‘Hier ist im Moment nicht viel los’ – no, there ain’t, for which I thank the Lord

Bad Gastein - Day One

This latest entry finds me washed up in somewhere called Bad Gastein, about 60 miles due south of Salzburg in Austria and none the worse for that. In fact, the bloody, sodding, ongoing hives notwithstanding, I think I’ve fallen on my feet for somewhere to take a break. I’m here for ten days, staying at the Pension St Leonhard, which does bed and breakfast and has only about eight rooms, but which otherwise, to all intents and purposes, is pretty much like a standard hotel. Bad Gastein is a small ski resort which, I’m sure, doubles up in the summer as a holiday resort for all those brave folk who like to put on a pair of stout boots and pack a lunch and take off up steep hills and mountains.

Now, mid-May there are not a great deal of tourists, though there are some – me, for example – and it is an occasion for all the necessary work to be done which might involve partially closing roads, restricting parking to make way for vans and lorries and setting up noisy equipment on the pavements and which can’t be done either in the winter or the summer. But who cares?

I kept an eye on the long-range weather forecast and from May 18, yesterday when I arrived, until May 28 when I bugger off again, rain was predicted – either full-on rain or continuous showers (Pete: continuous or continual?) with the very occasional glimpse of sun. Well, I’m glad to report they have so far got it wrong. The car rental guy at Salzburg airport told me I was lucky with the weather – there was bright and glorious sunshine for the whole day yesterday – as it had rained solidly for the previous two weeks. It was also sunny this morning, though the sun has now disappeared and the owner of Pension St Leonhard told me this morning that rain was forecast for this afternoon (it is, as I write, 1pm). But, again, who cares?

I am here to do bugger all for ten days, if not even less, I brought with me three interesting books (The Victorian Underworld by Donald Thomas, A Glass Of Blessings by Barbara Pym and an autobiography of Karl Marx by Francis Wheen) and as far as I know you can read perfectly well and

enjoyably even if it is raining outside (as long as you are inside, of course). Then, of course, there is all that walking I intend to do, though my usual rule is to make no plans at all at the start of a holiday - except, that is, plan to do fuck all - and take it as it comes. But I do suspect that a little walking might be on the cards a the beginning of next week (but don't hold me to it).

Ah, but those sodding hives. Well, I’ll have to put up with them, is all I can say. They aren’t half as bad – they? That makes it sound as though they are some evil entities in a fairy tale marching all over your skin and making life unpleasant – as they were in Rome, and all-in-all a bit of a mystery. I’ve been swallowing anti-histamine pills plus a ‘natural’ remedy called quercitin almost hourly and quite possibly they have helped, though I’m not going to stop taking them to find out.

The mystery is that while in Rome I did have the red wheals etc which are an indication of hives, the result of loads of scratching, now I have nothing. But I do have that ongoing tickling/itching all over the top half of my body which in an odd way makes me feel unclean and in want of a good shower all the time. But at least other things take my mind off it every so often. My GP and the dermatologist he sent me to where pretty bloody useless – yes, it’s hives, they said, and not a lot we can do – and I’ve no option but to accept the situation, but . . .

But if this goes on for much longer, I’m going back and ask to be referred to an allergy specialist. My diet, touch wood, is better than that of many in that I rarely if ever eat bread or other wheat products (though am not fanatical about it – being fanatical about anything strikes me as always being a bad idea), I eat loads of fruit and vegetables and about the only meat I eat is German/French/Italian sausage, the small amount you will get in a spag bol or lasagne and, a couple of weeks ago when I did some cooking, a bit of pork.

In desperation I have taken to eating a bowl of natural yoghurt with fruit and/or nuts for breakfast and have rather got to like it. (NB Don’t ever kid yourself that all those fruit-flavoured and sweetened yoghurts are doing you any good. They are full of e numbers and associated crap and whatever minor good the yoghurt in them is doing you, the associated crap negates ten-fold. Try proper natural yoghurt – the Greek or Greek-style is creamier – and if you do want it sweetened, add a little honey.) Well, there you go.

Still hasn’t started raining and, in fact, it has brightened up in the past few minutes, so I shall do my regular Thursday puzzles chore, then consider going for another wander this afternoon. I am beginning to resist having a tipple at lunchtimes, however much I like it. I had a couple of glasses of Weiβbier yesterday just after I arrived here and they knocked me for six. Mind, I had got up at 4.30am to drive to Stansted and was knackered, so no wonder, but I must say these past few years having a lunchtime tipple does tend to knock me over whereas before – that is when I was younger – it didn’t.

As for Leave/Remain, a pox on both their houses, and then some.

In which I go social, twice, although on a small scale and also reach out the hand of friendship to my Russian readers (whoever they are)

Two social occasions to write about, both small-scale, but both very enjoyable and crucially not a mention of the EU, my cars, phones, Macbooks or that bastard Erdogan in Turkey who is wrapping the EU around his little finger when he finds he has time so spare from locking up journalists who dislike him - or might at some point in the future dislike him - and is constructing one of the 21st centuries first democratic dicatorships.

The first social occasion was on Wednesday when I took one Sue/Susan Wharton out to lunch at the Sir Charles Napier in, I think Radnage. Sue (as I know her and as I have always known her) is very good company, batting 90, getting unstable on her pins and, for me at least, one of life’s joys. She is the widow of Michael Wharton, better known to some in the world as Peter Simple, the supposed author of The Way Of The World column which appeared in the Daily Telegraph for many years. (I’ll look it up - ah, between the late 1950s and around 1990). Michael, who I only got to know when he was in his late 70s, was a satirist and a very funny one. (Here is a list of his characters, which might ring a bell with some here in Britain, though I doubt it.)

He was widely regarded as ‘right-wing’ to ‘very right-wing’, but actually he wasn’t really. What he dislike and poked fun at was what he might have called ‘cant’. And ‘cant’ is everywhere, on every political wing imaginable. Sue was his third wife and the only one I got to know. She taught art at Wycombe Abbey school (a boarding school for girls) and still works as an artist. She is now feeling her age and, I suspect is, as are many widows and widowers in their late age, rather lonely. However, she is a lovely woman, though oddly enough assures me that she ‘can be quite nasty’.

She was down here in Cornwall in April, staying with my stepmother, when I accompanied here to two St Endellin Festival Easter concerts, and it was then, while we were chatting until quite late into the night, that she first assured me ‘she could be quite nasty’. Well, I’ll have to take her word for it. In fact, I was so surprised at the time that last Wednesday I reminded her she had said so and asked whether that was really true. Yes, she said. Oh, well.

I like her a lot and would be hard pushed to spot anything nasty in her, but I am, of course, obliged to take her word for it. I feel, being the kind of wishy-washy sort, rather guilty about the cost of the lunch at the Sir Charles Napier, because it was not cheap. I shan’t say how much it cost me, but many, many, many folk would be glad of the sum I paid to help pay off most of their quarterly electricity bill. And I am aware of that. But it was very much a one-off and, I trust, she enjoyed it. I know I did, both the food and the company. She does not have many more years left, rather fewer than me probably. Sue is one of those people with whom conversation just flows and she knows a lot about art and painters and the rest, and I always enjoy her company.

I had sent her a copy of ‘my novel’ - Love: A Fiction, still available on Amazon - and I was interested in her comments. She told me two interesting things. First, she admitted that she didn’t enjoy reading it. But oddly, second, she kept reading because she ‘wanted to find out what happened’. The first doesn’t bother me really, the second rather cheered me up. She has agreed to read it again. I shan’t here go into it, but it is both not quite straightforward as is not quite what you might expect to be getting, but also very straightforward, though in a different way. Let me just say that I still believe in it, and am quite happy with what I produced.

The second occasion was tonight when a long-time friend of one Seth Cardew, Nick H. and his wife Ann (or Anne, I don’t know) came around to my stepmother’s for a drink. I had only met him once before, a few years ago in Spain when I was visiting Seth at his pottery bolthole in wherever and had never met his wife before, but know here by sight because she was a teaching assistant at St Mabyn primary school which my two children attended.

Both were - are - very chatty and we had a good evening. She drank white wine, most of a bottle, although I was pouring the drinks, so don’t hold that against her, he and I were drinking gin and tonics and my stepmother had her usual whisky with warm water and two teaspoons of sugar. In

 time my stepmother went to her bed once her carer appeared, and the three of us sat outside. (I mention that because all too often ‘sitting outside’ is not necessarily an option here in Britain, even in late spring and summer. I did a dreadful thing, but I am not at all ashamed of it.

As I get older I find I want to drink less and less, but don’t feel I can make guests stint themselves. So Nick’s gins were strong whereas mine where largely tonic water with just a dash of gin. So he might have drunk rather a lot - about seven of those rather strong gins - but I didn’t. They left about 20 minutes ago to drive home, but I am sure they will get there safely. (If they don’t - or didn’t - Honest Pat will inform you and beat his breast accordingly.)

. . .

What I like about talking to anyone - and I do mean anyone, whether Sue Wharton and Nick and his wife Ann/Anne - or Paul at the Brewers Arms and Ray, the retired bookie, or, again at the Brewers Arms Chris and the retire Methodist minister who is always immaculately turned out though he doesn’t spend more than a penny on his clothes and buys everything at the equivalent of Oxfam shops - is hearing the small, tiny, tiny details of their lives. I hear them, vow to remember them, then forget - or seem to forget - most of them, but it give everyone flesh and blood. And I have, rather late in life it has to be said, discovered the virtues of shutting up and listening, only saying something, asking a question here and there, to elucidate more detail, though not everyone is interesting.

Chris, for example, who I still say hello to is dull, dull, dull. After being unemployed for many years, he finally, two or three years ago, got a job just outside Bristol doings something or other parking new cars. If you ever drive up the M5 past Bristol and look to the side of the motorway - left or right depending on which direction you are heading in - you will see several hundred if not a thousand of new cars parked, for whatever reason. It is Chris’s job to, I don’t know, move them from her to there. I know that because he told me, but when he told me, he went into chapter and verse in such excruciatingly dull detail about his various duties that I have since restricted social intercourse with him to a nod and a hello. I don’t want to encourage conversation. But, being the wishy-washy sort, as I pointed out above, each and every time I merely not and say hello and avoid conversation, I feel a tad guilty and hope he doesn’t notice that I am essentially giving him the bum’s rush.

Ray, on the other hand is far more interesting. Long since retired, he still does the occaional bit of bookie’s work at various local racecourses up and down the west of England. Other details I have elicited from him is that he is divorced and has a son living in Berlin (where I once lived) who was going out with a very nice Dutch girl, but that, eventually bit the dust, although that might in time be rekindled. Then there’s the ‘carpet showroom’ in Chard where he and Paul (since now died) used to buy their rolling tobacco. The carpet showroom was, in fact, a knocking shop which did good business until earlier this last year it was closed down.

. . .

I notice this blog is getting a lot of attention from a reader/readers in Russia. So chaps and chappesses, this is for you.

Relax and stand down: I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to rant about. But there are still histamines and just how loose use of the word ‘genius’ has become. So still room enough to waffle

Well, there you have it, a perfect example of Sod’s Law: I post a blog entry warning that the subsequent entry I shall be sounding off and how, then when I come to write that entry, I can’t for the life of me remember what I was going to sound off about.

Actually, that’s not quite true: I intended a fully blown self-righteous rant about how folk in what we condescendingly call ‘developing democracies’ are so pleased to be able to have a say in who has them beaten up that they will queue for hours, days even, outside polling stations and compare it with the pitiful credentials in the West where we take so much for granted. So I looked up figures (it’s called ‘research’ in more pretentious blogs) for turnout in elections over these past ten years, only to find that although not up there in the 99pc level we find in North Korea and Kazakhstan, all of whom also are so pleased with their current dictator that they vote him back into office, it has not just been holding steady, but has often gone up. Oh, well.

But I don’t necessarily give up that easily (i.e. sometimes I do give up very easily): according to this site which has a graph listing electoral turnout in the EU overall and in the UK for every EU election from 1979 to 2014, turnout is declining rather sadly. In the EU it was above 60pc and has dropped to just above 40pc; and here in the UK - never quite the EU cheerleader of popular myth, of course - it has remained more or less steady at just around the mid-30s. OK, I’ll be honest: here in the UK it has risen slightly. If you look at the site I have linked to above, you will see it was around 32/33pc in 1979, then fell to a pretty catastrophic 25pc in 1999, but at the most recent election, in 2014, it went up to 35/36pc, thereby wrecking my thesis and making an outraged rant just that much more difficult. Oh, well. So I’d better swiftly move on to hives.

. . .

I’ve done a bit of scouting around - call it ‘research’ if you must insist on doing so, although I don’t being the unpretentious, down-to-earth, meat-and-potatoes Cornish hillbilly who likes to call a spade a fucking shovel - and have come up with this: our cells produce a substance called histamine which is related to our immune system and white blood cells.

This is what causes all those nasty symptoms such as headaches, a runny nose, thick throat and, in my case, itching and tickling. These are usually useful immune responses, for example a runny nose is intended to clear whatever shouldn’t be there out of your nose. But often histamine production gets out of control.

Our bodies also produce a substance called diamine oxidase, one of whose functions is to keep histamine production in check, but in some circumstances it sometimes doesn’t keep histamine in balance, so histamine builds up in our bodies. And that’s when you get, as I am getting, some of those nasty symptoms for no obvious reason. So, hayfever sufferers will get runny noses and eyes because the histamine is going into overdrive trying to clear the pollen from noses and eyes. I’ve also come across lists of several foods we are advised to avoid as they contribute - or are said to contribute - to the amount of histamine produced. Some also contain it, apparently. And here it is Sod’s Law for the second time: many of them are pretty much what I eat regularly.

It isn’t just that I like them, but they are said to be good for you. So, for example, the German in my is partial to herrings - remember all the health advice about eating ‘oily fish’? Sometimes I get a jar of rollmops, but more often I buy tins of herring and mackerel. They, I’m now told, are no-no as far as keeping the lid on histamine in your body is concerned.

Then there’s yoghurt. And I don’t mean the sweetened, flavoured shite which is crammed full of E numbers to ‘prolong shelf life’. I’m talking about the original, unsweetened Greek and Turkish yoghurt. I had it once when I was very young, and I didn’t like it, so I never had it again. But a few weeks ago desperately casting about to find some way to end this bout of hives, I began eating half a 500g tub of Greek yoghurt with three chopped-up satsumas for breakfast.

Yes, my skin cleared up in a matter of days, although the itching continued. Not only that, but I found I actually liked the stuff (though I do sprinkle a little sugar over it). And aren’t we always told to eat natural yoghurt and that a lifetime’s diet of the bloody stuff, both as a sweet and savoury element of their meals has ensured that any number of Greeks and Turks (and I don’t doubt other Middle Easterners) live until they are well over a century old. Healthy or what?

Well, possibly, except that the pages of foods to avoid to keep a check on histamines includes - well, you guessed it. Also listed are nuts - I eat them all the time and we’re always told they are healthy; legumes - ditto; salami and other processed meats - ditto and possibly the only meat I eat in an otherwise pretty vegetarian diet (though not for political reasons or out of principle. I happen not to eat that much meat); alcohol - so what does that say about drinking a glass of red wine a day, which is pretty much what I do, is good for ‘cardiovascular health’? And on it goes: pretty much my whole diet is a no-no as far as histamine is concerned. But...

But, and there has to be a ‘but’, why did it start about seven months ago when I have eaten the same diet for years? (I forgot to add that I eat very, very few wheat products, again not out of principle or for political reasons - if you know what I mean - but simply because I just feel better.) Members of the jury, retire now and consider your verdict. Because I’m buggered if I know what’s going on, despite all my ‘research’.

. . .

Last Monday, I was sitting at work when I was rung by the assistant to our paper’s astrologer to be told the great man had died. (Incidentally, the assistant is a semi-retired journalist who supplemented his income by assisting the great man in his worldwide operation - his predictions were carried by a great many newspapers from here to Patagonia, all of them, it has to be said, 24-carat bollocks, but more of that later (©Geoffrey Levy).

David N, for it was he, told me that our astrologer had been found dead early in the morning by his wife. He had suffered a heart attack, apparently his third. He had not been feeling well for a year or two since the second. Now, although I am about to poke as much fun as I can at the great man, Jonathan Cainer, I shall first mention that I do feel for his wife and, particularly, his seven children (by three different women). For them it’s a personal thing and they have lost a partner/father. I should also add that Cainer did actually believe the twaddle he was selling.

Apparently, he wasn’t paid by the Daily Mail, but his personal predictions - suckers could call a phoneline for their start in which Cainer would give a more tailored reading - made him his money. He had also, over several years, so it was some operation, painstakingly built up a database of based on the exact time and the place of your birth. David sent me mine and it was a substantial piece, about 60 pages of A4. I was given mine to be shown quite how extensive Cainer’s operation was. Everyone else had to pay for them, and they were not cheap.

Here is a screenshot of his price list:

What you got for your £24 to £39 might seem quite impressive. In fact, if the child born in the same hospital within minutes of your also sent off for his or hers, it would be identical. Jonathan Cainer had built himself quite a reputation, and the Daily Mail made the most of him as a ‘brand’. But there will not be one hack in Northcliffe Towers in West London where the great paper is produced who did not agree with me that astrological predictions generally and the stuff Cainer produced in particular was complete bollocks. You might as well read a First Great Western rail timetable to get an idea of your day today will be a good one and whether the stars are favourable for you to apply for a mortgage. So the front page the day after his death says more about the Mail - and, to be fair, papers in general - than about Cainer. Here it is - note mention of the man’s ‘genius’:

I shall concede that in one way Cainer was clever: his schtick was simple. He was always, always, always upbeat. Not once, as in never, did he ‘predict’ anything negative or sad or bad. So it’s no wonder that the gullible of the world made him one of their first ports of call.

Me? Scorpio, if you were wondering. They do say about Scorpios that they are the star sign most likely to laugh during a funeral and to die by being stabbed in back.

I give you due warning that in the next few entries I shall be sounding off. So don’t complain: you have been warned

This is is a short posting only because it is one by way of introduction and also so that I can remind myself of one or two things.

Every week, I leave work in London and home west for just over two hours. I then stip off at the Brewers Arms in South Petherton for a break, to have a drink and a smoke and, if there’s any football on - usually Champions League matches - to watch some on Sky or BT Sport on the net. With a bit of luck, bosses letting me go and traffic permitting - both being as predictable as a next year’s weather - I am there by about 9pm and stay till pub shuts at 11pm.

Then it’s further on towards home in North Cornwall, down the A303, through the Blackdown Hills, where the road, the next 14 miles, becomes a winding single carriageway and along which, because I have done the journey more than 10,000 times and I know every stretch of road, I in my modest 1.6 litre 1998 Astra automatic - that is a car which is almost 18 years old - can overtake more timid drivers in their two-year-old 2.5 litre SUVs with impunity. They usually hate it: a bloody T-reg overtaking me in my 5-litre black Porsche/Rover/Nissan SUV? Bastard, I’ll get the cunt!

Yes, if they are also heading for Exeter, they can eventually overtake me on the 14-mile Honiton to Exeter dual carriageway, but they will have had to have been travelling at some lick on the previous few miles to catch me up. It’s what passes for one when you will not see 65 again and pissing takes ten times as long as once it used to be. (If I can be so crude, years ago when I was still a young thing and went out on the piss, then home again for a night’s shagging, the problem was different: then it used to take several minutes to piss because I still had a rock-hard hard-on. Ah, the glory days. Give me a minute. Right.)

Anyway.

The point is that I almost always spend the second half of my journey home, from the Brewers Arms to Higher Lanke, St Breward, rather less sober than I was when I set out from London. Not drunk, you understand, but after two modern 2016 pub large glasses of red wine - I stopped drinking pints of cider because I got fed up having to stop to take a leak - one has drunk the best of three-quarters of a bottle of wine and any pretence to being stone-cold sober is dishonest. I listen to the 10 o’clock news on the radio and much occurs to me. And that, the occurring to me is the point of it. I think ‘well, that might be something I could record in my blog (for which read diary/commonplace book)’, but invariably arriving home at 1pm I usually forget what I wanted to write.

So now, dear friend, I have decided to write this short entry to try to remind myself, at least to remind myself of what occurred to me tonight: There was a report on the new ‘deal’ between the EU and Turkey under which Turkey will lock up as many would-be immigrants to Europe as it can catch and stop them sullying the good lands of Western Europe in return for Turkish citizens being allowed to visit Schengen area countries without a visa. What appalls me is the cynicism of it all and how a once perfectly good idea - the EU - is being comprehensively ruined.

Then there was a piece about the local elections in Britain - today as it happens because the clock has just struck 2am - and specifically about the elections to the Welsh Assembly. More specifically the report was about how a large part of Wales is either uninterested in the elections or, more to the point, even unaware that they are being asked to elect members to their Assembly. Turnout is not just low, but is expected to be pretty much non-existent.

So what’s my beef? It’s this: is many parts of the world folk are living often quite shitty lives in unfree societies and would give their left arm to be able to live in a state where they, for a change, can elect to their government those they would like to see calling the shots. A good example is China - a good example - because it is a bloody huge country rules by a one-party state. Yet we here in the ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ western world who can now do so and have been able to do so widely for the past 70 years just can’t be arsed anymore to exercise our right to self-determination. But I shall first

like to do a bit of looking up on the web on both matters before I choose to add my two ha’porht worth here. Then there is the news that all things being equall one Donald Rutherford Surbiton Trump III has seen off all his Republican rivals and is most probably the chap to stand against one Hillary Rodham Clinton VII for leadership of the free world. And he might well win.

The sole point of this, my most recent, entry is 1) to give you due warning that at some point in the next few days I shall be sounding off; and 2) to remind myself that I am fully prepared to sound off. Now to bed. It is, after all 2am - actually 2.08am - and I am knackered. Not least because I had an extra additional small glass of wine on top of my two large ones. Bon nuit.

No more EU for now (except, of course, to mention ‘no more EU for now’), but the eternal, infrenal itching now has a name - great! - and I plan my next invasion of Europe. Sorry, wan’t going to mention Europe, was I?

I have to say that for some odd reason I have held off posting here for several weeks because my main urge was simply to repeat how insufferable the whole should we/shouldn’t we stick it up the EU/cement the sacred relationship we have with our European cousins? campaign has been. But as I would merely be repeating what I said in an earlier post - a plague on both their houses - it seemed rather pointless.

Were I to do such a post, there would be much to report, for example the fury of the Fuck The EU camp when President Obama warned the U.S. would stop sending tourists to London if Britain left the EU, which naturally roused the Brexiteers to fury even had one Boris Johnson - not my favourite person and something of a nine-bob note - rather gracelessly refer to Obama as ‘half-Kenyan’.

Then there’s the strange alliance of God and Satan who have temporarily come to a truce and jointly come out to warn that if Britain does not vote to remain in the EU, that’s it - Armageddon (to which both, of course, though for their different reasons, are looking forward with some pleasure. (So why aren’t they supporting Brexit? You didn’t think that one throught, did you, Patrick? Ed.) So, for the time being, no more EU in these hallowed pages.

. . .

Well, the itching which has been the bane of my life since last October has got a name: hives, or if you want to use the posh medial term uritcaria. And if you want to use another posh medical term and make as though you know what you are talking about, call it idiopathic urticaria.

We already know what uritcaria means. Idiopathic means - well, in a sense it doesn’t mean anything because doctors use it when they don’t know what is causing a disorder, illness, rash or, in my case, itch. After visiting my GP and being referred to a dermatologist, I have now been prescribed an anti-histamine. I was already taking one, but the new one, fexofenadine hydrochloride, was prescribed by the dermatologist and she said it ‘was better’. Well, better or worse, from folk who adopt posh-sounding pseudo-Latin words such as ‘idiopathic’ to hide the fact they don’t know what’s actually going on, I’ll take it with a pinch of salt.

As you can imagine, I have been scouring the internet for info and can tell you this: for most folk hives come and go in a few hours or a day. For some poor unfortunate schmucks such as me, the

are chronic (where chronic doesn’t mean ‘really bad’ as most people think, but ‘ongoing/long-lasting’). I have to say it isn’t half as bad as it was from last October to the end of February when a perfectly good and respectable weekend in Rome was ruined and consisted mainly of spending the very boring day at Fiumicino airport itching like fuck, waiting for a 10pm flight to Gatwick and wanting to be nowhere else but home. Maybe that’s the antihistamines.

I have also taken to eating a bowl of three chopped up satsumas and half a tub of Greek youghurt for breakfast, and although it hasn’t cured the itching, it has done wonders for the rough, red, dry skin I had on my arms and perhaps on my back, though I could never get around there to take a look. (NB Picture posed by model and for illustration purposes only. I’m a bit older than that.)

The odd thing is that for the past 50 years I thought I didn’t like yoghurt (and I’m talking about the natural, unblemished stuff, not the heavily sweetened and flavoured stuff which has enough e-numbers to form a Yorkshire chorus). Then I tried it and decided I do actually like it. Admittedly, it has an acquired taste, but it is a taste I have since acquired. I must be honest and add that I do sprinkle just a little sugar over it all, but I’m sure - we’re all liberal free-thinkers now, aren’t we? - you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive me. The odd thing is that given that the worst seems to be over - fingers crossed - and I am now reduced to slight tickling and itching all over my arms, scalp and torso, I realise I have been suffering from mild hives for some years, because I have long felt like this, though I didn’t think much of it.

. . .

My next holiday is booked: ten days in some ski resort in Austria which has a spa. It’s called Bad Gastein. I can’t for the life of me remember how I hit upon the place except that it had something to do with looking up possible quite spots in the Appennines for a break and then somehow travelling just a little further north on the map.

Then, using Expedia, and having settled on Bad Gastein, I hunted down some three/four start hotels and a flight and found Pension St Leonhard which isn’t exactly a hotel in that they only do breakfast (which, of course, many other hotels only do, too) and the front desk shuts at 6pm (understandable as it is ‘family-run’. It remains to be seen whether that is an Austrian Addams family - after all, they do have form).

After my experience of wasting a perfectly good weekend because of the bloody itching which ruined that trip to Rome, I had held of booking a proper holiday, as I dind’t want to spend several hundred pounds to fly somewhere far away, then spend ten days holed up in a hotel room, scratching and feeling very sorry for myself. But once the antihistamines began doing their bit and I was once again sleeping through the night (although two nights ago was something of an ordeal) and when I discovered that at work available weeks to be taken off were rapidly diminishing, I there and then got on my computer and booked. And it’s great to have something to look forward to.

As usual I am making no plans. I shall be taking with me two or three books (of which one is Francis Wheen’s biography of Karl Marx if I can find it again) and enought underwear to keep me respectable and that is it: as far as I am concerned the whole point of holiday is to have no duties,

no plans, no schedule, no obligations, just time off to do what the bloody hell you like, and if that means sitting in an Alpine field surrounded by cows with bells doing absolutely fuck all, so be it. My one stipulation when finding a hotel was that it had wifi internet (and not only because I have to carry on doing the puzzles for the Mail while I am away, but also because courtesy of a useful browser extension I shall also be able to watch Sky Sports while abroad).

Apart from that it was just a question of looking at the reviews. I pay particular attention to the one-star reviews if there are any and gauge from what is said and what is complained of whether there is any reason for giving just one star or whether the complainant is just another bad-tempered perpetual whinger who would find fault with the Second Coming (and that would be someone like my wife). And I have to add the Pension St Leonhard, on Tripadvisor, gets 25 excellents and 10 very goods, and no review is below four-star. So I’m rather looking forward to it.