Winners!!

Two winners, as promised, in my little competition:

Jacqueline Pye - who got it absolutely right, when she said Hove and Brighton (I was actually in Hove, and looking towards Brighton).

And Terry Tyler, who came out of the hat first of those who just said Brighton.

I'll be in touch with both of you - and this is what you will win:

Another book?

Yes, another book - a real book in response to all those who have asked me to put my Over the Hill ebooks into print. So here you will find my adventures in the Himalayas, including a rather alarming encounter with a tiger, how I shared a room with a rat in Laos, and finally my salsa through Cuba.

But, some will say, these are all available as ebooks - and you are right. They are. But many people have asked for print copies, to put on their shelves, to share with friends, and so I've put these three journeys together.

So, you might be asking, if I've read the ebooks do I find anything new in From the Inside Looking Out. No - only a brief introduction. If ebook are your thing, then there's no point in buying this purely for decoration. (Aren't I shooting myself in the foot - suggesting people don't buy it if they've read the ebooks? Maybe, but I'd rather be honest with a shot foot than have you accuse me of implying that I've deceived you)

I've got the proofs, and it's at the final tinkering stage - so my winners will have to wait a week or two. But I'll get in contact both of you to get your addresses and send it off to you as soon as the final copies arrive.

What a noisy world we live in!

I should qualify that - here in the UK, even in a market town, silence is rare, and precious. Even if the traffic is quiet, there is wind in the trees, the occasional dog, the radiators ticking, someone passing my house and running her stick along the railings. Mothers dragging their children to school. The slam of car doors. The drone of a passing plane (especially irritating if it's a microlight). Petrol lawn mowers.

Some - such as the passing police car or fisticuffs from lads coming home from the pub - I could live without.

But others can interrupt me any time and I'll stop to listen and smile:

Children playing. I can hear the children at the nearest school if I stop and listen when they are out to play. The cries and laughters from children's playgrounds are the same the world over. I remember waking one morning in Laos to the same joyful cries - and felt both a twinge of homesickness and delight at being where I could hear Laotian children all at the same time.

The mistle thrush that wakes me in the summer as the sun rises. I'm not good in the mornings but always I forgive this little bird. Many times - when I've been in 'less developed countries' (I don't like the term but you know what I mean) - I've been woken by cockerels. I have mixed feelings about cockerels. By the time they're crowing many local people are up and about, women in the fields and men ... too often the men are playing cards, but sometimes they're doing useful things with machinery. But the point is that local people are already into the day while this lazy tourist is still abed. The cockerel rebukes me. But, at home, my mistle thrush sings me back to sleep.

Music (almost all music. There's some very modern classical music that I struggle with.) Music does wonderful things in my head, and I'm not sure I can put it into words. Some makes me tap my feet, or swing my shoulders - and I'm not even aware I'm doing it. Some makes me join in a sing, in spite of myself. And some will make me cry - though I've no idea why. But somehow it reaches parts of my brain that are nothing to do with thinking, and that makes me feel wonderful!

Some accents - a strange one, this. I've no idea why some accents whine like musical saws (you know the kind - they appeared in music halls and are so screechy you want, briefly, to hide till they stop talking) while others are compelling. Last weekend, the waiter with his French, 'Voila' was enough for me to know I'd listen to him to reading the phone book. Tom Conti (do you remember him?) - I could listen to him reciting anything, listening to the music of his voice and paying no attention to the content. I read somewhere that the language of Dante was taken as the national language of Italy when the country united in 1848 because it was the most beautiful of the dialects available - and I get that, for I can listen to it without caring I don't understand a word.

And soon I'll be bombarded by new sounds. Cuban Spanish, Cuban children, Cuban birds, Cuban music ...

What sounds make you stop, listen, be glad you woke up today?

I'm trying to learn Spanish

Well, the nights are drawing in, and, as some of you know, I'm looking towards my winter trip. To Cuba.

And this time I'm trying to do something about my linguistic ineptitude. I'm trying to teach myself Spanish. I have a book and a CD and have found websites to help with pronunciation.

It's a slow process. I'm not naturally good at languages (well, I like to think I'm good at English, but you know what I mean). I can, now ask someone how she is (though who know why I might want to do this before I buy my bus ticket, I'm not sure). I can tell them I have four daughters and four grandchildren (though words can never quite capture how wonderful they all are). I can ask the way to the bus station - though think it unlikely I'll ever understand the reply. And I can order a beer.

Yet there are many questions which aren't included in my basic Spanish - questions which, in my experience, are vital to know when you're a tourist. Such as:

There is no toilet paper in my room.

I think I am on the wrong bus.

Is that spider poisonous?

I shall happily play with your children but will not take them home with me.

No, I will not marry you just so you can get a visa.

Is there a collective noun for cockroaches?

I know I'm white-skinned, but the war in Iraq is not my fault.

Some years ago, when I was in Spain, I sent a text to a daughter, then teaching in Caracas, needing the Spanish for cake. (She understood cake emergencies). She now has three small children. Is it stretching her good will too far to contact her in the middle of the night to ask for the Spanish for, 'A rat has eaten my rucksack'?

When you're on  your travels, have you come across phrases you need translated, urgently, and cannot possibly mime?