We started the month (and the year) on the north coast of Sicily. From there we trundled round to the east coast (think Etna), popped over to Malta for a week, and then bumped back across that surprisingly choppy bit of sea to take in a bit more of Sicily's southeast coast. By the time we were climbing on the night train to head across the strait, and up the Italian peninsula, it was the end of our Four-Island Foray.





Still, this is a pretty nice coda. Bologna was a cool place to hang out for a few days, and yesterday we whizzed up over the Brenner Pass to arrive in Innsbruck, in Austria's Tyrol.

We've taken the most photos in a month ever...





Big tick for January, then. We saw so many beautiful and/or interesting things, and also managed to avoid being clobbered by any major adversities (toi toi toi). There were a few inconveniences on account of various storms, but nothing remotely catastrophic. Nigel's foot has been a nuisance, but it hasn't stopped him doing things. And we managed to NOT be travelling on any of the three days when Italian railworkers were on strike.

It has been the kind of month, in short, that makes you want to just carry on... A bit more slowly, probably, but just keep rolling...

While we can. Because you never know how long this window will stay open. Health issues loom large on our horizon these days. Geopolitical issues likewise. It's tempting just to keep on the move, then. While we can.



But we can't really do the keep-rolling thing, for various practical reasons.

And it's also true that you need to factor in blocks of time that offer less external stimulation and more routine. Times when you can just put your head down, and get on with things. I'm not thinking only of the tedious jobs that modern life seems to create more and more of, but also of all the other things you like doing, which tend to get shorter shrift when you're travelling.

Not that we do nothing but "travel" when we travel. We like the kind of travel pace that allows you to do lots of ordinary things -- the things we like doing anywhere -- but just enables you to do them somewhere different.

Perhaps my ideal would be a rolling three-monthly cycle. Three months' travelling, followed by three months of being settled. One settled month to do all the tedious stuff that builds up, and two additional settled months to just blob (and, let's be honest, to do some environmental payback, because -- even though we try to travel responsibly -- really the best thing people can do for the environment is stay within walking distance of home, and for those of us who do travel further afield, there has to be some balancing out somewhere along the line...)

OK, so now I just need someone to rent me a place for three months at a time. Oh, and let me leave my stuff there when I'm away...

I'm rambling, I know. Partly because at the moment we're trying to figure out what shape we'd like our future to take going forward. Assuming we get any choice in the matter, that is...



Turning to other issues, The Velvet Cushion is a little in arrears (ie, I've read good things that haven't yet made their way into posts). Plus, I'm now doing three slow group-reads, so thoughts on those won't emerge for quite a while. In the case of Henry Eliot's read-along of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, we're following the schedule of the original instalments in The Russian Messenger (the monthly periodical where they were first published), so that one won't be finished until next year!

But there has been a bit of seasonal stuff: Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon (another vintage crime story, but with a Christmas flavour); and Winter, by the always thought-provoking Ali Smith.

Plus a fair few Italy-related books: Mystery on the Coral Coast by Gavino Zucca (really fun to read because the author was born in Sassari, where we stayed for a while, and the action was set in many of the places in Sardinia that we'd visited); A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe (a zany bit of Gothic melodrama); My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor (a nail-biting account, based on a true story, of the escape line that enabled thousands of Jews and prisoners of war to survive Nazi-dominated Rome during WWII); and In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (the curious story of how and why a prize-winning author in English might want to start writing in a foreign language, namely Italian...)

Then there were a handful that don't fall into either category: Audible's excellent audio adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 (and there has never been a better time to revisit that story); James Baldwin's incredibly moving Giovanni's Room; and -- at completely the other end of the spectrum -- Margery Allingham's rip-roaring Police at the Funeral.



By the end of February (I have Dad in my ear again: "If we're spared..."), we should be back in Kuching. After we set off in September, an alternative plan, which would have taken us back to the Isle of Man for a while, looked like it might be taking shape, but my annoying requirement for medical checkups, and my failure to secure appointments in Malta, mean that we need to head back to familiarity fairly soon. Plan A, then, is reinstated. I'm very much looking forward to reconnecting with friends (and with noodles). In the meantime, of course, we've missed Lunar New Year (although we did raise a glass to the Snake while we were in Bologna).

Onwards and upwards... Tomorrow is the first day of the Celtic spring!