The bear and I are off on our travels. Having spent the last two months averaging 20 hours a day at work, the boss has sent us off for a recharge.
I need it too. The country I live in is starting to resemble a tin-pot dictatorship; I've always been fiercely proud of the fact that the police aren't armed and are a respected organisation.
But now... now I listen to the radio and hear senior policemen cheerfully saying that anyone who looks a bit funny will be shot on sight. In the head too, in case they're carrying a bomb.
Now, the whole reason we don't have the death penalty here in the UK is the "what if we made a mistake" scenario. You can't very well say "Sorreeee" to a corpse. Unless your name is Romero and you've made another really bad zombie film.
And yet after a man whose only crime was to have an expired visa and to run when a copper shouts at him gets pinned down on the floor of a tube train and shot in the head/executed by the police, we have the chap who runs the police saying "Yep, and we'll do it again too"
I tell you this in truth, I'm now more frightened of the police than I am of nutters blowing themselves up.
So I need a holiday. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to Tuscany. To an isolated farmhouse. With a swimming pool. And a fridge full of beer.
Ciao, baby.
