Long long ago* Dr G had to go to California for his work and I tagged along. While he was in a very dull meeting in a very dull town I nicked off to Los Angeles for a day. My colleagues were spewing when I told them my plans – we were deep in the miserable bowels of winter at the time and it was just nasty to be escaping to gleaming blue skies, beaches and beautiful people.

But they felt much better after they saw my photos. Now if you're a tourist and you have just one day in a city, sometimes you just have to surrender to the whistlestop guided Bus Tour. This strategy, while making you feel like an unimaginative old codger, usually gives you a nice overview of a place. Except if you happen to arrive in the midst of some kind of rare, freakish monsoon and you cannae see a bloody thing.

At least there was no chance of homesickness

That blob in the fog is a bust of James Dean!

* yep, again with the untimely blogging.

The Pope was in Edinburgh today, just a week after I was skulking around his neck of the woods.

Here's Dr G looking holy.

He was totally out-posed by this lassie.

How must it feel to have been in the job for five years but you STILL have to compete for calendar sales with your cuddly predecessor?

Afterwards we wandered through the Rodeo Drive of religious fashion.

DiscoPriestwear.

But none of that sparkly stuff for the nuns.

Sigh.

I have friends that travel a lot for their work. Some are very bored and breezy about it – "another day, another airport". Then there are others who never lose their sense of wonder. They drink up new cities, even if it's just a glimpse from a grotty taxi en route to a boring meeting.

I want to look at the world like that again. I've been in the UK for 7.5 years now and at some point it started to feel like home, in good and bad ways. It's easy to slip into routines and ruts and stop exploring. You stop seeing things with an outsider's eye. I saw a sign on the motorway, Edinburgh 10 miles and was almost surprised… Edinburgh? That ye olde place with the big castle? I live near there?

And London had become That Place Where My Sister Lives. Somewhere you pop down to for a quick visit, like a childhood trip to Orange with The Mothership to buy some jelly fruit. But dude… it's LONDON! When I was a teenager on a farm reading 6-month old imported copies of Q magazine, the other side of the world seemed impossibly far away. So when we were there recently for Dr G's birthday, I made sure not to let my eyes glaze over famous sights.

I don't have any witty insights here… it just feels good to be awake again; to re-fall in love with it all.

The Boris Bikes await you.

Lookit that dead grass! Makes one pine for the land Down Under.

An outstanding beer themed birthday cake for Dr G.

A real beer for Dr G.

A new hat for Dr G.

Dr G and I are off to Rome for a week in September! Well not precisely to Rome. More like a crappy campsite in commutable distance to Rome. But it's free accommodation (long story) and I've never been to Italy before so I am the late Big Kev excited!

I'm drowning in guidebooks and travel websites at the moment so was wondering if anyone out there has been to Rome? What did you see? What did you do? What did you imbibe?

You were previously goldmines of good ideas for New York and Australia so I couldn't resist asking again! I will totally reciprocate whenever you ever need to know the best place to spew up your kebab in the Ancient Scottish Capital of Dunfermline.

Things I am interested in so far:

• tasty food
• visiting the Pantheon
• finding places from Roman Holiday
• tasty food

Things I am not interested in:

• visiting the Evil Pope.

I was moseying around Picardy, France earlier this week for a work trip. This warning sign in front of a bouncy castle was my personal highlight.

England! Land of red telephone booths…

Banburgh

Fine fayre…

And fierce creatures.

Anguished of Alnwick Castle

We had a great day pootling down the Northumberland Coast with the in-laws yesterday, one of those times when you remember OH YEAH I'm living in a foreign land and there is still so much to see. I always forget that the border is just over an hour away. I've been to London a dozen times and once got stranded at Bristol airport but apart that I've not really seen anything of merry old England after six years. FOR SHAME!

The main project of the day was to catch a boat to the Farne Islands to see the kazillion nesting seabirds. The boat was packed with bird nerds in woolly jumpers. Look! Guillemot! Shag! Cormorant! they crowed from behind their binoculars and long lenses. The commentary was handy as I'm only good at spotting kookaburras and galahs.

Although I know a puffin when I see one, and we saw hundreds. And many angry terns, who were staunchly defending their nests. I grew up on a farm with swooping magpies but they are totally softcock compared to the Arctic tern. These guys are not afraid to peck you on the head then come back for more. It was pure Hitchcock. Check out the feathered action on Flickr!

One of my favourite Scottish phrases is "jammy bastard" which means "a very lucky person". After drowning the phone and losing my wedding ring last week, this one has been indeed smeared in jammy goodness. I'm in New York! I came over last Thursday to go on The Early Show on Friday. But then my segment got bumped to Wednesday and now it's been bumped to Thursday so I've been forced to extend my stay. Such hardship! Who knows if I'll ever get on the bloody telly, but comrades… unexpected New York holiday. You cannae beat that!

Today I moseyed down to Times Square to soak up the inauguration atmosphere on the big screens. I've never heard so many woohoos and allllllrights and dang I been waitin' for this day all my lifes. The massive cheer when Obama got sworn in, oooh it gave me shivers. Must admit I was a little teary.

Then Obama did his bigass speech. His voice, the closed captions and the video were all out of sync so it was very confusing and people's attention started to wander and there were as many people saying let's get a coffee as YOU DA MAN NOW!

On a recent jaunt to London, Rhiannon, Dr G and I went to Highgate Cemetary.

 Specifically, we went to Highgate Cemetary East. Admission was £3. I don’t know if you have to pay to get into Highgate Cemetery West. Maybe it’s free there because the residents aren’t as accomplished. Honestly, I’d never got an inferiority complex from a headstone before, but this place was chockers with overachievers – poets, artists, philanthropists, medical pioneers, Iraqi communists. Sometimes all of the above the same time.

 But the crowdpleaser at Highgate is the one and only Karl Marx. He gets his own sign at the gate, so if you’re a tightarse Scotsman and start spluttering about the fee, your companions can point to it and say, “But they’ve got Karl in there!”

 It’s a big whopper of a grave. Karl looks like a jack-in-a-box, stuck and helpless. Sorry world, about Lenin and Stalin et al. As you can see I have no body. I just came up with the ideas, and those dipshits went totally mental with them.

 Amongst all the flowers someone had left Karl Marx two oranges. Anyone got a theory about that one?