Another longish pause since my last post. It was somewhat busier in the week than I expected, partly because of little expeditions yesterday afternoon and the day before. I'm still busy writing about property and, I'm becoming generally faster, the odd one takes longer than expected. Thursday's, for example, was about property in Tuscany, which is generally of either paying quite high prices or renovating. So it seems that the risks of a property in Tuscany (or Umbria) comes down to one's chances of avoiding a rogue-trader stonemason, plumber etc.

Though Tuscany looks charming, I haven't heard anyone enthusing about the Tuscan seaside. This is where we headed just after I had finished blogging last Saturday; not Tuscany but an almost deserted West Wittering. It felt slightly strange to see so few cars and people in the car park in mid July. I'd supposed that more folk would want to see the sea even though it was only 20 degrees. In fact there were more people having bar-be-ques by their cars than on the beach. Instead of walking round to the dunes on East Head, we walked straight out towards the open sea. The Isle of Wight looked clearer than usual (sure sign of rain) but eventually we were rewarded with some watery sunlight. After that we took off for excellent fish and chips at East Wittering.

There was no queue at the fish 'n chip shop but while I was being served I had an odd conversation with the chap behind the counter. Was I really English, I was asked and what proportion of people in the UK weren't white, the man (who's Turkish) wanted to know. If I answered that correctly I'd get my order free of charge. It all seemed vaguely un-PC and I said I didn't know, which was true.

On Thursday I managed a walk back at Lynchmere, galvanised by the threat of rain for yesterday. This time I took the car back to where I got to last week and walked from there, which took me to Stanley Common. The common itself is nice walking but the footpath I followed for the second half (Parkgate Rough, Bird Piece and the Leithe - according to the map) is becoming overgrown, both underfoot and overhead - a way for short walkers.

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On the current affairs front I'm bemused. The winding up of the peerages for cash investigation without any prosecutions was a surprose. I had the impression that the remorseless draining away of Tony Blair's authority since last December was related to this investigation and the likelihood that at least some people closely connected to him would face prosecution.

Now all we're left with is a little smoke but I don't agree with those who say the whole investigation was a waste of time.

The cause of the problem, reform of the House of Lords, grinds on and on. The politicians don't seem able to understand that they reached the limits of the constitution just evolving. MPs can't see clearly what to do because their judgment is skewed by being an interested party. They should just drop the matter for the time being and include it in the national debate about what goes into our new written constitution and give the voters a say.

As for the issue of party funding, the politicians should realise that the need is for mass membership parties paying their own way from voluntary subscriptions. What other kind of party deserves to succeed?

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There wre reports in last Sunday's papers that Lord Inge, former Chief of Defence Staff, had made a speech warning that unless the allies succeeded in Afghanistan, Pakistan was in danger of 'going down' as well with the real prospect of an Islamist government seizing power there.

I think Pakistan is always going to be the sort of country where several things are going on at once. Out of the mixture of Islamists, democrats and the military one element may assume temporary hegemony but it seems there is always going to be a kind of fruitless friction between them all. This is partly why the government is so ineffectual in dealing with Pakistan's tribal areas, the inhabitants of which, incidentally, would presumably loathe the existence of cooperating Islamic regimes on both sides of the Afghan frontier.

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In order to progress with David Deutsch's 'The Fabric of Reality' I've kept myself on a strict one-book-at-a-time regime. I've just finished the chapter on the feasibility of time travel; fascinating - I reckon I understand about two thirds of what he writes.

Up until now I'd assumed that nothing about relativity or quantum theory was comprehensible to anyone who hadn't done a science degree. It certainly didn't seem to feature in Physics O'level circa 1972. Having read Deutsch this all seems unnecessarily elitist.

The other thing that strikes me is never coming across any speculations about how parallel universes have been taken up preachers when they talk about the miraculous. I would have thought that Jesus's resurrection (and the gospels in general)would be very fertile ground for hypothesising about signs of parallel universes (or the Multiverse as Deutsch calls it). If anyone knows of any worthwhile books on this subject, I'd love to know.

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I'm hoping to post sooner next time. Have a good weekend.