Blog 1st anniversary: swans fall from sky and other oddities

I just wrote a blog on the Tribune de Geneve saying that it is the first anniversary of my first blog, which was right here ("What's it all about, Alfie"). I had planned to write a series of posts this week about the blogging business, the do's and don'ts, the fun and less fun sides of it and so on. However, I had such a strange, strange day yesterday that I wrote about some of it there. I wrote about a swan falling out of the sky next to me and the ambulance driver saving it and the fire department rescuing it.

And on my blog for GenevaLunch I wrote about the oddity of seeing an old steam train come toodling into Morges station, on the extremely busy high-speed train line that connects Switzerland's major cities. I have no idea what it was doing there and can find no information on it!

The day was odd from beginning to end, but the end included this lovely moment. I had just met a woman I've been talking with about sharing some of the GenevaLunch work. We'd had a wonderful cup of tea in a teashop owned by two Dutch women who serve great cake and have hundreds of books, many in English lying around. I don't know how they get anyone to leave.

But we did leave at 5pm when they closed. We walked past a flower truck about to unload and I shot a photo. "Come in!" they shouted, so I climbed up the ladder and into the flower truck, heavy with roses and freesias and other scents that the first cold November evening didn't carry outside. It was a small but rich moment of magic.

An odd day all around.