Locatum

The site of Fiona tut-tutting on the 10 o'clock news is bad enough at the best of times but over swine flu - 2,000 suspected cases globally, 5 on our shores, 7 dead in Mexico, 1 (child) in the US - is off the scale. Three million or so people, many of them children, most of them far from airports and cameras, die every year from malaria - oh yes, and with climate change we can expect that one (and others) to spread. We even went as a family into a malarial area on holiday in East Africa last year, shock horror! We can't give malaria to each other directly, mosquitoes are the vector, but we can get a mild form of flu from another human - oh dear, let's wheel out "pandemic" and watch the stock market shudder. It's not as if the world is short of bad news stories, some even related to preventable diseases.....Desperate Housewives saves me from further fury tonight! A thought before leaving the office to watch football training and prepare for the big match.....

This looks like a first post but really it isn't it's just that what I've been offered from the backroom hasn't done what was expected and while I'm waiting for a replacement (that particular room being somewhat busy for reasons that will become apparent at some point) decided to take bull by horns. Am sorely tempted to post retrospectively over many issues that have caught my eye on the water, the slopes and the web. However, I think that is probably not the right "tarteeb" (a word I use occasionally being a "Holmanism" from the late Mike Holman, adventurer, Marine, Arabic speaker, originally from the Arabic where it refers to "the correct order of things", specifically the order of the Nazool (sometimes translated as the sending down) of the Holy Qu'ran). I suppose (n)etiquette is an alternative but carries different baggage both old and new, so tarteeb it is! No doubt many of the things I am interested in, from snow and wind cond...