Ordinary roads are shown in blue, while an autostrada is indicated in green - the exact opposite of the system in the UK.5. "Objects are invariably overpriced, and the traveller should insist upon a liberal discount before purchasing". It is many miles from the city and linked by an expensive bus. Fortunately, scheduled flights from the UK use Linate - much closer in, and a quick 50 pence bus ride from the centre.4. Don't be unwittingly diverted by the Italian road network's scheme.

Recent travellers report that booking clerks at some Italian stations short-change foreign travellers. Clerks correct errors when challenged, but not every traveller notices a "mistake".3. If you feel airports should be situated somewhere vaguely near the city they serve, then avoid Milan's Malpensa airport. Beware the law that requires you to pick up the receipt in any hotel, bar or restaurant and take it with you from the premises - you can be fined if you fail to do so.

However depressed they are feeling, there's such a yeasty, register-hopping vitality about the vernacular in which his characters talk, that a linguistic perkiness would poke up, you feel, even in the suicide note.It is not really the plot, which gets a bit mechanical by the third play, but the demotic richness and comic resilience of the dialogue which keeps you coming back for more.The Paisley expression for 'cool, good' is 'really gadgey'. Let's hope the trilogy makes the Young Vic really gadgey again.The individual parts of John Byrne's 'The Slab Boys Trilogy' are in rep at the Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London SE1 (071-928 6363)(Photograph omitted). The exhibition 'little pieces from big stars' is the latest fund-raising initiative from War Child, a charity aiming to provide not only food and medicines for the people of Sarajevo and Mostar, but morale-boosting supplies of musical instruments and recordings as well 'little pieces. .' brings together close on a hundred artworks by musicians, to be auctioned at the Royal College tomorrow at prices ranging from around pounds 50, for one of several pencil drawings by EMF's Ian Dench, to about pounds 4,000, for a series of 14 computerised collage prints by David Bowie. Some, like the gold-on- black symbols from his Faith album donated by George Michael ( pounds 800- pounds 1,000), or Bono's music box containing his Fly sunglasses, a few cigars and one of his old AmEx cards set in resin ( pounds 1,500- pounds 2,000), are of primarily historical import, while others, like Brian Eno's camouflage pieces ( pounds 500- pounds 700 each), have a quirky conceptual presence. There are a few obvious homages like David Sylvian's Intensive Care (For J B); judging by the wax and felt involved, it's for Joseph Beuys ( pounds 400- pounds 600). There's even (or perhaps, inevitably) a contribution, Wood One, from Paul McCartney.

An old hand at this charity lark ('It's good fun, keeps me off the streets), he admits he doesn't have much of an explanation for it other than that 'it's a nice- looking piece of wood with a few marks on it', and says, 'I chain-sawed it out of me woods It took a couple of hours. In here, they've put it up for, like, pounds 1000 or something - the aim is just to earn a bit of money and direct the focus of attention to this charity That's good enough for me I don't think a lot. I'm pretty thick really.'He seems almost apologetic - perhaps because this, his debut piece, is expected to fetch around 10 times the pounds 100- pounds 150 predicted for the small but perfectly formed Man Ray-influenced images by his wife Linda, a well-respected professional photographer. But then, as the former Ultravox vocalist John Foxx (a dab hand, on this evidence, at cross-hatching) explains, 'Attention makes value, as Brian says, so I imagine I'd choose work by the most famous stars.'Maybe he'll be bidding for a brass-rubbing of a Thomas Crapper manhole cover submitted by Billy Bragg. 'Well, it's a Warhol-esque thing, innit, elevating the everyday to art,' he blags briefly 'Nah, it's because I'm crap at drawing. It's almost like a tracing, innit? And also, I thought, I wonder if anyone else is going to do a Thomas Crapper manhole cover? At least I'llbe original.'Bragg sees himself as part of the don't-give-up-your-day- job section, a heading which could also cover artistes as disparate as Kirsty MacColl and Frank Black.