Escapism - Travel To Escape Threats, Bad Memories, and illness - Getting Out and Back Quickly

Let's start with the worst case scenario, needing fast action.

Threats

What can you do to escape danger? In some countries such as the UK and USA you can take out a restraining order. However, this does not always succeed.

 When somebody is trying to kill you, or your child, you could take your child on a holiday to a foreign country and then change hotels. Take a trip from there to a different country. 

Before sending a letter or making a phone call, you could go across the border to an adjoining country for the day. So that your location is not known or traceable. Rent your home to somebody who does not speak English who looks of a different race. 

Witnesses

What if you cannot leave the country because you are needed in a court case?

1 In some cases it is possible to give evidence by video link from a separate room.

To avoid danger, to save the cost of travel, and missing work or medical appointments, you may be able to give evidence by video link from another country. I remember this being done in Singapore.

2 Your country might organize a witness protection scheme.

Changing Identity

You could change your name by deed poll.

You could adopt a pen name or professional name.

You could change to a shorter name, from Alexander to Alec or Al.

You could change back to your longer name, from |Al to Alexander.

You could alter the spelling of your name, eg from Jane to Jayne, or from Jayne to Jane.

You could marry somebody and take their family name.

You can change your email from your name to your status or profession. eg from John Smith at the Company to Treasurer at The Company.

Moving permanently overseas

Since Brexit you have to consider several legal and financial questions 

1 Do you have the right to reside overseas permanently?

2 Can you buy property overseas?

3 Can you receive your pension overseas?

4 Can you avoid paying tax in two countries?

The cheapest form of accommodation is often camping. 

If wartime or security causes your holiday, or return flight to be cancelled, and you need to return home for work, children's schooling, consider whether you can hop countries. You might use budget airline, private plane, taxi, bus, ferry, hire car, shared expense car. You could start a whatsapp group for all the passengers on a stranded plane, which cannot fly because the crew are over their flying hours limit.

To leave or return in a hurry, you could even buy an old or new car and sell it at the destination.

Useful Websites

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15793521/Mother-died-Bristol-explosion-hailed-hero-saving-child-seconds-gangster-ex-boyfriends-grenade-

https://www.college.police.uk/app/prosecution-and-case-management/victim-and-witness-care

https://www.myexpattaxes.com/

https://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/About-Singapore-Law/Civil-Practice-ADR/requirements-of-foreign-jurisdictions-on-the-taking-of-evidence-given-voluntarily-by-way-of-live-video-link-from-a-witness-located-in-their-jurisdiction-in-civil-proceedings-before-singapore-courts

How Excel, other venues, and exhibition organizers can improve - and how I keep records

Excel asked for my feedback and I was delighted to have the opportunity to make suggestions. 

1 Give listings of hotels and restaurants with guides to prices. 

2 Show which stations are nearest which events at Excel which is between two stations, one at each end. I wasted a lot of time getting off at Custom House and walking a long way when Prince Regent was nearer the other end.

 3 I also lost time going down to underground toilets down and up many stairs at the Custom House end. Give signs and distance to nearest ground level toilets for the disabled and those with heavy luggage.  

4 TFL announced change for Jubilee at Canada Water which wastes time because Canary Wharf is much quicker, just one escalator. Please warn people not to change at Canada Water which has three escalators, then at ground level, no signs, but a by stander in uniform told me  you cross the square, around the building ahead to another building. At this point I turned round and went back down the three escalators. I missed a meeting. 

5 Meetings should be listed at the front of the exhibition with arrows or maps to the stage. And make this printable map marking venues and time and dates available from the website. 

6 Event catalogues have numbers of stands too small to read. Have an online map which can be printed or printed in multiple sections and sellotaped together.

 7 Have a map with a tickbox on stands you have already visited so you can mark those to re-visit later or next day.  

8 Include exhibitors' websites so you can verify who you visited, phone numbers, emails etc. Many stands did not have address cards. Very confusing. I met the niece or cousin on the stand who spoke English.  The boss was somebody different. Their head office was not the same city or country as the producer of the product, where you could buy wine at a cellar door in Italy or visit their hotel or restaurant or shop which was yet another address. The distribution area such as the UK supermarket, eg Tesco, Majestic wines, was different again. It would have been useful to have a list of people on the stand and a list of products, with tick boxes. 

But what can I do differently?

At one exhibition at Expo in Singapore, I learned a system for saving business cards. The stand owners had one lined notebook, labelled with the event. You can do this using the catalogue or a leaflet or flyer, or print one. 

Use An Address Card Notebook

An address card notebook keeps each address card with the notes made during or after the event.

One's instinct is to add the address details at the end. The address card system makes the notes look like a webpage. Or a letter. Instead you have the business address at the top.

If the notebook is shared by two or more people on the stand, to rith right or underneath the address cards of the visitor you place the name and contact details of the person on the stand.Each page had a section at the top for business cards. You can create that by drawing a line across every page a few inches down. Or simply staple the business card of each person you meet at the top of a page. They stapled the business card at the top, then made notes, during the meeting, afterwards, and in the evening. They noted facts. Action to take. Date deadlines.

Afterwards, the rest of the notebook can be used for the year's further events. The following year's annual event. Or tear out the blank pages and staple them for notes inside a folded piece of coloured card, with a label to create a new, separate record of another exhibition.

My latest systems include

1 Photograph the person I met holding their business card or ID lanyard. Photograph myself with the product and person I met.

Write a blog online at the time and read it back to them, correcting errors in spelling and location.

Ask and say on my blog whether the product is discontinued, current, or yet to be launched.

Write on the address card the date and name of the show where we met. Note who I met if they gave me somebody else's address card.

Keep all the cards from an event together, in a box, or with an elastic band.

Keep all the leaflets from one show together. Cut off large borders of heavy card. Staple together related leaflets. 

Write a large label with the year, date, and local or event on the front of notebooks. Put a duplicate label on the spine and back. Write the word diary, notebook, travel, or year on the page edges.  

How to type foreign words with accents

 

I have trouble with words such as cafe and manana. Without the accent, they look wrong. 

Accent can mean intonation, or diacritical mark. The most common ones are :

The Acute Accent

más

 México

the circumflex, and 

the tilde.

The Tilde

 Ñ

mañana

Real Academia Española 

Simple System For Copying Correct Accents

My usual method is to find the word in google or  an online dictionary or Wikipedia and copy the whole word  or the accented letter. After you have copied it the first time, you can past it several times in the same article or post. Either continue using the control +v, or, if you have afterwards copied other letters, words, or pictures, search for the word with the accent in the article you are writing and copy it from your own article.

 tú

If you change to other words you are copying, then copy the letter with symbol again, this time from the first time you used it correctly in your own text.

As for remembering pronunciation, in French I think of the word for schoolchild, eleve, with the accents going up, acute, then down, grave.

élève

French words with accents

à la carte

château

If you copy a word in bold, and you are in blogger, just go to the character for inserting bold, the big capital letter B, and you will undo the bold of the word you have copied. If it comes out too large, look for the double TT sign which alters text size. if it comes out italic like this, click on the capital I sign which will be leaning forwards.. 

German accents

unlaut

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:German_alphabet

Ä	ä	Ä	IPA(key): [ʔɛː]	Audio: Duration: 2 seconds.0:02
Ö	ö	Ö	IPA(key): [ʔøː]	Audio: Duration: 2 seconds.0:02
Ü	ü	Ü	IPA(key): [ʔyː]	Audio: Duration: 2 seconds.0:02
ẞ	ß	Eszett

Norwegian Bokmål 

Spanish words with accents

letter ⟨ñ⟩ in Spanish

Español

Real Academia Española 

mañana

Spanish uses only the acute accent over any vowel: ⟨á é í ó ú⟩. 

Useful Instructions on using foreign letters / accents

https://acuteaccents.com/how-to-type-accents-in-microsoft-word-6-methods/

For details on Spanish pronunciation, see Spanish phonology and Help:IPA/Spanish.

Useful lists of words

French

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_French_words_and_expressions_in_English

German

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:German_alphabet

Search systems

https://www.etymonline.com/word/a%20la%20carte

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Spanish words

The colours and motif of the flag of Spain superimposed on the outline map of Spain.

 Spanish is also spoken in the Canary Islands and other islands such as Majorca and Minorca many South American countries, and Mexico and as a first or second language in much of the USA. 

Spanish is a romance language, similar to Italian and Portuguese. Also. As a bonus for learners  lots of words resemble French and English, from the shared root of Latin.

Sunday is the day for the big push to learn more words and phrases on Duolingo, the free language teaching website. 

Why Learn Spanish?

Although I have logged onto about twenty languages on Duolingo, I am concentrating on Spanish this year,

Firstly  it is the easiest language, quickest to learn, of the big three spoken widely worldwide, if you are an English speaker.

Secondly, in preparation for a trip to Spanish islands in the Canaries.

Easy Spanish Words - Similar to English

 Spanish - English

a pie - on foot

anual - annual

atracciones - attractions

circo - circus

enorme - enormous, very big, huge

entero - entire/whole

festival - festival

gramo - gram

mantenir - to keep (maintain)

parque - park

parque de attracciones - amusement park

tomates - tomatoes

Challenging Words and Phrases

carros chocones - bumper cars

un circulo - a circle

mayoria - majority - (not mayor)

mayor - major (not a mayor)

el alcalde - the mayor

Useful free websites for learning Spanish

duolingo.com

Wikivoyage phrasebook Spanish

Wikipedia Spanish words in English and English words in Spanish

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Caffe Pascucci, the name's meaning and the forthcoming coffee shop in Hatch End

Hatch End was called the restaurant capital of north west London by a local newspaper.  Hatch End has no shortage of Italian style coffee bars and Italian and Indian restaurants. 

Caffe Pascucci

Scheduled to open early May, 8-10, they told me, is the Italian Caffè, by the same people as the caffè Pascucci  a few doors along towards the Hatch End station. The new branch in on the corner, where the old post office was for years.

I have lived in Hatch End many years and often pass the caffe and find the name hard to remember. I finally got around to looking up the origin of the name. It comes from the Italian word for Easter, so it was a name given to children born around Easter time. Or the offspring of a parent who was given that name.

If your first language is English, how do you remember it?  The Italian sounds similar to the French for Easter, Paques. Also the Hebrew Pesach. There you have it, the meaning, and the way to remember the name of the coffee shop.

https://caffepascuccihatchend.co.uk/

https://venere.it/en/the-meaning-and-history-of-the-last-name-pascucci/

https://www.names.org/n/pascucci/about

 

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After the Real Italian Wine & Food Experience at Excel - looking backwards and forwards

After the Real Italian Wine & Food  Experience at Excel, I have been looking back at their website and catalogue and what I discovered and enjoyed at this new style trade show. 

Why Sunday and Monday?

Firstly, the date of the show was a Sunday and a Monday. The day of the week chosen was not an accident, nor simply due to the availability or price of the exhibition hall. The organizers, wineexperience.com, chose a Sunday and Monday because that is when many restaurants and food and wine businesses are closed or have fewer customers, consumers, and can afford the time to go to an exhibition for business to business meetings.

They even had a children's area. So families could come along. But children were kept out of the way, whilst adults were tasting wine. 

Looking Back At What I Learned and Missed

I missed out on the blind tasting area. I like an attractive bottle and label. If I had more time, next time I would do the taste test without the distraction of the bottle and labelling. 

Super Seating - Lounge Based

What I did enjoy was the cosy seating.

Instead of having everybody walking around whilst sampling drinks, and spitting, which I hate, a new system. Not the old cross between a random cocktail party and a boozy pub crawl. Nor the other system of  having front desks where temp agency staff ignore passers-by, and a gatekeeper holds back everyone from a seated VIP area. 

Something much better.  Each stand at this show had comfortable chairs. This created a nooky look and feel so you were invited to sit down and savour the drink, and sometimes food.

Sitting Listening To Stories

Whilst it is possible that every stand has a story, it did seem to me that I could quickly establish if we had no connection before sitting down. The most smiling and welcoming people often knew they had a great story, or were willing to chat away until we found a profitable point or subject of mutual interest.

Here's a summary of what I learned.

1 Cans Of Semi-Sparkling Wine 

The stand had both bottles of sparkling rose wine and cans of semi-sparkling. I tried both and I was honest, tactless, enough to say that the cans did not have as much of a sparkle, a bubble, as the traditional bottle. Convenient to carry, for a picnic, backpack. 

Why no bubbles? Just for a cheaper product? No. The promoter, Cristina, explained that, as most people already know, the heavy glass of the Champagne bottle and similar sparkling wine bottles, is there to withstand the pressure of the bubbles. The much lighter aluminium cans can't take such strong bubbles without the risk of bursting. Once I knew that, I was no longer disappointed by the smaller sparkle of the canned drink. Just a different product, for different occasions, different requirements, different weight, size, and price.

If you look carefully, the can may say semi sparkling.

I have a can of  Peach Moscato says  kosher, not for Passover, but kosher for other occasions.

It is only 5% alcohol, nearer to the alcohol content of beer. Not as strong as wine.

Looking Forward To the Next Real Italian Wine & Food Experience

Similar trade shows are being organized in the Americas in Mexico City, in Mexico, in April

In summer of 2026, in June, in Asia. The event is in Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city in Vietnam. An opportunity for a side trip to one of the two top sites in Asia, the green pinnacles in the blue sea, visited by boat on a romantic  overnight dinner cruise at Halong Bay.

The next opportunity is in November in Mexico City. 

Next year I shall want to attend this trade show again in London, England. 

2 Forno Minniti For Perfect Panettone

In addition to Panettone, they make biscuits with lemon flavoured marzipan filling. All kinds of aromatic, melt in the mouth pastries and biscuits, sweet and savoury. I must mention the onion biscuits. I've never had anything like it before.

Large Panettone from Forno Minniti. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I look forward to seeing and sampling what is new from Forno Minniti, the makers of the oh so aromatic and tasty Panettone, flavoured with bergamot (which is an orange) and almonds. What will they come up with next year?

The Spelling of Panettone

Notice the spelling. Minniti has double n, one letter tee. The opposite of panettone.

But panettone has double t and the ne twice. The word starts with pan, not just a cooking pan, but the word for bread, or cake, in many languages, such as the French phrase for chocolate pastry, pain au chocolat. The word panettone ends with the word one, o - n - e.  You can get a small panettone but in my photo is one big one. Panettone.

Useful Websites On Italian Food & Wine Shows & Food

winesexperience.com

fornominitti.it

italianwinecan.com

it stands for Italy.

Another Panettone supplier is in the Lombardy region, at Breschia, going north from Milan. They make a triple chocolate panettone, and have a shop.

Useful Website on Chocolate Panettone

www.marzoilpasticcere.it

Wonderful Wines & Spirits

https://marinium.it/en/products/

The Real Italian Wine & Food Experience

winesexperience.com

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