The Toffeewomble: An Announcement

Trapani



The regular reader of the Toffeewomble might have noticed that the frequency of my posts has dropped off, in recent months; indeed these days one month can stretch into another with nothing on here but cyber tumbleweed rolling past the derelict cemetery of web silence and towards the disused saloon bar of over-extended metaphor.

Clearly I have an excuse. I have become much busier of late. Sort of. I also have another website: the genesis secret (soon to be tomknoxbooks.com - but not yet - calm down!)

Moreover, I have started twitterin. You'll find me tweeting under the name "thomasknox", if you are interested.

All that exciting activity leaves the Toffeewomble looking a little forlorn and neglected. And I have decided to do something about it. I don't want the place to become one of those sad blogs that just STOPS.

So. From now on the Toffeewomble will be, in the main, a repository for my photos. In the last few years I've started taking lots of shots, and indeed sometimes I even get paid tiny amounts for them.

So the Womble will become a kind of personal photo album of almost no interest to anyone apart from me. Yes, it's going to be that good. It will chart my travels, and not much else. It will be an imagistic map of my life and thoughts, with maybe some cute girls to make it halfway interesting.

I fully expect my readership to decline from the dizzy heights of two a day to maybe half a visitor a month, but at least in fifty years I'll be able to look back and say ooh, that's what I did in August 2008.

And what was I doing in August 2008? I was wandering around the Mafia port of Trapani, in western Sicily, a very moody but also captivating place, where I took this shot of an old alley leading down to the sea, complete with poignantly 3 wheeled car.

Ciaociao.

Door 78

The doorway to the sala at Andrea Palladio's Villa Godi, a couple of days ago.


I am in Italy. I like Italy. I like the Italians. A lot. Right now, down in the evening street, outside my hotel room, the Italians are babbling way, with mellifluous unintelligibility. If there is Muzak in Heaven - it might be this: people chattering quietly and happily in a
poetic southern language you don't understand.

Ciaociao.

Happy Birthday Lucy Lamorna

My daughter Lucy, yesterday.

She had a picnic party in the park, and very nice it was too.

The Truth About Our Leaders

Cooperballs, yesterday.



Right now the whole of Britain and her attendant territories, is agog to hear the final revelation from the Daily Telegraph, as to the corruption of our politicians in the unfolding scandal known as ChocolateSantaClaimedOnExpensesGate.

The paper has promised that this last and latest revalation will be gobsmacking, and worse than all the others that have been revealed hitherto.

Frankly, the mind boggles. Given that in the last few days we have learned that our lovely MPs have stolen, swindled and cheated the taxpayer to the tune of several millions, while claiming for porn, a helipad, moat-cleaning, four houses, silk cushions, a chocolate santa, charity donations, £500 a night hotel rooms, £400 cab rides, wooden spoons, a bathplug, endless plasma screen TVs, and a private security force costing £25,000, one wonders just what revelation might be so bad it outdoes all this.

I mean, it has to be pretty bad. So here's my prediction for the Final Revelation.

A well-known Labour couple, both Cabinet Ministers, have claimed the cost of two pairs of £9000 ballet shoes woven by orphans in Vietnam, slippers so finely crafted the orphans have since gone blind from all the exquisite work in poor lighting conditions.

The gold trimmed shoes were for a special one-off £400,000-a-head Gold Shoes Fascist Sambo Ballet Weekend on a private island in the Turks and Caicos, also paid for by us, where billionaire bankers and well known Labour couples waltzed all night on an ivory dancefloor to popular Nazi songs played by native minstrels in comedy loincloths earning 3p a year.

I’m guessing it’s something like that, anyway

Gordon Brown's Manboob Moment

Our Dear Leader, Yesterday.



I’ve just realised what Gordo’s weird “shoulder swaying” movement, in the Notorious Expenses Video, now reminds me of.

See it here

(the eerie socialist shoulder-shuddering occurs about halfway through)

He looks like one of those burlesque dancers in a Wild West saloon, at the end of her strip, who bends forward to “twirl” the tassels on the ends of her nipples, by making her hooters go up and down, and maybe left to right.

This is the only explanation for this otherwise inexplicable movement. In the privacy of his own home, Gordon likes to relax by getting topless and attaching shiny tinsel to his nipples. Then he bounces around the kitchen shaking his shoulders, so his prime ministerial manboobs go up and down - and left to right - and the tinsel goes twirly.

No doubt this is the cause of much amused laughter from Sarah, and the Number 10 staff, and various aides and passing EU ambassadors.

So why repeat it? I reckon this “twirly time” must be a cherished moment of intimacy for the Browns, so the prime minister unconsciously reenacts the happy memory during times of stress, as a kind of Freudian defence.

It all - suddenly - makes sense

HOORAY!

Yowza.


As of this morning, my thriller, The Genesis Secret, is Number One on the UK Bookseller Heatseeker charts. For the third week running.

Number 1. You gotta love that. Not 2 - but... 1. ONE. Numbah Wun. In the premier spot. Top of the pile. King of the Mountain. The wearer of the laurels. The gold medallist. The silverback. The alpha, the first, the winner, the leader of the pack. Number 1. At the peak. Topping out. Making the summit. Standing above. Numere une. Uno. Eins. Numberrrrr.......... ONE!!!

Tomorrow I may be number 2. But today I am number 1*

*for the third week running

Most Ominous Roadsign in World, Maybe

Gridlock, Namibian style


So I was going through my photos of Namibia and I found this one. It was taken about sixty klicks south of Rosh Pinah, on the MAIN ROAD through the Fish River Canyon and the Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, into South Africa.

The Namibian Highway Department weren't kidding about the hazards of that drive. It took about three hours to do those eighty kilometres: I saw one other car the whole journey, and about a hundred baboons.

Namibia is the best.

It's here.

Massive phallus-like pillar in the lost Egyptian capital of Tel al-Amarna, city of the doomed monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten, yesterday.

OK, I know you've been waiting all-too-long for this, but here we go.

The website for my thriller... is ready at last

Da-da!! If you buy the book I promise to sign it personally next time I am in your neighbourhood, especially if that happens to be near soi 6, Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok.

Thankyou.

I *heart* Bangkok

The most romantic place in the world? Yesterday.

People say romance is dead, don't they? But two weeks ago, last St Valentine's Day, all the brothels in Bangkok's Nana Plaza DOUBLED THEIR PRICES FOR HOOKERS, especially. Just for that one day.

All together now: ahhhh.

I just thought I'd post that, cause it's easy to get cynical and sour about the world, especially in these days of economic hardship and struggle. But it seems some people out there still CARE - they still want to celebrate the good things, and go that extra mile, and cherish the rose of love.

I fly home tomorrow.

Window of Rock!

Astonishingly money-earning photograph of fat silly German standing in natural rock window overlooking Namibia's Fish River Canyon, yesterday.

Here's a thing. For a long time I've been taking my own photos as I trot about the world, doing my thang, as my regular reader will know.

But in the last couple of years people have actually started paying for them - my photos. I believe I have earned literally dozens of pounds in the last 18 months from my photos, and given that they are taken with a phone, that ain't so bad.

This photo will be published in the National newspaper of the United Arab Emirates, next week, to accompany a travel article, and it earned me the plutocratic sum of 50 bucks. Yes, fifty dollars. I hope the German doesn't sue.

Door with V Cool Name

OK, this door isn't very exciting to look at. But it's the door to the Sleeping Chamber in the Courtyard of the Black Eunuchs.

It's in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul.

The room itself is a bit poky even though several people used it. I don't think being a black eunuch in the Ottoman Court was a very good job, frankly. Not only did they chop off your penis and testicles and force you into a life of castrated slavery, but you had to share a room.

Back to Doors and Windows Hooray!!

Me, cameraphone, Namibian desert, car door, window, mirror, rush hour, yesterday, ish.


Hello everyone. I'm in Thailand where it's hot and sunny, having just come back from Namibia and South Africa where it's hot and sunny.


If you are reading this in freezing Britain or frigid America, I thought you might like to see a picture of me driving along in the sizzling Namib-Naukluft desert, just last week.

This exceptional picture also manages to combine several of my favourite themes in one: exotic travel, desert austerity, a door, a window, and me having a nice time in the sun when everyone is cold at home.

If it's any consolation, about a day after this photo was taken I nearly died of heatstroke. I may post about it later.

Kappunkap from Bangkok.

Things You See On A Walk In Namibia

So I was out having my regular afternoon stroll on the desolate diamond-rich coast of Namibia's "Forbidden Zone" (as you do), and I came across this:




It was SEVEN FEET LONG. Yes. More than TWO METRES. And there were dozens of them washed up on the beach:



What the F? Does anyone know what species these jellyfish might be? Or are they just dead aliens or something?

Crazy. And brilliant. Namibia is wild.

Nice View of Dachau

Sea looks nice though.




OK guys, I'm aware my blogging has been sparse to the point of inexistence of late; that's cause I'm working hard. Right now I'm in Namibia, researching the next Tom Knox thriller. Recently I arrived in Luderitz, a semi-derelict port surrounded by deserts, ghost towns and prowling hyenas - i.e. it's a bit like Britain in 2010, after two more years of Labour government.

But here's a thing. I’ve just realised my hotel room has a good view of the world’s first extermination camp: Shark Island, where the Germans killed the last of the rebellious Witbooi people, in the 1900s.


Read about it here.

That's quite something isn't it? The island is on the left of the pic.

Do you think this was a deliberate feature, incorporated by the architects? I’d like to have been at the design meeting when the hotel was being planned. “No, Tarquin, let’s put it nearer the ovens, and call it the Mass Grave Breakfast Bar. Then guests can gas their own muffins.”

Maybe they just didn’t realise.

Anyway, I’d like to know if anyone can beat that. Has a reader been to a more unfortunately situated tourist complex? Perhaps they’ve stayed in a Centerparc built on a plague pit. Or used the trouser press at the Hotel Rwanda. I’m prepared to be trumped by the amazing resources of the toffeewomble blogerati.

Dankie. More soon. Promise.