Multimedia thrills as Sod Abroad visits Essex

I think this link will work - A 10 minute interview with Dave Monk of Radio Essex. Surrounded, of course, by all your usual Essex-based chat and music. He played 'Rock with you' in the middle of the interview. Great choice, but not as great as this.

Synchronicity: How 2 quite different people can write the same staycation piffle on the same day

Lionel Shriver, the 'Boy named Sue' of Britain's literary elite, did a bit for The Sunday Times this weekend about how ghastly she thinks holidays are. Not a mile off my own bit for the Indy that I posted about on Sunday.

Indeed, they went with a markedly similar pic too.



One might be tempted to infer from this a woeful dearth of imagination among the editorial staff of our great nation's broadsheet news papers. I would disagree. I just think that flicking the V's at travel agents is an idea whose time has come.

From today's Independent on Sunday - 'What’s so good about holidaying abroad?'

Essentially a super-sized puff for 'Sod Abroad' it also provides some (I am sure) interesting background on how I came to write the book..

Plus, it reveals some harrowing insights into my painstaking research:

Before I went on that holiday I had just assumed I didn't like camping. Now I know. Some magical alchemy about getting enough tents together in one place attracts rain like a picnic attracts wasps. It poured for two weeks, pausing only to allow a sinister fog to roll in from the sea every breakfast. To make the situation even more comical our daughter had just reached that sofa-surfing stage, where a child is almost ready to walk but needs regularly spaced items of furniture as staging posts. Solid pieces of furniture aren't easy to come by on a campsite, and as a consequence every adult in the party was pressed into service as an emergency baby-walker, resulting in long-term lumbar damage that was in no way exacerbated by having to sleep on a thin foam mattress.

Finally, and I'm sure you'll see this as a bonus, there's a nice picture of me reclining on my sofa and reading the splendid (and highly recommended) My Little Armalite