From Helsinki to St. Petersburg, Sunday August 17th

!!!!!! Acatcan is in Russia!!!!!! ... which looks rather like Finnland, but the difference between the tidiness and upkeep of the buildings and land is quite marked. Finnland, as all of the countryside we’ve seen in Scandinavia, is incredibly orderly, the houses very well-maintained, fresh paint and gardens all clipped and square. Here, the same architecture is peeling and faded, there is junk lying around the edges of the yards, and all the way along the railway line. There is more mud here; more anonymous railway stops (no names that we can see), a lot of logging trains, and also a lot of people moving through the forest foraging for something - perhaps berries, because they are carrying smallish baskets.

The train is Finnish, so it’s a marvel of design, cleanliness and modernity. We’ve been to the dining car twice, through the mobs in 2nd class (which is purrfectly comfortable, we don’t need to be in 1st class really). This trip only takes 5 hours, of which at least one hour has been taken up with two stops at the border - a leaving Finnland border check, a short ‘demarcation’ zone, and then a longer stop at the Russian border where our passports were taken away for a while. That’s a slightly unnerving feeling.. but the guards were purrfectly polite and we have all been successfully stamped, clocked, noted, checked, spotted, listed and given purrmission to proceed. We’ll be in St Petersburg in about half an hour. Travelling companions (Aussies from Perth) have given us some very useful info about taxis - we have a price which is reasonable for the travel from railway station to hotel, and we also know we have to agree it with the driver before we set off. No meters.

The weather is slowly getting warmer, it may be nearly 30 degrees, altho I hope my extremely vague interpretation of the Finnish tv weather last night is wrong and that WAS the weather, and today it’s going to be a nice fresh 18 or something. It’s been rainy and cool in Helsinki, a steady 15 degrees from dawn to dusk.

~~~~~~

Helsinki has been a busy time; M had a contact at the University from his linguistics professor at the ANU. On our first full day in Helsinki (Tuesday) was spent with Terttu ?, the Department Head of a Linguistics Centre of Excellence. She met us at the hotel, took us for a delightful walk through the Botanic Gardens to the cafe for lunch, and then we had the whole afternoon with her colleagues at the centre. We met people specialising in all manner of research and analysis - a very interesting team of three young men, all working on their PhDs, who are interpreting mediaevel texts of cuisine, medicines and ‘spy’ letters (reports from travellers). These blokes are working closely with a team at Oxford University, so their English was very beautifully accented. Nice to hear people speaking ESL that ISN’T American-accented. I get narked by that..

After four hours of high-speed, high-level linguistics, corpora, diachronics [and a sideways leap into pure research (we met Matti ?, who has examined the 12,000 !!!! examples of the word ‘to have’ in the Helsinki corpora and written a dissertation on it. Just before retirement... he is a charming, charming man, a 70 year old bear of a man wearing a t-shirt saying ‘ROCK AND ROLL FOREVER’. How inspiring! He sat us down, picked M’s brains, threw me a few curly questions about language acquisition, and then settled back to discuss Australian and Kiwi wines. Heh. A universal language!] ... we needed to rest our brains. We found a bar/cafe to meet our needs, and then staggered back to the hotel, feeling very welcome and most comfortable to be thrust back into the academic environment.

We found a good Italian restaurant for dinner, where the waitress listened closely to our questions about the wine list, and then proudly listed the three varieties of Freixenet piccolos - dry, sweet or rose. Rose! I love sparkling pink champagne wine grog. We returned to the university on Thursday afternoon, to join the group for their regular fortnightly afternoon tea. Once again we were warmly welcomed, given Finnish delicacies (a mild cheese, lightly grilled - looks a lot like fried havarti - which one eats spread with a dob of cloudberry jam, very nom; and a blueberry and almond tart, ditto). Matti came and practically sat on my lap, he was so keen to talk. We had a rousing discussion about Scandinavian music, during which he admitted to being a singer, and then told me he used to sing with the Finnish National Radio Chorus (I think that’s what it’s called). He must be quite a singer. Made me feel very nostalgic for Cantorion - hi guys!

Our stay in Helsinki wasn’t as cultural as we hoped for - my poor health slowed things down a bit, not to mention a patch of marital crunchiness. M went out one evening to see a concert of organ and bass singer, at a local church. He enjoyed the music very much, and compared the bass’ voice to the famous Finnish singer ‘Martti Talvela’. We heard bits of Sibelius at the Rock Church and I think in the background at an exhibition we saw yesterday - which was a strange but successful day. Finally we have bought mobiles! But still no connection - Finnsk mobile networks don’t extend anywhere else, so we bought the hand sets and will have to investigate SIM cards and prepaid cards here, and in the Baltic states. Then we bought a suitcase, on the less small side, so we could leave our customs-claimable goods and the cold-weather clothing at the hotel. When we return, only for a day, on the way home, we’re staying at a different hotel, so we went up there to check the booking and leave the bag. No worries.


~~~~~~~~

THANK YOU AND WELCOME AGAIN!

ST PETERSBURG!!!!

... sorry for all the cor wow gob-smacking, but, you know, cor, wow!!! I’m in St Petersburg! I’ve been a bit uneasy about coming here, especially since that nice Mr Putin dropped eleventy thousand Russian troops onto Georgia and destabilised things... and I have my reservations about communist regimes, having lived in one before. As we cross the border, which takes about an hour and a half - we stop at the Finnish border for a passport check, then creep through a demarcation zone, then the official uniforms change and the very stern Russian border check mens come aboard. They collect our passports and take them away. None of us like this very much, but one doesn’t argue with Russian officialdom. They are returned in about an hour, happily stamped with entry dates on our visas. We have only about an hour to go now, to get to the city.

The change in environment is immediate - from the very clean, orderly train trackside, and the houses and gardens in Finnland, which are toy-town tidy and even the felled logs are left in neat little piles, the rubbish and decay and junk on the Russian side are like the dark observe of the Finnish picture - the landscape is the same, the building style and cars and so on are the same, but house need painting, there is a lot of junk in people’s yards (old car parts, broken toys, bits of wood, fallen-down washing lines and old plastic garden furniture). The sense of grace and pride is gone. How glad I am that we are in the nice clean Finnish train, and not the old-style Edwardian Russian carriages!

It’s easy getting into St Petersburg - even though it’s a city of over 4 million people, the train runs straight into one side of the city, with very few suburban stations between the end of the countryside and the terminus. We roll off easily, and are down a side exit and into a taxi in minutes. It’s hot, humid, smoggy and M can’t find his hat. We were told, most timely information, by R and S that one negotiates the taxi fare before getting into the car. They even had information about what a reasonable charge would be from the station to their hotel, and he and M looked up ours on the map and we decided the same amount (700 roubles) would be quite fair. And the taxi driver quoted that to us, so no problems.

He carefully laid all our cases into the boot and the front seat, bowed us into the back seats, and leapt in and put the airconditioning onto UBER. LOVELY. It’s only 10 minutes or so and we’re at the hotel. It’s a boutique hotel, perhaps only about rooms, in what is probably an old apartment block of one large apartment per floor. Our room is about twice the size of the Helsinki room, with high ceilings, parquet floor, and a bathroom big enough for two people very comfortably, bigger than our small Aussie bathroom in fact. The decor is post-bloc dinge, but not dirty. Policestation green walls, tan curtains and bedspreads, a rather grotty marked brown rug, and a sofa in dingy brown with darker dingy brown blobs, which wouldn’t be out of place in an old country motel in Queensland.

The plumbing is somewhat eccentric - every time you turn on the tap, the dunny gurgles. But M says the shower is good, and I am about to test his opinion. Lonely Planet says ‘DO NO ON ANY ACCOUNT DRINK THE TAP WATER’ so we are back to bottled water for everything. I’m glad I’ve done this before, too. It takes a certain discipline to remember to clean yer teeth in a glass of bottled water, rinsing the toothbrush ditto. And I have a special challenge to master - I remember what one does about food (NO salad, fruit or street food, unless it’s a banana; no ice or water from the back room)... but I have (sadly) taken to biting my fingernails again in the last year, and this might be a problem. I have a bottle of Aqium with me, and I will get more, so with luck I’ll be able to keep those tasty little fingers out of my gob and not give myself double-dystentery. Yikes!

We’ll also need mozzie spray, suncream and a bit of fortitude. This is the first smog we’ve encountered, and here’s me at the end of a month-long sinus battle which I thought (and I shall say this VERY quietly) I was getting on top of. So cross your nostrils for me please, that with my armoury of fixatives, squirties, drips, drops and tablets, I can fend off any challenges.

Today brought to you by train coffee, eau de electric trainline, a small blast of Gucci, and borscht for dinner!

Helsinki, signing off Saturday August 16th

We're just about packed, re-organised, tidied, checked, turfed, left-luggaged, mobile-d and looking very schmick. What with M's posting championship yesterday (not 8 kg but 8.9 kg!), and the purchase of another suitcase today (which we have left at the hotel where we will spend 36 hours before beginning our home journey) we're looking very trim. I can't tell you yet how many items we'll be carrying - I hope for merely 7 or 8, especially as we packed away our heavy jumpers and M's overcoat today. But anyway, when the Dodgy Brothers Travelling Circus hits the train-tracks tomorrow morning at 7am, we'll be down to the least amount of stuff we've had so far. We DID find one or two things we could have dispensed with, after we'd done the suitcase transfer, but in the overall scheme they don't take up much room - nothing like the kitchen bag (coffee pot, grounds, teaspoons, rice crackers, paper plates, etc), OR the fan. OR the teddy bears... and I see the forecast is for warmer weather, and rain, so we dare not ditch the fan yet.

I think I owe you a few more Helsinki stories - I'd better finish packing, showering etc before I hit the laptop for this. We'll have to be pretty slick in the morning, and the only (the ONLY) way I can manage that is to be 99% prepared the night before. With only brain-death-strength tasks needed to get out of the hotel. I know I was a lovely baby who slept, and this ability has stayed with me most of my life, but the morning brain-whiteout and bleeginess is difficult when I need to be razor-sharp mastermind. I'm not telling what it takes to achieve! Dad, SHHHHHHH.

Seeya in a minute... so far, today brought to you by buckets of Chanel No. 5 Hair Mist, which I nearly managed to resist at the Stockman Mall yesterday, but ... nope. I do likes my Chanel No. 5....

All that matters...

... is a cat. And after a pretty damn purrfect afternoon - details in next blog entry - we were graced by a visit from a very fluffy tabby/torty cross Norsk pussk. He had a lot to say, and because we have been here 5 days, we understood purrfectly. I quote: "Neglected, misunderstood, starved and forced to suffer indignities like cruising strangers at a bus stop for a bit of attention. Waaa.. "

I, sook sook, took lots of photos and a movie or two (on Le Camera) to prove that Norwegian catspeak is not unlike feline dialects across the world.

We are packing tonight, ready to abandon our luggage twice tomorrow - once at the hotel foyer, for the afternoon, and then again at the Hurtigruten tent at the Fish Market, ready to embark!!!!! at 6pm, and sail!!!!!!! at 8pm. I can't really quite believe we're going to do it, but now M has the grog (what pisspots we must sound, and how anal are the Bergenese with their two wee liquor shops, and their 6pm beer-selling closing time at the supermarket. Is there a problem??? *I* aint got one)... we can sail away and, if we like, not set foot on land unless we need more tonic water. Wowee!

The Prada was purrfect. I hope you out there, my dear ones and my unknown readers who I would like to know more of, are all well, warm or cool enough, and within grasping distance of whatever it is that soothes you most. G'night fur now.

Last day of July..

FIRST: I've been fiddling with dates and times, to try to get the posts back in order. So you might find peerless prose below you haven't seen, underneath p/p you HAVE. Happy untangling!

~~~~~~~~
Last day of July, and we are having a major excavation of all our belongings, aiming to post a big heavy bundle home, the first boxed set of accumulations since we departed our home shores..

I am somewhat better today, although once again it is a late start. But we've achieved a lot without leaving the room - eaten, coffee-ed, pilled, washed, laundered, folded, fossicked, sorted, packed and re-packed. Determined that THREE purrfumes can go home. I would almost sob, except it's not really going to take me very long to acquire more, is it. No, not even a question.

There is a good feeling, to see the huge piles of meds slowly reducing as we guzzle them down every day. And I like knowing that we can ditch all the cold weather stuff at Helsinki, that should leave LOTS more room for spontaneous souvenir sampling.

I do hope I can find a wi-fi Net cafe soon, so I can get these various bits onto the blog. I'll get all out of kilter and you won'ts know where I is at!

Today brought to you by Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill on the darling iPod, the previously unidentified purrfume (Gucci, by Gucci!), and a rising sense of excitement about the boat trip. Yippee! T and S goes coastal!

~~~~~~~~~~

Those dang Viking gods have been at again. We achieved great things and very sore feet today - major post office operations (look out for small parcels and postcards, my dear ones), money exchanging (and we found a place that doesn't charge a fee! - I now have a zillion Norwegian kroner but I don't really know what they're worth, M keeps changing his mind about the maths and I haven't bothered to check have I..), found a laundry, found (after a PROLONGED STOMP AROUND A LOTTA COBBLESTONES) one of the two liquor stores here, only to discover it had closed 10 mins earlier buggerbuggerbugger ... went past the wool shop for some knitting needles and wool but it had closed- this northern summer midnight sun fools us easily into thinking it's been 4pm for half the day, only to find the good Burghers of Bergen have the gall to close up shop at 7pm!. How slack is that... where was I??...

Oh yes, M was fading fast so he came back to the room for a bit of non-B time. I stopped at the 'Bazaar' dress shop [where I was investigating cruise-ship formal wear the other day] and managed to bend my Visa card most successfully. I am now kitted up for anything short of a royal visitation, in which case I shall retreat to my room and knit.

Returning to our room, thinking happily of Netting and having some coffee, I find M looking hot and cross.. he needs some time out and is planning a Net fix over the road, via the pub. But oh bloodybotheringshit he suddenly grabs his jaw, and out comes a crown from a back tooth. Baaaaaaad news. We take deep breaths (the better to swear, my dear); then I stomp up to reception while he has his nervous breakdown in private. Jarle, the very helpful young man at the desk, searches for a dentist which is still open. No luck, and no luck finding an after-hours clinic either. Eventually we agree that we'll front up at 8am tomorrow, when someone can ring around and make an appointment for us. I hope we can get in somewhere quickly, it will be very VERY anxious-making for M to go on a boat trip for 6 days with a busted tooth. And who wouldn't be? The chance of it suddenly getting very painful is a nasty risk.

HOWEVER one good thing that comes from this is that Jarle confirms that this hotel does have wireless internet, so when I've typed this last bit I can load up several days worth of peerless prose, and gets myself back into date order.

Today brought to you by ow-de-cobblethrobbers, coffee, and a strong longing for chocolate.

Leaving, on a jet train...

Har Har.

The gods have been at it again.

We packed up our bags last night, finding that somehow our possessions had expanded beyond our zippers' capacity to close the cases. Eh? I only bought... well, 3 t-shirts, several small souvenirs, a shawl, several tubes of face cream, an umbrella (a very fetching umbrella with Swedish cats on it, couldn't be left behind!), stationery, postcards, a coffee plunger and a tin of coffee, a teddy bear, several magazines and some coat hangers. Hardly anything.

We ended up with our 4 small cases, a backpack each, my small handbag, and two plastic bags (tied up with my new head-scarf). It was fine getting out of the hotel, just lugged it all into the lift. Fine getting to the station, just shoved it all into a taxi. Fine getting through the station to the information board, just made like pack-horses. But then we discovered that platform 11 was down a level, and the lift was mysteriously hidden in the chaos of shops, seats, info terminals, peoples by the hundred, and lots of shiny lights FAR too early in the morning. Some of the shiny lights were not without charm because they said "coffee", but it was not to be. M walked the station looking for a lift. He said there was one (somewhere) but it didn't go down to the level we wanted. I speculated that if we tried it, we might get half-way and then be able to find another lift going down the extra floor.

Good thinking B! Only trouble was, where WAS the damn lift? We circumnavigated the innards of the station, but couldn't find a "HISS" sign. M found several sets of stairs but my leggies said NOOOOOO. I was lucky to then find a railway staff member who pointed me to the area in the main hall where a lift was to be found. Hurray!

We lugged again, but once in the lift it wouldn't go down to the second level, where we thought we needed to go. Just as we were about to get out anyway, at Level 1, the lift started ascending again. A woman with a mobility 'chair' was waiting to use the lift. M, swearing, got out. I wasn't fast enough and I disappeared down to Level 1 again! Pressing the"2" button and swearing wasn't doing the trick. At level 1 a woman got in, and I asked her why the lift refused to go any further down. She said 'but this is the lowest level you can go' which explained a lot. So up we went to the main hall again, where a red-faced M was waiting with the disabled woman. M leapt on board again (there was no room in the lift for that poor, patient woman and her chair). We chugged out at Level 1 and followed the sign for Platform 11.

Oh Har Har. To get to Platform 11, we had to climb a full flight of stairs. Har Har Har. M started up, managing quite well with his pack plus two cases. He'd only gone about 6 steps up when a gleaming, healthy young Swedish woman offered to help with his cases. Angel number one for the day. Meantime I was lugging, carefully but knowing my back would protest, my two bloody lead-weight pieces of over-laden travel bags. I made it up about 12 steps before our helpful Swedish angel re-appeared to help me. I didn't even manage to make eye contact with her when I said thank you, she was so fast hoicking my case up the rest of the stairs.

Once on the platform, we were able to stop and wait to read the notice-board about the imminent arrival of our train. I made a rather large crowd-blocking station, surrounded by all cases and bags while M did a recce up and down the platform trying to find a map of the train so we could see where to wait. Turns out Svensk railways doesn't purrvide such things, but a helpful young gent explained where out first carriage would be and we were able to shove our way through the crowd to about the right place.

M also leapt on board as soon as the train arrived, to find our seats and dump a preliminary bag or two. Then we got those four dang cases on board, and found enough room for one of them in the luggage-shelves near the door. The rest had to be lifted by us up into the luggage racks. I hope they stay put - any one of them falling on a head would do a lot of damage!

I was very sad that there was no time in all this for me to grab a coffee. But as soon as the train got started, M went looking for the dining car. He returned with coffee and lovely fresh prawn, egg and mayonnaise rolls, the only choice! They were cool and delicious. The coffee went down just in time to prevent a wifely loss of intestinal fortitude. We have 6 hours on this trip to Oslo (in a non-airconditioned train), then a wait of about an hour, and another 5 or so hours to Bergen.

I hope the hotel room is cooler than our Stockholm room. We *could* see that our room in Stockholm was on the less sunny side of the building, but even with a fan on and a chair propping the door open, to let some of the cooler passage-way air into our room, we were pretty hot and stuffy. Enough with the heat waves!!

Today brought to you (so far) by Lacoste purrfume, eau de railway station, coffee, and boiled egg with mayo squished lavishly into the prawns on the bun. Nom.

******************

Part two.

An hour into the trip to Oslo, an announcement came of the PA - due to work on the line, the train would be stopping in K..., and we would proceed to Oslo by bus. Consternation. An extra two lots of hoicking our bloody bags around.

But in the end, we were grateful. There was no airconditioning on the train, and only one window per carriage to allow some (hot) air in. I fell asleep but was really only dozing; I was aware that sweat was dripping off my face and running down various bits... uncomfortable. The bus to Oslo was airconditioned; you could hear the sighs of relief from all the passengers when the driver started the engine and immediately overhead air thingies (like on planes) started blasting out cool air. The drive to Oslo took about 2.5 hours, during which I spent about half the time appreciating the beautiful farmland, and about half snoozing. This time I didn't drip, I just bit my tongue.

Oslo railway station gets the thumbs up from us - no steps at any stage. There was a small moment of conniption when we saw an OUT OF ORDER sign on the lift going from the platform to the main station, but there were escalators, which are a fine substitute. And our plan of taking two small cases each, plus backpack, works well in such situations, because no individual piece of luggage is hard to manage. Mine all seem to be bloody heavy though..

We had about an hour before the train for Bergen departed. We spent it doing two useful things - M exchanged some money, and I found a pizza cafe which had beer on tap. Without quite noticing, I drank a pint of cold water, a pint of beer and a pint of lemonade, before downing a huge latte. These fluids were all good, giving me various types of inner strength. And, for once, I think the beer was more necessary than the coffee. Shows you how HOT I am. Yes yes yes, I know it's summer. But don't they have summer every year here? How come no aircon? Hmm?????

M has left me tapping away at this, while he walks up and down the train to cool off. And I don't mean temperature cooling... he asked a helpful Information Desk person about this train, wanting to know which platform and also which end of the platform our carriage would be. Unfortunately the info was correct as to platform number, but wrong as to carriage position - M was told our (first class) carriage would be the first one behind the engine.

LIES.

We had to schlep all the way along in the bloody hot sun and across the unhelpfully textured platform pavers, bout 16 carriages to the other end of the train, to find our comfy spot. There was much husbandly head-shaking, vehement use of good old anglo-saxon language, and quite a bit of arm-waving. When I suggested that it didn't matter cos here we were on the dang train, before it left, et etc, I got TOLD. I expect I deserved it for being Pollyanna-ish. I don't really care. M's first act was to go for a walk to find the dining car, and bring me back another coffee. I KNEW it was a good idea to marry this man.

So, with luck (and I am saying this VERY QUIETLY so any pesky gods with contra-suggestable senses of humour won't hear), we will get to stay on this train all the way to Bergen. We will also be able to easily wheel our stuff out of the station and into a nice cool taxi which will take us extremely quickly and cheaply to a nice cool hotel. Where we will collapse in a heap, needing only to pop out to the smorgasbord pub next door to get dinner, before showering off quite a lot of Svensk and Norsk sweat and then hitting the sack.

This part of today brought to you by Pilsener, double-strength under-arm charm, and the blissful scent of a cup of coffee.....moderated slightly by the taste of Ventolin, because for some reason I can't breathe properly, It's been 3 days since the wheezes started and don't ask ME why. It's certainly not cold, or polluted, or infested with cigarette smoke anywhere near me, and I don't have any infections (it was hard to type that last bit with all my fingers crossed but I find the point of my nose helpful in such situations)... anyway, bugger.

Tra-la, tra-la...

My mate reminded me of singing four-part harmony on the deck, champagne to hand, a warm sea current waiting to wash any cares away, and the company of good friends... summer holidays, no stress, excellent coffee.... cake, even!

Our weekend hasn't been ANYTHING like that. In fact the only four-part harmony was probably when we were all whinging for dinner at once - a whimper, a request, a mrow and a biff (in LMW-speak biff counts as a complete vocabulary, and I might say is remarkably effective, especially when it draws blood). The cats got the better of it, they got fed. M had to resort to yet another tin of tuna, and I probably ate either muesli or toast. Yes, when in doubt, have breakfast again. I *have* been trying to 'eat the freezer' (defrosting interesting lumps of icy stuff to see what they are), and we've had some fun - the lump labelled "M's potato bolognaise" defrosted into some roast chicken with herbs. Who knows where that mutant bog got to? Bread is easy to identify, and the smaller lumps are invariably yet another packet of gourmet coffee beans. There's a bit of a gap in the fresh veggies and herbs department though..

My crisper is empty. Most of the open packets of pasta, rice, weirdo curry pastes, pickles, rubs, mustards and that bit of wedding-cake icing I forget buying, have gone either down the hatch or in the compost. The bottom of the fridge is so clear of food, all you can see is a row of bottles of grog (now THAT'S an organised fridge, a fridge with its priorities straight).

The linen cupboard got tidied, folded, culled and labelled in a huge Virgo attack some months ago. I've washed all the cotton rugs. I've arranged for new paths around the house to be made while we're away. I've left a life-time supply of cow manure for Alice the Garden. I've mended the washing line, put away all the knitting, piled up all the important papers I have ignored for weeks into a really tidy bundle, thrown out my old sneakers, and looked behind the bed.

I've written CLOTHES HORSE on my right wrist three days in a row, to try to remember to buy one before we leave, because clearly if I don't I will fret all the way around the Baltic States that our house-sitter won't be able to get her stuff dry on our crappy little old one.

We went out this afternoon to have a meeting - a strange marital habit leftover from the days when a step-dorter was involved in the household mix. We used to go out (neutral space) and thrash out any co-existence problems over coffee and cake. There was an agenda, a chair, and a scribe. It took hours. Then the step-dorter would happily announce 'but ya know, cos I'm a teenager, I reserve the right to forget all these agreements sometimes'. Step-mother used to gnash and wail.... anyway, as I said, we had a meeting. We drew up very competent lists of days, items, appointments, chores, memos, reminders and must-dos.
After some pages, I saw that nowhere on my list does it say "PACK". So apparently I am going away for 12 weeks to exciting northern hemisphere destinations with no luggage. Meh. But think what I'll leave behind! - the most incredibly well-organised household, cats, parents, house-sitter, extended staff (gardener, builder, plumber and cleaners), workroom and study.

OK, OK, I lied about the study. I'm going to continue putting things in piles to look efficient and hope-to-fuck nothing important gets forgotten, or rears up as a narstly problem for someone else to fix while I'm gorn. And I'm going to put all the purrfume away in a nice dark place so it doesn't go off while I'm gone. Except for what I take with me. Last time I believe I started out with only two bottles, succumbed to the fun of buying some in mid-air with my shiny new Visa card, and picked up at least one more along the way in a Duty Free shop. My bathroom bag probably weighed about 7kgs. Fortunately it was in those long-gone days when one could carry liquids on board big silver birds. Now I am in a pickle - how to either decide which one to take (one? ONE!!!! I can't survive 12 weeks smelling the same kind of gorgeous every day!!!), or what to leave out from the rest of the packing so I can wrap up lots more in socks n stuff. You see the trials I am faced with?

And, just for fun, tomorrow I must have another shot into my hip, and on Tuesday I must be attacked by a dentist to have a permanent crown stuck in me gob. So the medical habit continues, right down to the line....

Today brought to you by the aroma of Segafredo lattes (thanks to Tilleys), and a strong reminder of yesterday's 'Ange ou Demon' via my bra. From the over-active squirts I applied last night before going out to an extremely spiffo dinner. Nom!