My mate Doug runs a web site called Signspotting. It’s a repository for all those weird signs you see when you’re travelling the world. The unintentionally funny, even obscene, warnings and instructions that come about when you attempt to use a language that is not your own.

Being an enterprising American, Doug has spun the Signspotting concept into a number of successful incarnations. There are the wildly popular books – Signspotting 1,2 and 3 (Number 4 is on the way). The hugely well-attended Signspotting exhibitions – Stockholm, Copenhagen, Dubai, Edinburgh and soon Covent Garden in London. And let’s not forget the merchandising – greeting cards, fridge magnets and posters.

Now, at last, there’s the Signspotting iPhone App.

It’s called Sign Shaker, and it works like those Magic 8 Balls that were popular a few years back. You ask a question, shake your phone, and Sign Shaker gives you a randomly selected sign as an answer. Doug sent me a prototype a few weeks ago and I’ve got to say it’s a lot of fun.

First up, if you’ve got an iPhone, do yourself a favour and download a copy. I guarantee it’ll stay on your phone longer than that fart application you downloaded.

Secondly, I’m interested to hear any ideas you guys might have about how I could do something similar with my books.

Can’t guarantee a commission, of course, but you will be duly credited!

One of the things I loved about both of my Vespas was the little hook under the seat. It was perfect for hanging things off – usually plastic bags full of Parma ham, tomatoes and fresh crusty rolls for the impromptu picnics I’d have beside some picturesque field in Tuscany.

The hooks can still be found on Vespas today. I’d use the one on my PX in Sydney to carry home takeaway Thai for example.

The other day I got an email from Steve Wadman telling me about an unusual use he found for the hook on his Vespa. I let him tell you about it in his own words:

“Last year my uncle died and I took a major part in helping my Mum with all of the arrangements. He had been cremated and my Mum kept putting off making a decision about disposing of the ashes. It was the anniversary of his death a couple of weeks ago and I suggested that it would be good to do something with them on this day. She agreed and I arranged with my brother and sister to all meet up at my mother’s house in Rottingdean.

It was a really hot day and I decided to ride the Vespa down to Brighton to collect the ashes form the Funeral Director who had been keeping them for us. I rode down in my shorts and T shirt and felt really positive as we could put some closure behind us after my uncle’s death.

I arrived at the Funeral Directors and went inside. I don’t know if you have ever seen the container for someone’s remains, but I was expecting a small container. I had given no thought to this matter and when I was presented with a box the size of a shoe box with my Uncle’s remains inside and it was quite heavy – I was somewhat taken aback. They had thoughtfully given me a carrier bag. When you do think about it there is the coffin and the body so there is naturally quite a lot of ashes at the end of the day.

I went outside to the scooter and I already had a change of clothes in the top box and some other odds and ends under the seat so you know what’s coming!!!!

That little hook under the seat came out and the carrier bag with the ashes fitted perfectly between my legs.

I set off to Rottingdean to my mother’s house and rode along the seafront about 6 miles with the ashes snuggly tucked in and hanging on that hook!!

So my uncle made his final journey on a Vespa and we then spread his ashes in the sea as he loved swimming at Rottingdean.

I am sure you will appreciate this tale as it brought a lovely smile to all my family when I turned up on the scooter with the ashes in this fashion.”

I wonder if that’s what Enrico Piaggio had in mind when he first suggested the hook to his designers back in the early fifties?

As far as jobs I go, I think I’ve got a pretty cool one. I get to travel for months on end, write about my experiences and then gad about the place telling people stories about my adventures.

But this morning I got a bit of a wake up call. There are a lot of jobs that are much, much cooler. Especially if you are five years old.

You see, Daisy’s school has been inviting dads along to class as part of their celebration of Father’s Day. (It’s in June here, not September like back in Oz.) And today me and four other dads got to sit in for an hour in the morning, see what our children get up to and ‘help out’ with the lessons. Then we were ushered out just as the day’s special guest arrived.

Today’s special guest was Amelie’s dad. He is a pilot and arrived dressed in his pilots uniform. Me and all the other dads looked at each other with alarm.

We knew. Each and every one of us.

You can’t compete with a man in a uniform.

Each month I get a handful of emails from people asking for help with a charitable endeavour they’re undertaking.

You know the drill – the said person is about to set off on some crazy wild-eyed adventure to raise money for a worthy cause. No consideration is shown for for my emotional well-being, of course. Every time I read one I wish I was heading off on that wild-eyed adventure too!

Sadly, until I start introducing vampires or boy wizards into my travelogues, there’s not much I can do to help out. I can offer sincere best wishes and the odd signed book. But that’s about it.

In an attempt to do a little bit more I’ve decided to post a blog, once a month, to highlight the crazy adventures my more charitable readers are setting off one.

If you want to help them out – great. If it inspires you to go off one of your own – even better. I’d rather help you guys than the charity muggers who have made Covent Garden one big collection bucket.

So without further ado, here’s this month’s selection of adventure ‘chuggers’:

Welsh 3000′s
Charity: Madam Curie Cancer Care
A group of teachers from the John Bentley and Springfield schools determined to climb all 14 peaks above 3,000ft in North Wales. Their students are hoping they get lost and they get a couple of days off school.

Scilly Mission
Charity: Cystic Fibrosis Trust (UK)
A group of lads from the Scilly Isles attempt to drive to Ulan Bator in a Citroen Saxa, currently the only car on Tresco.

The Odyssey
Charity: WaterAid
Graham Hughes is attempting to become the first person to visit all 195 members states of the UN in one continuous land journey. He’s only got 40 countries to go – bastard! – and is running low on funds.

Euromums
Charity: Cystic Fibrosis (AU)
Disclaimer notice time. One of the said ‘Euromums’ is my sister Vanessa. She is taking part in The Great Escape this year to raise funds for Cystic Fibrosis. Any Eurosceptics should note they’re out of Eurobodalla in NSW, not Brussels.

A couple of weeks ago Nokia sent one of their 3G Booklets to try out. The Booklet is Nokia’s first foray into personal computing – a netbook with a 3G sim card slot.

I was a little surprised when they contacted me. But they said they came across my website and wanted me to put one through it’s paces. And maybe blog about my experiences.

Now, I love my gadgets. But I’m no tech guru. So rather than go on about the awesomeness (or otherwise) of the Atom processor I thought I’d just talk about how the Booklet performed in real life. Or at least my approximation of it.

First Impressions
The build quality is amazing. It’s made from a single piece of aluminium, just like the new MacBook Pros. Indeed it looks like the netbook Apple would’ve built if they hadn’t decided make the iPad instead.

Everything feels solid and beautifully crafted. It makes the Dell Mini 10v I hackintoshed feel like a piece of plasticy rubbish. You could demolish buildings with this thing.

On the road
The trial coincided with a six-day trip to Italy, a perfect opportunity to use the Booklet how I would if I was off ‘researching’ one of my books. I loaded it up with trial versions of Microsoft Office, Photoshop, InDesign and Lightroom. And popped in a CF card reader (the Booklet already comes with the more popular SD slot) and an external portable hard drive to store my photos.

It soon became apparent that the Booklet was a head-turner. While a multitude of MacBooks passed through the security checkpoint at Stansted without comment, the Booklet was singled out for special attention. When the guard on duty saw it was a Nokia he took it away to be ‘swabbed,’ primarily so he could show it to the other guys on duty. They nodded their heads, seemingly impressed.

It wasn’t the last time someone wanted to take a closer look at the Booklet. Every time I pulled it out in Italy someone noticed the Nokia badge and came over to have a closer look. Nokia obviously have a strong and respected brand image so their move into netbooks is not as crazy as it first seems.

Performance was pretty standard for a netbook. I could keep two or three programs open without any noticeable effect on performance. Editing 20mb photos in Photoshop took longer than on my desktop but not annoyingly so. The 3G sim card picked up the local network without any probs in Italy. And the Nokia social media application looked like it would work seamlessly with all the appropriate social media websites. I just baulked at paying £4 a megabyte to update my Facebook account!

Positives
Battery life. Nokia are claiming 12 hours between charges. I never found out. Like I said, I took the thing to Italy for six days and didn’t have to charge it once.

Sure I wasn’t using it heavily. Transferring photos and editing them, writing the odd article, doing a bit of (wifi) web surfing. But that’s how I would use it if I was on the road. Just the odd hour here and there.

Now I know all netbooks boast long battery life. But in real life I’m lucky to get two or three hours out of my Dell Mini. To be fair to Dell, I hackintoshed it so I could run Snow Leopard on it, probably screwing up its power management settings in the process. But the Booklet just didn’t die.

Mac-like design. Stylish and and extremely well made. Like I said before, the Booklet was an attention magnet. Anyone who saw it felt compelled to comment. But more than that, I had no doubts it would handle six months or more at the bottom of my backpack.

Negatives
The price is a major hurdle. At £695 rrp that’s £500 more than my Dell Mini 10v set me back. It’s definitely worth the extra £500 – you can see where the money has been spent. The problem, for me at least, is justifying that extra expense for a ‘spare’ laptop to lug on the road.

The second is the 3G capability. In theory, being able to browse the web, update blogs and social media sites, email etc over the local telephone network anywhere in the world is a huge, huge bonus. Unfortunately, as it stands now, it also results in an equally huge phone bill. That’s not Nokia’s fault, but until the likes of Vodafone start charging reasonable fees for data roaming the sim card slot is a money pit not a feature.

Conclusion
I want one. If I didn’t already have my Dell and an unexpected royalty cheque came in I’d be tempted to shell out the extra cash. The build quality and design is just that much better. And I’ll be honest, the attention it garnered was kind of nice. I wasn’t just another wanker with a MacBook. (And I say that as a wanker with an iMac)

On a practical level, it did everything I needed it to do. And gave the impression it would handle a six-month jaunt through the former Soviet Union or a trip down the west coast of Africa.

I just wish the phone companies would come up with some kind of reasonable international roaming plan so I could make the most of the 3G slot.

Disclaimer
Nokia sent me the Booklet to trial for two weeks. (The man from DHL just took it back off me.) There was no obligation for me to blog or tweet or Facebook about it. But I figured a lot of you maybe looking for some kind of laptop to drag on your next adventure.

I went to the Teenage Fanclub gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire last night. If you drove past the the square last night you wouldn’t have spotted me. I was just one of a couple of hundred guys there with a receding hairline wearing a checked shirt, jeans and converse trainers.

I very nearly didn’t go. I saw them at Koko back in 2008 and left the show depressed. I got the feeling that they were struggling with getting older, questioning what they were doing and wondering where they fitted in now. Looking back at YouTube videos posted from the gig I realise I may have been a bit harsh.

I suspect I might have even been projecting. When you’ve been doing something ‘creative’ for a while you begin to worry that your best days are behind you. You wonder if your latest work is just a derivation of a past glory. If it has that spark and energy that your earlier stuff had.

Well, I do anyway.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I lifted it from a t-shirt a guy was wearing at the gig last night. I don’t know if it was ironic or a bold statement of fact. But I found myself nodding in agreement. When it comes to Teenage Fanclub I DO like their old stuff better.

It pains me to say it, but since Songs From Northern Britain in 1997 each album has been following the law of diminishing returns. Each has one or two good songs, but the rest seem like filler. The new album, Shadows, is the same.

But I keep going to their gigs. One, because they’re great live. And two, when they play one of their classics, like Sparky’s Dream or Radio or Ain’t That Enough, it really is one of life’s transcending moments.

And thankfully for TFC, their are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of blokes in checked shirts with less hair than they used to have, willing to shell out good money to do the same.

It’s funny where a Google search will take you. Almost eight years ago to the day I typed in ‘Buying a Vespa in Italy’ and came across a guy who called himself ‘The Waspmaster.’

His real name was Filippo. He bought and sold Vespas. And his friend Marco restored them. Although they didn’t have a Vespa that matched my needs – as old as me and in roughly the same condition – they pointed me towards one on eBay Italy that did.

It was Sophia, the Vespa that took me from Milan to Rome in Vroom with a View.

I caught up with Filippo and Marco when I finally got to Livorno. We hit it off immediately and spent close to a week visiting festivals, drinking coffee, tearing around the ancient canals at midnight in Filippo’s boat, drinking ponce and basically living La Dolce Vita. More often than not I’d end up crashing on the sofa in Marco’s workshop, waking up the next morning not quite sure how I got there.

After the trip we all stayed friends. Marco took my Vespas under his wing and I came over periodically to visit them. When Filippo got married to the lovely Valeryia, I was there. And when Marco married the equally lovely Lucilla, my daughter Daisy was the flower girl.

Last Saturday it was Marco’s 50th birthday. And, naturally, me, Sally and Daisy were there.

Those of you who have read Vroom with a View and Vroom by the Sea know that Marco is a man of style and taste and likes to do things with a certain elan. His birthday party was no different.

It was held in a ramshackle fisherman’s shack hanging precariously over the lake where Puccini wrote most of his operas. It was reached by following a narrow path through a thick wood to the edge of the lake. Then we had to beckon a boatman to take us across the water. Sally commented that it didn’t feel like Italy. It was more like the bayous of Louisiana.

Dinner was prepared by the guy who owned the shack using ingredients he had hunted and caught that day. And as he cooked various pasta dishes with duck, crawfish and wild boar a small band played swampy blues from the Deep South. The sun set, candles were lit and bottles of wine from Simone’s vineyard in Bolgheri were cracked open. People danced in the shack and on the boat.

It was at once raucous and intimate, like we were all part of a big Italian family. At one point, around midnight, Daisy fell into the lake, but that is another story for another time.

It made me realise that one of the real joys of travel isn’t necessarily the temples or cathedrals or the market stalls or the sugar white beaches. It’s moments like these, where you connect with people and with their culture and become friends.

And then, of course, the crazy, funny times that flow naturally from that connection.

Just added: A video made by Francesco, an artist friend of Marco’s.

Just got back from Stockholm and I’ve got to say that Arlanda airport was a real eye-opener for me. Not only has it been declared an official ‘Love Airport’, it is a home to a selection of very weird products.

There are the ‘Plopp‘ and ‘Japp‘ chocolate bars – one sounding unappetising, the other a little racist.

Moose salami with the testes of O.P.Anderson.

And then these tea bag holders featuring various world leaders, called DemocraTEA.

The set includes Obama, of course, as well as European leaders Berlusconi, Merkel, Sarkozy and Putin. How ‘democratic’ Berlusconi and Putin are is a matter of debate. And why there isn’t one of K Rudd, one of the few world leaders to avoid a recession, I’ll never know.

Even more bizarre, there isn’t a British leader. Birthplace of parliamentary democracy and they don’t even get a tea bag holder!

My theory is the Swedish manufacturers found themselves in a bit of a quandary. A Gordon Brown tea bag holder would put people off drinking their tea. And with the polls ahead of the recent election pointing towards a hung parliament they didn’t want to risk making a David Cameron one.

Now there’s a Lib/Con coalition they probably don’t know whether to go with Nick Clegg or David Cameron.

They could put each one on a different side.

Trouble is, no one would be able to tell them apart.

I’ve already had one trip canned this year thanks to Eyjafjallajokull, a.k.a. that volcano in Iceland. A little two-week jaunt through Iraqi Kurdistan that didn’t get off the ground because I couldn’t get off the ground either.

Easyjet refunded the cost of my flight to Istanbul. But I had to wear the cost of the internal flights in Turkey that were going to get me out to the border and back. And the B.A. flight back home to London.

This weekend I’m meant to be going to Stockholm for my mate Doug’s 40th birthday. According to the maps put out by the MET office I shouldn’t have any problems with the ash. (Not that the MET office every get it right.) But if the ash cloud omens look good, the dispute between BA and it’s cabin crew don’t. If the court ruling last night banning the strike gets overturned only 50% of BA short-haul flights will run.

With my luck of late I’d put money on both of my flights being affected. (Having said that, I wouldn’t complain too loud if my flight back got cancelled. I fancy an extra couple of days in Stockholm.)

The fun and games continues though. On June 1 I’m supposed to be heading off to Italy with Sally and Daisy to celebrate Marco’s 50th birthday. We’ve booked a villa, hired a car and lined up a room in a Nunnery for our last night in Pisa.

Trouble is, our travel insurance expired last month. And our new policy won’t cover any disruptions caused the Icelandic volcanic ash. It’s a known problem now, you see. And as far as travel insurance companies are concerned, an integral consideration in your planning process. So if the wind blows the wrong way up there in the North Sea we could be severely out of pocket.

But what can you do? That’s the new reality when travelling in 2010.

It certainly makes realise how relatively stress-free the great overland journeys that form the basis of my books were. And the benefits of travelling without a timetable.

Ideally I’d like to start living my life like that again. But I’m not sure what the headmistress at Daisy’s school would make of that.

How about this volcano in Iceland, eh? It has a bit of a hissy fit and the world’s aviation industry goes into a tailspin.

I’m meant to be going to Istanbul on Monday. The plan was to start there and then head into Iraqi Kurdistan. From the look of things that trip is dead in the water and country number 100 remains as elusive as ever.

There is a (slight) upside though. Nick Danziger is stuck in Jerusalem. He’s meant to be giving a talk tomorrow at The Adventurists Tea Party in Notting Hill. If he can’t make it to London I’ve been asked to step into the breach and give a talk about travelling from London to Sydney without flying. Which is kind of appropriate.

I won’t know for sure until about 10 am tomorrow. But if you’ve got nothing to do and you find yourself in London you should pop along. Regardless of whether it’s me or Nick giving the talk, there’s free Windhoek Lager on offer. (After you’ve paid the admission, of course!)

You’ll find more details here >>