THE PLUMBER, THE POLITICIAN AND BAGPUSS!

I met Zac Goldsmith today.   I interviewed him about his views on travel and the initiative the Energy Smart Campaign whereby the local council not only sends someone round to show how you can save energy but also gives you the contacts for the plumbers who are not cowboys and has organised a loan system that won't screw you into the ground for the next ten years to get your boiler fixed.

This is particularly pertinent to me at the moment as I am boiling water in saucepans as a plumber my neighbour recommended has charged me over £100 to get my downstairs loo fixed (I could have bought a new one for less) and looked at my boiler and now I have no ruddy hot water at all. Hence the  saucepans.   So I will be using the campaign, seeing if it's simple stupid and I can get a new boiler, a plumber that does good and not Richmond prices, and for once believe what a politician tells me is going to be delivered - happens.  

But I liked Zac Goldsmith.    I interviewed him about his travels which will appear in writing and online, but also on my new website too in the next month.    But here's a photo of the very handsome Mr Goldsmith and me grinning like the proverbial cloth cat

CUT PRICE HOLIDAYS - mind the gap and surf the net.

Ive been asked to comment on the increase in holiday prices during the summer and school holidays.   It is extortionate now, yup.   The prices more than double but it's only because we've had it cheap for so long and compared to other countries we have been blessed with cheap package holidays.    For example in Canada, very few Canadians have travelled around their own country - it's relatively cheaper to leave it than travel round it.   We have it good.

Of course, if you have the money - which a proportion of us do, we can go anytime, any place anywhere like the Martini advert says, so price is irrelevant. For the rest of us it's a bit of a scramble.  I suggest you get your teenager to surf the net, search the engines and get off their butt and facebook and instagram and anything else that appeases them at the moment and do something useful with their computer time.    The prices are not up over the holidays because the tour operators are greedy but because tour operators usually run on a very fine profit margin.    That's why when things get tough, they don't have margin to mind the gap, they fall through it.  

BIG BRAIN, LITTLE BRAIN....

GO TO GOZO...

Tips on going to Gozo - don't go on a Saturday, don't go for the day.   Visit the Ggantija Temples and Ramla Bay below the Calypso Cave, visit Rikkardo at his restaurant in Victoria, - the fresh cheese is the best - and go in the Spring or Autumn.   Avoid the hot summer months and the coolest of winter, and did I mention, avoid Saturdays...

this is a pose. not sure what it's called but it's the same thing I did once after having too much to drink outside my hotel room when I couldn't stand up properly.... The arch is DWEJRA, the man is Rikkardo, of Ta Ricardu restaurant. he makes wonderful cheese.

WEEKEND WITH THE PROFESSOR

Last week I woke and it took three minutes for me to remember what day of the week it was.   I texted friends to find out if this happened to them or that I was going mad, which is a possibility.   I was told by a knowing soul, that it happens when you have a) too much on the mind and b) have had a deep sleep. So any of you out there who wake up not knowing the day of the week - there you have it - you're not mad. If you still don't know three hours after you wake up, that may be different. When I was traveling a lot I used to wake up and not know what country I was in.  

Two weeks ago it was Italy. Today I am in Gozo as I type.    It's a fifth the size of Malta and is treated like 'Ireland is to England' in other words not as bad as France and Britain and Australia and New Zealand and America and Canada, but sort of - an 'ish' of suspicious (ish), as Professor Edward de Bono would say.

Talking of which, I have spent a few days in the company of this incredible man again.   The person who was able to break down barriers of politics, prejudice, personalities, by using his incredible ability to simplify and thereby make accessible the process of thinking, has probably done more for productivity on all levels than the combined diplomacy of the world. His methods are used globally in China and America and Russia - cultures which rarely agree on anything even to this day without lots of negotiation, compromise, chest beating.  In companies, schools, universities, governments, establishments who not so much have narrow ways of thinking, but don't actually think, he made more progress than any statesman and far fewer enemies - if any.  Jealous critics perhaps.   He also happens to be a very funny, charming man, thoughtful - which doesn't often go with someone who is this clever and thinks on a level few can aspire to - and has a lovely partner Jayne.  He is going to have a busy year of which I will write about later, but it was an extraordinary weekend with lovely people.

Getting back to Gozo, it's a bit like Venice in that people visit for the day. Don't. Stay here for two nights, do a spa day or holistic (yoga on the beach) see pix. The walks here are lovely, very rural and incredibly dramatic countryside and cliffs.  Don't go on a Saturday as 'Saturday is Gozo day' for the locals - so go Tuesday which is the quietest.   Don't treat it as the poor relation to Malta as it's very much part of the package with it's own history and food specialities (I don't eat cheese but the goats cheese here is lovely).   Eat at Rikardu Zammit 35621555953 in Victoria and ask to see how they make the cheese.   Stayed at the lovely Corinthia Palace in Malta and the Kempinski in Gozo.  

VENETIAN, FLORENTINE, ROMAN HOLIDAY....THE PIX