is part of the pleaure that the weird “ob” reminds one of “knob”, that squat little lump of a word?

Maybe it’s time to nominate some (other) favourite words?

long after i read the Durrel Books i read Thucydides, it took several months before i made the connection between Corcyra and Corfu. so another reason to go, but not enough to add it to the itinery, unless i ever get around to the Mediterranian cycle circiut that i have oft pondered.

These people distribute pamphlets all across southern England. In the pamphlet it sort of looks marginally on the sane side of bizzare, just enough to attract children who then insist on going.

In reality it is a garden of about an acre of a small farmhouse filled with garden gnomes. That’s it. There are some lame attempts to create some “dioramas” like gnomes placed round a small pond with improvised fishing poles and a sign saying the pond is a “wishing well” with an invitation to throw coins.

Bear in mind this place is about 2 hours drive from anywhere, and the kids are going to last about 5 minutes before they get bored. Truly horrific.

But first place goes to the model train ride (as in smallish ride-on model steam railway, guage about 10 inches) that runs through the grounds of a “stately home” in Dorset. The train ride is pretty good as far as things go, but the countryside is untended farmland and pretty uninteresting.

To spice it up you pass by a couple of copses of trees where old, wet moldy teddy bears have been nailed to tree branches. Yes you did read that right. It costs about 5 pounds, children are 2 and takes about 10 minutes.

Man, sometimes I just really adore the English language. Shaw, Wilde and Frank O’Hara would be no fun at all in Flemish. Hell, even Jacques Brel is funnier in translation, wai?

btw, I must apologize for the comment which M. quoted above. It was meant as a sort of Unreliable Narrator joke, but when I see it in plain black and white, it’s easy to see how it could be read as simply obnoxious. Which was not the intention.

We apologize for any misunderstanding.

– the People of Noo Yawk, Hizzona M. Bloomberg presiding(at least I think; haven’t been reading the papers much).

The actual fact is of course that New Yorkers do everything TWENTY FUCKING TRILLION TIMES FASTER THAN THE REST OF YOU FUCKING MORONS

Except walking.

Sorry, I don’t know when Sydneysiders overtook New York for walking speed, but my wife and I keep running up the heels of the locals with monotonous regularity.

Get off the sidewalk already!

When I was there last year I visited a friend and there was still a squat toilet on her floor, even though everyone had their own toilet. It’s just olde tyme Paris.

Ah, I see.

Paris is easily the oldest place I’ve visited, I tend to forget about the living history stuff in truly old places. Cheers for that.

I can’t believe somebody actually went to the Mystery Craters.

I was en route from Bundaberg to Mount Perry and saw the sign on the turnoff from the Bundaberg-Gin Gin road saying that they were just 100 metres to the left.

Accentuating the positive, can I put in a plug for Wooli on the NSW North Coast and Woodgate on Queensland’s Fraser Coast? And also Boreen Point, Pomona, Imbil and Kandanga in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.

Oh, and you have to see La Victoire de Samothrace before you die. The Louvre is rather disappointingly full of reproductions of classical greek and roman statues from the 18th century, but that thing is astonishing.

The French, Germans, and yes, even the Italians are streets ahead. Maybe it was better before the Thatcherite wrecking-ball, but blimey, talk about 2nd-raters.

The scariest moment I had there was the Paris Metro police conducting one of their regular “sweeps” on the local metro station. They are really nasty bastards. Even though I’m patently a large prosperous WASP, it didn’t stop one of them from tapping my throat with his truncheon because I was bit slow in finding my metro ticket. I shudder to think what happened to the poor African bastards without “les docs” they were escorting into the windowless buses.

On a brighter note, watch out if a Parisienne invites you to lunch around Montmartre just before noon on the first Wednesday of the month. Apparently it’s a long standing joke on the unaware and it freaked the bejesus out of me when it was first played on me. Not least because everyone in the bistro from staff to customers gleefully played along.

However, if you want unfriendly, I give you: London. Not that I cared a lot when I lived there. If you go Thames-side looking for a smile, you may be missing the point of that ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly f*cking great town.

Yes, those fucking water puppets aside, I agree. Giant banyan trees looming out of the morning mist on streets full of classic French colonial terraces. Wandering through the old quarter with its winding roads full of ancient crafts like the streets of tinsmiths, silkworkers, woodworkers and Tintin memorabilia knockoffs. I spent a hugely enjoyably hour there bargaining over an beautifully carved and well loved opium pipe. To celebrate the fact I’d beaten them down by A$1.50 from what was already overpriced at A$12, little cups of bitter black coffer cut with condensed milk started appearing. Hanoi is not all like Saigon.

Another great Hanoi memory. Eating ice creams at sunset at a Hoan Kiem Lake kiosk playing Bix Biederbecke and Jack Teagarden. It’s a curiously timeless city. Not a tourist trap.

Well I’m very happy you’ve pointed this out. The idea that New Yorkers are rude has always been a gross misperception. The actual fact is of course that New Yorkers do everything TWENTY FUCKING TRILLION TIMES FASTER THAN THE REST OF YOU FUCKING MORONS. And this is what accounts for the discrepancy in perception.

We are very sorry for any misunderstandings which may have been caused.

Signed,
The people of Noo Yawk