If you yearn to see some pretty scenery and you are in the UK,  get your arse down to Dartmoor. There are vast moorlands that are totally bristling with ancient stone rows. standing stones, stone circles and other paleolithic masonry.

Some are right near the road like these ones near Merivale. Others you’ll need to tromp about with an ordinance survey map in one hand and your itchy head in the other.They are not always easy to find (or maybe we just suck at reading maps), but when you do finally find them it’s like an exciting treasure hunt!

Brett took me to Ireland for the weekend for my birthday. We flew into Cork and stayed at Blarney Castle Hotel. It’s a very nice old pub next to the famous Blarney Stone Castle.

The night before we arrived the Police Station next door to the pub we stayed in had been petrol bombed! Blarney seems like a quaint and even slightly boring little place. But when ever I asked anyone what happened to the cop shop they went all tight lipped and looked away. Seriously! It was like everyone knew, but was too scared to say anything. I felt like going all Veronica Mars on their arses until I realised I didn’t care.

They can kiss my arse, cos I didn’t kiss that stone. It was still worth the 10 euros to see the Blarney Castle which is a very impressive fortress ruin despite all the superstitious bullshit about the Blarney Stone.

County Cork isn’t very big. We drove all day Saturday and saw quite a bit of the south coast, with its classic green hills and misty beaches. You’d have to be a fussy bugger not to be impressed.

Kinsale looked like a very pretty and interesting old fishing town, but it was very busy. Glandore is further west and looked very nice, but much quieter. Near Glandore is The Drombeg Stone Circle which was a highlight for me. But then I’m a bit kinky for big rocks.

I’ve met so many people who count Prague as their favourite city that I was worried it would be a huge let down. But nooooo. Prague, like Paris, can soak up accolades like a spongy Diva.

Prague is magical. It is very slightly spooky, with its cobbled alleys, Gothic spires and 14th century bridge. Some reports tell of heavy pollution, but coming from London I was nearly knocked out by the freshness of the air. The pace was calm and peaceful falling blissfully short of quaint. I suspect this is very different in high summer when it heaves with tourists.

We stayed at the Golden Well Hotel, which was flawless.

We loath Xmas and love France. So this year we avoided the whole Xmas mess and took the Eurostar to Paris on Christmas eve.

We’re huge fans of the Hotel Costes CD’s (funky funky lounge music) so we booked ourselves into the new Hotel Costes K because the older one is tres tres expensive! But the new one is wonderfully luxurious and ultra modern for about a third of the price. We did go to the original Hotel Costes for dinner and a cocktail and it was super gorgeous and not snooty at all.

I think the best thing for me was getting up very late on Christmas morning, wandering down to the Eiffel Tower for a delicious ham and cheese crepe fresh from one of the stalls for Xmas lunch and munching it as we strolled along the Seine.

Pretty much nothing is open on Christmas eve in Paris - that is the big important meal for them. Many things are closed on Xmas day as well, but Paris is much more lively on the 25th than central London; most of the cafes were open on the Champs Elysee and I even noticed the tour buses were running. Or you can always live on Crepes from the stalls around the Eiffel Tower.

Got back last night from a week of yoga and skiing in Switzerland! That’s right yoga AND skiing. It was a yoga retreat in Wengen. And what a treat it was!

Wengen is a quiet little alpine village in the middle of a world heritage site. The scenery is breathtaking. I wish my photo taking could do it justice. These two shots were taken from our balcony, but represent only a fraction of the panorama.

The whole week was organised by a company called Yoga Traveller which is run by a brilliant young Irish couple – Michelle and Michael. These two are brimming with joie de vivre- scuba diving, snowboarding, yoga-ing and partying their way around the world. I recommend any holiday they organise. Check them out –

http://www.yogatraveller.com

Doing yoga twice a day for a week really sorts you out. Skiing, drinking and eating mountains of cheese keep you from floating away.

The thing I love about Switzerland is the way the houses are processed from the pine trees that surround them. Pointy mountains, with pointy pine trees and pointy pine houses. You get my point.

My sweet honeybun took me to Coombe Abbey near Coventry for my birthday weekend. What a treat! It’s a twelfth century abbey that is now a luxury hotel and has extensive grounds to wander around in. We had a lovely relaxing break.

You can find loads of these kinds of places all over the UK and France on this site:

http://www.celticcastles.com/

I brought home two beautiful pine cones from the park. Their form is just so rigidly sensuous. I love them.

No matter how nice it is to go away it’s always nice to come home, back to the nest. I made an awsome lentil soup and we watched Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch).

Lentil soup recipe: Serves 2.
Ingredients

1 ‘take away container’ of cooked lentils
(I cook em up in a big batch and freeze them in take away containers or you can buy them canned)

1 onion diced.
2 teaspoons of whole coriander seeds (this is a must!)
1 fresh red chilli (or tons of chilli powder)
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 zucchini (courgette) diced
1 capsicum (pepper) diced
Teaspoon each of dried herbs, salt and pepper. Tomato paste is good too.
Saute the onions and corriander seeds till the onions are soft. Then add the chilli and the other vegies and herbs. Stir over a medium heat till they are all smelling like friends. Then add the lentils and canned tomatoes (and tomatoe paste). Add some water if it’s all too dry.
Simmer till it looks good enough to eat (About 15 minutes)!

The resiny smell of hoochijuana wafting out of every second cafe, bikini girls lounging in windows yacking on their mobile phones, people wearing suits and riding bicycles - I must be in Amsterdam. Sleaze lovingly mixed with quaint tidyness makes Amstedam a delightfully mellow and sane place. It’s only a tiny city, but it never feels like a parochial backwater. I can’t work out why more people don’t move here.

We went over for Tony’s ‘Rubbish Super Hero’s’ Party. It was a total blast!

I don’t have any photos of me. I went as The Tickler. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I looked fabulous.

We also went to the Rijksmuseum which is only half open at the moment. They have piles of dutch masters as you would expect, but my favourite item is the big 17th century dolls house.

You can see more of it here:

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/BK-NM-1010?id=BK-NM-1010&page=0&lang=en&context_space=aria_encyclopedia&context_id=00050219

Last weekend we hired a car and drove down to the seaside. My sister inlaw, Tania, hadn’t seen Stonehenge so we went via Salisbury. The traffic was absolutely crawling along the road to those ancient monoliths. I noticed on the map that if we skirted around the back roads we could not only avoid all the traffic, but we could also visit ‘WOODHENGE’! Oh boy! Two henges for the price of one.

You can read about woodhenge here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/434821.stm

The first thing you notice about woodhenge is that it isn’t wood. It’s a bunch of concrete blocks that some genious has placed where the ancient oak beams used to be. Why it never occured to them to use new oak stumps is totally beyond me. A field of concrete stumps? Hmm maybe we should have just sat in the traffic…Anyway we went around the back way to Stonehenge which is totally awesome.

We then drove down to Portsmouth via the New Forrest. The New Forrest has some pretty woodsy bits dotted amongst lots of barren scrubby bits. But one thing’s for sure; it is possitively packed with ponys. They even wander through the streets in the village of Brockenhurst. So if you are kinky for ponys (like Tania) then this is the place for you.

As for Portsmouth? Well I wouldn’t rate it, but then we were only there for one night (thankfully). If you do go there avoid Gunwharf Quays unless you are yearning to walk along a sterile strip of chain stores. There is a ‘fun’ pier at the other end of the town, but it wasn’t open on Saturday night in the middle of summer. I suspect it hasn’t been open since GAP, Polo Ralph Lauren and Tiger Tiger moved into the Quays.

We got back to Heathrow from New York on thursday only to find all flights had been cancelled due to the terror alert. We were lucky, we were one of the last planes to be allowed to land and we were only delayed an hour or so. Which is preferable to being blown to bits mid air.

I gotta say I was half expecting something to happen what with the gross injustice happening in the middle east.

Can I just point out that it’s not necessary to take sides in a war? I reckon Hezbollah are as bad as Israel. They both have no respect for human rights or UN resolutions. They are both violent terrorist bastards that place nationalism and ideology above human life. They can all kiss my ever growing rubber band ball of peace.

So I don’t suport Hezbollah, OK? But I did enjoy watching this YouTube clip of George Galloway lay down some home truths on Sky when asked to justify HIS suport of Hezbollah. Go George!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbmgkCiwTKo

New York really is the greatest city in the world. I’d forgotten how many huge buildings there are. Big and beautiful. And the New Yorkers are just so loud and larger than life. I totally love ‘em. The energy just rises up from the ground here.

We went down to ground zero. It’s a massive crater. I was glad to see some anti war sentiment looming over the big hole that was once the World Trade Center.

Visited MoMA (museum of modern art) and saw some far out and funky stuff. When this guy in the loud shirt stood between me and the Pollock I just had to snap one off. A picture that is…

I especially liked the work of Swoon that they had there -She’s a woodcut, paper street artist. She puts her stuff up on walls and it just decays. I just realised that yesterday I took a picture of one of her decaying works in the street down in Tribecca. So I looked her up and here’s a link to an interview with her. She sounds cool. http://gammablog.com/gammablablog/featured/swoon.shtml