professor,” he said. “Wild hair, toothpick resting on your tongue, skew glasses (I sat on them), a cat perched on the back of your chair, empty coffee cups strewn around, piles of papers, magazines and newspapers surrounding you.”

“Don’t care,” I announced. “Got stuff to do.”

I waved an empty coffee.

Ten days ago a client in the US express mailed me a parcel (jewellery she needed photographing). Yesterday, six days after it arrived in Brussels, the Customs & Excise office contacted me. They wanted to know exactly what the parcel contained as they needed to extract 21% tax from me. It is considered an import into the EU and as such is subject to every tax known to mankind (even if it's going back in a few days). The pond life at the customs and excise office advised that even if its marked a gift I have to pay 21% of the value declared on the parcel. There’s no fighting it. I could stand on my head and whistle God Save the Queen through my ass, it still needs to be paid.

I asked the official why they had taken so long to contact me, seeing that the parcel's been in Belgium for nearly a week.

“We’ve been busy,” was his response.

Every time I deal with EU bureaucracy I get so upset that even my pee gets into a froth!

But wait, the best is still coming. I asked how much longer I needed to wait before receiving the parcel and was told that it may be another week still.

“You’re shitting me! Is this not an express mail item?” I shouted, both feet leaving the ground at once. “Continents drift faster that this!”

“Oh no mademoiselle, I not the shitting,” Frenchy responded.

I’ll now take comfort in a long G&T and in the knowledge that client service is the same the world over and is indeed an ass.

Berlin, and other wild things in the dark

2007-08-03T13:51:00.000-04:00

Some things in life truly amaze me - like the peace one finds in observing a sitting cat, the many shades of green on nature's palette and the driving laws in Belgium. But none could equal Berlin's decadent night life I recently discovered. I sometimes still sit upright in bed at 3am recalling it vividly.

In hindsight I feel privileged to have met the people I did. I’ve come away feeling secure about my eccentricities and personal hang-ups, like cleanliness and perfection, and not touching stuff and not consuming products derived from animals, and how the smell of centipedes can instantly evoke nausea in me.

There are so many pressures in society which, if you give it a moment’s thought, all start in the crib. Pressure to walk, potty train, read, write, be polite, study, study more, learn to drive, university, lucrative employment, work pressures, mortgage. It’s no wonder most of us are taking some form of medication to suppress these anxieties; but even then some of us crack. The individuals I encountered in Berlin have found an alternative therapy.

It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but if that’s what some folk prefer, so be it. In fact, I’d rather have that going on behind closed doors and then deal with a pleasant person the following day, as opposed the likes of the anally insipid twat I dealt with at Customs & Excise recently.

If fact, I’m going to suggest that they consider going to Berlin for their next departmental pow-wow.

Rule of the road

2007-08-03T13:43:00.000-04:00

My mechanic collected my car recently for its annual service. However he had not reached the bottom of the road before being rear ended by a lady who was distracted by her two toddlers standing on the back seat. In Belgium parents do this, yet feel compelled to have numerous bumper stickers announcing there to be a child on board, suggesting that everyone else should take care.

When he called with the news I immediately knew who it was that hit my car as just the day before this lady (with the obligatory two kids standing on the back seat) had reversed out of her driveway - without looking, directly into the path of an oncoming truck. In Belgium it's considered uncouth to hoot, instead everyone smiles at everyone else. This lady even gave us a stately wave.

One of the many Belgian driving laws I find quite terrifying is the one which compels a driver to always give way to the right. As such vehicles from side streets can lunge directly into your path, as they have the right of way. In fact, these same suicidal drivers (usually with a couple of kids standing on the back seat) don't even pause or look to see if it’s safe to enter the intersection - they just presume you'll stop.

I came across this article in the local press recently, here is a translation:

Belgium, renowned for its beers and beer drinkers, is shunning the national beverage after a clampdown on drunk driving. National consumption and production slumped as tough drunk-driving laws introduced a year ago began to bite. A slowdown in beer drinking, which averaged 188 pints a person last year, fuelled an estimated 5 percent drop in production. With one of the worst records in Europe for car accidents, Belgium introduced spot fines of $155 a year ago for drivers with a blood alcohol level of more than 0.5 milligrams per litre. The previous limit was 0.8 milligrams.

As drinking is a Belgian's national pastime I'm certain this law only applies to tourists. Put another way, I've never heard of a local being prosecuted.

Today I'm taking studio shots of some gorgeous jewellery and need to get cracking, but I'll leave you with this thought... driver's licences only became compulsory in Belgium in 1975.

I think its time to move… Germany is rather nice. In fact, I’m going on another trip there soon and doing the Mosel Wine Route in a Messerschmitt bubble car!

Why I prefer to travel

2007-08-03T13:40:00.000-04:00

I watched an old lady, whose car was parked beside the road, place a few parcels in her boot. She looked at the traffic she would need to reverse into and shook her head in dismay. We exchanged smiles. I was a participant in the stationary traffic jam and had come to a stop directly behind her, effectively blocking her in, and recall wondering if the vehicle behind me would be kind and allow her to reverse out of her parking bay into the road.

Her reverse lights came on and she rolled back, and she kept on rolling. I could not move forward or back and she was heading directly at me, picking up speed. I hooted but only managed to attract the attention of the driver in front of me. She hit me with such force that my sunglasses flew off my face.

“What is this!” the she shouted in French, stepping out of her car. “Where did you come from,” she demanded, striding towards me.

“I’ve been here for about 10 minutes waiting for this traffic to move,” I stated. “I watched you climb into your car.”

“Oh no!” she insisted. “You were not there when I reversed. Her raised voice and wild gesticulations managed to draw a small audience. “This is not my fault, you drove into me,” she professed. I don't know quite how she figured that one out; which was perhaps the point point at which she realised she may need to take responsibility for this incident – the sheer number of witnesses outweighed her argument. Her initial accusing mannerchanged to one offering large sums of cash to “fix whatever was broken” and not involve insurance companies. Yeah right lady, dream on.

This is the third accident in less than a year – on all three occasions people drove into me. Front driver's side fender, boot, driver’s door. It's time to work on the other side of the car now.

I’m starting to believe those suspicions about green cars being unlucky.

All in a day's work

2007-08-03T13:35:00.001-04:00

Over the past few days I’ve interviewed and written an article about a Congolese entrepreneur for an African magazine and taken some advertising photos of designer jewellery.

For the remainder of this week (and weekend) I need to rework two articles about South Africa for an editor in the US; schedule an appointment with the Royal Navy’s Admiralty Interview Board as well as a Flight Aptitude Test for my son; research and schedule appointments with local tourism offices (I am researching a local Guide Book); take my car to the panel shop, again; research and photographs the café society in Brussels for a feature in a US magazine; celebrate my ninth wedding anniversary (well, I think its nine); research and write an article about the Moselle wine region in Germany for a British magazine, next week I’ll be travelling there to photograph it.

Variety, for sure. Excitement, you bet. Family life, huh?

Customer services

2007-08-03T13:30:00.001-04:00

I have a mean streak running through my veins when it comes to money, I've even been likened to being as tight as a crab's arse, so don't try to rip me off! Which is what I should have said when I was handed my check for coffee.

Picture the scene: I went into Brussels city centre to photograph the 'cafe society' for a US coffee journal I'm writing for. This of coures requires that I order some coffee (to photograph) and eventually consume.

At the first cafe the waiter brings me a luke-warm espresso, even though I asked for a latte. I found this mildly irritating not least because if you're paying three euros for a cup of coffee you would at least expect it in a cup, not a thimble! As God is my witness, I took it down in one swig!

I stalked off in search of a different setting and a latte and headed towards the Grand Platz. My excitement was short lived when I saw my latter approach as it too was luke warm. But management felt this offering deserved a price tag of five euros. Five Euros, I kid you not! These are the kinds of prices you pay in the tourist trap areas!

My favourite coffee shop in the whole world is in Antwerp where I've become a regular. Coffee is a religion here you see and you're handed a little quartet of coffee, cream, chocolate and if the little chap who runs the place isn't around, my waiter substitutes these ingredients with a little sliver of apple pie and skimmed milk. He understands that I am doomed to a life of eternal dieting. A trip to this little coffee mecca (CafeNation in Hoplandstraat) is worth every mile of forty five I need to travel to get there.

In fact I am taking my teenage daughter there tomorrow night (she loves watching them make hot chocolate = a slab of chocolate placed in a large cup and filled with steaming hot milk), before I interview touring rock bands 69 Eyes and Wednesday 13. Such devine coffee... such devine musicians.

On reflection...

2007-08-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

2006 has left me exhausted. Thus far I've visited twenty international destinations, some more than once! So forgive my reluctance to move off the sofa for a few days - unless it's to switch the kettle on.

Next week I plan to complete a personal narrative of my recent travels to Malawi; then I'm shooting an album cover for a European rock band. My sofa time will be spent researching my next three destination - Sri Lanka, Japan and Kenya.

Over Christmas and New Year my mum-in-law, the dearest little English lady I know, is visiting. While she's here I'll be taking her to a glorious little hamlet I've discovered in Germany's Riesling country, named Traben-Trarbach. In fact, it's the wonderful hospitality of the stunning art nouveau hotel I'm really looking forward to experiencing again.

The Travel Diva

Learning to fly - and other human rights - Cindy-Lou Dale

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The mile-high club

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New-age health check for pets

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African Taxis

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Vengeance is sweet

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Got to love the British Government

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Bad like news, like

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Growing old

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Absurdities

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Football

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Hyenas

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Misty

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UKYouth

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Boozing

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Where's the FAA when you need them?

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My mother's new carving knife

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Going without

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Model planes

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Out here in the woods

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The way of the world's media

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Assignment: South Africa

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A walk on the beach

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Amsterdam and the unhappy hookers

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My tottering blue-rinsed neighbour

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At Starbucks recently

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Europe, after a while

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Nothing about Africa surprises me anymore

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From Morocco with love

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Things I am not

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On second thoughts...

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British Elevators

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Driving styles

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A drive through England

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The McDonalds Finishing School

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London City

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Hit the ground running

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For the love of my cats

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In the name of art

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Over breakfast the other day

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The luxury of sleep