Anyone who had a heart ….. wouldn’t want to miss this

One of the girls, N, who was with us had said, apparently, that she didn’t know who he was.

She meant, of course, she didn’t know his songs. But everyone knows a few of his songs, even if you don’t think you do.

And, so as this 83-year-old man shuffled on stage last night at the Milano Jazzin’ Festival, although I knew that I knew many of his songs I was blown away by both him, his playing, his songs (I knew all except a couple of them) and the atmosphere which was much like a party.

It was fun.

It’s difficult to pick just one song since there are so many of them. As it is, I shall pick two.

The first, although first sung by Dionne Warwick, was a hit in the UK by Cilla Black and so Cilla and this song always go together for me:

The second is a song that I don’t know that well but it’s sung by Elvis Costello – God Give Me Strength (although, obviously, not last night):

Burt sung some of the songs and he can be forgiven for not having the perfectly strong voice of a young man.

His contribution to the world of music is immeasurable and I am so happy that I’ve been to see him since you don’t know if he’ll ever be back in Milan. Although, if he is, I really want to be there :-)

At least I am in no danger of getting pregnant.

I have to make an apology.  To all ladies/women/girls who may read this.  It’s an apology in advance.  In advance of me writing the thing for which I am apologising.

So, I’m sorry.

It’s just that, this week, it’s been terrible.  Well, not all of it.  But it’s like I’m going through my period.  Even if, quite obviously, I don’t have them.  OK, so I’m not getting the stomach cramps (ache, as it used to be before it became a new thing to differentiate it from the less serious and rather ordinary ‘ache’) but I am so irritable and irrational.

But, only at work.

I’m fine when I’m out of work.  Or, rather, I’m fine when F is there, with me.

And now I know why this is.  And I tried to explain it last night when we went out with An, his friend who used to live in London.  We were talking about past relationships and I learnt a little more about the breakup between him and S.  He was saying that he has remained friends with all his ex-boyfriends.  I wish I could say the same.  And then we were talking about friends, in general.

And I tried to explain that it was him that was the key to this on-going friendship he has with so many people.  He was saying that it takes two – which it does but, a little like the guy C, who is my ‘official’ boss at work, sometimes, you’ve got to look at the common factor.

In his case, he is a useless, self-important, misogynist, bigotted, racist, pig of a man.  Nobody likes him and he has many arguments with almost everyone.  And, if arguments keep happening and there is one person who is almost invariably part of the argument, then you’ve got to say that this one person may be the reason that the arguments take place.

Unfortunately, even with me on Monday.  Which annoys me in itself but he just makes my blood boil.  As, it seems, he also does to others.

Whereas F has an opposite effect on people.

And he is the common factor in all of this – in all his friendships with ex-boyfriends.  So it’s him that is the key – not the others.

And, so, maybe that’s why, when he’s around, I feel a different person.

So I feel like I’m having my period – which is good because it means I can’t get pregnant.  See, there’s a bright side to everything :-)

p.s. I also did the booking of restaurants yesterday so that’s another thing off my mind.

Pizza with pig fat

Ruth wrote about it back in January of this year but I’d never seen it before.

However, as I now ‘weekend’ nearby (how jealous are you, Ruth?), it seems only logical.

Friday night we were late getting down.  Too late to go and eat with F’s parents and, so, F, having not eaten much lunch, suggest we drop the dogs off at the house and go for a pizza.

Seemed a good idea to me.  I don’t know any restaurants in the town and so learning of which ones to go to is important (for me).

We went to Bati Bati right in the centre of town.  It looked nice.  Rustically rough but clean looking.  We went into the back part of the restaurant.  Everything was white except the floor.  Unusually for the town, not everywhere was marble!

I then saw – pizza with lardo di Colonnata, aubergine (egg plant to you Americans) and asparagus.

Now, I do really like lardo and lardo di Colonnata is produced in a town (maybe village) nearby and is reputedly the best.  They serve it thinly sliced – but I mean really, really thin – almost see-through.  The combination of the lardo, the aubergine and the asparagus was divine and, surprisingly, very light!  I loved it.

F has now promised to take me up to Colonnata where we can get some of the real thing.  I resisted suggesting that we should do that first thing in the morning.

The only problem will be to slice it thinly enough.

But there is a bakery that bakes bread in a wood oven (so the sign says) near to the house and the idea of a thin slice of lardo di Colonnata on a piece of warm bread is making my mouth water already!

I guess it’s official now.

I guess I have reached the ‘I am an old codger’ stage of my life.

It’s not really my age, as such, it’s my attitude.

Saturday night was the ‘Notte Bianca’.  This is an Italian thing.  Once a year, roads are closed to traffic and the shops and bars stay open until late.  By late, I mean 2 or 3 or later.

There are often ‘discos in the street’, stalls and street traders selling tourist-type crap.  There are food and drink stalls.  And people wander about.

I suppose the reason it can be done here is the weather.  It’s warm and it lends itself to staying up till the early hours of the morning.

F apologised a number of times and checked I wasn’t bored.  St, an old friend of his, has been having problems with her 30+-year-old marriage.  Or rather her husband has been having problems, if you see what I mean.  She has lived in the town all her life and feels she cannot confide in anyone who lives there – so F was an obvious choice.  It seems a lot of people are having problems right now.

Anyway, obviously they were talking in Italian.  I suppose I could have tried to follow the conversation but it seemed rude to do so, me not being an old friend.  So, I didn’t.

We went to a bar and found a seat (which was lucky).  And they talked whilst I looked around.  And I catch myself wondering why the young people (especially the girls) think that wearing a pair of shorts or skirt that barely covers your bum when you have tree trunks for legs, think that it can possibly be attractive?

I suppose it is the same as when I was a teenager and I suppose the older generation thought much the same about us as I think about the youngsters of today.

But, that’s not entirely fair.  There are women of F’s age wearing the same sort of thing although it’s noticeable that the women of that age generally wear something that suits their figure.  Not always, of course, but mostly.

We left about midnight as F didn’t like a friend of R (his best friend who had joined us with his entourage later) who announced to everyone, and in front of her 10-year-old daughter, how she really needed a fuck tonight.  I only learnt later that was why we had left as I hadn’t understood.

Possibly it’s as well that I don’t understand sometimes but F and I do agree on stuff like that.  As we used to say in the UK – it’s not big and it’s not clever.

However, I did enjoy the evening.  Watching the people.  And St seems very nice.  Bless her, she’s still in love with her husband after almost 40 years of knowing him.  Shame he’s such a barsteward really.

Teachers murder girl!

As one parent quite rightly said on Twitter, apparently:

‘she should have been safe at school, she was just sat on a bench talking with friends….it could have been my daughter.’

After all, on school days, the parents have no responsibility for their children.

And, in addition, there is no such thing any more as ‘an accident’ but, rather, there is always some person to blame.

I suppose that if it had been a Saturday or a Sunday the headline could have read something like:

Park keepers guilty of manslaughter

or

Council killing children!

The actual headline of this article didn’t really say that teachers had murdered the girl but only implied it.

Girl, 13, crushed to death by a branch as she sat on a park bench after teachers went out on strike

But, then, this is the Daily Hate Mail so, I suppose, what can you expect!

 

Just in case ………..

Well, my blog does seem to be ‘up’ more often than it’s ‘down’ which is a great improvement, I’m sure you’ll agree.

However, slightly worrying is that the hosting company’s forum/website has been down since yesterday afternoon! Generally, this is NOT a good sign. So, I am backing-up at least once per day in the hope that, if I DO have to move it all again, I won’t be caught with my pants down.

We shall see. But, just in case it completely disappears for a day or two, you will, at least, know why.

In the meantime, the weather is wonderful. T-shirts and sandals all the time – even walking the dogs at half past midnight!

Most people, of course, complain it’s too hot and it’s so difficult to explain that, in the past, with my feet that feel the slightest cold (and always have although I’m certain the smoking doesn’t help it), being able to walk in sandals at gone midnight is truly fantastic …… for me.

The dogs are finding it a bit warm, however. Still, it breaks tonight/tomorrow, getting back to a manageable 25° or so (that’s degrees C for my American visitors).

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Inexplicable procrastination

It is, truly, incomprehensible.

On some things – I procrastinate – for no reason. Or, no ‘apparent’ reason.

On the other hand, some things that I could leave for a day or more, I do immediately.

So, all my editing work is done. Completed. Sent back to the authors.

Lessons are prepared.

Booking of a couple of restaurants – not done. The alarm goes off on my mobile phone calendar. I reset the alarm ‘for later’. Even as I do it, I wonder why. The call will take about 2 minutes. And, yet, I put it off again. I really don’t know why.

Well, writing this post has made me get the telephone numbers, at least. I suppose that’s something. It’s like ‘I’m getting there’ but oh, sooooo slowly.

The first is in a couple of weeks. Someone who had been my best friend for quite a number of years, is coming to Milan. With his wife. It could be nice or ‘strained’. I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I want F to be with us or not. In some way I do but in another way, I’m really not that bothered in ‘showing him off’.

It reminds me of a time, many, many years ago. A really good friend and I were always competing with each other. You know the sort of thing. “We’ve just moved to a new house”; “I’ve just got a new car”; “I’ve just been promoted”.

Except, for some strange reason I decided to ‘opt out’ of this competing game. I decided not to tell him that I had got a new car. When he and his wife arrived to stay for a weekend soon after, they saw the new car in the driveway. I got some sort of sadistic satisfaction from seeing his jaw drop. In a way, I was still competing. Just in a different way. As if, by NOT bragging about it, I was actually bragging more! If you see what I mean.

And so it is with this ex-best friend. If F doesn’t want to go, of course, then I’m certainly not going to push. I don’t know how awkward it will be. And, as he’s not English, it will be all the more difficult to follow, for him.

The next is a booking I must make for D&S. They are coming over for their first wedding anniversary. I have a restaurant I want to book for them which is ‘magic’ in terms of place and food (if not service). I think it is perfect for their first anniversary. We shan’t be with them that day as they want to spend it together – which is how it should be, of course. But I do want their evening meal to be a bit special.

And, yet, I still haven’t booked these restaurants. And I can’t possibly tell you why.

It’s completely inexplicable.

Life is difficult

I’m guessing (although I am certain, really) that each of us have no idea how our current crisis affects those around us.

When I was 30 and went through my mid-life crisis (although, secretly, I’m hoping that ‘mid-life’ is not literal), I think it must have been hell for those around me.

Hell and very, very boring.

Worse still if you aren’t that close to someone. Worse still if they are just an office colleague that you aren’t close to but that you work with. Much, much worse if, as it seems, both partners have just reached 50 and are both having that mid-life crisis at the same time!

For that’s the way it seems.

“Can you just check on your websites if you can find the telephone number for this person?”, she asks.

I don’t know who it is but I’m certain it’s a friend of her husband. She goes on Facebook – but not as herself. She doesn’t want to be on Facebook. But she looks all the same.

“See if you can find pictures of these people?”. She wants to see what they look like. Of course, she’s clutching at straws.

“You know”, I said, yesterday, “you should be careful what you look for because you don’t know what you may find”. I have a wisdom built up from more than one occasion. Now I understand why the old people have so much of the damned stuff. I am, after all, old and, therefore, experienced and, therefore, have wisdom. Damn!

And, yet it won’t stop her. She is determined. She explained that she found the full details (phone number, address, etc.) by using directory enquiries. Finding one bit of information at a time. So as not to be considered suspicious.

She says she knows what I mean (about being careful because of what you might find).

Some mornings/days, she is almost in tears. When it’s like that she can’t talk to me. I feel sorry for her. I also don’t really want to know. We’re not really close, after all.

Her husband IS on Facebook. She’s told me some things about him. And things about some of his friends. It’s a marriage with problems. The problem is that he’s an Italian man (enough said) and the problem is also that she’s 50 ……. and trying hard not to be.

Age is a pain in the arse, really. For women it means you cannot look your age and you have a fixed time to have children. For men there’s the ‘not being able to get anyone else’. Or, rather, I should just miss the ‘n’ off ‘men’. Now I know different.

But I know that, in spite of my outstanding wisdom on this point (not that I have ever taken my own advice), she will continue until she finds out everything. Or, rather, until she finds some indiscretion. And then, depending on the parties will to fight for something or not, the end or a re-start.

And, even if she’s not close to me, it’s a shame.

And the amount of effort this all takes! I know it does, of course. It takes a lot of effort to find information that is, whilst not exactly secret, difficult to find. And then, to find it in such a way as to make the finding of it secret.

Until you spill the beans. The point at which you show your cards. And then? Well, then depends, of course. Depends on the relationship and, more importantly on the two people involved. It depends upon both of them wanting to ‘make it right’. As soon as one of them doesn’t, then you’re just sliding to the end.

And, however bad things are, there are times when you have doubts. When it seems that what you (think you) have is better than the horror of what you don’t yet know. The horror of being single.

But I am wise now. It is a horror (for some people and, certainly, for me) but one that doesn’t need to last. If you don’t want it to. There is a future and it’s yours to shape.

In the meantime, this tragedy (for that is what it is) of the secret searching and the secret finding and the trying to be more powerful than the other (because knowledge is power, isn’t it?) and the playing of what you think are aces, etc., etc. is tiring. Both for them and for us – the us that have to listen and watch.

Life is bloody difficult, isn’t it?

Pleasantly warm

I stand out on the balcony.

I think to myself that it’s ‘nicely warm’. And then I think that most Italians are complaining about it being too hot. Last night, on my journey home, at the last traffic lights before I park, there is a chemists that has a sign showing the current temperature. It said 31°. It was nearly 7 p.m. I like this. A lot.

Today will be much the same. I guess it’s getting to about 33° or 34° during the day.

Everyone seems to be looking forward to Thursday or Friday when the weather will break.

Our mind plays tricks on us. I seem to remember that, when we first came here, the whole of June and July hovvered around the 30° mark. But this weekend (the beginning of July) it forecasts the low 20s. I secretly hope that the forecast is wrong. Or not so secretly if someone should ask me.

But, is it right that only 6 years ago, the summers were hotter? Or is it just wishful thinking (wishful memories?)?

Obviously, it’s nicer if you’re sat at a bar with a cooling beer or on the beach with the cooling sea to go in to – but we can’t have everything in life. Or, maybe I could if I moved further south ;-)

The last few days

We did bitch about Italians quite a bit. It makes me feel a bit guilty but it was really all about shared experiences and, unfortunately, most of them would be about Italy and Italians.

It was beautiful weather. We arrived late – very late – after I had been to Bologna to pick her up.

Saturday was walking the dogs, having a coffee at the cafe in the centre of the town and then the beach.

Saturday night was dinner at La Brace (see restaurants on the right). This was fabulous and some spectacular wine except for one thing – we had Fiorentina (a steak from Tuscany) but, unfortunately, it was overcooked.

However, very nice.

Sunday, I had planned to take her to Le Cave (where they extract the marble) but I woke up really late and so, after the dog walk, it was just the beach again.

We left later than I wanted but, still, it only took 3 hours to get back – the traffic queues being at the start instead of the end.

It was nice but I miss F when I’m there. Still, from now on, he should be with me :-)