Sometimes when I'm travelling I get up early, put my running shoes on and just jog for fifteen minutes or half and hour, stop, look around at where my legs have taken me, then run back the way I came.  This habit has taken me to some interesting places.  If you start in a town you'll often end up in some quiet, out of the way spot in the country.  Some of them have really stuck in my mind - a rice padi on the island of Langkawi, a misty rural canal in Northern France.  Now I take an iphone around with me I can even take a photo and spot my exact location on a map. I'm staying in digs in Lincoln for the next three weeks and this morning, before dawn, I put on my running shoes and headed out of the city down the Nettleham Road.  Even at 6.30am there were lots of commuters driving into town.  It was colder than I'm used to in Italy and so I ran a bit faster than usual, trotting through the outskirts of town past cut-price gyms and Pizza Huts in modern in...

Waiting for the Ryanair flight to Stansted. It's dark a baby is crying.  I got to Bari on my motorbike riding through olive groves and vineyards in unseasonably warm weather. I did a deal with a car park in Bari to keep my bike there for a month at 3 euros a day. I was treated like royalty and guided to an underground parking space next to a Chevy Corvette. On the way to the airport the courtesy minibus driver talked enthusiastically of his time in Brixton. I'm off to the UK to attend the Humanist Celebrants' conference and to start putting myself about for celebrancy work.  Also to see Dad before I disappear to asia for three months and to catch up with old friends. I feel a bit scared a bit excited and a bit tired.

With Sue away in Borneo and me not working, the time can weigh heavy.  Especially on a grey, wet day like today.  Like so often in my life I feel in a kind of limbo.  In ten days I'm heading for the UK for a month to try to get my career as a humanist funeral celebrant up and running.  In two months I'm leaving for Asia to spend several weeks with Sue.  And, in less than a year we will have our occupational pensions and financially our lives will be transformed.  Normally I would go for a run or a bike ride to get my daily fix of exercise, but pressing my nose against the window and looking at our damp and chilly terrace I decided to go for a walk instead.  I took the car and parked on the steep escarpment that leads down to the Adriatic and then walked a circuit I often did with our little dog Milly. The walk takes you up a steep fire-break and along the top of the pine-fringed ridge to the hotel Lo Smeraldo ("the Emerald" in English).  The...

I'm sat in our land basking in the Autumn sun in what Sue calls our "mediteranean garden" - a corner set aside for her to try different plants, now sadly bare.  I'm going to be on my travels soon, so I'm experimenting with using my iPhone to make a post. Sometimes the country here is so beautiful I want to stretch out my arms and hug it.

We're on the cusp between summer and autumn here in Puglia.  I love this time of year - it's still warm, but the storms that mark the end of summer have made the country green and lush and the leaves are turning gold.  The air is full of rich smells - bonfires and fermenting fruit.  The market is overflowing with ripe produce such as melons, peaches and prickly pears and the vendemmia or grape harvest is just round the corner. This photo is of stuff I picked from our land during ten minutes of wandering around.  The colours reflect the season so well.  There's a lot to do on the land at the moment.  Right now I'm pruning the fig trees, which haven't been touched for four or five years and are tangled and overgrown.  Whenever I prune trees I have Erminia's dead husband Paolo invisibly at my shoulder whispering advice - "you prune olive trees to look like a wine glass, but figs like an umbrella".  At the time he told me this I had no idea why,...

I had an afternoon flight back to Puglia yesterday and so was able to spend a few hours with dad in the morning before driving from Lincoln to Stansted airport. Dad spends a lot of time waiting for things these days - his carers coming and going four times a day, me bouncing to and fro from Italy and one much bigger thing.  To alleviate the boredom he reads, watches TV and snoozes.  The snoozing is taking up increasingly more time and occasionally he even nods off mid-sentence, sometimes waking with a start and looking round in bewilderment. For me the time with him passes slowly and I catch myself checking my watch every few minutes.  Conversation is difficult because dad is slurring his words quite badly these days and so I invariably have to ask him to repeat what he says, which is frustrating for both of us.  The slurring is worse when he's tired, which is most of the time now. When the time finally comes round for me to go I lean down and give him a hug ...

I'm writing this on the sly while dad watches 'the Third Man" on the TV at a volume which is making my ears bleed.  He resents my tapping away at the computer, but if I don't do something I start to go stir crazy. I'm here with dad in his little suburban bungalow in Lincoln for four days before heading back to Italy.  I keep my sanity by going out in my hire car to the malls of Lincoln and aimlessly window shopping or by running errands and doing "odd jobs" that dad decides he needs doing. Yesterday I noticed that the glass in the display case where dad keeps his medals was cracked and I bought a picture frame with the intention of remounting them and hanging them on the wall.  He seemed pleased with the result as I took a step back to admire my handiwork.  The one on the right with the blue and white stripes was issued by the UN for his service in the Korean "peacekeeping operation" in 1953.  Some things don't change. I thought putt...