Memento mori

Sunday mornings are all about reading the papers and noodling about. I start with the online Observer, move through the Sydney Morning Herald, the IoS, the Australian, the Times, the Torygraph and Scotland on Sunday, via Aftenposten and Dagbladet, with a quick look at the Beeb. I can while away the whole morning with the Sunday papers.

But how I miss having a hard copy version of the Observer scattered over my bed on Sunday mornings. When I lived in the UK, I'd get up ridiculously early, put some clothes over my pyjamas, run to the corner shop, buy an armful of newspapers and a couple of croissants and head home. Then it was back to bed for a snooze before warming up the pastries, making a pot of espresso and taking it back to bed. Breakfast in bed with a presshall's worth of the papers? Indulgent, delightful and one of the best things about the week.

These days, it's more of a sit at the kitchen table in front of a laptop routine, which is nowhere near as satisfying or decadent. But if I didn't do it, Sunday wouldn't be the same.

This morning's trawl brought me up short.

I was reading the Observer and came across this article. I don't know whether it's because Mum's birthday is looming or because Steward touches on points that still resonate almost four years after Mum's death, but her story made me search out the photo above.

It's not a particularly good photo technically, but it is a good photo. It captures Mum as she was in the last "good" phase of her life. You can still see her, her spark, her crankiness, her humour, and she still carries traces of her beauty, despite the illness. But it's also a true image, reflecting that time precisely - my father and I are alive, rude with good health, while death's fingerprints are smudging Mum's face. It's one of the last photos I have of Mum.

There was one particular line in Steward's piece that prompted me to look at the photo again:
My friend Krysia keeps her mother's hairband and says she cries when she wears it because she can still smell her hair on it. "I don't wear it often," she says, "because it could lose her smell."

About three months or so before Mum died, I went down south. On the way to Jindabyne, we stopped at Goulburn to fill up and marvel at the Big Merino. I bought Mum a pair of woolly bedsocks. Her feet were always cold, it was a small discomfort that amplified the larger, harder discomforts of terminal illness. Having cold feet was something she felt she could complain about. So, I bought her a pair of merino wool socks, in a pastelly mauve (a definite Mum colour). When I got back from the Snowies, I gave them to her. They helped, a little. She wore them almost constantly.

Of all the things that belonged to Mum that I have with me, the socks are the most important. There's still a lingering trace of her scent on them. It's a combination of Mum and eucalyptus wool wash and baby powder and Mum. It's the best smell in the world. They're in a drawer, in my room.

There's nothing else in that drawer. Just the socks. The socks my Mum wore for the last few months of her life. The socks she wore the day she died. The socks I remember rolling off her feet before we washed her body and entrusted her to the undertaker.

And like Steward's friend Krysia, I don't bring them out of the drawer very often. In part because something banal - a pair of mass-produced mauve woolly socks bought on impulse in a tacky souvenir shop - can stir up grief again. But mostly because every time I disturb them, a little bit of my Mum's smell - a small, tangible piece of Mum, proof positive that she really was here - disappears forever.

Oh, for a cracking head

Sub-editors are a vanishing breed these days. The bean counters that run print media organisations think subs are an unnecessary cost, leaving production desks nursing the scars of the razor gang's frenzy.

This piece is a damned good argument for employing skilled subs, who know their way around the language, who can think laterally, who have sharp news sense and a dash of sensitivity.

Abdul-Ahad's piece is strong and fine. It's simply and powerfully written (and I wish I had his skill). It's good reportage.

But, oh, that headline. It's banal. It doesn't do justice to Abdul-Ahad's writing. With that head, you may as well pin a note to the top of the page saying: "Run along, nothing worth spending your time on here, it's just a bit of didactic hand-wringing."

I know you're not meant to judge a book by its cover, or a story by its headline. But bloody hell, all it takes is a wee bit of effort and a bit of thought. There's a headline in there that would have - should have - made that page sing. It's a shame no one found it.

Lost leader

Scottish port Mick Imlah, who may win the TS Eliot prize tonight, has died.

Railway Children

After the branch line went to Ochiltree -
I would have been fifteen – two men were shut
In the station waiting-room, and one of them
Brought out his pocket anecdote of me:

'The boy's a splurger! - hey, when Danny Craig
Passed him a flask on the train the other day,
He gulped it, just for the sake of showing off.
And he's a coward too, for all his face.
For after he'd taken the drink, he noised about,
And Dan, to clip his wings, made up a threat
To hang him out o' the window by his heels -
You know Dan didn't mean it, but the boy
Grew white at the very idea o't – shook
Like a dog in the wet - "Oh!," he cried, and "Oh! -
But how would tha ground go flying past your eyes;
How quick tha wheel beside your face would buzz -
Would blind you by quickness – how tha grey slag
Would flash below ye!" - Those were his actual words;
He seemed to see it all as if for real,
And flinched, and stopped, and stared, like a body in fits,
Till Dan was drawn to give him another drink;
"You'd spew with dizziness," he said, shut
His eyes where he sat, and actually bocked himself.'

Going in circles

(Brought to you by Gazprom. The copy taps are shut, this way I look like I'm working. Excellent)

We're a mixed bunch at drawing class - a couple of young, tattooed, dreadlocked boys hoping to get tattooist's apprenticeships, a lass waiting to start architecture studies, a newly-widowed 80-year-old man, J, L and myself.

We all have crisp A3 sketchbooks, newly-sharpened pencils and - speaking for myself - a dearth of inspiration.

I stare at the blank page and pick up a 2B pencil. I am no Kathe Kollwitz. I doubt I can make a line sing. Dag, our teacher, tells us to get a feel for our pencils (mine feels distinctly pencil-like, for the record) and to draw lines. Straight ones.

Tricky one, that. I'm not so good at straight. I can't walk a straight line sober, let alone draw one freehand (sober or otherwise). Even with a ruler, it's a bit hit and miss.

Sod it, I think, I'll draw straight-ish ones and see what happens.

And it's fun. Especially finding out what shades and thickness of line I can get by turning the pencil this way and that, by holding it differently, by drawing quickly or taking my time. I enjoy it, anyway.

My lines are wibbly, wonky, decidedly wobbly, but some of them are quite pretty. Who cares about straightness? It's over-rated.

We talk about circles (calming apparently), squares (solid) and triangles (aggressive). I'm sidetracked by the thought of hundreds of thousands of aggressive triangles on the march, growling angry iscolese-esque threats at all and sundry as they stomp towards ... where? I don't know. I got stuck at the bit with all those jostling, angry, growling triangles.

Now, two parallel lines across the page, a dot on each, directly opposite each other. We're to draw a circle using the two dots as a guide.

Much, much harder than it looks. He doesn't want perfect circles, but he is after something circular. Right.

I try. The first attempt's not so good. The circle starts off circular, but one of those irate triangles must have taken possession of my pencil mid-stroke, ruining the arc. I fail. Badly.

Try again. It's ovoid. Which is an improvement, except I have managed to take the left hand side of one oval and marry it to the right hand side of an entirely different oval. They don't match. Hmm. The teacher has a look over my shoulder and can't think of anything to say. Not even a mumble. The look on his face says it all.

So I keep trying. Over and over and over again. I'm determined to draw something slightly circular. It can't be that hard.

The more I try, the less circular they get. I have to give it up as a bad job. But I'll come back to it. I have seven weeks of this class and if I can manage to circle by the end of it, it'll have been seven weeks well spent. For sure.

After-school club

Christmas and new year was a bit bumpy. Cold and grey and gloomy. L and I both found out that fresh starts can be false. Ouch. As for J? The poor man was crushed.

Over a few too many beers not so long ago - beer is the balm for broken hearts, surely? - we decided we needed a plan. A Plan, even. Rather than whimpering and licking wounds, it was time to do. To do what? Something. New year, new you and you and you.

Well, maybe.

L, being a practical, level-headed type, already had an idea in mind. She sketched it out.

First, we drink more beer. No arguments there from either J or I. To drink more beer, we need to go out more. Obvious, really. To go out more, we need a reason to be out.

(I'd always thought going out purely for being out was good enough, but hey ...)

And L had the reason sorted too. An after-school club. For adults. Three adults specifically. The three sitting around a table in an out-of-the-way bar. The trio who spent a little too much time at work, thinking that work was a good way to dull the nagging ache of bruised hearts.

She pulled out sheets of paper (she's a producer through and through, this one. Everything planned, mapped out, timetabled. Impressive and then some). She'd signed us all up for drawing classes. She had sussed out extra yoga for me, more salsa for herself. She'd also scouted out some cookery courses, and there were drumming classes as well, if we were interested.

We were. We are. We're cracking on with it. Fingers crossed it works.

Blinded

In Youngstorget last night, 10,000 of us stood in the cold, holding torches, asking - quietly - for peace. We shuffled our feet to keep them warm, shielded our candles from the wind, we listened to calls for a ceasefire. Then walked from Youngstorget to Rådhusplassen, by the Nobel Peace Prize Centre.

I'd like to think what were doing said that violence diminishes all of us, regardless of who we are, where we are, or in whose name or for what cause we strike out. That force is the last resort of the weak and the foolish. That revenge is poison. That all attack and counter-attack leave behind is dust. That an eye for an eye blinds us all.

Three streets away, at a smaller demonstration, a riot broke out. There were running street battles between Stortinget and Tullinløkka between the police and gangs of youths. Bricks and bins became missiles, new year's fireworks morphed into rockets, burning cars as barricades. Tear gas and baton charges.

Blindness.

Good things

I've never been good at resolutions, new year or otherwise. I think, perhaps, I like change to be gradual. To ease myself into new situations, new ways of doing things, to ease myself out of things, habits, frames of mind. Abrupt changes disturb my equilibrium, leaves me looking for something familiar to grasp. It's not pretty.

So this new year, despite some gentle nudging from above, I didn't make a list of things to do or a list of things to stop doing. I took a deep breath and hoped. Hoped for some good things - for me, for the people I care about, for the planet (I know, I know, bloody hippy). Mostly I hoped for good things. Kept it vague, tried to keep it positive.

This year, for sure.

It should have been obvious

To the cinema this afternoon - nothing better than a matinee on a sleety Sunday afternoon - to see Max Manus, this year's big Norwegian film. It's the biggest budget homegrown film ever, about one of Norway's biggest heroes.

The Telemark saboteurs are probably more famous outside Norway, thanks to Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, but in Oslo? The resistance boils down Manus and the Oslo gang. They blew up ships and railway lines, they sank the Donau, they destroyed government files containing the details of thousands of Norwegian boys, saving them from conscription and service on the Eastern Front.

It was a good film. A little flabby in parts, but the story - and it's a true story - is so good that any quibbles are better coming from a Norwegian.

The thing is, though, that despite knowing that King Haakon (that's him in statue form just up there) was born in Denmark to a Danish prince, was brought up and educated in Denmark, you know what I hadn't realised until this afternoon?

Norway's king - a man who is still universally revered by Norwegians - spoke Danish.

Uff

Stuff's been kicking me in the backside a bit of late and have let things slide. Oops, didn't mean to.

On track soon, promise.

Apropos of

Absolutely nothing, really.

Have become ever so slightly obsessed with Blip.fm since iTunes ate my music.*

The obsession would be of more practical use if I could work out how to get my blips to a playlist, but hey, that's a wee technicality. It'll come.

Thing is, Blip.fm has reawakened my Neil Diamond love. Shut up. I'm not a wilful obscurantist all the time.


*well, the digital stuff anyway. There's still an obscene amount of actual in your hands vinyl, cassette and CD music in the house but that's not the point. Honest.

From here to there

My home town is a long way from anywhere. It's on the edge of nowhere, but it isn't quite nowhere.

My new home is closer to somewhere, but it's perched on the fringes. The fringe of a bigger, busier, more crowded somewhere.

Like my old home, to get anywhere from here takes effort.

My new home is half a world away from my old home. And sometimes, that half a world can be a universe of difference.

Some days, nothing is as it should be. The pieces don't quite fit. You're not just an immigrant, you're alien as well. There's a slight skew that trips you up, sends ripples of unease through your equilibrium, makes your breath catch in your throat.

The seasons are the wrong way around here, it makes me feel topsy-turvy. (This September baby will always know she's a spring baby, despite the chill in the air and the crisp crackle-crunch of orange and brown on the ground). My senses are unreliable here, my gut instinct wobbly. I can never be sure of the fundamentals, my givens are not always givens here.

I am always just a little bit outside. I was always just a little bit outside in my old home too.

The difference is I don't ache to shake the dust from here from my feet.

Things to do at work when it's snowing

Make midget snowmen.

Christmas baking

Gingerbread moose and reindeer on the loose. There are seven types of biscuits Norwegians traditionally make at Christmas time. Gingerbread is one, I don't have the patience for the other six.

Undo

When I was small, my dad ran a pub for a few years. It was a pretty standard country pub. Open 10am to 10pm Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2pm and 5pm to 7pm on Sundays. There was a wide verandah around the first floor, shading the footpath. Three doors facing the street - one for the barber's shop, one for the pub's main hallway, the last for the public bar.

The public bar was tiled and faced the street, the only women who entered it were barmaids. Fourex on tap, rum and gin in the optics. There were bottles of sherry and port and a shelf of ageing Bols liqueurs - mostly curdling advocaat - reflecting into a drunken, smoky eternity in the spotted bevelled mirror against the wall.

The bar had a shiny brass footrail with small metal bins that tucked in under the rail, snug to the bar. I used to have to fill them with sand. By closing time, they were filled with fag ends and plugs of rollie tobacco, burnt matches and scrunched up Tally-Ho papers. The detritus of the day's session.

The bar smelt good early in the morning, after mum or dad had hosed it out and had run over the tiles with a mop doused in neat Pine-O-Kleen.

To get to the lounge - which was where the ladies took their gin and squash - you walked down the ancient, crackly lino in the main hallway, past the barber's, skirted the wide silky oak stairs and through a multi-coloured plastic strip curtain.

Beyond the lounge, the pool table and the jukebox was the kitchen - a massive room with a huge wood-fired range, a long set of presses filled with crockery and cutlery, a large wooden table, scrubbed white from almost a century of use, and a walk-in pantry.

The pantry was cool and dark. Shelves up to the ceiling. On the floor stood drums of flour and sugar, rolled oats and a bin for stale bread (we made our own breadcrumbs with a mincer - a fun but dangerous job). Above the drums was a shelf with smaller containers - bakelite canisters for loose-leaf tea and tea bags, coffee powder, cereals and the like. Next to them there were packets and packets of biscuits for smoke-oh.

In the corner of the pantry, there was a tower of pink and yellow wafers for puddings. Neon bright, cardboard wafers. Something to add a touch of city slicker sophistication to a bowl of ice cream.

Mum, dad and I lived upstairs. Mum and dad's room seemed massive. It was our living room and their bedroom, all in one. It had French doors opening out on to the verandah, overlooking the main street. Dad's aquarium stood next to the doors, near the telly and the old sofa.

He had goldfish - a couple of black, frilly-finned, boggle-eyed beauties, some larger orange versions of the same and a few standard goldfish. They had a pirate's chest, a bare-breasted mermaid, a tiny underwater castle and a diver to keep them company. It looked like a good life.

If mum and dad were busy with the pub and my grandad couldn't take me, or it was after kindy hours or I wasn't at my cousins' place, tied to a tree in a game of Cowboys and Indians (I was the youngest and the smallest, I was always the Indian), I'd perch next to the aquarium and watch the fish. I'd take a pile of books, drag an old bar stool next to the aquarium and sit with my books, as close as I could. I thought the fish might like the company.

One afternoon my grandad collected me from kindy. We'd had our lunch together with Aunty Vi, the pub cook - a sandwich made from doorsteps of fresh white loaf and roast beef from that day's counter lunches. I was shooed upstairs to have an afternoon camp while my grandad and Aunty Vi went out to the back verandah for a smoke and a chat over mugs of stewed milky tea.

I climbed the main stairs up to mum and dad's room - it always seemed to take an age to go upstairs. It was easier to go down. If there wasn't a grown-up about, you could slide down the bannisters.

I went in to their room - it was a hot afternoon, I wasn't sleepy at all. I pulled my bar stool over to the tank and looked at the fish. I wiggled my fingers in the water and the fish came swimming up, thinking there were fresh flakes on offer. They suckered at my finger tips. Poor things, they never had Aunty Vi's roast beef sandwiches and sarsparilla cordial for lunch, they had fish flakes. Boring.

I sat for a little while, thinking about the food I ate and the food the fish ate. It didn't really seem fair. Our dogs got bones and the offcuts from the sides of beef my uncles cut up for freezing. The cats got liver and kidneys and bowls of hot, frothy milk, fresh from the dairy cows. The hens ate like feathered royalty - chook mash as well as potato peels and tea leaves, carrot skins and bits of beetroot. Even the canary and the budgies got a break from bird seed - pieces of apple, a carrot, some celery.

The fish needed a treat. They had to have a treat.

I took off down the back stairs to the kitchen. My grandfather and Aunty Vi didn't notice me. I crept into the kitchen through the back door. The last of the beef stood on a carving dish, cooling. No, beef was no good, the fish had no teeth. They wouldn't be able to chew it.

I walked into the pantry and looked around. Tea? No, that would be silly. Sugar was definitely out as well. Milk arrowroot biscuits might work, but I knew Aunty Vi counted the packets and would notice if one went missing. I turned and saw the wafers.

Perfect.

I grabbed a packet and scooted back up the stairs.

I remember opening the packet and laying the wafers on the surface of the water. Yellow, pink, yellow, pink. It looked pretty. The fish swam up to investigate.

Then the dye in the wafers started leaching into the water. Little poisonous curlicues of yellow and pink spinning lazily in the water, fanning out like filigree. I knelt on the bar stool, my stomach knotting and churning, my eyes prickly hot with tears. I tried to scoop the soggy, washed-out wafers from the tank, but they fell apart in my hands.

One by one, the fish started to float upwards.

I killed them. I killed them all.

Navidad a lo Cubano

I'm wishing for a Cuban Christmas again. It's not that my feet are itchy, although they are. It's not that Christmas is more Christmas-y in Cuba. It's not. Christmas was banned for 36 or so years, the island's just getting back in to the swing of la noche buena.

And that, I think, is why last year's Cuban Christmas was a joy. Bar the giant Christmas tree in the lobby of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, wishing us "Feliz navidad y Viva la revolucion!" there were very few clues that Christmas was around the corner.

No Christmas adverts, no Christmas muzak in bars or shops, no fake Santas on street corners. The shops didn't have decorations, cards or specially packaged boxes of Christmas chocolate on sale. There was no last-minute rush for this year's must-have gift, no strings of Christmas lights twinkling in plazas and along streets, no Rudolphs prancing across Spanish colonial rooftops. There was no hassle. None at all. No doubt Cubans might prefer a little more Christmas pizzazz - an antidote to the shortages, rationing, the hardship of the periodo especial. But to this cynical westerner? The absence of commercial Christmas spirit was more than just a relief, it was bliss.

Thanks to Mildret, my friend's Trinidad landlady, we knew Christmas was coming. She had set up a nativity scene in her front room, propped up by a small, raggedy plastic Christmas tree, topped by a giant red star. Plaster Joseph watched over plaster Mary, who gazed devotedly at an empty plaster manger. The plaster shepherds watched their plaster flocks, the plaster donkey looked suspiciously at the plaster cattle. We took our Christmas cues from the plaster wise men.

Our first visit to Mildret's coincided with the beginning of the three wise men's long journey from the east (the front patio, fronting Frank Pais) to Bethlehem. As Christmas drew near, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar nudged closer and closer to their goal. We reckoned they'd have to make the fringe of the rug for Christmas eve if they were to hit Bethlehem in time for the Epiphany, holiday traffic being what it is.

The journey was dangerous. Sometimes their path took them close to the main walkway through the house. Other times, Mildret's dachshund would help the magi on their way, picking up one and scampering off, past the tree, down the corridor, through the kitchen and out into the back courtyard, dropping the battered wise man with a hollow, chipped clunk at Mildret's feet. Sometimes the pup would stop to have a chew first. The magi were was rapidly losing their looks, chunks of their gifts and their head gear.

Mildret's battered magi had to make it to the manger for twelfth night. The thing is, there were places to go. Holguin was calling.

I still don't know whether all three kings made it to Bethlehem intact. I like to think they did. And that the infant Jesus preferred the wrapping paper to the treasures inside.

Dream

When I was seven or eight, Mum bought me a set of World Book encyclopaedia. I guess I was a pretty geeky, strange kid (even then), because I remember aching to read them.

I'd choose a volume and flip, stopping to read whatever seemed interesting. Cosmonauts were far more intriguing than astronauts, but I can remember poring over the entry on the Apollo Moon landings and looking closely at Moon maps. Like I said, a nerdy child. My parents must have wondered what on earth they'd spawned.

The World Book entries I never tired of, though, were one about the Sahara and a shorter piece about Tuaregs. My eight-year-self decided that when I grew up, I would go there. Just to see.

I don't remember thinking very deeply about it, it was more of a pointer of what could be possible once you were done with long division and PE on Wednesday afternoons. It was one of those dreams that you don't or shouldn't think through - if I had, I would have realised that, on face value, it verged on ridiculous. A kid from a one-mechanic town in the middle of nowhere, from an island in the middle of nowhere, travelling halfway across the world for sand and camels? As my Dad would say: "What do you want to go there for? We've got sand and camels here."

Didn't stop me wondering how vast a sand sea could be or imagining Tuaregs at the head of great camel caravans, ignoring borders, heat and sand storms as they headed towards the horizon. My imagination discounted the fact that the internal combustion engine and 4 wheel drives had rendered camels, as a mode of transport, virtually obsolete. Shhhh.

Still, sometimes you get to do the things you'd only ever dreamed of. One thing I know now about holding tight to a dream for so long is that reality can be very different from the idea you have carried for years. The reality can be better.

Sebha, the main town in Fezzan, Libya's Saharan province, is 1000 kilometres and a world away from Tripoli. You can feel the Sahara on the streets, hear it in people's voices. The sky is bigger, wider, emptier, bluer than the sky over the Mediterranean coast. The people have eyes that stare past the sun, gauging the depths of the horizon. There's coarse sand in the air and it creeps across the road leading out of Sebha towards the sand seas.

We'd been driving for hours - first down a long, thin wadi with dunes on one side, the twisted sandstone outcrops of the Jebel Akakus on the other. The road was a track, twisting snake tracks carved across a black gravelly reg by 4WDs, neat slices curving through volcanic debris. Ibrahim, the lead driver, swung his vehicle off to the left.

The gravel started giving way to sand. Yellow and orange into the distance, meeting the sky in a strip of white who knows how many miles away. Then slowly, the sand gained bulk and height. And then? Dunes. The dunes of my imagination. Beau Geste's Sahara. A sand sea.

And it is a sea. Waves of sand in every direction - vertiginously high in places, too. Perhaps upwards of 300 metres in places.

Our camp nestled in the bowl of a mighty dune. Its arms cradled the camp, smaller dunes crested in the distance. It was nudging sunset. I'd put my sleeping bag on a mat behind one of the 4WDs and stashed my shoes deep in my rucksack. I grabbed a can of (non-alcoholic) beer I'd bought when we passed through a small town earlier in the day. And then I took off. And up.

In places, the sand was hard-packed and rippled into hard, nobbly ridges by the wind. The climbing was easy. A little further up and the sand loosened, it was like stumbling through molasses, warm on the surface, colder, damper underneath. Scramble a couple of steps sideways and the sand was firm again. The going wasn't easy - the dune was steep, towering above its neighbours. It was magnificent, almost alive. You had to earn the right to climb it.

Finally, finally, I reached the top - a long, thin, sharp ridge of sand slicing through the flat light. I sat, pulled the can out my pocket, opened it, took a swig and looked around.

Below me was a near-vertical drop to another bowl carved by the wind. Seif dunes danced off into the distance. To my right and left and way, way ahead, there was sand. Nothing else. An ocean of it. Vaster than my dreams, vaster than the Sahara of my imagination. Dustyu orange gave way to pinks and purples as the sun bowed and took its leave. The moon rose, full, heavy, enormous, so bright it blocked out the stars.

I took another slurk from the can. The wind sang across the Sahara. I have never been so happy.

Ahmadinejad: My role in his downfall

(Apologies to Spike Milligan)

Iran's next.

Last December, I went to Cuba. It was exhilarating and exasperating in about equal measure. El Che and non-stop salsa, quotes from Fidel and Raul pinned up on CDR noticeboards, massive billboards berating the US blockade lining near-empty four-lane highways, revolutionary trinkets for sale, a dollar a piece. If I ever hear Guantanamera again, it will be too soon.

A month or so after my return, Fidel stepped down. Cuba's inching towards some sort of new era.

Last month, after what felt like an eon of wading through paperwork, getting translations and bits and bobs and wigwams for goose's bridles (for geese's bridles?), I went to Libya. The day after I left, Gaddafi - AKA the Great Leader, the Guide, the Colonel, the man who risked his soul for Libya, Arabism, Islam and humanity altogether, etc etc ad infinitum, ad nauseam - spoke on the phone to George W. Bush. It was, apparently, the first time there'd been top-level contact between the US and Libya for decades.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

But maybe not.

There's also the small matter of Slobodan Milosevic getting caught. But I can't take full credit for that. I'm suspicious of homeopathy and I was in Belgrade about a year before he was arrested. That link's a bit tenuous.

Still, I've decided on a trip to Iran before June's elections. Think of it as a test of the mojo. But going on the track record, if I were Mahmoud, I'd be worried.

Mind you, if I've got the mojo on, then it means that there's a minibreak in Pyongyang on the agenda as well. Hmm, perhaps Kazakhstan needs some help first ...

Meine digitalen Untergang

(Pretty hairy: the latest version of iTunes, left)

So, iTunes hates my iPod. My iPod probably hates iTunes in return. I am getting close to hating both the programme and the shiny gadget.

See, iTunes keeps telling me that it can't copy to the drive. I think that was the error message. It was so rude and uncalled for that I've conveniently blocked it out. In essence, what I think iTunes was saying was "I hate your taste in music. Ditch that obscure stuff and download some Shakira instead, smarty pants."

I digress.

Sometimes iTunes and the iPod would synch and all would be happy. Then, when they synched none of the newly uploaded stuff would appear.

Then the synch started happening at a snail's pace.

I could live with that, but not with the sloth-paced synch. And mid-way through a four-hour synch, iTunes would spit the dummy, claiming it couldn't read anything.

When the sloth-synch first started happening, the synch would get as far as N. Then L. Over the weekend it got to I and gave up.

I've restarted the machine on occasion. That doesn't work. Then I tried resetting the iPod a few times. That was a waste of hard-won hand-eye co-ordination skills.

After that, all I could think of doing was seeing whether restoring the factory settings to the iPod helped. It seemed like a good idea. Wrong.

The synch after that? iTunes uploaded four - four! - tracks to the iPod and spat out another "I give up. And by the way? Ms Wilfully Obscure? Your taste in music sucks the big kumera and I refuse to have any part of this pathetic charade" message.

So now I'm planning to reinstall iTunes, copy across music library again (did I mention how much I love my external HD?) and hope for the best. Fingers crossed.

** Late breaking news **

Broken. iTunes broke my iPod. My iPod broke iTunes. The gremlins broke the external HD. All of them broke my heart. It's a luxury problem, I know, but right now? There's a small world of music and it's gone.

Guess Edwyn Collins is right. Rip it up and start again.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast ...

I'm struggling with a perplexing and frustrating iPod issue. I've tried swearing at both Mac and iPod and neither have worked. I suppose I have to resort to the long, dull process of trying to isolate the problem. Ugh. You'd rather look at photies of Libya wouldn't you? Me too. Feet, non-alcoholic beer, sunset and the affects of too much non-alcoholic beer and sun. Much more interesting than iTunes hassle.

Sprung

Miss Etta must have thought she'd finally cracked it. Months of patience paid off. She'd waited until the killjoy was busy elsewhere, snuck into the living room, made a leap for the sideboard and finally - finally - the planets fell into alignment. She had the time, opportunity and claw length necessary for some serious ikebana.

Good thing too, that there were lilies in the vase. Palest pink petals, just in full bloom, vivid orange centres.

Her bad luck though, to bounce into the office apres-shred, all squeaky and filled with lily-killer joy.

That thick stripe of orange lily pollen running from the tips of her ears, down her nose and curling round her mouth?

Sprung. Sprung badly.