Pre-ramble My apologies for the delay between blogs recently. I've come up with the following excuses: 1) The dog ate my laptop 2) Hemingway, Shakespeare, Mailer, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Spilsbury and Austen, all the literary giants get writer's block 3) I was abducted by aliens (again?Ed) 4) I've only just recovered from tick bite fever The answer is, of course, all of the above. Anyway, on to the blog……. Murder in Meiringen, Switzerla...

Tannoy: "Bing Bong Bing Bong" "Hello Camping! This is to know that in 5 minuten we are having Izzi Sparnish in the sorshall womb" Despite residing at Camping Marjal (Catral, Valencia) from early January to mid March we never did manage to say hello to Izzi Sparnish. Angela did, however, attend the "Fun Bingo", which due to a total lack of cash prizes and the need to shout the numbers out in 5 languages, turned out to be 4 hours of anything but fun. Ditto the "Q...

First of all apologies to everyone for the multiple (6!) emails you received re the last blog update. Off Exploring has been having some "server issues" which results in notifications being sent more than once. Sorry about that, hopefully the problem has been solved! Anyway back to the blog. Those of you who read the last one may have gathered that my mother-in-law Jo (Josephine) has been on holiday with us here in Spain. We had a great time and we got on ...

Tip 1 Don't invite her Tip 2-10 Tip 1 applies Actually I haven't spoken to my Mother in Law for 18 months….I don't like to interrupt her!

Never let it be said that the Spanish pass up an opportunity for a festival. Their economy may be going downhill faster than Man Utd's season but Spain will be celebrating over the Christmas period, albeit on different days to most of the rest of the world. Christmas starts in Spain on 8 December with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a public holiday, which, coming 2 days after Constitution Day, another public holiday, means many Spaniards take this wee...