Diamond Lillibet

What more appropriate way to begin the Queen's Birthday holiday than by watching the coverage of the Royal Pageant on the Thames to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee? Except that the BBC's commentary was so obsequious, and the weather didn't co-operate - but 1000 assorted boats, five miles, four knots, swan-uppers, watermen, a floating belfry, a million-plus spectators, goodness knows how many Union flags and miles of bunting... it was an unmissable spectacle. (Let's gloss over the fact that I could easily have been there, just popping back over the Channel last week instead of flying home from Munich. I'm perverse like that: I got to England in 1977 a scant fortnight after the Silver Jubilee.)

It was good to see the waka making fine progress along the river with all the other rowed boats, though I felt for the bros with their bare chests; and I looked away when the leisure cruisers went past. The Queen seemed delighted to board the Britannia launch again to get out to the royal barge - it's normally kept now at Leith with the Britannia since its decommission. That was the first of today's connections: Her Maj and I go right back, you know. I've been growled at by her bodyguard at Badminton, drunk her tea at Buckingham Palace, trailed around Holyrood, got the goss on the royal parsimony at Sandringham (no silver sixpence in the staff Christmas pud!) - not to mention being born the year she was crowned, so she's been a fixture all my life. In the job 60 years, still going strong at 87 (didn't sit down once!) - impressive, and well worth celebrating with such a huge spectacle.

It was fun to see Joey from War Horse prancing on top of the National Theatre - I went to see the play last month and it was brilliant (it's now on also on Broadway). I was interested too to see Tower Bridge with its bascules (bascules!) raised right to the top as her barge approached at the end. I went under it myself just last month, on a ferry along the Thames, gawping at all the sights old and new - like The Shard, almost complete (and already explored by an urban fox right up to the 72nd floor). It's a must-do, such a good way to view that great city, and  the river is always busy - though never as chokka, and as colourful despite the dreary weather, as it was during the pageant today.

Mentioning the war

In preparation for my day at Stalag Luft III tomorrow, I was reading Paul Brickhill's 'The Great Escape' on the train to Berlin last night, and got a bit embarrassed when I realised I'd put it down with its cover up to get out my ticket for the conductor. I really shouldn't have been: the war is a fact of life, or of history at least, here in Germany, and I suppose every German has had to sort out for themselves how to manage that. Every culture has events in its past that are, at the very least, an embarrassment to those living with the ramifications - even we mild-mannered, low-profile Kiwis have our issues, the treatment of Maori in the early days of European settlement not the least of them.

But of course a World War (or two) that killed millions is another matter altogether, especially when that includes the Holocaust. I was quite impressed this morning when I was photographing (badly - broken shoulder, remember) a bronze sculpture of children that we came across by chance in a side street off Friedrichstrasse near the station, which commemorates the Kindertransport. That was the sending of 10,000 Jewish children to England in 1938-41 - the lucky ones, that is. Other trains took other children to places like Auschwitz. I learned this thanks to the passing German lady who took my arm and led me to read the nearby story boards that accompany the sculpture. She's got her handling of history sorted, it would seem.

And tomorrow is going to be all about the war, as I visit the remains of a prisoner of war camp hidden in the pine trees that line the bumpy roads here in western Poland. My father spent four years of his early 20s there, hungry, bored, frustrated and no doubt sometimes fearful for his safety - with good reason, as we discovered after his death. I wonder what else I may learn tomorrow.

En train

So it's goodbye to Blighty, with its grey skies and yellow fields, and off on the trains again: Eurostar under the Channel to Brussels, then change of trains to Cologne, where I went last year on the river cruiser, and finally today to Berlin, where I've never been before.

Brussels is new to me too, but all we're seeing of it is the big and busy railway station, where an Air France lady took the trouble to come out of her office and tell me to keep better watch over my bags, which I had turned away from to read the paper. Bit unnerving, though kind of her.

Trains are such a novelty to me, like most New Zealanders, that I'm always disproportionately impressed by how people whisk through these large and confusing places, taking the whole system completely for granted. And it all works so well! On time! Comfortable! Free wifi! An efficient railway network is the mark of a civilised society, I reckon.

Big thinker

Isambard Kingdom Brunel: now there's a name to remember. And not just because it rolls so splendidly off the tongue, but also of course because this man thought so big during his busy 53 years. Not just thought, but did. Ships, bridges, tunnels, railways, dockyards... His works are all over Britain, still standing, still used, and in Bristol today we got to know the SS Great Britain, the world's first propeller-driven steamship (just think how important that leap of imagination was) and at the time the biggest ship on the planet.

She's back in her home dry dock now, after a long and chequered career transporting gold miners to Australia, guano from South America (I'm guessing the Ballestos Islands off Peru), wheat from the US, coal to the warships of the Great War, storing wheat in the Falklands, and more. Hauled back to the UK in 1970, she's been beautifully restored and sits like Cutty Sark shored up and able to be walked around, this time under a layer of water on glass, the iron hull below carefully kept in a humidity-free environment (odd, to feel drier under the water than above it).

It's really well done, a big ship with lots to see, lots to learn and marvel at - and on this SUNNY bank holiday Sunday, was being thoroughly enjoyed by heaps of people and family groups, which was lovely to see. Bristol's waterfront was buzzing, with boats and a train, and the M museum was pleasingly full of parents teaching their curious littlies bits of Bristol's pretty lively history. Good day. And sunny, too. Did I mention that?

Old

There's no getting around it: our English friends are old in both senses now. As are we, of course, and I'm currently feeling all of that myself, what with the awkward left-handedness, the stiff knee, the aching shoulder and all. Not to mention the bruise on the cheek from the glasses that have been remarkably high-profile on this trip for frames that were chosen particularly for their unobtrusiveness.

Despite being in shock with the pain of the dislocated shoulder, I was still able to snap at the paramedic who reported that I'd "had a fall" that actually, I'd TRIPPED AND FALLEN, thank you very much. But it didn't help that one of our friends has also done just that while walking along the road and has, at the moment, an even blacker eye (and greener cheek) than I have.We made a right pair, out at the pub for our dinner tonight after an afternoon of catching up in front of the fire with their startlingly ancient and ragged - but perfectly content - cat on the mat.

But, coming from such a young country, it's noticeable that being old(er) in England feels more fitting than at home, what with everything we look at from houses to hills to trees being so very much older - and all the better and more attractive and interesting for it, it must be said. Though, really, it would be pushing it to say the same of Fluffy.

A cold homecoming they had of it

 

Back on what was for a long time home turf, we've eaten award-winning pie here at the Farmer's Boy, caught up with old (and best) friends, tutted once again over the untidy mess that our once-loved former home has become (spied on through the gate), been appalled at the shocking state of the minor roads, and been taken by local guide Mary on a tourist's tour of Ross-on-Wye on what felt to us like a bone-bitingly cold day.

Ross is a busy little market town, its central Market Hall surviving 350 years of traffic along what is now the A40 squeezing past its worn red sandstone pillars. Once, every third business was a pub, every fifth one a butcher's, each with its own slaughter-house. We sneaked into dark alleyways that we never even noticed when we lived here, were invited into a fourteenth-century almshouse which was pleasingly warm and cosy, though the living room was about the size of our bathroom back home, and walked through the cemetery behind the church, where playwright Dennis Potter is buried, and the children have a sad little section all to themselves.

There was a story about highwayman William Lester, mortally wounded as his horse bolted right through the town, another about a love-lorn and tragic young couple, and lots about benefactor John Kyrle, the Man of Ross, after whom the high school is named, where I once briefly worked, and whose students were wandering through the town at the end of lessons, one of them wearing just her uniform polo shirt. Brrr.

The Queen's Narnia

Sandringham is where the Queen and the Royal Family spend Christmas every year in private, staying for about 6 weeks. It must be odd to have a house that you only live in during winter - it must always be associated in her mind with cold weather and fires, and chilly walks to the nearby little flint church with its unexpectedly extravagant silver altar and pulpit. "A land in which it seemed always winter", as Tennyson didn't say.

But evidently they sneak in for the odd weekend at other times of the year, the remarkably well-informed guides told us, when they slum it in another house on the estate; so they do get to enjoy the expansive gardens and grounds that today were entirely at the disposal of doughty and well rugged-up dog walkers. In the stables, there are immaculately polished cars - Daimlers,  Rolls Royces, Bentleys - as well as some outrageously indulgent large toy cars enjoyed by Royal children over the years. There's also a rather horrifying room bristling with horns and heads from big-game hunts long ago: three understandably glum-looking rhinos including a baby, plus a stuffed (in both senses) lion and lioness, cheetah and zebra skins, several bison  heads, a whole herd of deer and antelope, and elephant tusks. "Kept in celebration of the taxidermist's skills," the notice read - rather defensively, I thought.

The house, though apparently much modified since its Victorian heyday, is still very cluttered with stuff, all of it with a story that the guides can tell. The one stationed in the corridor to the ballroom which was lined with cases of shotguns including 33 Purdys, and masses of racing trophies and statues, who boasted that she could find something to link with every nationality, was stumped when I asked about New Zealand, though. She's probably still kicking herself. (It's very hard to take photos one-handed, by the way, holding the camera, focusing and clicking the shutter all with your left hand.That's my excuse.)

A dislocating experience. No, really.

Sigh. So there we were, all set this morning for a leisurely cruise along the river, into a Broad or two, stopping wherever we wanted (or could, more accurately), and enjoying the brighter weather which included actual sunshine - and I wrecked the whole thing. Leaping hurriedly off the side of the boat to warn the Captain that he was about to bump the old-fashioned yacht moored ahead of us (crewed by Three Men who were having a wonderful time in the pub last night), I slipped, fell onto my right shoulder and both broke and dislocated it. At least I didn't fall into the shockingly cold water! (Only bright spot).

I can't really recommend a shoulder dislocation, other than its making giving birth seem like a walk in the park - which I was reminded of when the ambulance finally turned up and the nice man gave me gas and air, which I last sucked at just over 21 years ago as the Baby arrived. It's not very funny having invisible veins, either, so it took five (literal) stabs to get a line going. And then, all that swinging about on the end of my arm to manouevre it back into the socket was far from a bundle of laughs, especially being accused of "fighting it". The morphine that came next was a great disappointment, as I slept through the whole trip. Altogether, pretty much a write-off, as far as holiday fun is concerned. At least it was all free! Thank you, NHS, and British tax-payers.

So the ship was abandoned, and we were back to driving round the Broads, enjoying windmills, big skies, huge fields of green wheat and bright yellow rape-seed, hump-backed bridges, flint churches with sturdy square towers, and the rows of brightly-painted beach huts above the stony strand at Cromer. Almost as good. (Not really.)

Broadly speaking

I didn't know whether I should be channelling Fanny and Dick today, or Titty and Roger, when we picked up our frighteningly large (8 berth!) river launch for a couple of nights on the Norfolk Broads. It's a classic thing to do, to cruise the rivers and adjoining lakes, or broads, tying up outside pubs and going ashore in pretty villages to buy provisions (lashings of lemonade! Or pemmican?). A wet blanket recently told me that the Broads were choked with badly-driven boats loaded with stag parties, and thoroughly spoiled - but the river was pretty empty for us, and the worst drivers were us as we manoeuvred in to dock at the end of our sail downriver to Horning.

We tied up (amateurishly) eventually, after some quiet panicking, white knuckles and frantic thrusts backwards and forwards [ok, no more un(ish)intentional double entendres]. Then we discovered that there's a lot of walking involved in cruising, as we meandered past masses of thatched cottages, a windmill and two appealing black-and-white pubs, from which we chose The Swan, which was warm and cosy and inviting, and of course had free wifi (free wifi is gloriously common in England now - pubs, cafes, hotels, hotspots - it's just as it should be).

Then we wandered all the way back again for a quiet and still night on the boat, disturbed only by trespassing ducks on the roof, rowdy geese, whistling swans flying along the river, and some post-cider snoring inside. This is a lovely way to have a holiday - once you've earned your captain's stripes.

"Everybody's smiling!"

So said the chaplain ahead of us in the queue in the Refectory cafe at Norwich Cathedral this morning, when we congratulated each other on such a fine, sunny day and clear blue sky, after a month of dreary rain. The Cathedral is one of the city's many prides (another its Norman castle, above), its steeple second only in height to Salisbury, its cloisters the largest in the country, and the building overall light, airy, graceful and beautiful - though I have to admit to being most taken by the fact that the shiny copper font was recycled from a local chocolate factory.

It also currently has a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on the spire, dutifully incubating four eggs, to the infectious excitement of the two birders in charge of the powerful telescopes lined up on the nest. They also have a colour camera focused on the action, which they're watching on their iPad - how modern of them, yet also how sweetly old-fashioned of them to be so enthralled by the process.

Norwich is a lovely town to explore on a sunny day, riding the open-top bus around the main attractions, poking around the little lanes on foot, walking slowly over the lumpy cobbles, remembering to look upwards at the buildings, a colourful mix of stone, brick, flint, wood and stucco with their roofs every which way. We wandered along the river with its sleeping swans, through the Plantation Gardens with its Victorian follies, blackbirds and bright tulips, down Elm Hill where the tiny Bear Shop manages to fit in hundreds of teddies of all sorts, some of them works of art, all of them eminently cuddliable.There was high tea at the elegant Georgian Assembly Rooms, raspberry beer at the Belgian Monk, savoury waffles and cider at the Waffle House so conveniently directly across the road from our hotel at 38 St Giles that we could even get the wifi.

It's all been so good today that it's even more of a tragedy that we're going to be back to the rain tomorrow. Sigh.

Much more than a naughty acronym*

Norwich is nice, even in appalling weather that we have great hopes is moving away overnight. Sited on what is probably East Anglia's only hill, it has heaps of churches, a lovely cathedral (yet to be explored, as there was a service about to begin. On a Sunday! Tch), an impossibly old and sturdy-looking four-square castle full of gory stuff like a gibbet, death-masks and iron yokes, lots of appealing little winding lanes to wander along, good shops, cafes and restaurants, and a pretty midtown market of  permanent stalls all brightly painted in stripes like beach huts.

It will be open tomorrow, and fingers crossed there'll be sunshine so we can gawp and snap away to our hearts' content: it's a very medieval place, and the buildings are a wonderful mix of stone and flint and half-timber, very pretty and photogenic.

Tonight we ate at Suckling House, a 16th-century mercer's house with pointed windows and vaulted ceilings, and then went upstairs to watch a movie in the cinema in the same building. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was a bit dislocating in that setting, but also familiar, as the Yemen is next door to the United Arab Emirates, where I was just a couple of weeks ago, although it seems much, much longer than that. It was an entertaining movie, and quite funny.

Perhaps on a guided walk tomorrow, we may learn the story behind this street sign. I'm guessing it won't be a comedy.**

* (k)Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home
** Apparently it was a pub sign showing two washer women trying to scrub a poor little black boy white. Obviously long before there was such a thing as political correctness.

Hung with snow, along the bough

Well, Housman probably would have written that, had he seen this courtyard outside the Temple Church (the Inns of Court, by the way, are naturally very attached to rules, hence the underlining) - what looks just like a sprinkle of snow is purely petals. But the showers and rain have been interspersed with enough bright spells for us to enjoy a trip along the river on a ferry, gawping at old faithfuls like Tower Bridge and the Belfast, and at the new entrants, like the Gherkin and the Shard, which is very nearly finished.

Then it was lovely to walk through the gardens along the Embankment - so many green bits in the middle of all the roads and buildings in London - admiring the spring flowers and stopping every 20 metres or so to study yet another statue or memorial. London always reminds me of my aunt's front room, where every flat surface is cluttered with little ornaments, plates and knick-knacks. Some of the statues are obvious, like Robert Raikes of Sunday School fame, and Samuel Plimsoll of the line (possibly also the sandshoe), and Arthur Sullivan out the back (front?) of the Savoy Hotel. But there was a mysterious marble statue presented to Britain in 1920 in gratitude by the people of Belgium. That had me, historically deficient as I am, foxed until we went to the theatre that night.

War Horse the play, predating the movie by a year or so, was brilliantly done and quite moving, deserving its standing ovation at the end. It also mentioned that Britain entered the Great War in response to the German invasion of Belgium, which if I ever knew, I'd forgotten. There's going to be quite a lot about war in the blog posts from this trip. Some of it's going to be pretty heavy. You have been warned...

Hi ho (possibly ho hum) for spring

This photo on the front page of the Evening Standard strikes me as so typically English: a hosepipe ban recently declared after a long stretch of below-average rainfall is immediately followed by torrential rain that's delivered a month's worth of precipitation in just two days. And the people sigh and snap up their umbrellas and soldier on, martyrs as ever to the weather.

If they hadn't had that early sunny spell in March, no-one would have been surprised: spring is about changeable weather, after all. At least there have still been clear spells, when London's colours are bright - the flower-filled public gardens, the red buses, the gold on the domes and crosses, the pictures on the pub signs.

Yesterday the Queen opened the Cutty Sark to the public again, after a long restoration that was delayed by a big fire in 2007. The fastest clipper on the route to Sydney in 1885, it looks splendid now, its hull encased in shiny brass - and that part is conveniently glassed-in. It's a fine place to sit with a cup of the tea it was originally designed to bring to London from China, for the comfort and succour of the people, especially in weather like this.

Now that April's there

Ah, England in the spring! Wet and cold and windy, and irredeemably miserable - until the sun comes out and it's warm and bright and suddenly you notice flowers everywhere (only slightly battered-looking): forget-me-nots and tulips, primroses and honesty, forsythia and camellias.

Here in Farnham the brick looks warm, the Castle with its sets of seven steps built for the blind bishop looks imposing on its hill beside the town, and the pubs are cosy and welcoming. And so are the people.

Not so the cats in my aunt's house, who treat my friendly advances with disdain and suspicion, and look at me with narrow eyes if I sit in the wrong chair. It's a long way to come, to be sneered at through whiskers.

Things to do, places to go...

Turns out when you add a 21st birthday party at home on to an upcoming 6-week trip to the other hemisphere, straight after a flit round an entire continent, things get a bit frantic, domestically, work-wise and sleep-wise. The middle-aged brain struggles to keep all those mental balls in the air, which include a story about Iguassu, steroid boosters for the ancient cats, fitting timers to the heated towel rails (what? you don't do that before you go away?) and making a series of jelly Easter eggs for the non-cake birthday cake.

It's a long time to be away, and though I'm now reassured that the cats will (most likely) still be here when I get back, the dog's another story, sigh. It's autumn here now, AKA Indian summer, especially over Easter when the weather was glorious, kind of making up for our very crap summer - but when I get back it will be winter, the trees will be bare and the guttering leaking.

But I must resist this tendency to worry and conduct endless arguments with myself over what shoes to pack, because once I'm on the plane it will all drop away and I'll be caught up in the moment: flit to Sydney with Air NZ then swap to Etihad (always sounds like an anagram to me, but apparently it's Arabic for 'united' - though the OH reckons it's really 'reckless') business to Abu Dhabi, on to Paris, down to Marseille, onto a river cruiser on the Rhone for a week, then England for family stuff, Poland for a war story, Eastern Europe for a coach trip, and then back home. Lots of trains in the mix there, some theatre, Badminton Horse Trials, and lots of friends.

Starting with one from the Great Australian Cattle Drive in 2006, who's now working in Dubai and will be meeting me for breakfast in Abu Dhabi. (That's the most exotic half-sentence I've ever written.) Tahira is good fun - we got a lot of amusement out of the loofah she brought with her into the Outback, and the fancy seat-saver the equestrian outfitters equipped her with in London (though we were all envious of it in the end (on our ends?))

Las Malvinas, nunca!

Two weeks ago tonight, I was part of the audience in a super-slick and highly professional evening of dinner and a dancing display in Buenos Aires, where I used my camera's (more probably my own) inadequacies to produce what I insist on calling arty images. I shouldn't have been there at all: I was meant that night to be at a different dinner in another hotel in another city in another country altogether. It was the annual Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards run by Travcom, or NZ Travel Communicators, the professional association of which, until yesterday, I've been President for the last two years. It's a big event for a small group to organise, and with sponsors under financial pressure it was a real challenge to pull it all together.

But we did it, and I should have been there, not only to schmooze and suck up, but also to (ahem) collect a few certificates myself: runner-up for this newspaper story about Jaipur in India, winner for this one about Waterford in Ireland and, almost ta-rah, runner-up overall. Having won once, I can tell you that that works better - but it was good to have the Baby go up in my place while I was on another continent being wowed by smouldering looks, testicle-threatening high kicks and more Brylcreem than I've seen since last century. The show was wholly catering for tourists, but it was very well done too, and I enjoyed it.

Of course, it's the 30th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War today (throughout which it was studiously referred to in the British parliament and media as the 'Falklands conflict') and there were petrol bombs and water-cannon in Buenos Aires: not just smouldering there today, but actual fire. A burning Prince William, indeed! Harsh.

That was never 11 days we had just then

Why yes, that was rather a long gap between posts. Mainly it was because of marketing: selling stories linked to events and dates, and though the ones I've been fully occupied writing about are marking the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic a whole month from now, and Anzac Day even further away on April 25, there's been a bit of a rush to do it because I've got some travelling coming up. On Sunday I'm being whisked off to Buenos Aires on LAN's lovely business class, and thence to Iguazu Falls, Lima (again) and then, most excitingly, Easter Island. I once reviewed a book that was set there - rather unimaginatively titled 'Easter Island' - by Jennifer Vanderbes, who had clearly done a great deal of research into ancient angiosperms that she didn't want to waste, so by the end of the book I was quite the expert (temporarily) on fossilised pollen. Never heard the term 'palynology' before? Now you have.

Then after I've been home for less than a fortnight, I'm away again, for an incredible 6 weeks this time, to Europe: partly private but mostly work, and it's going to be very busy. Fun and interesting, but busy, and tiring. It doesn't help that there are three very old animals in this house, who miss me when I'm gone, and who so far have always been here when I've got back from a trip but, one day...

So anyway, the Titanic. I keep bumping into it, so to speak - of course, in Ireland last year, when we went to Cobh which was the ship's last port of call before setting off across the Atlantic, and where there was a really good exhibition in the old railway station there. Then there was an astonishingly, not to say anally, comprehensive travelling exhibition that I came across while I was in Copenhagen, that absorbed me for the best part of two hours while rampaging Hamburg football fans laid waste to the city outside (well, almost). We'll be going to a new one at Greenwich Maritime Museum while we're in London; there are, I discovered, others in Southampton, Liverpool and Cherbourg, all Titanic sister cities that I've been to; and several in Halifax, Nova Scotia where I haven't been, but have been increasingly hankering to go to over the last few years. Lots of the recovered bodies were buried there, including one J. Dawson, who was actually James, a boiler-room hand, but that doesn't stop a steady stream of fans of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack going there to leave red roses on the gravestone:

Mellow

Perfect, perfect day today: clear, sunny, warm after early freshness, the colours bright and saturated. And on a Sunday, too! It was perhaps especially precious having come straight after what the media are in the habit these days of excitably calling a 'weather bomb', the word 'storm' apparently not dramatic enough any more. It was more of a damp squib (always want to say damp squid) here in Auckland, a bit of wind and rain that blew a bucket across the back lawn - but further south in Taranaki, where I went in November, it really was very violent and ripped the roofs off many houses and punched holes in walls with flying fence posts. Nothing on the scale of the terrifying tornadoes in the US, but bad enough for us, who've had more than enough lately in the way of natural disasters.

Where do I go from here? I could focus on Taranaki, and my Parihaka story, because I was at a meeting a couple of days ago that was addressed by some people from Maori Tourism, that began with an unexpected reference to flatulence and moved smartly on to some fairly abstract concepts and included a lot more te reo than I was expecting or, to be honest, understood (to my shame). Thank goodness I wasn't MCing, the person who was fortunately much more fluent in public-occasion Maori than I could dream of being. The atmosphere was very friendly and down-to-earth, but there were some delicate matters glanced over that it would have been good to be able to talk about properly: like Maori people getting tetchy when offenders are called Maori in news reports, that being a term that they don't really use themselves, identifying much more with their tribes. Fair enough - though 'Caucasian' is just as general, of course.

Or I could branch off from the disasters reference to say how appalled I am that the Bishop of Christchurch has just announced the decision to pull the cathedral down as it's too expensive to try to repair what is now a dangerously unstable building. It's very hard not to come over all xenophobic and say that it's because she's a Canadian, in the job only 3 years, and doesn't understand what the cathedral means to the people of Christchurch and the country as a whole. Doesn't matter if you're Anglican or not, religious or not - that building is the heart and soul, symbol and icon of Christchurch and it has to be saved.

Or I could go with the weather, how lovely it was to be out in the garden unbitten by mozzies, doing some weeding in the hen run, much to the girls' delight (all those worms and other tasty insects revealed), remembering with nostalgia how a blitz like that back at our country cottage in England would have finished with a satisfying bonfire down in the paddock: happy hours of raking and poking, finally and reluctantly going back up to the house, thoroughly kippered. And, as I pulled out armful after armful of the crocosmias that have taken over the hen run, thinking how true it is that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place. Viz: this photo of the gardens at Muckross House in Killarney, Ireland, of crocosmia, in the right place.

An innocent abroad

So the plan was to write a story about how easy it is to get around Europe by train. That was my pitch, and that's how I've finagled myself a Eurail pass for when I'm buzzing from one assignment to another in April and May: France, England, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic...

Thing is, it doesn't seem to be like that at all, and I'm only up to the booking stage. The websites are confusing, they give conflicting information, on some it's not possible to book at all, on others there seem to be missing trains; so when I finally found at least two of my trips apparently bookable, I'd just about lost my nerve completely and felt very anxious about clicking on the final Confirm Payment box. It's all too easy to imagine some foreign railway station with single-minded people bustling all around, unintelligible PA announcements echoing overhead, display boards flashing, and me in the middle of it trying to figure out which is my platform, all sweaty about missing a connection.

I hadn't realised how dependent I've become on being presented with nicely laid-out itineraries, all the messy stuff taken care of, tickets in my inbox ready to print out, and someone in charge once I'm under way. There will be a bit of that this trip, but I have to join the dots myself, just like a real traveller. It's going to be an adventure! I do so hope I don't mess up...

Little and Large

In a new move for me, I've written a guest post on another blog: Blogger At Large, which is a proper travel blog full of information and latest news, as well as being very chirpy and enthusiastic. It is, as they used to say in the 60s, a now and happening sort of place, unlike the more leisurely and reflective blog that this one is. The post is about Highclere Castle - yet again. I may be laid-back here, but even I can't ignore the opportunity to jump on such a big bandwagon as the Downton Abbey phenomenon. Why not pop over and read it, and have a look around there while you're at it?

I've done a couple of trips with Megan, who writes Blogger At Large, both at her very kind invitation and both brilliantly good fun. The first was via Tahiti to New York, my first trip to that exciting city, and the second to Disneyland for a mind-blowingly extravagant famil to mark the opening of what was then the new Finding Nemo ride in the old submarine pond.

I'd been to Tahiti years before, but on this trip we went to Fakarava - always fun to say - in the Tuamoto Islands. It's a huge coral atoll, the rectangular lagoon about 65km long, the land surrounding it so narrow that you can see from side to side. On one sparkling day we went on a boat like a flying fish to the far end of the lagoon, skimming along the turquoise water for an hour or so until we fetched up at a tiny motu, or island, with nothing on it bar a handful of palm trees, a bush or two, and tiny white shells scattered over the pink sand. The water was warm and clear, and we had a swim while Coco our guide laid out our picnic on a white cloth and made a fire from palm fronds to barbecue our steak. It was a feast, and the setting was idyllic: just us, the seabirds, the lapping of the waves on the sand, and nothing/nobody else for miles and miles and miles. The world has never felt bigger, and my place in it never smaller.