La Belle Suisse!

I had an absolutely fabulous time in Switzerland. At one point, when we were down at the lake (which only the English call 'Lake Geneva' by the way), I decided to feed the ducks with an old sandwich I just happened to have in my bag. More fool me – the poor ducks didn't get a look in as I was immediately surrounded by a thousand seagulls, all shrieking for a bit of the action. I felt just like Tippi Hedren as they circled my head, some hovering just in front of my face, looking plaintively at me as if to say: "Me! Me!" One actually hit me in the eye with a beat of its wing – they were that close.

As I threw the bits of sandwich into the air, followed by bits of a sausage and some pieces of chicken (my bag is indeed resourceful), the lucky ones grabbed at a piece as it flew past them, and then wheeled quickly away as if they were terrified that another gull might snatch the morsel from their very throats. It was surreal and delightful experience. Not only did I feel like dear old Tippi (would that I had her fur coat and leather gloves), but I also felt like the Bird Man of Alcatraz; the old women in Mary Poppins on the steps of St Paul's; or maybe just Worzel Gummidge.

Anyway, the remainder of the weekend went really well too. We took the train on Sunday to Montreux where I tried to find any trace of the fire that inspired Deep Purple's 'Smoke On The Water', but I suppose it isn't something that would even be remembered, forty years on. I did stand next to the bronze statue of Freddie Mercury which stands, for some bizarre reason, on the palm-tree lined promenade in front of a rather tacky children's playground. The whole promenade is a bit tacky, to be honest – it clearly has delusions of grandeur as it attempts to ape the rather more cosmopolitan seafront at Monte Carlo. These flâneurs were not of the same calibre as can be found on the Côte d'Azur, let me tell you.

However, it was lovely to be beside the massive brooding waters of the lake, and it reminded me of a time when my Great Aunt Dolores (she who was knocked down by a lorry and yet survived, and later took up playing the xylophone) hijacked a steamer on its way from Geneva to Lausanne. She didn't use violence of course, but she used her formidably persuasive powers (otherwise known as aggressive bullying) to convince the captain to divert to Thonon-les-Bains where she had arranged a secret rendez-vous with the Aga Khan - or so she claimed, for unfortunately we were arrested immediately upon disembarkation and were forced to spend the next two days in the confines of the splendid Town Hall. I'll tell you more about that next time.