Well, Transylvania to be precise, but Bucharest for the first few days of the week and, by tomorrow, a little town on the Hungarian border. For the moment, though, I’m enjoying the high life in the Romanian Alps, where the clouds swoop in across the town in the morning and by afternoon they are just starting to break.

Actually, I’m living the high life in more ways than one, as the average annual – note ANNUAL – wage here is just

Hello. Have I really been gone so long? The last entry on this thing was a week and six days ago, which was the last time I logged on to the net and, you know what, I haven’t missed it at all.

So, what’s happened in the interim? Well, last week started in Paris for Apple Expo. You can read about it in the magazine. From there I flew to Athens where it turns out most ‘rules’ are optional. Red lights mean stop only if there is some oncoming traffic. Green crossing signs mean cross if there are no crazy motorbikes zooming through the crossing. Those motorbikes are frighteningly common. About one for every fifth car, I reckon, and only about a quarter of the riders seem to wear crash helmets. Even on the plane the no mobiles rule was flaunted by the guy who tested ALL of his ring-tones while dinner was being served, even when the cabin crew were asking if he’d like coffee.
Anyhow, it was all very nice and sunny, the Parthenon was interesting, the island I boated out to was hot and idyllic, the food was great (although I don’t know whether I could face feta ever again) and I generally had a lovely time.

Yesterday morning, very early, I left, and took the train to Bulgaria where I am now. It’s a fascinating place. The most common sign on bar doors isn’t ‘no smoking’ but leave your gun at the door. It’s a very camera shy place, too; you mustn’t take pictures of government buildings, train stations, tunnels or bridges as they could be seen as being of strategic importance. Beyond that, though, and the very pushy people on the streets looking to buy euros, it seems friendly enough.

There’s a lot of poverty, though, and I have seen old people sitting by the side of the road with battered old bathroom scales offering to weigh you in return for a few small coins. The average annual salary is about 8500 pounds (can’t find that sign on this Cyrillic keyboard). The minimum wage is about 1200 pounds a year.

So, I’m here for another couple of days, which I reckon should be long enough, before I hear north to an old hill-top fortress town for a couple of nights and, from there, to Romania, which I should reach by Sunday.

If nothing else, it’s turning out to be a very instructive trip. Full details when I get back home.

It’s autumn. Officially(ish). Which means you get some great sunsets out in the countruside. The hedgerows are also bursting with food. On a short walk this evening, beside the regular crab apples, mushrooms and edible fungus, and the flowers I couldn’t identify, there was all manner of edible berries ready for picking…

Elderberries, which go well in apple pies, or add weight and substance to blackcurrant jelly. Alternatively, they’re a bit of a tradition where cordial is concerned, which isn’t hard to make.

Rose hips, which as kids we used to break open and use as itching powder. The seeds inside each berry are hairy and stick to the inside of your clothes in a very unpleasant manner. Properly treated, though, they can be brewed as a tea or used for rose hip syrup. Make sure you get rid of all the hairs, though, or you’ll be itching inside and that’s dangerous.

Blackberries. Everyone knows what you do with them.

Sloe, which is the colour of a nice ripe plum and about the size of an olive. They’re most often used to make sloe gin, although they’re not the source of the gin itself: you have to buy that and add it to the fruit and leave it to ferment for two months, at the end of which you can pick out the berries and munch on their alcoholic goodness.

Loads of nuts. Beech and acorn in particular. If you chop and roast the latter, you can use it in place of coffee, as indeed the government encouraged the populace to do during the war. It worked, although it’s rather fallen out of favour since. More ethical than Nescafe, though.

There are lots of hawthorn bushes, all heavy with berries, which seem to dominate every hedgerow around here at the moment, and whose leaves go well with nuts or cream cheese. I thought I’d also found some late-fruiting wild redcurrants, but looking them up since getting home it seems that these are actually guelder rose, which isn’t particularly edible.

If you follow any of this, pick something and die, it’s your fault. No recommendations contained herein.

Rubbish tubes last night, so I ended up walking from Kings Cross to Liverpool Street, having already sat in a tunnel for the best part of half an hour.

Before I did, though, I decided to hunt out platform nine and three quarters, which rather illogically turns out to be between platforms 8 and 9b, so it’s really more like platform eight and a half.

That’s probably why Ron Weasley’s trolley has only made it half way through to the Hogwarts’ Express.

Rather predictably, fixing the break-in yesterday morning took far longer than I’d hoped. I was on to the insurance as soon as the phone lines opened, and the bored sounding woman on the other end told me the earliest they could ever hope to get the car fixed was Friday lunchtime. Over two days away. Apparently replacement windows for Ford Fiestas are in short supply. The way she was talking you’d think they were as rare as honest insurance claims advisors.

Fortunately I’d spent the previous half hour doing my research, and had read online that you’re not legally obliged to use their recommended fixer. So, when she demanded my credit card details for the excess, I refused and told her I would go somewhere else, where they’d be able to fix it today.

Needless to say, she promised they’d call me back in an hour. And you know what? An hour later they did and, miraculously, someone had found a stack of Ford Fiesta windows in a garage right here in Chelmsford. Conveniently enough, it was the very same garage they specified as their preferred outlet for repairs. Who’d have guessed?

They’ve gone down some considerable way in my estimations.

Still, the people at the garage were very nice. They did all the necessary umming and ahhing and sympathising and sucking of breath through teeth as I told them why it was broken and they promised to turn it around in an hour, which they did. In fact they went further than that, as they even cleared out all the scabs of broken glass I’d not been able to get at with my under-endowed Hoover nozzle. And while they were cracking on with that I went for a walk along the woody paths around Chelmer Village and found a World War Two pill-box hidden among the trees, in surprisingly good condition.

It was lightly graffitied, of course, but the edges were sharp, the door and window corners were well appointed, and the whole thing looked like it was nearer 20 years old than 60. It’s pitiful, really: I’ve owned a flat around here for the last eight years, yet it takes a break-in for me to find something so well hidden, so close to home.

That, I suppose, is one bright thing to come out of the whole affair.

…taken last night.

…taken last night.

…that if you’re going out, you shouldn’t be good. Leave the car at home and get drunk instead.

Kathryn, Ems and I went out Geocaching. It wasn’t entirely successful: we forgot to take any treasure to deposit, so had to detour via American Retro so we could poke through the gadgets and widgets and buy one for the cache. We settled on a rather freaky chicken keyring that laid a ready-peeled egg when you squeezed its plucked sides. Karthryn demonstrated on the tube.

Anyhow, we were doing a five-stage multi cache where we had to find four London landmarks going by the clues and coordinates we were given. These, in turn, would give us another batch of numbers that would point to wherever it was the treasure had been hidden. Hmmm… Fine in theory, except that for one of the clues you needed to get to the top of the Monument, which closed two and an half hours shy of our arrival.

So, we had a digit missing somewhere. It was an important one, so we cut our losses and after another half hour of walking the streets looking for somewhere to eat, ended up in Pizza Express feeling like we were in a totally alien city peopled by workers in suits and grey pencil skirts having quiet, civilised, rather boring drinks in conservative pub courtyards.

I’m so glad we all wear jeans and work in the west.

It was probably as we were sitting there that my car windows were smashed, and the poor car was left sitting at the station with gaping holes, open to the elements. They took some stuff, but stuff is only stuff and easily replaced, and it could have been a lot worse. They did, bizarrely, take the photocopy of my insurance document, complete with home address which is a little unsettling, but at least the windscreen was still in tact and they hadn’t keyed the paint.

So, next time let’s not be sensible, driving to the station and not drinking because you need to be in work early tomorrow morning. When someone’s smashed your windows you’ll spend the next morning getting them fixed instead, which will make you later than ever.

The Transport Security Administration oversees safety in the American skies and maintains a list of items you can and cannot take on a plane in the USA. It’s so illogical.

Permitted items include
Screwdrivers up to 7in long
Scissors up to 4in long
Up to four books of matches
Nitroglycerine sprays (up to 4oz)
Knitting and crochet needles
Corkscrews

Forbidden items include
Duty free alcohol
Fruits or vegetables in cans or jars
Pudding
Whipped cream
Yoghurt
Gel shoe inserts (but gel bras are OK)

Not mentioned
Snakes

There are plenty of Stingray-inspired puns floating around today in the aftermath of Steve Irwin’s death by stingray sting.

Is the BBC is going one step further to show the event itself, or just incautious with its buttons and words?