I always used to think that a sticker on the back window of my car saying "Dogs die in hot baths" would have been funny. A bit like "a condom is for life not just christmas eve"...but funny.

However....this week I have learnt my lesson as to exactly how serious it is to leave things locked inside cars when it is 36 degrees celsius in the heat of the sun, and I shall not make light of it again!

My car is usually full of various stuff for the shop - drink or sugar or serviettes or suchlike and nothing suffers from the heat - that can not be fixed. Smarties sometimes, and Nutella can be a bit worse for wear...but this week I thought I deserved a treat and bought a packet of jelly crocodiles for 95cents.

You know the ones....coloured A.D.D inducing pork gelatinous shapes on a white squidgy diabetic backing...

Anyway, I left them in the car all day - and the white bit melted.

I think I can still see the coloured shapes lost in a quagmire of white soup...fighting to get out.

I don't know what to do.

I tried freezing them today and sawing chunks off, but that was not very successful.

Maybe I could melt them again then spoon it into an ice cube tray...I'll let you know if it works.
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Time flies when you are tired and busy. It is August the day after tomorrow and then it will be september, then october....and then what? That's what I say.

I just overheard an english woman exclaim to her (assumed) husband "hey look, a 99 per cent paradise shop!". Now, regardless of the fact that it in fact is a 99 CENT paradise shop and that is clearly written in english on the window, it made me wonder just how low her expectation of paradise actually is. What I mean is, if she holds any religious belief, will her eternal afterlife be stood in a slightly darkened room surrounded by barely noticeably imperfect handmade balsa wood key boxes and obscure eastern european perfumes...all at just 99cents?

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Another couple who entered a week or so ago amused us also....the husband looked at the selection, the wife asked "a small cone of lemon for my man here please" (I add the please as a gesture of hope in mankind's graciousness towards shop people....but I find myself doubting whether it was there at the time...). I pick up the cone and then - the barefaced cheek of it - the husband asks "do you have coffee?". "Oh" says the wife, "you are changing your mind!".

For once in my life, and I apologise to you all for this, I did not say out loud what I thought, I wish I had done...but sometimes things are best left unsaid. My comment was along the lines of no, he is changing YOUR mind!

Poor man.

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Weston-Super-Mare pier burnt down over the weekend...one of England's big seaside tourist attractions (one of?). Today, 3 days later, the beach is full of people scavenging the seafront for salvage. One lucky punter was quoted as having found "A can of peaches and 3 pound coins!". Presumably all the taiwanese cuddly toys went up in flames together with the fake breast tee-shirts and the candy rock breakfast sets...amongst other things washing up on the shore were large bits of charred timber with rusty 6 inch nails sticking out...These then partly submerged in the sand just under the tide line.

But hey - free peaches!

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This morning also (busy day) I saw a car driving along with both indicators flashing...presumably having been parked badly somewhere it should not have been but using hazardlights as a universal get-out-of-jail-free card as we all have done in the past. Then the driver had pulled away and driven a while without turning them off.

This is a bit like fog-light man who still has fog lights on 4 days after it was foggy.

Now, sometimes I leave a light on in the house, or forget to lock a door or varied other miscellany and I am sure this is just what happens to these hapless drivers....

But then again, I do not have an illuminated panel at arms length to remind me about the bathroom light or the back door. What you need to remember when you see these people driving, is that for the period the hazards or foglights have been left on - for the whole period, which could be days - that driver has not looked at the dashboard. So he has no idea how fast he is going, whether the handbrake is still on, a door is open, how much petrol he has, oil water etc etc etc.

How scary is that.

I have discovered that all germans are called either Duncan or Peter. Try it out, introduce yourself with the word "Duncan!" and I guarantee whoever you are with will be called Peter.

strange...but strange nonetheless.

It has been a while, but the rain has stopped and I can finally make it to shore to type another blog. Hopefully the wind is with me.

It has been interesting seeing all the press about the Olympic flame. Not just the controversial side blah blah blah, but the ecological footprint of the flame itself.

The UK last year banned those vertical outdoor gas heaters from bars and restaurants because of the cost to the environment (and to make smokers smoke more in the cold to keep themselves warm) and yet the govt is happy to run a never-exstinguished gas torch from John O'Groats to Lands End...or round the North Circular (I get those mixed up). If this flame has been burning since the first olympics in...erm...Olympia...it must have quite a quarterly bill...maybe it itself is aiding global warming...or the loungely warming of the chairman of the olympic committee..."If it must be kept burning - why can I not dry my socks with it?"

I am also confused how it makes it from country to country. If you have ever tried to take a cigarette lighter or box of matches onto Ryanair you will appreciate this quandry. However cheap the ticket I think I would draw the line at sitting next to a sweaty bloke who has just run 26 miles, and is carrying a gas torch more at home in a hot air balloon.

Getting past him to go to the toilet would be hard enough, but imagine if he nods off with his head on your shoulder...

Perhaps in fact, that is how it should be proccessed in the future...by hot air balloon. Richard Branson is your man for this task - he's done it before....he'll do it again.

And finally, next week we are off to watch a german Elvis impersonator in concert in Tuscany, singing in English. He can barely speak english so this will be an experience.

His name is Jonny.

oh bugger.

Today is St Patrick's Day in Ireland, and pretty much here aswell since a coach load of young Irish are in town.

Now it is clear to the Italians that we are English (or German sometimes) because of various telltale indicators - 1) we do not wear clothes with Union Jack flags embroidered on the sleeves or chest, 2) we do not fondle (even) our own genitals in public and 3) I know which lane to be in at roundabouts...but the Irish go even a step further and wear large leprechaun hats, paint clover leaves on their cheeks and carry Irish flags.

The Italians love a saint-day, every day is the day of at least one saint, a child's saint day is celebrated as much as their birthday, the Irish obviously love today.

So why do the English not?

When is St George's day? Should I paint a red cross on my cheek and carry a flag? Do I get a day off? I think, unfortunately, not.

Instead of new ideas to swear patronage to the Queen, or to fly flags over council buildings, why not start giving everyone some reason to celebrate St George. England has it's issues, as does every country, but pride has to start somewhere in order to thrive.

Mind you, at least the UK does not employ the same PR people as South Africa.

On Sky News, South Africa Tourism is sponsoring a sports update segment, and has a nice graphic animation of the flag and a catchy slogan. For the purposes of the text where I can not strike thru a word I will use a different colour...but the slogan comes up on screen saying "South Africa. It's impossible." then a second later the "im" bit is crossed out. So...

"South Africa. It's impossible."

How long did this take, how much were they paid, and what alternatives did they reject before plumping for "It's impossible."?

South Africa, "It's not very nice." or
"Don't go there." or
"You can't go out at night." or even
"It's unlikely you will go home without being mugged."

We know some South Africans who live here now and they say it is a beautiful place, there are places to go and places to not go...but surely there are better slogans to use to entice tourists to go there.

I'll give it a go...

"Italy. Everyone drives really well and is very polite."

Gaw blimey Mary Poppins....it's March!

And it is crappy weather here in sunny Tuscany. Although the winter has been milder than Mellow Birds and less snowy than Tin-Tin's lap it seems that rain and wind has synchronized it's arrival with us unlocking the doors and whipping up a frenzy of gelati. I blame that God bloke I've heard so much about.

Anyway, since October - the last time I put finger to keyboard, what's gone down in groove town?

Firstly, and largely a cause of so much not-blogging was the death of a hard drive (or 3 in fact), so everything was put on hold until we could buy another laptop...and that had to be somewhere that spoke English - so England then.

We also lost a cat. Connor had been with us for nearly 18 years and, if you ignore all the urinating on the carpet she was a special companion and is sorely missed. She travelled well and enjoyed Tuscany. She was a star of television and internet and always will be with us.

We sold our house in the hills of Tuscany, www.casadiluce.com if you want to see what we had. A lovely house but too far away from the shop and too cold in the winter. Having taken about 2 years to sell it, we then bought again within a month!

We popped back to England for a while then started work on the kitchen (which we did not have) and the lounge (which we had, but did not like).

We finished that, then came back to work.

Nice break then!

So here we are, sitting waiting for customers. Reading the internet and filling in time...

Although I will not go into it here, I am feeling increasingly sad for the state of the UK. Daily we hear news and reports of what is going on there - binge drinking culture, knife culture, no culture, idiot teenagers and idiot government - and it really is scary. I am not saying Italy is any better or worse but I do know for sure that the UK used to be such a nice place to live - and visit! And now...I am not so sure.

It is absolutely tipping it down now so I think our work here is done.

So, hello to all our friends around the world, we do miss you (most of you) and hope to see or hear from you one fine day. I will summon some wit from the murky depths of my consciousness and bring you some biting satire and repartee some other day soon. I promise!

Also we have a new website for you to look at, the link is on the left of this page.

I'm off to ring out my underwear again.

C

Here in Lucca, much I expect like almost every other city in the tourist world, there is a bloke in white facepaint, wearing braces and a top hat, wandering around mime-ing, hugging passers by and presumably asking for hand-outs.

He is an okay kind of bloke, quiet (mostly) and unassuming. After all, he is a street entertainer - particularly for small children.

This morning, big however, he wanders up and starts complaining about something. I don't know what the problem was, or who the problem was, but he obviously is uncouthly unhappy. Then he begins directing his unpleasant demeanour at a guy walking toward us.

Maybe he had tried to get a hug out of this twenty-something-ipod-wearing-black guy (a chapter on "Know your target audience" torn from his library copy of "Street Entertaining for Dummies" perhaps...) and maybe black guy did not want smudges of white facepaint on his cheeks. For whatever reason, and whoever's fault - a full street row breaks out.

Lots of 'bring it on dude' and 'hey, don't touch me man!' later, the phrase " *&*! off back to your own country!" leaves the white painted lips of Marcel not-Marceau.

There are two possible outcomes to this chain of events, both situationally particular to Via San Paolino:

A: Every shopkeeper in the street joins in and kicks white-painted arse. You see, starting from the restaurant at the corner - and in order - the shops are managed by the safe hands of Pakistan, England, Canada, China, Romania, China again, Poland, and Canada again. There are two Italians in there aswell but they drown in the sea of multi-lingualism that is everyone else.

The phrase "go back to your own country!", if observed, will effectively cripple the city's income. I hear this week that one job in every 14 in the UK is occupied by an immigrant...I do not know the statistic for Lucca or Italy but based on Via San Paolino I suspect the figure is higher.

B: The two in discord beat the living crap out of each other.

However this is Italy. And what actually happened was

C: Nothing.

I know of no other country where C was going to be the outcome. Italians, or indeed Italian residents, seem (mostly anyway...no names mentioned) to not want to scuff their patent leather or ruffle their hair, or stretch their stretch jeans. But imagine for a second the reaction if you, in your town, stroll up to any passer-by and use the same phrase. Indeed.

So, this is Italy. Where everyone has a complaint, everyone has a moan, and all they do is wave at each other, make bizarre gestures and shout. It is infuriating, but it is at least not life threatening to be a bit belligerent.

The Segway, Simply Moving.

it says on the box (website actually, but box is punchier).

I can not think of a more boring way to move, it surely had a design brief of "a personal conveyor belt, a bit like an escalator but without the convenience of going up stairs." If it goes upstairs without the aid of a large cardboard box and a larger man with a much larger trolley then I apologise for my assumptive statement, however having walked up a flight of stairs in roller-boots (in my youth...) I think doing the same with 6 less wheels would be quite traumatic.

I wonder also if the man who designed it actually got a friend to design it while he himself had a couple of hours extra in bed because it absolutely is only bought by the world's most lazy of people.

You stand there - doing nothing. You don't even lean to the side to go round corners. You just stand there. The next add-on to it will probably be parking sensors off the back of a Ford Mondeo so you can just stand there and read the paper, looking ahead only if it beeps at you that someone or something is in the way.

There is a guy here in Lucca with one. He...what does he do, does he 'whizz' or 'hum', surely he does not 'zoom' or 'zip', maybe he 'segways' along up and down the 1000 year old streets looking like a fool who has been easily parted from his euros with the promise of "you will be the envy of the city, everyone will want one, and you can rent it out to tourists for fun sightseeing trips."

In fact he did try that for a while, he got someone to write him a board which he stuck to the front, offering 30 minute tries...but possibly everyone who saw him was reminded instantly of those poor puppies who have trolley wheels fitted after bad road accidents and did not see the marketing...so after a few days he got someone to take the sign away.

The weirdest thing about this is that some days he 'segs' along with 2 friends, one either side - having a bit of a chat. They walk, he just leans like a bored vicar on world cup final sunday delivering a sermon to an empty church on the evils of the devil scoring in injury time after a really dubious free-kick. So he leans, 'segging' along at walking speed...the 2 other guys walk. At walking speed.

It just looks strange. It reminds me of Captain Scarlet, or Joe 90, where the amazing marionettes could pull off pretty much any emotion, any weaponry usage, and a damn good impression of Cary Grant - but were ludicrously bad at walking.

This being Italy I half expect next time I see this guy to have a mini Segway, or Segwino, next to him with a dog riding it....ears flapping backwards in a light breeze, tongue hanging out staring at passing lamp posts (if they had lamp posts here - which they do not).

On the website they talk of police & military applications...and they say "Experience the unrivaled rebirth of community policing when you utilize Segway PTs in your force." and "Simplify and streamline your military applications with Segway's range of cost-effective government solutions". Ed-209 was supposed to be the future of policing in the community, with military functionality...oh dear.

One last thought is that Segway...is a bit like Sega...could it possibly be a derivative? If so, in Italian it has slightly different personally gratifying connotations.

Lets just say it takes ages to be this good.