Category Archives: Italy

Overall thoughts on Italy and things we do

Primark IS coming to Milan

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I’ve seen it mentioned several times but it seems it’s true.

Primark will be coming to Milan (and Rome and Venice) within the next 12 months.

It will be interesting to see how they fare here but, given the number of people looking for Primark in Milan – evidenced by the number of hits I get on this blog where, until this post, I’ve explained (several times) that Primark doesn’t exist here, it will be popular.

The full story (or a story of Primark stores abroad) is shown here.

It had always seemed strange that they weren’t here but they explain that Italy would be “difficult”, which I can imagine is true.

But, YAY!

Sayings and meanings

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He suddenly got, on Saturday, the dreaded bollicine (small water blisters) all over his back.

Before Saturday he had been OK. Looking for the reasons they could have come, I remembered that he had changed sun tan lotion that morning. I suggest it but he isn’t sure.

So, Sunday was me going to the beach whilst he was going to stay with the dogs in the house. He’s been told by the chemist, whilst getting some lotion and some pills, to stay out of the sun for 5 days – the rest of his holiday, more or less.

He started cleaning the house, starting with the kitchen. This means getting everything out of the cupboards, washing everything, cleaning the cupboards and putting everything back.

He was about half way through when I came back from the beach shortly before 4.

We were talking. I was sorry for him that he wouldn’t be able to go to the beach. He said that, anyway, it wasn’t as good without me.

That’s about as far as it gets towards “I love you.” But, for sure, that’s what it means. :-)

Books, beach and stuff

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Well, my last book, finished just this evening (Saturday) was Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir. It’s taken me about 5 Days, so more than Dickens’ Bleak House!

It’s not that it wasn’t Interesting, it was just a bit overfull with facts rather than story. Hilary Mantel, you have a lot to answer for! ;-). Weir made a good case for her being quite powerful, behind the scenes and for her and Henry VII having a loving marriage but, still too Many facts (how much money she gave and to whom, bills paid and for what – essential, I know, for trying to determine her actual life but not easy to read.)

So now on to Ali Smith’s How To Be Both, winner of loads of prizes – which is why I have it – notably, the Bailey’s Woman’s Prize.

I am alone at the beach full of people. F got loads of the small blisters yesterday And the chemist said to avoid the sun, so he’s at the house with the dogs. Later, we go back to Milan without him. He has another week here and I have another week of 35 degrees and getting up at 5.20 every day. I am already exhausted by the very thought of it!

But I’ll survive. I lay in the sun for a bit but was sweating like Niagera (spelling?) Falls so, after about 10 minutes, I was back In the shade of the umbrella.

I miss F but couldn’t stay at the house as he was going to “clean a bit”!

So, I sit typing this and, after I post this, back to my book.

Hope you have a lovely Sunday.

Hang on in there!

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Hang on in there!

I am exhausted, to be honest. The holiday, in a little more than 4 weeks, can’t come soon enough. It seems I never stop.

Take last night. I rush home from work, park the car, walk to the supermarket, momentarily forgetting that it’s about 34°C and therefore walking down the street with full sun on my back rather than a slightly longer way, mostly in the shade. I buy the minimum of stuff and walk back home down the shady streets.

Arriving home, as soon as I step through the door, having stopped “doing something”, I do my Niagara Falls impression. I put away the milk and stuff, change out of my suit (I had customers at work), put on shorts and a T-shirt. Within a second my T-shirt is soaked but there’s not really much I can do. I need to take the dogs out as I need to be back by 7.

I take them out. We do a slightly shorter walk in the heat. It’s too hot for them. I get home and Niagara starts again. Half an hour later, I change my T-shirt as the Falls have stopped (thank God) but the T-shirt is completely soaked. I could manage it better if I didn’t have to rush – but I have no choice but to rush.

After my appointment, I get to read the document that someone has sent me to look at. It seems serious. I text to say that we need to talk. She asks if now is possible and I agree (I shall be busy tomorrow and I want to pack for the weekend) so we meet at Bar Blanco, the nearest bar to my house. I tell her how bad it could be but that I’ve managed to find someone who may be able to help. It’s going to cost her anyway. She is grateful, for sure, but we end up having a drink which means I’m late taking the dogs out and so late to bed.

With less that 5 hours sleep, I feel like shit. But, I feel I have to help her and cannot just walk away.

But, it costs. The cost being my tiredness.

I don’t really need the appointment tonight but it has to be. Then pack. Then the dogs. Then bed – early, I really hope. I don’t want to drive all the way down there and then spend the whole of the weekend asleep! Not that I CAN sleep on the beach, but “sleepy mode”, if I’m tired, can mean a subdued and exhausting weekend.

But, F is being “made” to take 2 weeks holiday. That’s fair enough, since for over a month he has been home for about 4 days in total. He, too, is exhausted. He is with his mother for this time, with us going down for this weekend and next.

But it’s hard for me too. I have to do everything and there’s no time and the heat means I can’t take my time – although I much prefer this heat to the cold and, if I could just take things more slowly, I’d be fine!

But, only just over a week to go before he’s back home and we can share the dog walking. And just over 4 weeks an I shall be with Best Mate AND on holiday.

Hang on in there, I tell myself.

A night at Blue Note and the thoughts in my head; downloading a video from Facebook

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I can’t help but stare at him.

He’s young, probably about 25. He has that “floppy” hair that seems in favour, certainly with the gay people, here, in Milan, and he has a “kind of” beard. He plays the violin.

I stare at him because of the thoughts in my head. They race through, from one thing to another.

How lives are different; when I was his age; I could have been in this world; I’m envious that I’m not in this world; how fascinating to be creative; I wonder how much he practices; assuming he’s gay, I wonder what his boyfriend’s like; or maybe he has no time for that; always practising; up late every night performing; no money; no, I couldn’t have done that – no willpower to keep practising; how much do the whole band practise; he doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the band, they are much older, like “this is where not-famous musicians go to die”; but he’s too young for that – he has still to “make it”; so why is he here on stage with the oldies (none of them will be under 40); I wonder what his life’s really like; does he really have another job and this is only a hobby he wishes were something more; I wish I could do something creative; but I’m good with people; but that’s not really creative, is it; I wonder if I could do something creative with that skill; I would like to be on stage again; how did I get here – listening to this, in a foreign land, in a foreign tongue; am I lucky and will it always feel strange?

And so on, and so on.

That’s one thing.

There’s another.

We are at the concert of a “friend”. I mean, she’s not really a close friend but a friend of one of F’s colleagues, I. And she is a florist. And she sings. Good enough to have the stage at Blue Note in Milan – the kind of jazz/blues venue. And she was a student of mine once, for about 6 lessons.

We, in the audience, are a group of 5. There’s I, another girl, S, who is a very close friend and also works in one of the shops, and E who I’ve never met before. But they all know R, the singer. We don’t have a great place to see, being at the side of the stage but R has to walk past us to the stage and gives F her mobile asking him to take some pictures.

So, during the whole thing, F, E, S and I are taking videos and photos with her phone and theirs and then checking the photos and checking with each other for the best photos.

About the second song into the set, I am struck by the fact that, if I look around the place, everyone is watching R sing – except all the people in our group, who are, instead, checking their phones. OK, so R asked them for some photos but, really, even if all these people are friends of R, how come our world is now only really seen through the small screen of a telephone?

I find it a shame, really. People, as last night, are so busy with the technology, they forget to enjoy the experience.

I ate almost the whole plate of chips. And had two beers. And, after the concert, we went for an Indian. And, after a while, R and the entourage came too. But without the guy I mentioned at the beginning.

Of course.

Anyway, I’ve found out how to download a video from Facebook – that is, 1. Open the video in a new tab; 2. Change the part of the url from “www” to “m” and press enter; 3. As the video is playing, right click and “Save target as …..” which will save a copy to your hard disk.

Unfortunately, it seems the video doesn’t work (on this page – although I can play it on my desktop).  Damn the problem with browsers not supporting certain formats, etc.  Still working on it though.

In the meantime ……

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It’s not that I haven’t been writing.

It’s just that I haven’t been able to finish anything.

I don’t know – it’s a strange time. F has been away for almost a month now. I was joking with people the other day that I didn’t know who he was. Of course, the side-effect of this is that I have been incredibly busy, since I have to do everything at home. I don’t mind that, of course, but it all takes time.

There’s also another thing. Since I moved the blog and went through all the posts to delete some and ensure links still worked, I’ve become a bit more aware of the better writing and the boring stuff (this would go under the heading of “boring stuff”) and there’s a part of me that doesn’t finish the posts simply because I realise it’s not good writing or it falls into the category of “boring stuff”.

Of course, I should get over this. I can always delete posts later if they are really boring – like I did when I tidied things up after the move.

Also, because I’ve been so busy, there is also much less angst than usual and, as you will know, angst results in better writing. So, too busy = less angst = worse writing. A no win situation.

There have been many things that I’ve wanted to comment about, from the news, from life – but nothing really “strong”, nothing really important.

I am well. The dogs are well. F is stressed and tired but well. Summer is coming (it’s reasonably warm here if a bit temporal.)

So, that’s another thing – nothing is really happening.

Still, there ARE posts I want to finish so, who knows, maybe I will finish them soon.

In the meantime, apart from this post, I’ve been posting songs 8as you may have noticed) as a temporary stop-gap. Sorry.

Running out of books …….. again!

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Running out of books again

Well, we’ve started the summer and, by that I mean we went down to Carrara for the weekend.

I had an extra 2 days (the Tuesday being a national holiday here and so the Monday being what they call a bridge day – but it’s mandatory and taken out of your holiday allowance) whilst F, bless him, had to leave on Sunday because he was flying to Greece on the Monday (for work).

I didn’t want to take a huge suitcase so took three books with me. They were: Reasons To Stay Alive (I had to finish that one off), The Humans (would be a just-in-case reread – it being one of my favourite books last year) – both by Matt Haig and Because She Loves Me by Mark Edwards which I “won” and was, therefore, free.

Reasons To stay Alive was a good book. I was hoping it would help me with BM but I’m not sure it will really. Of course, I finished that within an hour or so. So, then on to Because She Loves Me. I did really enjoy this book. I don’t know that it’s my “usual” read these days being a cross between romantic fiction and thriller but I enjoyed reading it and I didn’t guess “whodunit” which was good.

But, unfortunately, I finished that within two days and so I was on to the re-read of The Humans. This remains a great book but it was a different read this time around as, in fact, it was his thoughts on Depression and during his Depression wrapped up in a type of Science Fiction (although I really think that’s the wrong genre for it – I think it’s more of a book on what it is to be a human being – even on the first read), as explained in Reasons To Stay Alive.

I tried to slow down my reading but it didn’t really work and so, in the end I had to start re-reading Reasons To Stay Alive!

Needless to say that last night I gathered together all my books to be read. I don’t want to be in that position again! And I find, to my surprise, that I have quite a lot of books to be read, so that is great.

This weekend, we go down again and, this time, a number of those books will be coming with me!

p.s. The weather was quite nice and mostly sunny but the wind was quite cold. The temperatures were about mid-20s°C

Life threads – so frail?

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This was a draft post from March of this year. I don’t know why it wasn’t posted and, maybe I meant to say more. But I think it stands anyway. So, here it is.

As my regular readers know, a lot of the stuff I post is stuff in my head which bears no resemblance to what I actually do or say nor to what people who don’t read this blog think that I’m thinking. Nor, sometimes, to reality.

For the stuff in my head is intangible and floats and changes depending on the crap that I may be thinking about at the time.

And so, this morning, I wake up with that feeling of dread. Again.

There’s no reason for it. Or, rather, there are reasons but they aren’t real … yet and, quite possibly will never be real. They are, of course, my “nightmares” of the waking hours – as opposed to my nightmares when I am asleep, of which I’ve had plenty just over the last few days. Not the same. All different.

So, this feeling of dread. It’s as if something bad is just about to happen. Like I’m on a knife-edge of a reality where everything starts to go horribly wrong. And, yet, nothing has gone wrong so far.

But the feeling persists. Maybe it’s the recent incidents involving V? After all, the fall from who he was to what he is now (as far as I can tell) spans less than 6 years. Can a normal, ordinary life have so short a thread that is can become unwound in such a short time? Well, yes, of course. And I’ve known that for such a long time too. I remember teaching a guy on a programme called Restart – a government funded programme to get unemployed people into work.

This guy told me how he’s had a good job, wife kids, house, etc. And within a couple of years lost it all simply by being made redundant. He’s been a roadsweeper at one point and told me of having people spit at him. He was a decent guy who wanted to work but then, all those years ago, by the time you were over 50 you were considered “past it” (I was about 25 at the time and I was teaching people how to rewrite their CV, write letters, etc.)

And, of course, from that point it’s not far to be one of those people without a home, no prospect of any type of job and sleeping on the street.

Identity. Crisis?

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Another draft post. Certainly not finished but I as can’t remember what I was trying to say, I’ll just leave it as it is.

From about November 2014.

Identity is quite a strange thing, isn’t it?

And by that, I mean to say, the way that you identify yourself and the way that you project that identity is strange. Of course, it’s “flexible”, as it depends on the situation you’re in or the way that you feel.

If you were asked to list the things by which you identify yourself and in the order which typically classifies that identity, how would you do? I mean, starting at the beginning, what is the one thing that absolutely, critically, makes you “you”?

You might say, “Engineer” or “Retired” or “Teacher” or something like that. But, in reality, this does not make you “you” since there are many other people who could claim the same thing and, in any case, surely what you “do” is not really that significant.

You might wonder what the hell got me to thinking about this? Well, it was yesterday or the day before, when I was thinking that, actually, I don’t feel very much like a “gay” person and I didn’t want to “be” one. Please don’t misinterpret that. It wasn’t that I suddenly wanted to be “straight”, just that I didn’t want to be pigeon-holed into that category. I didn’t want to feel like I had to “dress up” to that image.

And that got me to thinking that, in fact, in general, I don’t follow that line. Being gay is actually not really me at all. Being gay is just a single aspect of me that means I view men as “sexual” partners rather than women (and, I should add – not all men – in fact, few men – just in case you got the wrong idea!). It doesn’t really explain/determine many other aspects of me.

For example, I like the colour blue. It’s my favourite colour. Many of my clothes have some blue involved. I choose many “blue” things over other things that are not blue. Yet we don’t try to define people by what colour is their favourite colour. And, why not? Because it makes not a jot of difference to us …………….