In the parts of my youth that were not so misspent, I learnt some languages. French mainly, a bit of Spanish, Latin to a fairly high standard and some ancient Greek. Not being a science boffin most of my education was centred around literature and languages and at one stage, surprisingly, I was considered to have an "aptitude" for languages. Sadly, and not so surprisingly I also had a considerable aptitude for winding up my French teacher and the standards I attained were not that impressive.

An essential ingredient of any holiday is to sun yourself in the pool and that is exactly what I did today; I went swimming, Icelandic style. Since they have to find something to do with all that geothermally heated water, Reykjavik has an abundance of swimming pools.

The Icelandic Minister for Industry is obviously a little peeved that the US specifically left them out of the recent currency swap agreement with Norway, Sweden & Denmark. That's putting it mildly. Apparently he said "the US gave us the finger."

As the credit crunch becomes increasingly bizarre, not to mention scary, the Iceland government has made the extraordinary announcement that Russia is to come to their financial aid, offering to loan loan four billion euros ($5.4 billion). This of course begs the question why? Why would the Russians agree to a loan that if the harbingers of doom are to be believed Iceland has no chance of paying back?

As the credit crunch becomes increasingly bizarre, not to mention scary, the Iceland government has made the extraordinary announcement that Russia is to come to their financial aid, offering to loan loan four billion euros ($5.4 billion). This of course begs the question why? Why would the Russians agree to a loan that if the harbingers of doom are to be believed Iceland has no chance of paying back?