07 Thursday Oct 2021
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Like most people in Italy, I studied some Art History for three years, back in Grammar School. A couple of hours a week or so, starting on the third year…. and I remember that I’d been looking forward to it – if in a rather hazy way. I didn’t quite know what to expect – but, at fifteen, I had no doubts that a subject with “history” in its name just had to be wonderful.
Still perhaps some little doubt would have been in order… Continue reading
31 Thursday Dec 2020
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So it ends, at last, this strangest of years, this near dystopia with the world turned on its head, and the plague, and the fear, and the measures of containment, and the uncanny parallels with Shakespeare’s London and Manzoni’s Milan… Continue reading
25 Friday Dec 2020
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There isn’t much that is merry about this Christmas – but still… One can wish light, and warmth, and hope…
17 Thursday Dec 2020
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I was looking for my little stash of those tiny bulbs you have on old fashioned strings of Christmas lights, you know what I mean – and instead I found, of all things, the ticket of my first Don Carlo. Continue reading
10 Thursday Dec 2020
I don’t know about your corners of the world – but hereabouts these are days for trimming the Christmas Tree.
As a matter of fact, most people in Italy seem to do it on the 8th of December, a Marian holiday and, usually, a first taste of Christmas vacations. Others do it on the 1st of the month, and I have a friend who used to hold that a Christmas tree should, by definition, be trimmed of Christmas Eve, and taken down the day after the Epiphany. Now he has two young daughters, though – and the tree goes up as early as the girls can wear down their parents’s patience. In my family, for some old reason no one quite remembers anymore, we keep a tradition of trimming our trees on the Eve of Saint Lucia, on the 12th – the day after tomorrow. Continue reading
08 Thursday Oct 2020
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Rant ahead, I warn you.
Because the fact is, I do hate the new WordPress block editor… loathe it with a passion. Continue reading
30 Thursday Jul 2020
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Oh dear… it’s that time of the year again! July is almost gone, and August right around the corner, and, and, and…
And of course, family and friends are beginning to ask: when are you going to take a few days off? Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be booking somewhere nice for your days off? Why don’t you go to the seaside? Why don’t you go to the mountains? … and so on. Continue reading
02 Thursday Jul 2020
Am I very wrong in thinking that make-believe must be the most universal of all childhood games? We all traveled to far-away worlds, didn’t we? And made-believe to be this or that in castles, jungles, and star-ships? With or without dolls, toy soldiers or plush animals, alone or with other children, recreating stories heard, or making it up, rehearsing work, motherhood, war, fear, society – always halfway between a technical test of life and unbridled What If… Continue reading
24 Friday Apr 2020
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The Bard, you know – and the present times, and all this uncertainty… it brought back to mind an old post, about something that happened a few years ago, when times felt uncertain as well – although in a very different manner.
Anyway, it’s a small story about the power of words in dark times – and you can find it here: Reciting Poetry in the Dark.
23 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Eccentricities, Things
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Apart from or the Erasmus Year in Cardiff, my University years were spent in one of the smaller colleges in Pavia, the good old Gandini, housed in a wonderful 15th century palace right in the town centre. It was a pleasant place to stay, and I made a number of good friends there – and I played cards more than I ever had before or have since.
Now please don’t go imagining things: we didn’t gamble or anything… the place was, after all, run by nuns. The College’s game of choice was, for some reason, Pinochle, and we could spend whole evenings at it, playing in two, three or two pairs… Continue reading
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