MAY 22

IT'S been almost a week since we got back and I'm still nowhere near getting the bloody pictures sorted out. I'm debating whacking the lot up, but the thought of cropping 820 jpegs is a tad off-putting. Once I've got my act together I'll do it, so expect 'em on the site sometime in 2012.

And in keeping with this month's theme of putting pics up for the sake of it, here's a photo of my sister's KFC in Hereford.

MAY 18

WE'RE back in California but I'm afraid I have some sad news to report. We came home only to discover that our cute kitten Madoc is still alive. Frankly I don't know what Mike thought he was doing, but obviously my instructions to shave the cat and burn it were not followed in quite the way I'd hoped. Oh well.

I still have about 820 pictures to sort out, but rest assured that I'll be boring the tits off you with them in the near future. But there are two new columns up, if you've got nothing else to do.

MAY 12

WELL, I'm back home but I'm buggered if I know what to say. So here's some pictures, starting off with my first view of Wales - taken out the window of a Boeing 777 at 29,000 feet up:

Going up the escalator at King's Cross tube station:

It's amazing the things you see on the streets of London:

Never, ever chain your bike to railings near Green Park Underground station:

The view out the window of the 12:36 from Paddington to Gloucester:

That's it for now. We're off to see "Dr" J Flynn tonight, but rest assured - I've got about 560 more pictures to bore your tits off with, and they'll be on the site soon(ish).

MAY 5

IT'S the day of our flight to the UK so I've been doing some last-minute packing of the carry-on stuff. So far in my list I've got books, Zen MP3 player, camera, headphones, nicotine patches (so I don't go nuts) and muscle relaxant tablets (so I'll sleep), media cards, credit/ATM cards, passport, tickets, green card (so I can get back into the US... if I come back), jacket, notebooks, a pencil and pen and last - but definitely not least - a copy each of the Glendale News-Press and the Burbank Leader.

I'm taking the papers 'cos we print pics of people on vacation holding a copy up in front of a well-known landmark. So I thought I'd do my best to get in a paper I work for by taking loads of shots of me with a copy.

Thanks to the useless security at airports, it's no longer allowed to carry a cigarette lighter. So my sister is under strict orders to have one with her when she meets us in Heathrow. I just hope the baggage handlers aren't as spectacularly bloody useless as they were in 2003, when it took 45 minutes just for the luggage to appear, let alone my luggage.

And as I've started putting pics on the front page again (which, judging by the emails I get, seems to be most people's complaint about the scruffy-notebook look), I'm going to abuse it to stupid levels. Here's a pic I took of the truck in front of me on the way back from Ralph's last month:

MAY 4

YOU can always tell how classy your apartment block is by the number of supermarket trolleys littering the place:

MAY 1

IN RESPONSE to literally thousands of emails (well, maybe two) I've wasted some space by putting a page of Madoc pictures up. If you want to see the world's stupidest cat, go here.