Every time I'm in the UK I ask myself if I can ever live there again. I would like the answer to be Yes. It's the home of all the people I love most, apart from Mr F. It's the place I understand on a level I could never begin to understand the US or Italy. But more and more the answer is No. Here are just three recent, randomly chosen examples why.

An estimated six out of ten geriatric patients in English hospitals go to sleep hungry because there's no protocol in place to ensure they can actually eat or even reach the food that's slung onto their tray and nobody seems to notice when the plate goes back to the kitchen untouched. There used to be people called nursing auxiliaries who kept an eye on things like that. I wonder what became of them? Hell, they're probably down in the hospital mall ordering milk shakes and burgers.

A video made to illustrate our rich cultural heritage and shown to herald preparations for the 2012 Olympics, featured shock-artist Marcus Harvey's famous portrait of child-murderer Myra Hindley. A rare glimpse this because it provoked such fury when it was exhibited in the Royal Academy it's now kept behind glass, I think in County Hall. where presumably it doesn't provoke any reaction at all. I guess the message the Tourist Board intended was 'In London, anything goes.'
I should create my own list of things that might encourage people to visit London. And I will, when I've calmed down. Which I'm not likely to do until Derrick Campbell stops talking crap.

Dr Campbell is chairman of the National Independent Advisory Group on Criminal Use of Firearms and his take on the recent spate of drug-related shootings is that the government is to blame. By reducing funding to community groups, he argues, we are condemning young black males to die. Hunh? Do the pingpong tables need resurfacing?
If that's all it'll take for young black males to shape up, take responsibility for their children and stop playing at gangsters, I say give them the money. New bats even. And while they're waiting for the community centre to pick up the slack in their lives, why don't they get down to the hospital and spoon a bit of fish pie into some poor starving oldster?

Anyone who suspects their children find them embarrassing, gaze on Madonna and hold your head high.

I'm blogging off for a week. Tomorrow we head to England for a few days of R&R. We have quite a mixed itinerary: a little shopping, for those necessities of life that are proving harder and harder to find in Venice; a little sight-seeing - I'm taking Mr F to the Derbyshire Peaks. I think he'll like them; and catching up with family. Next Thursday I'm having lunch with ALL my children. But first, something completely different. This weekend the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth will be commemorated, as it is every August in my old home territory of Leicestershire, and we'll be there to pay our respects to that most maligned of kings, Richard III.

Richard died on Bosworth Field in 1485, the last English monarch to die in battle. He was, even by his enemies lights, a most courageous warrior, but he left behind some loose ends that muddied his reputation - chiefly, if he didn't have the young Princes in the Tower murdered, who did? Every Dickophile has his own theory. For instance, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, where were you the night of July 31st 1483?

But the person who really did for Richard was William Shakespeare whose characterisation of him as a barely human scumbag is still accepted by the majority of the population. Well, I mean, by that dwindling rump of the population who have even heard of Richard III or could give a damn.

What did Richard's death bring us? It brought us a bunch of Welsh chancers called Tydder, not least of whom Henry VIII. Or as he is known in this house, That Fat Tudor Bastard.

Richard doesn't have a grave. He was given a burial by the Grey Friars of Leicester but when TFTB went after the monasteries with his wrecking ball the monks, the bones and all were lost. So Sunday we'll be at Sutton Cheney, at the nearest church to the battlefield, to say a prayer for the repose of a man more sinned against than sinning.

And afterwards, to the battlefield, for a nice cup of tea and a re-enactment of Richard's last charge. Men in tights? Yes, I'm afraid so. I'm kind of bracing myself for the day Mr F tells me he wants chainmail for Christmas.

At last an answer to the oft-asked question, why is there a small Cherokee in my parents' wedding photo?
I always knew the figure third right was Lily Rosina, my great grandmother, an eccentric old duck who walked twenty miles a day until the gangrene got her. I also knew that her people came from the borders of Wiltshire and Hampshire, an area known as the New Forest. But every time I searched for information about her parents or tried to explain her very, ahem, distinctive appearance, I reached a dead end. Until this week.

Frustrated with lack of progress with Lily Rosina I turned my attention to her husband, Albert. I found his parents, I found his maternal grandparents, Richard and Theodosia Lee, and then I really hit my stride. I found his great-grandparents, James and Clevansi Lee. And I thought, 'Great. Clevansi. So I'm descended from a typing error.'

But genealogists can never leave loose ends alone, even when it's long past bedtime, so I did one last, desperate search for someone, anyone with the name Clevansi. I 'd probably have settled for an anagram even. And now a moment's grateful silence for the Internet. Because there she was, on my computer screen on a hot August night in 2008, Clevansi Lee, born around 1776, and her husband James as well. They were on a website devoted to Romanies, the traveling people, and in particular to the large community centred on the New Forest in the 18th and 19th century. So great-grandpa Albert's folks were travelers, and now the door swung wide. Because the next thing I discovered was that Lily Rosina's family name, Vincent, is a common Romany name too. So there it is. Tinkers, who'd given up the open road.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. But at least I can now lay to rest the question of the Cherokee in the trilby hat. And why she felt the need to walk twenty miles a day.

Today is the start of the Great Italian Exodus, which is like the Pamplona bull run but with cars. The two businesses nearest our building clanged down their shutters last night. If you wanted to buy an amber necklace or get your couch reupholstered you're out of luck till September 1st. And if it's coffee and a Tonolo donut you want, you'll have to wait till September 3rd. This is no deprivation to us because Mr F and I are trying to shed a few pounds.

Our methods differ. He uses the Nothing But Salad Till You Feel Like Shooting Yourself Diet. I'm on the No Booze No Cookies Regime. He weighs himself, I don't. My clothes tell me as much as I need to know. This morning he weighed himself and even though I was still surfacing from sleep I could tell he didn't like what the scales were telling him.
He demanded a recount. Tried a new battery in the machine. Kicked it. The scale still says he gained weight. This is why I never weigh myself. Lying bastard gadgets. They're always waiting to stab you in the back.

So here we are, nibbling on lettuce leaves and resigned to a donut-free August. The last people left in Dorsoduro. Ain't nobody here but us pigeons. And about two million tourists.

My mother-in-law has been in a benignly demented state for about seven years now. She probably doesn't have Alzheimer's but the label doesn't really matter any more. Her mind, lodged inside an amazingly nifty 94 year old body, is away with the fairies. Sometimes literally. Last time we were with her she said she had little people dancing on her hand. She's cared for in a nursing home that's as pleasant as such a place can be, and Mr F's two sisters pick up the slack.

So last weekend one of my sisters-in-law was on Mom Duty. She took along her iPod, to listen to while Mom slept and when Mom woke up she gave her the earphones and played her a little Elvis. And goshdarnit if Mom didn't start singing along, Can't Help Falling In Love With You . Word perfect. Now I don't know whether to welcome this news or worry about it. I mean, if she can recall Elvis lyrics, what else may be in there trying to find a way out?

And en passant, have you noticed that in novel blurbs there's always a character who gets more than they bargained for? Also that the only time people bid farewell to a place is in travel brochures?
Just an observation.

A bad start to the day when I discovered that Andrea, who sells flowers in the square on Saturday mornings, has had the nerve to go off on holiday, leaving me with a flowerless house. And I couldn't bear to go to either of the local flower shops because they're like entering a mausoleum. You really get the impression you're disturbing the dead when you ask them what anything costs and anyway, they're actually not interested in selling you a couple of bunches of freesias. Their forte is arranging flowers into bouquets and wreaths of breathtaking cellophane-wrapped hideosity. I had no choice but to walk to Rialto Market. And as long as I was there I thought I might as well buy vegetables.

So I'm waiting on line and listening to the old lady ahead of me who's buying one of everything, and then I'm aware she's started on her fruit list, one banana, one apple, one peach. And not any old peach. To my cloth ears it sounded like she asked for una pesca sorda. Which would be a deaf peach. All the way back from Rialto I was trying to figure it out. Would a deaf peach be a soft one, with slightly mushy flesh that made you think of muffled sound? Or a hard fruit, tough to get through to? It wasn't until I got home, noted a glut of eggs in the fridge and thought of hard-boiling a few that the daylight dawned. Hard boiled eggs - uova soda. She'd actually asked for una pesca soda - one hard enough to last the weekend. The minefield of a foreign language. Deaf Peaches would be a great name for a band, however.

Nothing. You hear me? Sweet FA.
I had a little previous experience but this past week I've graduated to a new level of doing nothing. Give you an example. For a period of four days I couldn't even locate a pen. The two I always carry in my bag disappeared and I didn't stir myself to buy a replacement. Seeing I hadn't packed a notebook there didn't seem much point.

We were staying in an area of great historical interest, not to mention world-famous gastronomy and scenic beauty. Or so it says in the books. I decided to take their word for it. The guide said 'go see the amphitheatre'. My body said, 'Naaah.'

So here was my day.
Get up, possibly as late as 9am. Unheard of, this. I actually shook my watch the first morning it happened.
After breakfast I might take a walk into town through the vineyards. Or not. My motivation was to buy the best figs I ever tasted in my life. But I wouldn't describe it as an irresistible urge.
But walk or not, always a swim before lunch. Then, when I saw my mate Louise twirling a teatowel of damp salad greens around her head, I knew it was time to get out, drip-dry and amble up to the trough.
After lunch, a siesta. Incredibly, after a 9 hour night I still managed a deeply blissful afternoon zizz. Followed by reading beneath a pine tree, more swimming and making myself available for a glass of chilled wine around 6.30.

I read four novels, talked to my friends and did a lot of thinking. I bought nothing, wrote nothing, regret nothing. Except perhaps the hundredweight of full fat cheese I consumed.

And now it's Monday morning. Time to throw the suitcase into the back of the closet, put on my writer's uniform and sharpen my pencils. Am I up for it? I better be. You should see my desk.

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence.

It’s summer on the Left Coast and we are burning up with triple digit temperatures (Fahrenheit, of course) and over 300 active fires around the state, making for unusual sunsets and serious air quality problems. We learn new phrases such as Haines Index, Containment Line, Plume Development, Fuel Break and Dozer Lines. We bookmark the Cal Fire notice page and keep in touch with friends who live in the path of a fire.

This is no Venetian summer. It’s dry heat that keeps us burning out here on the Pacific Rim. Keeps us on our toes.

We joke about our dormant volcanoes and yet we camp on their peaks. We know to never turn our back on the ocean but lose several people every year to sleeper waves and rip tides. We go hiking knowing we could encounter rattle snakes and mountain lions. We build houses on hillsides that slide down in the winter rains. We tell family stories in earthquake years.

And yes, we give our fires names.

I have friends who've taken to email but who never surf the Internet. They seem to feel it's like smoking crack: once you've started you can't stop. Now admittedly, it can turn into a great waste of time, but these are all people who watch TV. So what's the diff? And this morning, in just one hour of surfing, I've completed a deeply satisfying piece of research.

It all started over dinner last evening when I discovered that Mr F once visited Normandy. When you marry in your 50s it can take a long time to get the full case history. Anyway, long before he knew me he went to Normandy and he liked it so much he'd like to go back some day. In particular he told me, he'd like to see the Normandy beaches. Which led us to talk about my father who took part in the D-Day landings.
'Where?' asked Mr F.
'Dunno,' replied this slipshod custodian of family history.
But this morning, armed with my Dad's demobilisation papers and the fragments of what little he ever told me about his war, I filled in a lot of gaps. This is why I love the Internet. I don't care that you sometimes end up neck deep in crap. There's lots of wonderful useful stuff out there, at the click of a mouse.

Between breakfast and lunch I've uncovered much of my Dad's naval career. I now know where he trained for Combined Ops and what it was all leading to - the delivery of Canadian infantry to Juno Beach, where many died, but many more forged on to the liberation of France. My father always planned to go back but didn't live long enough to do it. Of course, now I'd like to visit Normandy too.

Not this week though. This week we go to Provence and my dear blog-locum Carrie Galbraith will keep the airwaves open.

Messages this week from readers who were surprised or relieved to discover that even a published writer gets attacks of the screaming abdabs after finishing a book and submitting to an editor's scrutiny. Oh yes. And any writer who tells you different is a fibber.

We had 95 percent humidity at 6am when I went to meet my friend Mim for a pre-breakfast walk. So what was supposed to be a brisk kick to our ever-widening sedentary backsides turned into a slow, sweaty stroll followed by coffee in an air-conditioned bar. Now, just before 9am, she's gone back to her desk, Mr F has just left for work and I'm feeling distinctly uneasy because there's nothing I absolutely have to do today. A normal person might go to the beach or the golf course, or at least fit in a little light shopping before lunch. An obsessive worker might start on a new project and someone with the true gift of indolence might lie on the couch with a bunch of grapes and a good movie.

I don't want to do any of the above. And I think the problem is, I'm in limbo. I delivered my book. The jury is out and I await the verdict. Mr F says he loves it, but then, he sleeps with the author.
I could get off with a suspended sentence. You know, something like, 'Well, Laurie, I think we'll let posterity judge you.'
Or I could get three months hard editing. I do have previous convictions, after all. Poor plot construction, lame jokes, gratuitous sneering. A repeat offender.
While I wait for the jury to file back into court the only thing I can think to do is strip down to my underwear, iron some shirts and consider possible new careers.

I see that the United Kingdom, which currently has an estimated half million illegal immigrants clogging the corridors of its courts, welfare offices and hospitals, has refused Martha Stewart permission to visit the UK because of her criminal record. For which, I seem to recall, she served her time.

I'm no great fan of Martha but I'd say that's definitely not a good thing.

Yesterday I signed off first draft of this year's book. Mr F is down at the copy shop as I write, running off his reading copy. Later today I'll be able to hear nothing but the turning of pages. And the sound of his breathing. Into which I shall read all kinds of wild speculation. But right now I am free. Not that there are any flower-decked meadows to lie in around here. But I am free to do whatever I please.

There's always been a sobering gulf between what I fantasise about doing in my free time and what I actually do. Thirty four years ago, when I was expecting my first baby, I planned to make a patchwork quilt as soon as I finished work. It never happened. Now that baby has babies of her own, and it still didn't happen. I guess I don't really have what it takes to quilt.

On my list of recently neglected activities I have
1. Piano practice
2. Filing
3. Going for a walk.

However, so far this morning I have
1. Loafed in the sunshine in Campo Santa Margherita, read the newspaper and consumed a second breakfast.
2. Surfed for accommodation for a trip to western Ireland
3. Bought a new notepad to make notes for a future theatrical project.

There's a lesson in this. It tells me the careers for which I'm best suited are
1. Rich man's plaything.
2. Travel agent
3. Writer

See? It's just a question of knowing thyself. But given certain other important factors, such as love and the gas bill, I've decided to settle for
1. Poor but treasured pensioner's plaything
2. Part-time travel agent
3. Writer

So business as usual. Even when I'm free.

It was only 4.15 and I'd already heard four renditions of Santa Lucia floating beneath my window. Naturally I think anyone who comes to Venice is entitled to their gondola ride but a girl can only take so much, so I decided to go out and do a few chores. First stop the optician because this past weekend I broke two pairs of glasses. I guess I've been doing a lot of heavy looking. But today is Monday. So why would my oculist be open.

Next stop was Angelo's to buy cherries for breakfast. But at 4.45 Angelo was still in the siesta sack. At 5.15 when I started my homeward trudge he still hadn't reopened. He was sort of in the back of the shop, scratching himself and ignoring my sign language. And as I've written so often before, this kind of thing can get a person down.

On the other hand I can't think of anywhere else in the world I might have seen, in the space of just fifteen minutes,
1. a man in a greasy muscle shirt carrying a pink and blue Murano chandelier on his head
2. a man choosing yogurts in the supermarket with a violin and a bow under his arm and
3. our 83 year old downstairs neighbour being complimented on her scarlet toenails by some 90 year old rake who hangs out in the square and tries to pull younger women.

So by the time I got home my frustrations were forgotten and I was quite back in love with the place. I think I can even take a little more Santa Lucia before the sun sets. And it'll just have to be peaches again for breakfast.

I was up at 5.15, all slept-out, unlike yesterday morning when I was up at the same hour because I was worried about a big and complicated day ahead of me. Some of you probably think I'm just a scribbler. You may not know I'm also a highly successful freelance worrier. Worried you don't have enough time to devote to your worries? Send them to me. I'm open 24/7. No worry too small. But, I repeat, this morning I was up because I wanted to be.

At 5.15 this city is silent. I can't tell you what heaven it is. And at 5.45 Mr F joined me on the terrace and we had coffee and the little white peaches that are in season here for about five minutes. It was really a quite perfect breakfast until I noticed an item of clothing on the table. He said it was a work of art he just bought, title Two Socks on Table. A Bronx wise-ass even at 6am.

At 8am we went down to the square. Mr F was on his way to work but first he had to supervise my buying of the fish for tonight's dinner party. He says I never buy enough food. I know guests sometimes tumble down our stairs on their way out but I'll never be convinced it's because they're weak with hunger.

Then, fish bought, flowers bought, I scored a very great triumph by getting to the Rizzo bakery in time to buy a loaf of their highly-prized ciabatta salata. I don't know why they don't just bake more of the stuff. Usually I lose out to our friend Sid who is an even earlier riser than we are and snaps up the last loaf. But sadly Sid's not in town right now, and happy though I am to be able to serve the bread tonight, I have to say, if it's a choice between the ciabatta and Sid, I'll always choose Sid.

And here endeth my Saturday morning.