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

119% of adults in the western world have a blog these days

But do they have an automatic blog post generator?

Well yes.

Yes they do.

Because it's out there on the Internet.

(excellent, if rather off-topic, find by Tamar)

Sod Abroad: Best price guide

If, by some appalling oversight, you haven't bought my spiffy collection of light comic essays about the iniquities of travel yet, then here's something handy. A constantly updated guide to the cheapest online prices so you can buy knowing that you've got the funniest treatise about staycations available, by the nicest known author, at the lowest possible price.

You could probably use it to find the best deals on other books too. If you wanted any of them.

Bear in mind, too, that even if you have got a copy of 'Sod Abroad', it makes an ideal gift for people who either don't like holidays, or like them a little too much, or feel fairly sanguine either way but need to have an inexpensive paperback given to them for some reason.

After all, it's got stuff about food, booze, bikinis, illegal drugs, sex, suntans and nazis - so there really is something for everyone!

Schott's Almanac of New Tourism

Lots of variety here, as one might expect from the master of miscellany, but I detect a pleasingly negative tone overall.

Take a look at the PDF & see!

Moby says aeroplanes are a great way to travel - as long as you don't wear glasses & like bad smells

This terrific bit from the online journal of ambient electro-advert music pioneer and all-round fellow bald chap Moby:

"I was on a flight recently and I was sitting next to a very professional business woman. I'm guessing she was 48 years old, very affluent and successful and poised. 15 minutes into the flight she took an Ambien and went to sleep. 90 minutes later she woke up, looked at me and said, 'I like your glasses'. She took my glasses and tried them on. She then sat for a second, farted very loudly, and went back to sleep."

"When she woke up later I could tell that she had absolutely no recollection of waking up and taking my glasses and farting loudly. If you're flying and you want to sleep you might want to think twice about what sleep drugs you're taking. Some sleep drugs probably should be reconsidered at 38,000 feet in the company of complete strangers."

So, two more things to be added to the list of airborne inconveniences - untoward ocular interference and intimate ercutations from people to whom you have not been introduced. I'm keeping a list of these, and it's getting rather long.

Jet set to 'blow' instead of 'suck' - hilarity ensues

It's a mistake any of us could have made. If we'd been entrusted with the cleaning of a very expensive aeroplane and somehow distracted at a crucial moment.

It didn't happen to us though. It happened to this poor lady. So let's take a moment to point and laugh.