Free the kalamazoo one
Isabella's Teddy is something of a world traveller. Ever since Isabella's daddy helped arrange Mr Bear's world tour, little Isabella and readers all over the world have been following his adventures on Postman Paul's blog. Since leaving Yorkshire, Mr Bear has visited Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Vermont and Singapore before swinging back to the UK to visit Grimsby (no, I don't understand it myself). At every stop along the way, postal workers have stamped Mr Bear's passport, taken photos and generally shown Isabella's teddy a damn good time.

All was well until Mr Bear arrived in Kalamazoo, Michigan a couple of months ago. Since arriving in the charge of local Postal Worker, a Miss Cyndi Allred, Isabella's Teddy has disappeared from the face of the Earth. Cyndi is refusing to answer emails and friends of Isabella, who will soon turn 3, are getting worried.

So what can you do? Visit this page and then send a postcard to Cyndi to politely remind her to send Mr Bear on his way. Lynn, of Chain of Daisies fame, has also produced this great button, which you might like to include on your site.



Remember, only you have the power to Save the Kalamazoo One!

Kids is squirrelly
You knew that, didn't you? As I was walking back from the shops last night I saw some kids tormenting another boy. They were kicking stuff at him, calling him names and generally making his life a nightmare. I debated doing or saying something. But what? What could I do? How could I help without making things worse?

As a kid, I endured my fair share of bullying. I remember dreading the interference of adults. There was kind of an unspoken contract that they didn't see or would ignore that kind of thing. If they ever deigned to notice, it somehow made things more real, more painful. And payback would be a bitch.

While I dithered, a woman in her fifties, walking from the other direction, made a fist of her hand and, with all of the strength at her disposal, smashed the ringleader on the back of his head. I saw the whole thing, just metres away. It wasn't a punch, it was more of an upswing, as if she were playing volleyball.

She screamed a lot, the kids screamed a lot and pretty soon it was just me standing there.

She took a stand and I didn't. This slight, middle-aged woman had the guts to stop something horrible, while I stood around debating with myself whether anything I could do would help the kid in the long run. She didn't over-analyse a thing, she went in and popped a bully.

She did the right thing and I did bugger all.

If I'd seen an adult hurting a child, I wouldn't have paused for a second. I'd go in and damn the consequences. As a society we make a big deal about protecting the innocent from preying adults. Perhaps if all adults were willing to step in and help a kid in trouble, all the time, then kids wouldn't have to worry about their lunchtimes or their walks home from school. Perhaps it's time we started protecting the little darlings from each other as well.

It's time to save the kids from the kids.

Next time I see kids bullying another kid, I'm not going to think twice. I'm bigger than they are and I'm going in swinging. Or, at least, yelling.

Why nostalgia and beer don't mix
My living room ceiling got a nice bleachy clean this morning, and suddenly I feel a whole lot better about life. I think I'd make a crap manic depressive, when having just slightly less mould raining down on me day and night makes me as giddy as a school girl.

And speaking of giddy, I never did tell you about my day in Zurich, did I?

It was bright, clean and sunny; full of happy, good looking people working hard and enjoying life. In short, it was everything London isn't. The Swiss have a reputation of being dour and humourless, a population of emotionally stable bankers and watchmakers who like to yodel on weekends. What I saw was a city of carefree office workers on an extended lunch break. It was as if everyone in town had temporarily put down their ill-gotten gold bars and relocated to the lake front.

Beautiful bikini-clad corporate lawyers and shop assistants were either sunning themselves, eating intriguing packed-lunches or diving into the crystal clear lake. The water itself was clean and seemed just about warm enough to wash a baby in.

I've never visited a town more at ease with itself. I think Zurich may be Europe's best kept secret. If anyone wanted to offer me a job there, I'd pick-up sticks and move tomorrow!

As I wandered around the magnificent lakefront, I came across a stand selling ice-cold cans of VB. For those who don't know, VB is a very popular Australian beer. Once upon a time it had been my beer of choice, but not a drop of the stuff had passed my lips since I left Sydney in '95. I was so hot and happily exhausted, and pleased to meet a fellow Aussie in that far away place that I settled down and prepared to drink what could not fail to be the best beer of my life.

For starters, the can was the right size. For those who don't know, all Australian drink cans, beer or soft-drinks, are 375ml. Elsewhere in the world, soft-drink cans are smaller (always leave you one or two gulps short of refreshment) and beer cans are larger (they get warm before you finish them). Only in Australia are all cans the correct size.

So there I was, hot and thirsty, sitting on a bar stool, surrounded by beautiful Swiss women in bikinis, an ice-cold can of my favourite beer in my hand. I paused, letting the pleasure sink in. I felt like that blind man in the French film Amelie after his little walk -- I was so happy, I might have actually been glowing.

I put the can to my lips and prepared to touch god. I drank deeply of heaven's nectar...

And found it wanting.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I've been drinking English beers for the past few years, and as unpatriotic as it may sound, they're just better. VB is a perfectly adequate beer, but like all Australian beers, it's too gassy. They say Nostalgia aint what it used to be, that may be so; But VB? VB is just what it always was -- A reliable, if mediocre, beer.

You can never go home, not even in Zurich.

Damn!
It's official, I'm not moving to Coventry.

And my roof looks like this...


I might go to that Bloggers Meetup tonight after all. I feel like getting drunk.

Photo call
Ain't she just the cutest thing? I've just posted some photos of Justin and Ramona with baby Selina, plus a few snaps from my day in Zurich, on my Lycos Photo Album.

Click here to take a look.

If you want to leave comments expressing your relief that Selina got most of her looks from the lovely Ramona rather than from Justin's particularly ugly mug, then please feel free. I know for a fact Justin is grateful that Selina dodged that particular bullet. As are we all.

We can but pray that she gets her brains from Ramona too!

The dark hours
Unable to sleep, I wrote a long and bitter blog entry about EasyJet on hotel stationary. Reading over it now, I see no reason to inflict all of that whining on you, especially since my Monday stranded in Zurich turned out to be an absolute blast, but just for the sake of completeness, here's the first bit of my hand-written blog entry:

"Pathetic is too mild a word; in fact I can't think of a word strong enough. I think I'm Gerschlunken. Gerschlunken is my made-up German word of choice and I've just decided that it convey's all of the subtle nuances of my current emotional and moral state. It expresses my despair, my self-pity, my anger and outrage, my skin condition and my ambivalency. It explains why I am writing this blog entry on hotel stationary in Zurich at 5am CET. It hints at my disappointment with the bed I just crawled out of and it might even explain why I am so thirsty.

"Yes, my friends, I am well and truly Gerschlunken."

It goes on, I whine about a lot of stuff, and frankly it's a little embarrassing.

That's all for now. Tomorrow I'll write about my enforced day in Zurich and, with the help of god and sixteen policeman, I'll post pictures of Ramona and Justin's beautiful new baby girl, Selina.

Reminiscing under mouldy skies
On Saturday night, in the historic German town of Uberlingen, I got very drunk with an Englishman, an Irishman, a German, an American and two Ramones-loving Mexicans. Sounds like the set-up to a bad joke, I know, but that's what happened. The whole night was lots of fun, I made the requisite drunken obnoxious passes at pretty German waitresses and ended up sleeping on the balcony of one of the afore-mentioned Ramones-loving Mexican's flat.

It was at least as cold as you might suppose.

Sunday was a day of recovery, vows of temperance and enforced viewings of Jean-Claude van Damme movies.

Sunday evening I was at Zurich Airport with time to spare. I didn't want a repeat of the Ryan Air incident. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed two hours. I changed some money into Swiss Francs, paid a small fortune for the last few scraps of English newsprint available, bought a controlling interest in a Starbucks Frappacinno and devoured the most expensive bowl of spaghetti ever sold. At the very end of those two hours they decided to cancel the flight. This was apparently because the crew would have to go on over-time. Why they didn't know that two hours earlier will forever remain a mystery. I spent the next two hours bitching with other stranded passengers until we were all dumped at a near-by hotel.

I was angry. I made sure I got a double room so that Satan's minions (hereafter known as EasyJet) would have to pay more. The room itself was nice, but the bed didn't make a lot of sense (no sheets and two thick continental quilts rolled up under the cover, despite a room temperature in the mid-twenties) and I was in no mood to be generous.

Before hitting the sack, I wandered down to the hotel bar. I was hot and annoyed and wanted to get very drunk, but remembering that morning's hangover I asked for a Coke with lots of ice. In the UK when you ask for lots of ice it confuses people. More often than not, they wont have any ice, but if they do, they'll assume they mis-heard you, and that you're asking for "no ice." If by some miracle you can get them to understand and they actually have ice, you will be given you two cubes of ice. Lots is two and two cubes of ice is plenty. That night in Zurich I was never more grateful for the wonderful literalness of the Germanic people. The barkeep filled my glass with industrial quantites of the frozen stuff.

A Coke never tasted better.

More to follow.

Home again
I am home again, just about alive. Did you miss me?

There may well be something rotten in the State of Germany (or even Denmark, for all I know) but there's definitely something rotten with the state of my flat. An hour and a half ago I got off the plane from Zurich. Forty-five minutes later later I opened my front door to be assaulted by a stench the likes of which has been unknown since the dawn of time. By the time I got to the living room, all was clear (what had happened, not the air). The cracks and holes left in the roof by the recent upstairs leak have sprouted vigorous mould farms. I've opened the windows, and sprayed and sprayed, but it still smells like death in here.

Anyhow, that's enough for now. In the morning I will tell you more of the past few days. I will write of drunken games and cancelled planes, of cabbages and kings. Stay tuned.