Currently have a crap internet connection – dial-up in fact. I feel like I have died and been reincarnated in the stone age. Ten years of internet and dial-up still exists? So much for progress. I can honestly say we do not deserve to live. There is news though. Pigs have been dying in China, so the worst is expected and any day soon around a billion people en masse all over the planet will find their viscera liquifying in apoplectic reaction to some inscrutable Chinese swine virus.

As for me, the truth can be announced that despite raining terror and abjection on Zürich like some minor demon having a hissy-fit, I have decided I like the place, the surroundings are adequate (though the standard of dress is in inverse proportion to the quantities of wealth), and most importantly I have been offered a job dancing, which I accepted. The alternatives were poverty in China (compensated by cheap DVDs) or unemployment in Australia. We started rehearsing on Tuesday, so I am now a resident of Zürich until the end of the year, by which time I shall be writing this in Swiss-German, which noone really understands and I thought was Japanese the first time I heard it.