Walking through Athens and what do you see? A dozen masked maniacs throwing chunks of marble at 6,000 armoured doughnut-munchers with shields. Yes, it's one year on from the start of the Greek riots of '08 and some people decided that the anniversary of a boy's death was a good time to chuck some marble, petrol bombs and, most devastatingly, oranges at policemen.

Read more...click below.

and we're off again...

What do you do when a problem is bigger than you can handle? Do you play it like most people and just give up? It would seem the logical thing to do, the reasoning being somewhat straightforward. 'Well, no matter how much I do I can't really make an impact, so I won't bother'. Sound familiar? Here's a little story. A woman looks after stray cats, loves having them around. Late one morning a cat of hers starts giving birth. She hurriedly prepares a space for it, tends to the birth, looks after mother and kittens and then she throws every non-black kitten in a plastic bag and gasses them.

For more murdering of innocent kittens please follow the link, add manic laugh as appropriate.

It's been a while since my last post. That's not been because there's been little to talk about. For one reason or another life has taken over. I was first tempted to say 'gotten in the way', but that would imply that the desired state is writing lots of blog posts all the time and what actually happened – having a really enjoyable and interesting time – is a somehow less fulfilling enterprise. No matter. Life has afforded a break and I'm here now.

More after the break...

We left Tuscany/Umbria on 8th September. JP went to London to shoot a wedding and I went to Rome for a week at the end of which I took a boat to Greece. After a few days, we were reunited in Athens (although we did our damndest to avoid each other at the airport, managing to wait at different gates for an hour before JP twigged that I was in the wrong place) and are now on Syros, an island.

When I left for Rome, we realised that we had never thought to get me a camera as JP would be taking all the photos. As a result, this post will have no photos but in any case, you've probably all seen it all before. In fact, I'm not going to write about most of what I saw as it was all the famous touristy stuff. Instead, I present 'Rome in tips and quotes'.

I don't think the name Mike Bongiorno will mean anything to our English readers but if I tell you that he was the Italian Bruce Forsyth, then you may get a measure of why his death is such big news.

Orvieto is just south of Chiusi and we were urged to visit it on our first day off, particularly for the cathedral. Everyone's seen cathedrals. Big, architecturally-rich monsters, with lots of paintings inside.

But this one was different.

Inside out, to be precise.

Our host test fires his burners in front of passengers and ground crew.

Last time around I mentioned that our host was a hot-air-balloonist. Well, a couple of days ago I had my first taste of this most serene of past-times. It wasn't from the gondola (this is the balloonist word for 'basket') but from the ground. There was a flight going up in the morning and I asked if I could tag along and take some photographs. Yes, I volunteered to get up at half-four and watch people mess around a bit with balloons. Those of you that know me well will be as amazed as I was that come 4.45am I was in the shower whistling.

Read on for lots of photos for a change...

So, we're off travelling again! It's a new plan for the rest of the summer after my ankle injury. Gone for now is the walk down Italy, although we've kept the mark in the right page and we still mean to read the book (and it's not just one of those optimistic bookmarks littering millions of copies of 'Das Capital' halfway through the introduction or stuffed with disappointment at page 17 of Lord Jim).

Click below to see the rest and read to the end twice or you'll die the next time you look in a mirror...

This isn't a proper blog post as such and will not contain any of J-P's fabulous photography but I thought you might all want to know that we are back in the UK.

(At this point, J-P would write 'click below' to read more, but I think you're all bright enough to work this out for yourselves.)

Thursday the 4th of June: 11am
On a hot summer's day made for falling in love on a morning's gentle skip downhill from the Jaufenpass we hit our first flat road for the past two days. It was a bit of a relief. “Crunch!” I heard, collapsing suddenly to the floor. I had sprained my left ankle on a hole in the road. Screaming in a rather disturbing way I told Julia “It's over, we're going home!”. I was on my back for two days, and I'm still limping today, or I would be...

Thursday the 11th of June: 11am
Carefully manoeuvring down from our first camp site since starting up again after the injury, coming down through a steep sun-bathed grassy vale, “Crunch!” I heard, collapsing suddenly to the floor, now cradling my right ankle in pain. Keeping very quiet and hoping my camera was still working I saw Julia come up to me, throw her pack off and say “That's it, we're going home!”

Click somewhere above or below here to read on...