My trip away was lovely. It was cold (boy was it cold) but it was so nice to discover a new town.

I've never been to Switzerland before. On the way over in the plane I was desperately brushing up on my French, hoping against hope that I wouldn't bump into a German or Italian Swiss.

"Bonjour madame"
"Je voudrais..."
" Deux biers s'il vous plait" etc

I really could have done with our favourite translator there. Maybe I could have squeezed her into my suitcase and then dragged her around after me on a short lead. (Oh alright, I would have given her a long lead. Otherwise she'd start complaining about "lead rights" or somesuch nonsense with fellow bloggers.)

But it really was beautiful there.

The town seems to be broken in two. At the top, lovely old buildings with a real "Europe" feel about them. From the balcony of the hotel, houses and buildings sweep before you with the solid bookstop of the Alps on the horizon. At the bottom of the town it was more modern, industrial. Space age buildings holding secret conferences with each other. Vast numbers of yachts nudging each other aside sceaming "look at me! look at me! I'm the most expensive."

The people are lovely. Considering they have to pay 50 odd francs for a bottle of Swiss wine (that's about £25, fact fans) and they can only shop in a Co-op, they're suprisingly cheerful. It must be all that electricity whizzing about.

Even the robbers are polite. Tap-tapping away on the Blackberry on my way to a meeting (yes I know, how corporate of me!) I felt a nudge. I looked down to see someone's hand in my bag. "Oi" quoth I (in my "I've got an English degree don't'cha know?" way)

"Ah! Pardon madame!" (I'm a "mademoiselle" actually monsieur) and with that he gave me a shifty look and hopped off the bus. Très charmant!

I was just dozing off when I hear "ooo, look at that!" from N. Somewhere half way down the M40 it felt a little bit more Christmassy as excitable snow flurried its way amongst the almost-stationary cars.

As we reached London, the snow turned to rain.

Switzerland today for a couple of days. Keep yourself occupied, won't you.

My my, who would have thought.

I am here. I am writing. I am still alive.

Several months have passed, I realise. Several million things have happened in that time. I suppose I might have to update.

1. I've moved into a new house, in a new part of town, with the old boyfriend(old in the sense of time, not age - he'd not be too happy if I spread rumours about his geriatric credentials). One day I might put some pictures up of the new abode. Chez nutty is very much a des-res (mainly because it's about 2 mins walk from our local) but it has a slight problem with its heating. It doesn't have any.

2. I have a new job (hoorah!) The old job was just getting a bit too much to be honest. Lack of money, too much responsibility, no respect. Pah - there's only so long you can deal with that grinding you down every day. So in the end, I decided to go. Great decision. I now work for "Big multi-national company". Sooo different to the last place. We get free coffee here. The strange thing is, since HQ is abroad (and all the internet servers are therefore routed abroad) I'm currently trying to blog in a German blogger. Makes saving posts/adding pictures/knowing what the hell I'm supposed to be doing a little difficult.

3. Dammit. They're making me work!