Foreign Perspectives

Let’s face us, the vast majority of us know diddly squat about the situation in Burma.

It’s one of those peculiar places in south-east Asia that aren’t on the flight path of the major airlines that we tend to get around on so there aren’t any stopovers there such as are commonplace in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. So, very few of us know anyone who has been there on holiday and therefore we know even less about it than we do about many countries around the world in this day of widespread international travel.

So, in many cases it is a country that simply doesn’t appear on our radar until something really serious happens there.

Sadly, that “something really serious” is happening right now. The government (if such a word can be applied to the people running that country) don’t want us to know about it but thanks to the communications infrastructure in place these days, the only thing that they can do is try to round up those that would write about it from within the country and yet still the news gets out despite their major-league clampdown on freedom of expression. So we have the Burma Blog among many others.

Buddism is one religion that just doesn’t get into any kind of conflict so it must be some measure of how bad it is when even they have been dragged into events taking place in Burma.

Let’s hope that the situation is resolved as quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The pattern of bookings this year has been rather peculiar right from the start and seems to be continuing in the same vein.

Last night for instance, we had only one couple in although we really should have two but ‘tother one was one of our “visa application bookings” so we weren’t really expecting him to arrive.

Tonight, not only are we full, but everyone is taking meals too.

What October will be like, we’ve really no idea at the moment as the majority of people are booking just a few days to a couple of weeks ahead these days which means we generally have no idea how a given month will turn out ’til we’re well into it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Just as suddenly as it arrive, the grape harvest is over and with it the bands of grape pickers are gone from the villages and their little clusters of caravans and vans.

This year the difference wasn’t quite so marked as just about all the wine growers bought the grape picking machines last year so they don’t need anything like the number of pickers that they did in years gone by and therefore the little campsites were much smaller.

With the arrival of assorted Eastern Block countries into Europe this year, the mix of pickers changed quite substantially as indeed has the face of the workforce elsewhere in Europe over the last year or so.

Popularity: 3% [?]