Am currently joining in the general race to get up to date before the holidays, whose precise dates I shan’t be announcing here lest they be noted by some evildoer with a penchant for burgling old computer equipment, scraps of Roman pottery and piles of proof revisions. Oh, and all those photos of bizarre scrapings in mud that meant something at the time.

This year’s expedition, which is being made for family reasons,  involves boldly going out of our comfort zone – beyond the borders of the Roman Empire and to lands whose languages we cannot even read, let alone speak. Looking at the phrasebooks has illuminated further vast and unsuspected wastelands of my own ignorance. If we find anything interesting to fill them with, more will appear here later.