A little bit about travelling with Di

I've often toyed with writing my reality over, or as well as blogging the photographs I take along the way.

I travel on a wing and a prayer and sometimes the universe is laughing at me and the wings ... well they do their best.

Tonight in Rome it was all about whether I had enough money to
- pay the hotel - check
- pay the train to the airport in the morning - check
- get dinner tonight - probably not
- catch the bus home from brussels airport - probably not (how was I going to tell Gert that last one?)

But ... this isn't cause for panic. I'm lucky, apparently I internalise everything which allows me to carry on and work through the tricky situations I often find myself in.

It's silly things like having enough to pay my VAT every 3 months or having Oxfam take their automatic donation out of my bank account which sometimes sends me into a financial speed wobble. It's committing to adventures or just life in general before I have the money or ... alternatively, just after I've completely run out of money. This happens often too.

But life has a way of working out and I've just discovered I can afford dinner tonight and that my long-suffering husband is able to bail me out on the hotel bill. I could have done it but only just and I am hungry tonight.

I'm a terrible creature who is compelled to wander ... from the time I could first climb the wooden gate at home. Everyone knew me back then and would take me home to my mum or phone her. These days it's more difficult to find someone who knows me and is happy to escort me all the way home.

Sadly, I just opened my email here ... but even that was a saga of Di proportions. It took some time to realise that I needed to go downstairs for a cable because that free wifi isn't in every room - some rooms need an internet cable ... and yes, it just happened that they did have a travel adapter for my American laptop because I replaced the one I lost in Napoli with the wrong type for the plug here in Rome.

I'm laughing at myself as I write this but as I was saying, the sad thing I discovered as I opened my email now was a request for a photography session in Naples. If only...

So don't imagine me rolling in cash when I travel, I'm usually about 3cms from sleeping in the gutter and eating from rubbish bins but for kindness of friends who give me couches and apartments and houses to rest in.

There, how's that for a truth.

Ciao from this bemused woman who has arrived in Roma!