This is a catch-up session as I've been neglecting my readership over recent times. This has partly been because of family circumstances and partly (a large partly) because I haven't really had anything interesting to put up here. Apologies if you've all been feeling neglected. I hope you'll forgive me and read on.

Sometimes, living in Switzerland, the changes that happen around you are so gradual you don't really take notice of them and sometimes they are so obvious you can't avoid them. Sometimes they happen out of sight and sometimes you are distracted by life elsewhere and miss them. Let me give you some recent examples.

One of the things my wife have been continuously aware of has been the deterioration in the behaviour of a minority of teenagers here. At one time this consisted of a CD/tape player playing quite loud over headphones. This moved to mp3 player and more recently mobile phones. Generally, apart from voicing concern for their hearing and making mental notes to invest in hearing aid companies it hasn't been a problem. Now, however, manufactures have started putting higher quality speakers into these phones. This sometimes results in the "youth" of Switzerland filling trains and busses with "sounds" they like with no thought for the rest of us. They know they can do this with impunity and sometimes seem to revel in the inconvenience they cause to others. This country is catching up the bad things in the world a little too quickly. I was particularly struck by this when stopped by a young man at my local railway station, he was asking people to contribute to an organisation involved in alternative energy as a response to the widely held belief in man-made global warming. We talked extensively on the subject and a phrase he said several times struk me. He deplored the selfishness of people, of te me, me, me society. There we had it, one the one hand a young man trying to do his bit to save the planet and on the other one intent on increasing his use of electricity (and therefore carbon footprint) by blasting out his favourite sounds to the world.