Just to remind myself that autumn actually happened...

It's true that I really picked the wrong moment to hibernate -- here I am, getting back into things in order to complain about the winter, while the human was off doing his best to enjoy the great outdoors before coming home to let me out of my sleeping bag and turn the heating on.
Things I missed include:

An apple and sweet onion festival -- which also seems to have included red wine and chestnuts -- in company with some of the old friends who first set me on the path of chronicling the eccentricities of humans;

and a trip (via Westward Ho!, no less) to a notorious pirate lair, convenient for the observation of Shetland ponies employed by the National Trust for mowing and fertilisation purposes, and the sort of meta-signage that offers visitors the best means of dpriving visitors of the opportinuty of actually falling off the ends of the Earth.

Score one for heliocentrism, methinks.

Anarchy in the Helvetian Confederation

Well, the humans have been doing their best to butter me up with chocolate and appenzeller cheese, though as usual they've been busily talking about the deer sausage they enjoyed for a post-concert bed-picnic rather than actually saving me any. The ukulele concert -- as they never seem to tire of reminding me -- was excellent fun, with old favourites and a couple of new numbers washed down with quite respectable Italian champagne. I'm told the sight of an eminently respectable Swiss audience being warmed up to sing the chorus to a Simon and Garfunkel arrangement of a Sid Vicious classic is really quite something!
Meanwhile the city's other marvels included mulled wine aplenty, hospitable and moderately-priced model-train-themed hostelries, and a ferryboat powered by nothing other than the current of the Rhine. The boat is attached to a pulley running on a cable running across the river, much in the manner of an aqueous flying fox, and crosses sideways facing into the current, its movement regulated by the position of its rudder. Culture, other than that offered by ukuleles, was not forgotten: the humans had much to say about the excellent Kunstmuseum and were even kind enough to bring me a photograph of a friendly-looking creature overlooking the courtyard ice rink.
Perhaps we can become penpals.

Non licet ombinus Londinium adire!

I'm trying not to complain too much about being left to guard plum jam in Lutetia while the human conveyed himself to Londinium by stella europae on the slightly dubious pretext of purchasing books and visiting the bibliotheca britannica. All Gaul may be divided into three parts, but the human was able to confirm in person earlier documentary evidence that the British have made progress in the blessed domain of cheesemaking:
Needless to say the human returned immoderately well fed, on everything from bacon (viz.)

with eggs and hollandaise sauce, Szechuan hot-pot ("hot and numbing" read the menu -- and I was most intrigued to note an apartheid-like divider allowing two different broths to be cooked in the one pan), aperitifs aboard what I suppose one would have to call a public houseboat, and finally an excellent Korean barbecue only rendered incongruous by being served in a quiet South-East London local with careworn oak panelling:
Old friends make for great happiness, and there is even news from the illustrious Dr. L that my dear comrade Fidel has emerged from hiding under a bed in Hackney. I can only hope I'll be included in the next visit...

Railing against incompetence

It must be tough being a transport planner in the service of the rum corps -- not only do they have some of the silliest liquor licensing laws in the country, but coming up with imaginative new cock-ups day after day must be a real challenge.

Witness the latest plan -- a metro line designed to solve the city's problems by taking people from one point already well serviced by public transport to another, the latter of which has the distinction of having nowhere to put or send the expected influx of passengers once arrived.

But wait, there's more -- we now learn that doing so would require already existing trains to terminate at the old country platforms, then get out of the way before the next ones come in, a feat that even the eternal optimists acknowledge to be impossible.

The French also seem to have encountered this problem. Witness what happened in 1895, five years before their own metro system finally opened, when a steam train slightly overshot the conventional stopping point at the Gare Montparnasse:
On this basis, I fell confident in declaring that public transport in Sydney is precisely 115 years begind its equivalent in Paris, although more precise estimates will depend on budgetary projections for the Broken Hill hydroelectric scheme...