Drachenfutter. You know how the Germans have 'got a word for it'? Well Drachenfutter is that bunch of flowers you buy from the petrol station when you've forgotten the wife's birthday. It literally means dragon fodder, as in a guilty present to keep her happy.
For more of these get hold of a book called The Meaning of Tingo by the extravagantly named Adam Jacot de Boinod who is a jolly nice chap who I once interviewed even though he has what sounds like a made up name.
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The words Roman Holiday (or Holliday) conjures up, for me, the name of a great film with Audrey Hepburn or a crap 1980s band that I once went to see but never got in to the audience. That's because I turned up with two male mates and they wanted more women in the audience so wouldn't let us in. I had a lucky escape. Another mate turned up later to meet us and got in - thinking we were already inside - so watched the whole gig by himself while the rest of us went to the pictures to see a double bill of Taxi Driver and Midnight Express for the fourth time.
But now I have had my own Roman Holiday, a four day trip to the Eternal City and while I am not a travel writer (I do not wear mismatched clothing or talk in a voice designed to make everyone listen to what I'm saying in a crowded pub) I must say it's a grand place to visit.
Well, you need at least a grand to afford to eat, drink, stay and travel there for four days when travelling with a wife and two children.
I loved it all. My immediate reaction afterwards was: 1. It's bloody expensive but 2. Why the hell haven't I been here before?
Did you know the mostly densely populated country on the planet also has the lowest birth rate?
The Vatican was an eye opener. It shapes the whole of Rome both spiritually and physically. No building in Rome can be built to be higher than St Peter's and that means it has few modern skyscrapers and office blocks.
We think we do history in London but most of the best buildings in Rome were already falling down before The Tower of London was being put up.
The Colisseum, The Forum, Capitoline and, my favourite, The Pantheon are worth a day trip each. The Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain - and dozens of other spectacular fountains - are truly beautiful.
The Sistine Chapel is marvellous but spoilt by being way too crowded and lacking all spirituality as a result. But a statue of Jesus and Mary by the 18-year-old Michaelangelo is enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of this atheist's neck. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
In fact the whole of The Vatican is a mass (pun intended) of people. Keep the kids close, and not just because it is a city populated by Catholic priests. You move in crowds. It spoils the place a bit but only a bit. The whole place is dripping in splendour. The number of visitors shows how the church has made so much money. The decor shows how it has spent a lot of it.
There are parties of 40 or 50 from places like The Phillipines or Brazil on £50-a-head guided tours who then spend as much again on Pope John Paul fridge magnets or wobbly headed nuns for the back of the car.
There are the strange sights that you probably don't find anywhere else in the world, not even in Father Ted, of gangs of young priests roaming the streets taking photos of each other outside the monuments, smoking cigarettes and riding scooters or filling up their basket with Papal souvenirs from the shops around the Vatican.
Rome is truly one of the great cities of the world. It's an expensive place once you get there, even though it's the capital of a country slowly going bust. But like New York, Paris, Berlin and, for me, Tokyo, it's one of those places you'll never regret going to.
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Not even flying Ryanair will spoil it. I reckon two thirds of the people I meet on Ryanair flights say the same thing. "I keep saying 'never again' but they are so cheap'. I'm not one of those. You put up and you shut up. What people resent, I guess, is the indignity of the Ryanair style.
I was more cheesed off by the lack of logic. They make you queue to get the best seat on the plane then you go through the gate and get on a bus to go to the aircraft. So if you're ahead in the queue you're first on the bus and are furthest from the door. Someone 50 places behind you (ignoring the East Europeans who push in) gets on the same bus but ends up by the doors so when they open they get on the place first. What's the point?
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The funniest show on TV at the moment is probably The Big Bang Theory as I may have mentioned before. But did you know that great scientists are getting older? The nerds on TBBT are out of synch.
In the 1920s all the great scientific breakthroughs were made by, mainly, men in their 20s. Many of them weren't even working as scientists at the time they had their lightbulb moment. Einstein was a 26-year-old clerk in a patents office when he came up with the theory of relativity. There are others. Paul Dirac who came up with something I don't understand and loads involved in quantum mechanics, whatever that is, during the prewar years.
But now the average Nobel prize winner is aged 50.
The trouble is they no longer have their Eureka moment to make a breakthrough. Instead they build up a body of work over two decades to come up with something substantial.
Oh, and baby faced boffin Brian Cox is 43.
Arrivederci...Solly
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