SPECIAL CANADIAN EDITION (3)
Not having a lot of luck in Whistler, at the foot of the Canadian Rockies. Our hotel suite seemed comfortable enough when we arrived, but then things started to go horribly wrong.

The first unpleasant surprise was the commanding view from the balcony of a large building site. The hotel next door is still being built.

It's also pissing down and foggy, so I've kind of given up on going on any pleasant mountain trails or mountain bike tours. I did try to use the hotel sauna but it seems to have blown a fuse and is stone cold. Looking further afield, I tried the local sports centre. Their fitness suite is closed for maintenance.

The crowning glory of our Whistle-stop tour in Whistler was the hotel suite toilet overflowing first thing this morning. My Mum woke me up at 7am in a panic, and water was cascading over the top of the toilet bowl all over the bathroom and out into the carpeted living room. Mum had piled towels all over the floor, Canute-like, in an attempt to stop the flood. I just paddled in and turned off the water (that was the rocket science bit).

I am beginning to have serious doubts about Canadian plumbing.

SPECIAL CANADIAN EDITION (2)
Stopover on our road trip in Victoria, Vancouver Island. In the night Mum got up to use the toilet and managed somehow to block it.

The plumber came very promptly in the morning, but the blockage (not our fault apparently) was so bad he said he would have to remove the entire toilet unit. The hotel staff were very helpful and gave us the key to the next room so we could use the bathroom. Meanwhile, burly men with unappealingly heavily soiled rubber gloves tramped in and out of our suite on their mission to restore sanitary order.

SPECIAL CANADIAN EDITION
Whilst in Vancouver, visiting my cousin Caitlin & family on Bowen island today. I rented a rather enormous Ford Explorer SUV to get to her place, which is in the depths of a Canadian pine forest. I parked a bit too close to a ditch at the entrance to her driveway. Mum was trying to open the car door on the driver's side, and suddenly vanished. She fell down into the ditch, and continued rolling deeper into it, before we had to haul her out.

Nothing damaged much more than her pride.

Congratulations to Fr Denis from St John the Divine, who is off on a well-earned holiday to Florida tomorrow which is currently being ripped apart by, er, Hurricane Frances.

Oh dear.

BBC News: Hurricane tears through Florida

The Disoriented Express
The ever-intrepid Janine has taken a trip to Gairloch in the highlands. She was meant to take a sleeper train to Inverness, changing at Edinburgh. Well, that was the plan, but then this is Janine.

The misadventure began when she turned up too late at King's Cross and missed the train. She then had to beg her way onto the next train. Once aboard she managed to get pissed and threw up in the basin in her sleeper cabin (I wonder if she was sharing).

She then forgot to get off at Edinburgh and was whisked off to Glasgow by mistake.

Could this be the next Judith Chalmers? (No).