The Horrors of PHRET
Last week I returned from a wonderful holiday in Switzerland and Italy, rested and rejuvenated, my batteries recharged, chock-full of unused clichés and ideas. In fact, I have so much to blog about, I’m not sure where to start.
Should I tell you about Switzerland, which I had previously only ever seen gift-wrapped in ice and snow: the incredible diversity of its fragile flora in summer; the Swiss families harvesting hay while the sun shone; the wonderful walks along Alpine ridges with glorious valleys dipping away on either side; the almost constant desire to loudly sing songs from The Sound of Music; the tiny lift that edged its way up to our sturdy chalet, Jägerheim; the brief glimpse of the ferry to Luzern, far below, setting off across the deep blue from Altdorf, where Wilhelm Tell was born?
Or should I tell you about the Italian province of Umbria, where I found an old friend living a new life in a glorious, thick-walled villa just under a hilltop overlooking Lake Trasimeno: the winding hairpin road leading through the spicy woodland to the ancient fishing village of Passignano; the ambling tours of the medieval cobbled streets of Gubbio and Cortona; the Eternal City of Rome, where the heat embraced us like an overbearing Italian mamma; where we stood on the sun-baked upper level of the Colosseum, babbling our awesomes with tourists from all corners of the globe; where we slowly ate our lunch in a pool of shade under four umbrella pines beside the basketball court in the orchard of the Villa Borghese; where we fled to a lake in an ancient volcano and watched fire-fighting planes dipping like swallows into the rippling waters?
Should I discuss with you the horrors of PHRET – Post-Holiday Re-Entry Trauma – or should I bloody well count my blessings and keep my promise to Jasper at KLM to deliver the next instalment of my alphabet blog about the origins of city names beginning with I and J? [Read the rest on KLM.com]
