Sorry about the lack of photo thumbnails on the blog lately*. I've been on holiday for the last week, in Portugal. Very nice. But I've had almost no internet access: slow dial-up for five minutes every few days. It's completely amazing to me how many times I wanted to look something up and couldn't. Questions arose, intriguing possibilities were considered and no determination could be made. Likewise with news. We watched Al Jazeera English, because it covers stories in parts of the world that AP/Reuters hardly touches and tends not to suck up to the same people as News International and its cohorts, but I'd far prefer to fetch my news rather than have it served up to me. While relaxing on holiday I certainly wouldn't have spent a lot of time in front of an internet connection, even if it had been available, but it still would have come in mighty handy half a dozen times a day, in between walks along the beach. And while England is damp and uninspiring to return to, it's a small consolation being able to find out what my bloggy friends have been up to - and that coyote I like to keep an eye on, of course.

*As you may know, Em and Anna select and publish the books, Em plans for and manages the company and takes meetings, gives speeches, etc; I put the thumbnail photos on the blog.