The Cabbage Soup Diet
I quite like the sound of this.

I'm Theroux with Travel Writing
And re-typing.

This is my attempt to recapture the excitement of the missing post. I fear it may all be in vain. As I recall it all started with The Guardian, as things so often do. In today's edition there is a great little piece about BBC presenter Louis Theroux. I think I made some pithy comments about Louis being all together too self aware for his own good. And too private. Not a good combination. But that said, his shows are generally worth watching. My favourite is still the one where he takes a look at professional wrestling in the US. Too funny.

I then moved on to dear old daddy. As you may known, Louis is the son of well known novellist and travel writer Paul Theroux. At one point in my life I could have confidently stated that he was my favourite modern writer. I still respect him. If you don't know much about Paul Theroux, Amazon did a fine interview with him a while back. The interview is a little specific, dealing with the controversy surrounding his relationship with V.S. Naipaul detailed in Sir Vidia's Shadow. Worth a look, but not strictly relevant.

You might well ask,"Relevant to what?"

I'm glad you asked.

As I was thinking about Paul Theroux, I started thinking about travel writing in general. Specifically, I wondered, why don't I read it anymore? Because I don't. The last travel book I read was Bill Bryson Down Under and that was the first one in a long while. I read that one for very specific reasons:

[1] I'm from Australia, and haven't been home for a while.

[2] I don't like Bill Bryson, and therefore read everything he writes so I can hate him even more. I've hated him ever since he described the intense pleasure of punching Tubby Tucker in the stomach. Tubby was victimised by other kids at Bryson's school and, even though he knew it was wrong, he joined in. Wit does not redeem arseholes.

Well, this one has gone off on a tangent. I will return to why I no longer read travel writing. For now, goodbye.

Being Careful
I've just learnt a lesson. After typing a long and insightful blogg, I clicked Post & Publish, only to discover I was no longer logged in. And that my Blogg was lost forever. Aargh. So, from now on I copy to clipboard befiore clicking the button.

Garden Leave
They call it Garden Leave. Nothing to rake up, just time to shine your seat, look for work and start your own Blog. As you do.

First things first: A definition: "Garden Leave" -- They have to keep paying you, but don't need or want you there, so they send you home, ostensibly to garden; Hence Garden Leave. Usually companies use it to get rid of employees with rock-solid contracts. Now comes the fun bit, a beginner's guide to UK companies law.

Feel free to skip this if you have a low boredom threshold:

In the UK, if you lay off more than 99 employees, you have to give them all 3 months notice. If you've just taken over a company and all you really want to do is shut it down, the cheapest thing to do is get everyone out of the building, close it down and sell off the assets. Ah, Garden Leave, a great way to strip-mine a company!

Not that I'm bitter. Oh no.

I'm quite looking forward to spending the next two months on paid vacation.