When people from outside Europe hear an English accent they tend to assume you're from London and respond with a blank expression when you correct them. Cities including Birmingham are actively working to raise their profile and attract more visitors and good results have undoubtedly been achieved. But how can the UK unite to make sure the message is being heard internationally, particularly outside Europe, that there's life in the UK outside the M25?

We made a rough plan before we left of where we'd like to stay and driving times but the only real requirement was reaching LA in time for our friends to catch their flight home. Along the way we've seen some beautiful coastline and visited some lovely places, but I don't think we were quite prepared for how much time we'd have to spend in the car.

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Fundraising charities broadly receive their income from one of four sources: public sector support, trusts & foundations, companies, and individuals. Although Arts Council England has set up a specific fund to help arts companies through the recession, some other funders - local authorities, regional development agencies, etc. - have found themselves with dramatically-reduced resources and so have been forced to cut services and sector's support of charities has been cut back (or in many cases simply removed) and trusts and foundations have found their endowments somewhat shrunken in the face of Icelandic banking disasters and world economic turmoil. Fundraisers are now hoping that individuals will feel compelled to support projects close to their hearts - but wait, aren't these the very same individuals who are losing, or worried about losing, their jobs right now? That's right, it's the humble taxpayer who foots the bill. However, we are known as a supportive and generous nation when it comes to charity; as the phrase goes, charity begins at home and recent history seems to bear this out.

Reporting duties took me to the National Exhibition Centre for the grand opening of the National Caravan, Boat and Outdoors show. My (almost) full take of the event is featured in the Birmingham Post tomorrow (Feb 20) but I held back this shocking image for fear of scaring the children.

During my time in China I have ingested some questionable things, jelly fish, grasshopper and fish face, being amongst a few of the local delicacies, which I am often urged to share details of when attending parties here in the UK. But now, perhaps, the English can take away first prize for the most bizarrely flavoured crisps, replacing the Cucumber flavour crisps which have become a personal favourite of mine in Beijing.

Has anybody ever heard of a more bizarre flavour than Squirrel?

When you've been living in china long enough, you begin to learn that you must find your excitement elsewhere. And when you have become truely easternised (myself not yet being qualified, having only been in china 2 years), you'll have been counting down the days to the Chinese new years celebrations, or what is also known as Spring festival.

Like our Christmas, Chinese New Year is the biggest event on the calendar in china, and the only time in the year that every person gets enough time to travel to their home towns and relax with their families. Not wanting to feel completely abandoned and alone in Beijing, I decided to do the exact same thing and travel home to visit my family and friends in good ol' Blighty.

Feelings of excitement mixed with nerves engulfed me as I arrived at Heathrow, and I felt slightly intimidated by the seemingly tall and burly built people at the airport. Strangest thing is, though, as soon as I arrived home I felt like I hadn't even been away. My mother had redecorated and my younger brothers had grown, but there were no radical changes, and nothing knew to adapt to, just an overwhelming feeling of safety and comfort.

Yet worryingly, I can't help but feel that I have perhaps 'outgrown' my home...I guess this is all part of growing up, becoming independent and finding a new and different sort of home in a new and different sort of country.

Mentioning or not mentioning the war seems to hold a great power over the English, and not just those you'd think of as hooligans -- it's summed up beautifully by this letter from Viz (cribbed in this instance from this fine column by Patrick West on Spiked):

'Could I take this opportunity to remind the UKTV History channel that a lot of history happened before 1939, and a substantial amount of it has also happened since 1945. Not only that, some of it didn't happen in Germany.' A Thackray, Letter to Viz comic, September 2008

But despite the Great Escape and Dambusters film tunes being a feature of both bars before the game and the England Supporters Band's badly-played repertoire, I didn't see any trouble. I also spent an evening in the company of hundreds of German football fans, which was not only trouble-free, but friendly and fun.

Check out this recent story, courtesy of the Shanghai Evening Post:

Disgruntled Son Hides In Sewer From Family

A man in Shanghai sat tight in a filthy sewer for more than an hour to hide from family members.
Ye, a Shanghai local in his early 30s, had quarreled with his kin and decided to hide from them in the cesspit.
After police found him hiding in a sewer with a diameter less than 1m, they feared he would suffocate amid the dirty water and slime.
Too big to follow him and wholly reluctant to do so anyway, they kept beckoning Ye to come out of his own accord.
They eventually coaxed him out.

There's just two things I yearn to know about this story. 1. What did the family quarrel about that made him take such drastic measures? 2. Ok, so in China there aren't really any proper pubs, but how about visiting a bar, or just taking a walk? I mean, was there really no other alternative than to sit in the sewer??!

People are fascinating.

Expatriate male friends of mine have excitedly engaged us with the unnecessary details of the kinds of mischief they have gotten into at the elusive karaoke houses in Beijing, in which men are presented with their choice of naked Chinese girls to fulfill their every whim. All comes at a price, of course, and if you're not happy with the price, you negotiate. How comforting to know that you can not only haggle over the price of your new shoes, but also your next lay.

Expat men can indulge themselves until they are so exhausted that they have to go home and back to 'reality'. As you can imagine, the lives of the expat women is not nearly as much 'fun'. Expat women marginally sit back, sip their vodka and tonics, and shake their heads as they watch another expat man's ego rocket through the roof when a beautiful Chinese girl gives him a second glance in a nightclub. But what does he care what the expat women think? This isn't the real world; this may as well be Never-never land. Well, guys, Captain Hook lived in Never-never land too and look what kind of reputation he got for himself!

I like flying, especially now with airports so full to capacity that you get to walk out to the plane over the tarmac and feel like The Beatles or the Pope. I also really enjoyed overhearing "It looks just like Google maps" from someone looking out of the window as we took off. No doubt Google and the airline have a plan for overlaying adverts for local businesses.

I also like Italy although, at the risk of coming over all Clarkson, I've never understood the European obsession with Snoopy. The dullest character in a fairly dull comic strip, and yet the first bit of graffiti we see beside the train track is the small white hound. He's also on many a sweatshirt to be sold around tourist attractions, with his twin pillar of American marketed cartooniness Bart Simpson (the dullest character in what I'll admit is/was a brilliant show). What Bart and Snoopy are doing here is called 'Pisa Posing' or 'Pushing the Tower' - that is standing in between your mate with a camera and the tower and trying to line yourself up so it looks like you're interacting with the round leany thing.

The odd person pretends to hold it in their hand, some hug, but most either hold it up or push it over (an interesting psychological distinction, anyone want to fund a long research paper into it?). Of course, they're only trying to look as if they're doing it from the angle of their mate taking the photo. Which means the area is filled with people doing crap tai-chi. It looks like the biggest mine convention in Italy. It looks brilliant. I spent a good couple of hours taking pictures of them from the 'wrong' angle, and chuckling manically to myself. There's a Flickr group dedicated to it, as there is these days for everything.

For most of the locals, and expats especially, we were more than happy to cart off the billion squillion tourists to the airport and back to their own country, so that we can have our bars, malls and taxis back to our self-centered selves. But now they've gone the city feels kind of lost. Despite the fact that the Paralympics has only just begun, the excitement and buzz has disappeared, and a lot of the people are asking themselves, "so what's next?"

Expats are leaving, having run out of excuses to stay in China, and new expats are finding it harder and harder to get jobs in China thanks to a new employment law limiting job offers to foreigners who are already living, and have been living in china, for at least two years. It's also becoming a requirement for those foreigners to be fluent in mandarin. After all, who needs a foreigner to do the job when each year more and more Chinese are returning from abroad with top qualifications, able to speak both Mandarin and English and willing to accept a lower salary than your average foreigner?

Gone are the carefree times for the expats, and things are becoming serious. The expats that remain, myself included, are upping their mandarin classes, and doing grown-up things, like marrying their chinese boyfriends and girlfriends. Calm down, Dad, i'm not married yet!