The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

This weekend I am in Switzerland for a motor tour organised by my firm. Various of my partners and our clients met at Interlaken to spend a couple of days driving around beautiful scenery in a variety of exotic and/or delightful cars. Today we lunched at Meiringen, which Sherlock Holmes fans will recognise at the town nearest the Reichenbach Falls, where the great detective, in "The Final Problem" fought his last battle with Professor Moriarty. The town appreciates the connection, and sports not only a Baker Street and a Conan Doyle Place, but a
rather splendid statue of the great man himself. My family and I are all Sherlockians and I shall be the envy of Miss Paine the younger in particular.

The high passes were closed by snow so sadly our planned route had to be varied both yesterday and today. This afternoon it cleared up however and some of us took a detour to drive up to the top of the Grimsel Pass, where I took this snowy photo of Vittoria

One of our number (driving a beautiful Porsche which is normally only used on race tracks) was pulled over by the Swiss police after a local had telephoned to report a group of cars driving "at high speed." We were touring not rallying and were all fully respecting local laws, so one can only attribute this malicious report to envy – or a Calvinistic antipathy to fun. I have in mind an elderly local driver and his wife as suspects. I saw a certain puritan glint in their eyes as I overtook their boremobile.

The police asked about our group (our cars were sporting numbers and tour badges and they clearly suspected an unauthorised road rally). Being lawyers, we had researched the matter and were acting perfectly properly. The police seemed to accept this and took no action, but – oddly – they photographed the "road book" prepared for our tour (complete with the quiz questions which comprised the only competitive element). Have police forces all over the world taken to photography of the innocent as a means of intimidation? If police are not gathering evidence, why would they wish to photograph private property? It is perhaps as well that I was not the one pulled over, as I could not have resisted asking that question.