Tag Archives: Holiday

Who knows?

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“What the fuck?”

That’s what I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Everything has to be thought through before I say anything.

I think I actually said, “Really?”

It seems that I am right in as much that “everybody” doesn’t know, except that the “everybody” that doesn’t know is only the person that this really affects! It seems that the doctor has spoken to the family but not the person at the centre of all this (PaC.) Everyone is acting perfectly normally whilst PaC is in the room. PaC doesn’t know anything.

To say I was shocked is an understatement and I still can’t quite get my head round this. I asked that, should I ever be in this position, please, please, please tell me. Apart from getting used to the idea of it all, I would have things to do!

But I’m still in shock.

PaC doesn’t want to go anywhere at Christmas and doesn’t want anyone coming over (to eat). F said he would prefer me not to go down, for this reason. So, now I’m not sure what will happen. I’ve said I’ll do whatever he wants.

PaC is not eating. Has not been eating much since summer. Is thinner. I wonder, if, in fact, PaC will even be here for Christmas? I don’t say this. But now I’m certain we’re talking weeks or, maybe, a couple of months. You can’t go on forever without eating.

F is stoic, as he normally is. Almost too English. He will go down again this weekend and speak to PaC about the possibility that I might come down. Then he’ll make a decision based on this (as to whether I go down or not) so, I may go down or I may be on my own. I’m not sure I will want to go and “celebrate” with any one else, tbh. It just doesn’t seem right.

When he tells me that PaC is the only person who doesn’t “know”, I tell him that there’s no way this would happen in England. But now I wonder if that is really the case? And, is it always the case in Italy? I’ve never been this close to the situation to know. I’ve just always assumed ……

And, can I just say that, the whole thing is scaring me. The knowing and not knowing thing is scaring me more. I don’t know why. I feel uneasy, unsettled. It’s not a good time. I even heard F telling someone on the phone that 2014 has turned out to be a pretty shit year.

My heart is full of tears for him and his family.

And the rest of me is as scared as hell, for some reason I just can’t fathom.

Some things

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Apparently, even this weekend, he will be “making excuses” for why he is there and, also, why I’m not with him. The excuse (which, in fact, is partially true) is that he has come to “sort things” about the house. The reason I am not there is “because it is raining a lot so it’s better for me to be at home with the dogs”.

And, I am told, we’ll only spend 4 days or so down there at Christmas. We won’t be staying at New Year because it’s too “sad”. The reason it will be too sad is because we shall have to stay with the dogs (because of all the fireworks) and that means we shall have to stay in the house which is unfinished (or, rather, not started).

Instead, we shall come back and have our usual New Year’s Eve party. Our normal visitors for Boxing Day will, instead, probably come over on New Year’s Eve – which will be nice but that does, however, mean that another friend may not come as the two women don’t get on.

But, of course, this is what I’m told now. This is fluid and will depend on many things, non of which are within my control – but that’s OK.

On the other hand, last night we ordered, online, our Christmas present to each other. It should be delivered within the next 15 days or so.

And, of course, F isn’t really sleeping very well and, as a consequence, neither am I. So, in one way, I shall be glad he’s not here this weekend as, maybe, I’ll be able to sleep a bit longer.

p.s. there are STILL no Italian Christmas stamps issued this year. They’d better bloody hurry up. I would be most disappointed if they don’t do them or they’re too late. Sometimes, this country is incredibly frustrating.

Sighs and questions

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We have the occasional deep sigh. I can’t imagine how much this is hurting by I am impotent.

I gain a little more information. The timescale is unknown. Now I don’t know if this measures weeks or months or, indeed, years.

But, maybe, neither does anyone else.

Sometimes, the lack of tactility and information surprises me for Italians. At times, his family seem more “English” than mine! Keeping everything hidden. He continues to make jokes as that is his way of coping. Although, last night, the joke was quite black and I had to force a laugh.

And then, unexpectedly, we have a deep sigh. And I feel terrible (although, I’m sure, not as terrible as he does.)

So, I wait for the next bit of information. And I have a lot of questions that I simply can’t ask.

We are, in fact, going down for Christmas. Except he needs to make it an unexceptional event (us going down for Christmas). So he needs to make an excuse. Apparently. So now I know that not everyone knows that he knows. And, I know that during this particularly “unfestive” period, he will make jokes and laugh and act as normal. And, so will everyone else.

And it will, indeed, be very weird.

Up in the air.

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So, Christmas is cancelled. Or, at least, curtailed.

At the moment, I (we) don’t really know where we will be. I suspect it won’t be the best Christmas ever but that’s OK. I also expect the House Warming party won’t happen. That’s OK too.

I’ve got to try and make F smile a bit and, certainly, give him all my support. Poor guy, this year is not turning into the best for him.

But, as the saying goes, “this too shall pass.”

Give me a couple of days to get my head round it all though, please?

Christmas Decorations are UP! And other Christmas-related things

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The Christmas decorations are up!

No, don’t worry, not in our flat. I mean in a street which I use on my way home from work.

They aren’t switched on but they are up.

And, talking of Christmas, I have still to do the cards. This weekend, is the plan.

At the moment, F is talking about doing a house-warming party around the middle of December – when he has decorated the flat! :-) Bless him.

As an aside, I tried, on Monday evening, to get my computer to display films on the TV. We already have the HDMI cable punched through the wall and I had bought an adapter to attach to my MiniDisplay Port. So, it should have worked just by connecting. Although the picture was fine, the sound only came from the computer which, being in the next room, wasn’t really any good. After hunting around, I found that Macs built prior to 2010 didn’t have a proper HDMI slot and no audio was passed through.

Wednesday, I found an adapter that WAS supposed to do the job for Macs of the age of mine. Except that the company making them had stopped making them. However, I found one on Amazon and bought it. It’s “on its way” now. Should be here by Monday but I’m hoping Friday – then I can try it at the weekend!

In the process of trying to make the sound work on Monday, I found, on Tuesday night, that one of my programs wouldn’t work anymore. After hunting around a bit, I decided to re-install it. So that was that.

Except, on Wednesday night, I found that, as a result of my re-installation, Firefox wasn’t working properly and what-seemed-like-spam pages kept coming up. After much pratting around, I found the solution. Let’s hope that the new adapter I’m going to be getting doesn’t end up messing up other things on my computer. It’s not that I can’t fix it, it’s just that everything then takes so much longer.

It will be nice if we can watch films in the lounge, especially for Christmas!

Strange Days – Halloween and The Day Of The Dead

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The weather got cold this week. Sunday night, to be precise. Obviously, it’s not in minus figures yet (°C, Gail) but, still, those of you who’ve been reading long enough will know that I absolutely abhor the cold. And, as for every year, the heating at work was not switched on until we had suffered a number of days of freezing in the office.

But, it is the end of October, so I suppose it’s to be expected.

And, today is Halloween. Obviously, I’m quite old now, so my memories of Halloween are being at home, doing some apple bobbing, maybe making some toffee apples but that’s it. No Trick or Treat stuff (that’s American trash (sorry, Gail)), no elaborate costumes. Instead, it was only a few days from November 5th, or Bonfire Night, as we called it. 1st November was really nothing special. Not even a holiday. We just didn’t celebrate it in the UK.

And now that I live in Italy, although Halloween is getting quite a big deal now, here, it’s November 1st that’s THE DAY. To be precise, The Day Of The Dead.

I’ve always been in Milan and it means a holiday to me. A day off work (except, this year it’s on a Saturday). However, with the special Aunt dying, tonight we’re off to Carrara and, tomorrow – well, I’m not sure what will happen. I’m guessing, a trip to the cemetery and I know we’re supposed to be going out for a pizza with the cousin in the evening.

It will be interesting. As FfI said to me this morning when we spoke, They don’t have a party for the wake but they do this (whatever this may be.)

I’ll let you know ……

Not really in the UK

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Of course, London is not really “the UK”. It’s like its own country. Still, it has many things related to the UK.

It seems as if people fall into three groups: Eastender-type people, foreign people, pretentious pricks.

Eastender-type people speak estuary English. That’s like English for people who never went to school. They also dress as if they don’t have mirrors at home and select clothes which, quite obviously, don’t match anything else in the world, thereby creating an image of having selected things from a jumble sale. Basically, they don’t seem to give a shit.

Foreign people are everywhere. Of course, by “foreign people”, I don’t really mean foreign, what I mean is that, even if they, themselves, were British born, their parents or grandparents came from somewhere other than the UK. The mix of cultures is obvious. I don’t have any problem with it – it’s just noticeable and completely different from Milan. F said that it seems as if all staff in restaurants and bars are not English – and I think this is true. Certainly, we seem to come across “an Italian” in nearly every restaurant or bar. It was noticeable that there were a lot more “Muslim” women around, wearing some sort of head cover. Milan, on the other hand, seems to have very few.

Pretentious Pricks fall in to two categories. 1) Hipsters (although there seemed to be less than in Milan.) 2) People who look like someone from the 30s or 40s. Same haircut, same “look”, normally as camp as Christmas. Speaking with received pronunciation and being loud everywhere. Or “business men”, on the phone or a laptop being “business-men-who-are-very-important” – with received pronunciation or speaking like a cockney. All of these people seemed very much up their own arse.

On the other hand, there was BEER, TEA and full-English breakfast. Pubs with tables sticky from spilled beer; weather which was bright or cloudy or raining or different – every few seconds; wind; police or security – everywhere; drabness and colour in equal amounts; overflowing ashtrays; expensive public transport; and, of course,

Kate.

No, not the one that people call “beautiful” even if she isn’t – it’s just compared to every other member of the royal family, she is!

No, Kate Bush. The live edition. The two-and-a-half-hour extravaganza of singing and music and choreography. It was truly fabulous. She was fabulous. The whole set was fabulous.

Oh, yes, and we went up the Shard, which I think is an ugly building – but the views of London were stunning.

So that was London.

Mantova Festivaletturatura

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Here it is, starting tomorrow, the sign that the warmer weather (what there was of it this year) is about to go away in a final flourish of summer.

Mantova’s (Mantua) literary festival is the signal for me that the holiday period is almost over and it’s a soft, gentle way to slip into Autumn.

But, the BIG news this year, is that F is coming! I am so happy about that. I am hopeful that we can get to stay 2 days because that would be nice. But even if it’s one single day, it will be good. I get to show him off. He’s coming even though he has to fly out early on Monday morning, so this is a bit of a sacrifice for him. Or, maybe a peace offering following an “incident” during the holiday?

In any event, I want to make the most of it.

Reading, reading, reading

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It seems travel (sort of) books were next. First up, Road to Rouen by Ben Hatch, an amusing book about taking his family around France. Amusing, yes but one of those books I won’t read again. Sorry, Ben. Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids? The stories are mildly funny but I think you have to have kids to really get them.

It was well written and, as I say, amusing but not really “great”. It can’t, for example, compare with The Goldfinch, nor anything by Margaret Atwood. Maybe it should have been the first book that I read?

And then I started an ebook. To be fair, although this IS available on Amazon, it’s a book written by the brother of a friend and ex-colleague and also the son of another ex-colleague, sadly no longer with us. As I don’t have a Kindle, he sent it to me in PDF format.

It’s called: New Zealand Calling by Alex Richards.

He’s not a professional author but he tries to be descriptive. However, it reads much as I assume my blog reads; interesting enough if you know the people involved; a collection of experiences and stories that don’t really hang together with a “plot”. There’s no “conclusion”.

However, some of the stories were interesting and some, amusing.
But I found that just reading an ebook was neither comfortable nor enough and so, at the same time, I started God’s Traitors by Jessie Childs.

I finished it today, so it’s taken about 3 days. This is a history book, about the Roman Catholic persecutions during Elisabeth I’s reign and afterwards, told through the experiences and lives of several generations of one (noble) family.

But it’s history and so full of dates and factual things. Not really a novel, as such but still a bloody good read.

And, for my next book (which I will start in a moment) I’ve chosen A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride. I think this won the Women’s Prize for Fiction but I’ll need to check.

In any event, I’ve read it’s difficult to read, so I have another, just in case.

Livers and spots

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It’s always the hands, isn’t it? They’re the give-away. You can always do something with other parts but there’s little you can do with your hands except, maybe, wear gloves. Except that I don’t do anything. My idea has always been to grow old gracefully or, rather, just grow old.

So, the lines on my face multiply and grow deeper and longer; my belly hides more of what’s beneath it; my bones click and creak, stiffen and have pain for no reason (and although many Italians and older Brits would blame the weather or the change of weather, I don’t for I know it’s not that, it’s just a time thing – and, by that, I mean the passage of time); my throat has developed what I can only liken to the wattle of a chicken and, finally, I have small areas on the backs of each hand that are slightly darker, like freckles but are, of course, liver spots.

They, like when the skin on the backs of your hands becomes thin and almost translucent, are signs of extreme old age. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.

And, I’ve noticed here, on the beach, that they seem to be multiplying at an extraordinary rate – even in the last few days.

I guess it could be the sun. Or the smoking. Or both. Or, just old age although I had always thought that liver spots were something reserved for those who had passed retirement time – some time before their appearance.

It seems not. Or, at least, not for me!

It’s not that they look so bad – just that they exist at all! And, instead of fading against the tan I am getting, they seem to look worse!

Anyway, I’ve finished The Bat. It was OK. I suspect that Lola quite fancies the author, whose picture was on the cover. Today, I’ve started The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This is a thick book. Let’s see how long this keeps me going!