(A bit of a departure from the normal blogs...) Hairdressers have long been known for their love of puns, evident in the various names of their salons, from HairPort, British Hairways, and A Cut Above, to Scissor's Palace, The Best Little Hair House, and the undeniably clever Crops and Bobbers. The other thing hairdressers are famous for is inane chatter. Who hasn't been sat in the chair only to have the stylist start off with, "So, where are you going for the ...

We finally got within a stone's throw of the Mediterranean. Well, that's assuming you can throw a stone six kilometres, but the 13th Century town of Aigues-Mortes is as close as we can get by boat at the moment. The canal does continue on to a place called Grau du Roi, a nice fishing port, where theoretically you could carry on out into the Med and head for Spain, Italy or Greece. But apparently you're only allowed to go to Grau du Roi by boat if you are "going...

There's a lot about canal boating that's photogenic. The canals themselves for one thing, especially those here in France that are lined with trees, planted in the 19th century in a forward-thinking move to reduce evaporation and erosion. Then there are the boats themselves, many of them dating back a hundred years or more, with gorgeous lines and curves. Add to these the play of light on water, the horizontal beams of sun at dusk or dawn, the egrets, herons a...

For the past two days we have been in the teeth of a gale. I like that; gales have "teeth", wind "whistles", you can be out in a "biting" northerly. There is something very oral about wind, no doubt because it shares a common characteristic with humans: it blows. Now it has to be said that a bit of wind doesn't faze us. I've lived in Wellington since 1979, Liz for the past 16 years, so we both qualify as full-blown citizens of New Zealand's capital city. As suc...

Death and taxes; the two inevitabilities. Liz and I are successfully avoiding the latter - simply by not earning anything at the moment - and trying our best to steer clear of the former. Had we been sailing down the Rhone in the past week we may well have been staring death in the face, as the river is in flood and screaming along. There has oviously been some serious rain up north, and sensible boaties don't venture out in such conditions. Luckily for us we ha...