The Cathedral in Lausanne on a rainy night.

We had a late dinner at Cafe Romand – a very unassuming doorway from the outside, but cosy bustling and friendly inside. I had a yummy and unusual very local dish called Papet Vaud, which was a kind of leek and potato mash with a cabbage and salted pork sausage. Meringues and cream are the real thing for dessert. (I had a taste and they were much richer and tastier than what we know).

I just took this as we were leaving, when things had quietened down, just as a reminder of a great place and evening.

The lovely graceful Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, which houses photography exhibitions. In the other direction are gardens and the lake.

The exhibitions there at the moment were Internal Conflict, featuring photos from the conflicts in Biafra, Vietnam, Londonderry, and the Six Days War, by French photojournalist Gilles Caron; and a retrospective of music, film, and photography by Phill Niblock. I found them depressing.

Yesterday in Bern we just happened across Klotzli the most amazing knife and scissor shop. I love good knives and scissors and it was like heaven – all sorts of specialised ones, beautifully made. I got chatting to the owner (it’s a family business from 1846) and he showed me some of the more specialised scissors – those with lovely patterns that he said wouldn’t be available when his last ones had gone; those like old editors ones where the blade is much longer than the handle part; and leather scissors where the opposite happens so there is much more leverage for tougher cutting. I fell for a beautiful tiny pair of high precision scissors for paper cutting and a more general pair for my work.