Work, work, work!

Well, my contract ends in two and a half days.  This means that, technically, I am out of work and have no money coming in.  I have to admit that these last two months have been more difficult, especially the last three weeks.  I know what it is.  Part of it is the fact that January and February have got to be the worst months in the calendar, so depressing and grey.  The other factor is work.

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It’s Milan Fashion Week and now I’ve actually been!

To be honest, Milan may be one of the fashion capitals of the world but, in the main, most people here continue to go about their business as if it was just a normal city.  Fashion Week (there are four) just means a lot more traffic, full restaurants and waif-thin models on street corners with maps looking for the place of their next job.  So it was, to be honest, for me too.  But, finally, I saw something of what it is about.

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Driving in Italy – Part 199

Today, as I am driving to work there is another accident.  I crossed the lights and found myself in a traffic queue which, unfortunately meant that I was blocking the traffic traversing the road I was on.  So, in order to avoid the blaring of horns by cars that would come right up to my drivers door, and because I am driving more and more like a Milanese, I turned my car to the right and pulled up alongside the car that had been immediately in front of me (who, incidentally, was also blocking some of the traffic from the right).  So now he wasn’t blocking any traffic, it was only me.

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Question Tags and more on driving in Italy

OK.  So we all (native speakers, that is) know about question tags, don’t we?  We know how to and when to use them.  We use them automatically, without thinking, all the time for many, many situations.  They open a conversation with a stranger, they give others the chance to show that they agree with us (or not, of course), we use them when we’re unsure about something, etc.  And, depending upon the fall or rise of the tone will tell the other person what we are trying to say (after all, they may be called question tags, but they aren’t always questions that we create, are they?)

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