We’ve just come back from a week break in the south of France, Le Grau du Roi to be exact. Great place, fantastic company – can’t complain, really. Weather was also hot and sunny with no rain. Now, it’s back home and that also means back to the daily realities we escaped from.

Apart from the holiday, we had another big expense – a new (well, second hand) car. It’s a van, really, and we needed it as having three children required a lot more space. Plus our old car was reaching the end of her life, and with the car test coming up soon, we decided to change.

 That means that we have to save every penny (or Rappen) we can. So all extras are being slashed. Now I know how the Greeks are feeling with their austerity measures  in place. Here are some things that are definitely out: 

1. A new bike
2. Travel to Malta
3. Celebrations and present for my 40^th birthday
4. Ski holiday (but the girls will go anyway)
5. New jacket
6. New watch (I revived my old Swatch Irony, so no problems here)

 I guess I can live without these things (especially Number 4 as I can’t ski to save my life). Any suggestions on innovative saving ideas are more than welcome. And I’ll also be reviving my teaching career (twice or three evenins a week) – now that should be fun!

A newspaper back home carried an article saying that the Virgin Mary has apparently appeared to a man in Gozo, Malta’s sister island, to tell him to urge people to “refuse” divorce. Am I missing something here? Do people actually believe all this rubbish?

Don’t get me wrong – I am a Roman Catholic, I believe in God and even in the Church (although I disagree with a lot of what they say and do). But when I read things like these, I begin to wonder. Now the Church, as far as I read, is “observing” what is happening. Hmm, what a convenient position to take.

I believe in choice. I believe in giving people whose marriage broke down  – for whatever reason – the chance to start over again. I don’t believe in a couple staying together “for the children”, living a miserable life with a partner they probably hate. Children are not dumb – they intelligent and perceptive, even though many adults are quick to shrug them off as immature or not old enough “to know”. Children realise things are wrong and end up suffering more. Oh, the joy of seeing one’s parents constantly quarrel…

I live in a country where divorce exists. You don’t see queues in front of the court house with people wanting to dump their partner. Sometimes it happens – because love wears out, or the relationship is violent, or the couple want to go their separate ways. As my learned cousin Malcolm said, voting against divorce is like voting against pizza – nobody is forcing you to eat a pizza! If you don’t want to divorce, don’t! But don’t deny this possibility to others. Anyone for pizza?

The daily drudgery of going to work, doing what one does, and returning home shows on the faces of commuters – nobody in Zürich smiles. Nobody! It wave after wave of dull, emotion-less faces, growling at you if you dare hold their gaze for too long. It’s road rage without cars. And when somebody does smile, people wonder what’s wrong with him. I stopped smiling a long time ago, blending in to the society I joined seven years ago. I became even more cynical than I was.

But then, on FB, I saw a video about a chap called Nik Vujicic . I don’t normally watch these videos, especially religious ones. I know what my faith is all about and don’t want anyone to ram religion down my throat. But I watched this one. Nik is happy, he says so himself, and I believe him. He is happy despite having no arms or legs. Can you imagine? I though my time acting like a grumpy old man would have to wait until, well, I was old. That time will come soon enough – in the meantime, I started smiling again. Strange though – since that day, I started seeing other people smile, too!

The train ground to a halt. Nowadays, that’s a bad omen with the SBB, the Swiss Railway Company. They have been blighted by delays despite their claims to the contrary. The conductor was soon on the crackling PA system, and with a metallic-sounding voice, courtesy of the ageing system, he announced a few minutes delay in getting past Dietikon, half way between Zürich and home. He was back some five minutes later, explaining that the reason why we were waiting was that train traffic through Dietikon was being staggered because of a “Personenunfall” – there had been an accident and somebody was hurt. Now, if there is a collision between a train and a person, generally the chances for the person aren’t good. Nonetheless, a woman sitting beside me huffed and puffed and looked at her watch impatiently. I don’t know what incredibly important business she had to attend to, but the insensitivity was amazing. Is the life of a person not worth a mere 15-minute wait (because that was the extent of the delay)?

 When we eventually passed through Dietikon, the ominous white police tent was enough evidence of who had lost the battle between man and train. The woman next to me didn’t seem to care. She looked out of the window with a smug face, as if mocking the dead body secluded under the tent. And that was that. A life lost was just an inconvenience. What a messed up society! Or hopoefully, just a messed up woman. I never found out if it was a man, woman, his or her age, if he or she had family. What I know is that the person under the tent now has a small place in my thoughts, for whatever that’s worth.

It as classic as a Charles Dickens novel, as predictable as the England football team. The minute you stop looking for something, that thing appears. Murphy’s Law (is it, really?), I hear you say. An incredible nuisance, you hear me reply. But this time I’m more happy than mad. Ziggy, one of our three missing tortoises, has been found after a three-week absence. So yes, that’s good. What’s not good if that barely hours earlier, I dismantled the complex enclosure from where the three boys so ably managed to escape . Which makes me think – maybe it was time for the enclosure to go, just like Alcatraz after Morris and the Anglins escaped in 1962.

August has been somewhat of a roller coaster month, despite being only a week old. I first got my university result, and yes, I did graduate. Now, I can, apparently, put ‘internat studs’ after my name. Makes me feel all macho and all… Next, we get three tortoises for our three daughters. So that’s two ups followed by a big down as low and behold, the tortoises escape – in two waves – between 3 and 6 August. How does that happen? It’s not like they make a dash for it. They are as fast as a government minister is to admit a mistake. And yet, they got away… And then Leicester City, my favourite football team, lost their opening game. Very disappointing indeed. We had prepared such a nice enclosure for them. Hope they’re OK. Now another up – our eldest starts official school (by official I mean post-Kindergarten). Our yongest, at the ripe age of 15 months, has taken her first steps. well, what’s the hurry, really? On the work front, there have been some ups and downs too, but that will be the subject of another post. Speaking of roller coasters, I really want to go to Europa Park again.