Is this where M3 is?

Is this where M3 is?

[thought for the day] monday

How can you govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?

Charles de Gaulle [1962]

[papa rimski on the move] beware all evil-doers

With the weight of that staff, he could easily beat them into submission

With a newly-tuned piano at hand and a borrowed kitten for company, Pope Benedict XVI was recovering from jet-lag in Australia Monday ahead of WorldYouth Day celebrations.

Make no mistake - that kitten is there to ward off Imhotep and the whole gang of underworld nasties. The Cross, of course, speaks for itself. When Papa Rimski travels, he means business. I wouldn't want to try it on when the Pope's armed and dangerous.

Supposed to be in Australia for World Youth Day. Well, all right. Fair's fair.

But don't you think there's also a case for World Senior Cits' Day? I can see it now - all of us zooming round on our mobility scooters and the Pope in his Popemobile. Surely it's time they brought the Popemobile back.

Perhaps we could have a Black Policeman's Day as well? Just a thought.

"At 3.8 metre and 15 kilogram, you attack at your own risk."

[integrity] arnie would never go opportunistic

This is so unfair to Arnie, who would never ever cut a deal or do anything remotely ambitious:

But instead, when asked, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed to suggest he would have no qualms about joining an administration run bysomeone called Barack Obama -- who, if memory serves, is the Democrat actuallyopposing the Republican man the Republican Schwarzenegger endorsed for president.

Nah - it's just another blogger speculating.

Isn't it?

[earthquakes] and other fun happenings

Cheated here - this isn't Sicily at all - it's America.

There was an article in La Sicilia yesterday [the dead wood version ]about Mt. Etna and how tourists are determined to climb it, knowing full well the dangers.

Actually, that is my reading of it in my very limited Italian – I was scouring it for meaning yesterday morning over the cappuccino and croissant at Vecchia Caffe, a counterpoint to the news that yet another tourist had been lost to the dreaded Etna.

We actually live further down the coast from there and so the question is not so much rapid lava flow but earthquakes. I was asking Welshcakes and she said there had been a bad one up north in the late 80s and various tremors all over Sicily since then.

I asked if she had experienced one and she said that yes, the walls seemed to move like the beginning of a dream sequence in a film. Wow. When I asked if she thought the Big One was therefore coming, she gave a nervous laugh and said, “I hope not.”

She continued:

“When the sky is a funny colour, not dark, not grey, perhaps ashy and it seems sort of lower than usual – that’s when the Sicilians start to panic. Raffaele apparently said to all within listening distance about him: ‘Hope we don’t all die.’ ”

Hey, I can live with that.

Welshcakes continued: “They’re very philosophical about it here. If it’s got your number on it, they say, then it’s your turn.”

Hey, I can really live with that – makes life a bit more interesting, don’t you think?

So here I sit, typing to you and waiting for the Big One. There are 100 bells in this town which will peal in a Hemming sort of way and we can all ask one another in our mad, frenetic helter skelter flight:

“Did the earth move for you?”

For those who are a little worried about us down this end, I’ll put a helpful link in the right sidebar where you can check out our earthquake or volcano danger on any given day. Actually, the chances are fairly low and from what I can gather, these are our main dangers in southern Sicily:

1. Coffee poisoning;

2. Being run over by a Vespa or Lambretta;

3. Dehydration;

4. Getting closer than 200 metres to local politics;

5. Old age;

6. Volcano;

7. Earthquake.

Touch wood.

[july 14th] not forgetting july 4th

It's the French National Day and I urge everyone, if you haven't already done so, to go down into your local village and partake of petit pain or croissants and coffee. You might even get wicked and toast Bastille Day with a fine cognac [but not before 11 a.m.]

To the Americans, I apologize for July 4th but I ... er ... didn't have a blog at the time and so thought I'd wait until today. May your sovereignty and constitution remain intact in the next few years, despite the severe assault on it from within and from outside. Stand firm, America.

[thought for the day] sunday evening

A loo with a difference

WARNING: TOILET TALK AHEAD

Definition of an excursion:

Fearful and fraught foray far from a loo

Whilst not yet exactly incontinent, nevertheless, the thought of an excursion, a day trip, fills me with dread for these reasons:

1. Inaccessibility of a Little Room;

2. Inaccessibility of water;

3. Tedium and tiredness.

It would have to be a mighty interesting and well-equipped expedition which would draw the Higham from his hermit-like existence.

And you?



Mobility GTS – the only way to go

[the idyll] and the hidden serpent

The picture above is the Caffe Consorzia where we went for lunch.

It was balmy and idyllic, not to mention the quality of the food itself. Sitting under the giant olive tree with those leaves so easy on the eyes, one could be envied - see Welshcakes' post for details of the meal we ate.

So to come home, try to set up a new Yahoo account for Bloghounds, to go through the usual first page of filling in details, press the button and then be confronted with a second page asking to provide credit card details so they can confirm our age - that was beyond the pale.

Exactly what the heck are Yahoo up to? Have you too had any problems? Try setting up a new Yahoo account.

Meanwhile, back to the coffee and croissants.

[britain] will there be one left to return to

We were watching Skynews and BBC and had the same thought simultaneously - the way Britain is portrayed there now, if it can be believed,well - what sane person would want to live there with all its PC, ethnic issues, ASBOs, stabbings everywhere, druggies, crying bereaved families and so on?

Of course, I don't trust Sky or the BBC as far as I could kick them and probably, out of the dangerous urban areas, it's quite OK but still - are you worried about living there, British readers of this blog?

And what of your economic situation? House prices, credit and mobile phone debt? Mortgages? The surveillance society? The vastly increased chance of arrest on technicalities? The situation in schools and with lost national data files left by people on trains? Is all OK with you in that green and pleasant land?

Because if not, then it seems to me it's a bit like, say, Welshcakes, Guthrum and myself zipping off years ago, on our respective starships and meeting up one day on Alpha Centauri, where the news has just come through to the big screen that the earth has blown itself up.

Oops - we're now permanent expats for the remainder of our lifetime. Even Grendel seems worried, opting to detour to Russia instead of immdeiately returning.

Just how bad is it over there now?

[doping] does sport have a chance

You have to wonder what chance sport has:

Manuel Beltrán, who rides for the Liquigas team of Italy and who is a former teammate of Lance Armstrong’s on the Discovery Channel team, tested positive for EPO after the first stage of the race. Beltrán was withdrawn under the terms of a contract that all of the teams signed with the Tour organizer.

This is not just a bleat about "oh how bad everything is these days" but a question every sportsman faces.

When weight training in Russia, one learnt who the steroids boys were [a high profile gym down the road where they were all Adonises with not an ounce of fat] and the "clean" trainers such as one at our place who always carried a certain "lining", shall we say.

He and I were chatting about competition and how he had to give it away because he just couldn't compete against the stoked up bodies in that field. No point competing if you're not going to win, they'd say. Ben Johnson would understand.

This blogger is most certainly not ant-sport - quite the opposite, in fact - and yet there doesn't seem a solution to this thing.