Today's news...

Readers may wonder what I'm up to at the moment. Well, I'm preparing for two big events in my life. 1. I am representing sense at the Helen Keller World Conference near Kampala, Uganda in the last week of October 2009. I shall be writing a full report of this Conference afterwards. I hope to re-submit my Paper on weapons that I submitted to the DbI World Conference that was held in Perth, Western Australia in September 2007. 2. I am very fortunate in that I have accepted a job teaching English at the White Cane Foundation in Debrecen in eastern Hungary from early November 2009. I am really looking forward to this adventure and I shall be writing about my experiences. I hope to improve on my current stock of five Hungarian words. Here in Hove, September has been wonderful, and as I write at nearly 5pm it is still sunny outside and fairly warm. Yesterday I had some fun. I went to an auction and I bought some jewellery. In particular I bought what I consider to be a very attractive necklace of freshwater pearls. In the same auction lot was an amber necklace and another necklace with amber beads and freshwater pearls. You can see these necklaces around the lovely neck of Natalie. Who is Natalie? She is the very co-operative young woman who works in the offices just below my flat. She agreed to be the model for the necklaces. My understanding is that this is the first time she's ever been approached by a strange man asking her to model necklaces. There's always a first time... The other two photos attached to this posting are of the Beast himself at his computer- pretending to work. Sunny Hove, September 2009

I am back in circulation!

Loyal readers of my blog will wonder where I have been. Have I disappeared down the great plug-hole of history? No, I have been travelling in mainland Europe. On 12 July I took off from Gatwick for Vienna where I stayed for 3 weeks. Why Vienna? Well, my "step-daughter", Kamila, lives in that city with her husband and two their two young children. Wanda, Kamila's mother who is Polish came to Vienna at the same time as I did and we attended the Christening of her two granddaughters together. We then stayed in Kamila's flat for 3 weeks visiting all the interesting parts of Vienna as well as engaging in family activities. You can see many photos of Vienna on my Flickr Photo Gallery and here is the link. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova After our successful spell in Vienna Wanda and I went by bus to Radom in Poland which is her native city via Bratislava, Slovakia. We spent some days in Radom and round about. We then went on a very interesting trip to Lwow in the Ukraine. There have been disputes between and her neighbours: Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Germany over the centuries. Currently, Lwow is in the Ukraine and it is the most interesting and attractive city. On our return to Radom we spent some more days in that city before I went down to Salesesia where an old acquaintance of mine, Jim Parton is living in some style with his new Polish wife, Anna. more about that another day. Attached to this posting are 6 representative photos. I remind you that if you wish to see all the photos form those memorable 6 weeks I boringly repeat the link which you must click. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova Happy viewing. I welcome comments either onto my blog or directly to me by email at : colinbbennett@palmeira.org.uk Colin Bennett, Hove