It's been a while

I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted anything. How lazy is that?

Well, I do have some mitigating excuses. At the time of my last post (July 17) I was in the thick of preparations for the 2012 meeting of the CITES Standing Committee, the body that governs the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in between meetings of the Conference of the Parties (CoP). It was my busiest such meeting to date (I've been to six week-long ones and several one-day meetings in all told), with WWF issuing a rather provocative report in advance criticising some key countries' compliance with CITES rules on rhinos, tigers and elephants. Along with other members of the species team, I had to field media interviews for radio and print media (one here at  http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/switzerland/how-vietnamese-parties-and-endangered-species-are-.shtml?31667#.UA_LIFV_KvQ.facebook) and to lobby to get our key demands adopted at the meeting (with some success, though not 100%). The meeting was also an opportunity to catch up with friends from the National parks and Wildlife Service; the weekend before one such friend joined Magdalena and myself, first for a concert at the Paleo festival in Nyon and then for a hike in the Juras.

From there I went on a flying visit to Krakow to attend a wedding of one of Magdalena's cousins and i quickly realised that nobody can do weddings like the Poles can, especially when it comes to food and drink. Despite the weather being insufferably hot during the day, we had a great time. The next day we visited the Schindler factory, now a museum of the German occupation of Krakow; one, moreover, like its sister museum on the Warsaw uprising in that city, is heartbreakingly sad.

From Krakow, it was back to Switzerland for a few days of tidying up and brain-dumping in the office, as well as trying to prepare for my flat move. Then, the following Saturday I was off to the US - again! (having never been there until this year I've now been there twice and I have to admit I like it!). There I attended a meeting in the offices of the Pew Environment Group to prepare a lobbying strategy to get more shark species listed on CITES at the next CoP next year. Then from there, almost directly, to Edinburgh, to see my daughter, who is working for the Fringe Festival. We saw some outstanding Fringe shows, including Outland, about Lewis carroll, and a grimly eerie adaptation of 4 Edgar Allen Poe stories. We also visited the Elephant House Café, where JK Rowling wrote the early Harry Potter books; the most interesting thing there was the graffitti in the loo.

After that, it was the flat move proper, which still isn't quite over, though at least the boxes are unpacked. I've had an exhausting week of unpacking boxes and assembling furniture.

BUT....

The best news of all is that my Brussels novel has been taken on by MuseItUp publishing, initially as an e-book and will emerge next March, hopefully. The title isn't confirmed yet but I will be using the pen-name Philip Coleman. So I will have to re-think my online identity and the future of this blog...