Stuff has been happening, as is the way of things.

Firstly, I went to Bruges for a long weekend and it was restful and full of food. Photos will flood Flickr as soon as I get around to extracting them from the camera. Lots of cobbles and faux-artistically angled shots of buildings, of course. That, however, lead to my next piece of news which is the beginning of a travel column on BitchBuzz. The working title is Bitchin’ Travel – it might or might not stay that way. I’m starting with Bruges but planning to cover Rome and Athens next, then possibly Barcelona. After that, wherever I think of next that I have anything to say about. Although I’m starting the column, I’m hoping to get talented readers and other members of the widely-travelled BitchBuzz team in on it; obviously between us we have a lot more scope for covering good destinations than one of us alone. Being a transatlantic team doesn’t hurt either.

Links to the column will appear here when it’s up; I’m just tidying up my first post now. I’m trying to catch up on my general writing commitments and widen the net a bit, which is why I’ve also signed myself up as one of a pool of potential reviewers for The F Word, which is pretty exciting too. BitchBuzz, incidentally, has just seen its first anniversary go by. I’m very pleased for the founding editor, Cate Sevilla; her hard work knows no bounds when it comes to her baby and it’s really paid off.

Which leads me to my final bit of news. Which actually has nothing to do with the other two, but which I feel like writing about. I am likely to need my gallbladder removed. I’m seeing a specialist on Monday; the gallstones were actually discovered accidentally while I was being diagnosed with Epstein-Barr (call it glandular fever, or mono, if you prefer) but since then there have been symptoms, etc. Anyway, the point is there are great balls of bile and cholesterol blocking up my gallbladder, and the big medical guns need to decide whether to hack out the little bagful or not. Frankly, I’m all for it – don’t need it, don’t want the symptoms to degenerate into a full-scale attack (which they’re pretty likely to). We shall see.

And that’s pretty much it. But feel free to fill me in on what you’ve been up to.