Pedestrian crossings. You'd think you know where you were with a pedestrian crossing, wouldn't you? Green is good, you're safe to cross. Right of way and all that.

But not here. Oh no.
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I swear, bicycles and wet tram tracks are my nemesis. Just came off for the first time over here. Nothing broken, but a bit bruised, so a medicinal beer seemed in order. And solitary beers are the fuel of your basic working Brno blogger, of course ( Read more... )

Swallows ( Read more... )

Further impressions ( Read more... )

If St Lucia is the prettiest island of the East Caribbean, then Dominica is the most unspoilt. A note, should you get to visit: Dominica is an island nation, slightly bigger than the Isle of Man and with a comparable population - about three hundred and sixty square miles, holding some seventy thousand people. It is pronounced with the stress on ( Read more... )

Thus in a way, the trip really began the following morning. Our cabin is double-glazed and air-conditioned, so the full impact of our exotic location only hit me when I opened the curtains, to find the ship already resting at anchor ( Read more... )

Barbados ain't what it's cracked up to be. Well,  not the bit that I saw in a hasty-by-Caribbean-standards airport-to-container-port transfer. Those booked on a complete P&O package need not concern themselves with mundanities such as luggage retrieval; they merely swan outside, board their air-conditioned coach and ride away. Those of us on ( Read more... )

It was only in the year that my mother turned 60 that we both very belatedly realised that, since I was born two days before her thirtieth birthday, there was a very simple, round, three-decade gap between her age and mine. In 1997, I explained to her, she became bang on twice my age as of two days after I attained (to my slight surprise and ( Read more... )