It's going to be a happy Christmas

I'm going to paint my nails red and re-connect with the kitchen: mince pies with butter pastry; baked rice pudding with Jersey gold top, double cream and vanilla pods; potatoes roasted in goose fat; crispy salted crackling; deep rich gravy.  The best part is that it's cold enough to justify saturated fats cut by swooshing red wine... burp.  'Tis the season to be jolly.

And music, lots and lots of music!

 Especially Les Douze Noels which I love to play but which the family, frankly, have enough of by Christmas Eve.

Discipline has to come from somewhere

messy desk

One month at a time                              
A week at a time

Focus on what you can influence
and change and what is a priority
Debunk big things,
make lists and tick off.

One of my daughters said to me, 'What would you do if you had a child who
wasn't attractive?'  Without hesitation my response was, 'Encourage her to
develop a life of the mind.'  As she laughed spontaneously I ruminated on the
implication in her question; that she and her siblings were attractive enough not
to require any such drastic intervention.

tidy desk

 But I do require drastic intervention as my resolve slips into the dark days of December.  In my attempt to recapture something of my mind, I set to this afternoon to clear my desk.

Gone are the black things; the work laptop and the inordinately over-sized printer.  Removed are books I might need within reach or at least where I can see them to remind me that I have actually read them. Gone are the boxes that cluttered, heap of papers waiting to be filed.

In their place, in its purity, lies my own laptop, ready for tomorrow's work.  I have an external deadline. I can and will keep.  I have internal deadlines, which I will fail.  But it's OK  because no-one will know how bad I am, will they?

Here's my old school song.  I can still remember singing it proudly at my high school and I remember being read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress at my Church of England primary school.  These words meant something to me then because they were about human endeavour.  Since then the combination of catholic guilt and protestant work ethic have wrought their effect and I'm only too aware of my weakness.

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim..
Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit:
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

I really like the hobgoblin bit.  And here it is sung the way we never sang it:

Inside out

First glass of beautifully smooth Remy Martin fixes the blues; the second one is liquid Lethe.  Who needs reality.  Home cooked poetry and performance curry married to discipline encourages confidence.

Remember 'woman must write, just write' said Cixous.  Well Helene, belle Helene, de longue haleine, here are the words, words, words, wors, wors, wors, rows, rows, rows, dros, dros, dros, drows, drows, drows.  Ah the power of three.  Ha, ha Perseus, it's all yours. There you go!

Requiem

All mechanical things are done.
There is nothing left in me now.

Laughter is a betrayal.
In which I want no solace.

Surrender is the imperative.
Humanity exposed.

Raw, open wound into which
blows dirt, grit, spit, pain.

Into this vacuum, a new bedfellow
comes - joy thief of my years.

Point of View

I've been listening to this song for some time now; comes up in a playlist I use while working at home.  Until recently it hasn't been available on YouTube but 14 hours ago someone posted so here it is.  It catches me every time  with its haunting little melody and its sentimental lyrics.  It's the kind of song my mother would have liked. It would have appealed to her romantic spirit. Although lately I've been hearing a lot of things about  her that suggests she needed more romance than she got.  I don't think you watch me mother but I  find the song comforting because it's the sort of relationship I'd wish for.

There's no voice more powerful than the first voice you hear but is it yours or your mother's?  And when your mother's is gone whose voice is left?

The stars and I come out
And hang from up above
The stars shine down their light
I shine down my love
The perfect place to be
To watch you from afar
Do you ever see
How beautiful you are

For those who have a mother still, Allison Mooorer, 'The Stars and I (Mama's Song)'.  Indulge your sadness for without it how can we know when we're happy?

Silence

In a week when a 14 year old girl is shot in the head by a grown man for promoting female education, in the UK more revelations emerge from abused women who didn't have a voice less than 40 years ago.

 It’s interesting to note how ‘unsurprised’ many people are about these recent cases; how conclusively collusive silence muffles victims’ voices.  But in the Swat Valley 14 year old Malala had a voice; she wrote.  She was that most dangerous of creatures, a new women writing.  At 11, when she started her blog, her liminality protected her.  With approaching womanhood, her voice jeopardised her as fear of her potential power threatened the ignorant around her. 

There’s a 16 year old girl in the north who’s afraid of the power of her own voice but through support she is moving towards confronting her demons. I hope she makes it, she deserves to.  She’s kind and intelligent, full of wit but terrified of becoming a woman.  Why? Because she’s had first-hand experience of seeing one particular woman’s condition, her lack of agency; locked-in syndrome of the domestic variety.  What would recommend womanhood to a girl who’s witnessed these things, a girl who’s too bright for her own good, a thinking girl, an analyst? 

I hope Malala makes it with enough of herself to carry on. I hope A makes it by finding out there’s another way to be.  I don’t know what to hope for the many victims of sexual abuse, male and female, throughout history but I know this.  As we walk through our days, we are surrounded with them holding their secrets in lest anyone should judge them as harshly as they judge themselves.

Looking back on those decades which allowed Haut de la Garenne, the transportation of children, who in turn were abused and countless other revelations, the only surprise is that it’s taken this long to emerge.  How well I remember the sense of freedom that magazines like ‘Cosmopolitan’ offered to our tender coming of age with the advent of reliable contraception.  Finally, women were free from the fear of pregnancy and could enjoy unfettered sexual freedom.  Really? As quickly as that?  

The other day, what appeared to be an amusing encounter in a lift aptly summarises what contributes towards silent disempowerment.   Early morning in the lift going up to my office, one male companion cheerful and communicative.  Lift stops, a man and woman get in.  Woman is carrying a green plastic box under her arm labelled ‘Orthodox Christianity’.

I take a risk; make eye contact, smile.  Then to explain my boldness, intrigued at the charming absurdity of being able to carry an entire religion, and all that goes with it, under her arm.  She gets it but seems unimpressed. A shrug as if to say, ‘this? it’s nothing’. Cheerful male companion picks it up.  He’s already been charming enough to hold open the security door for me so we’ve bonded in human spirit.  ‘Don’t lose it’, he says laconically. 

The fourth person joins in.  His timing is a little quick as if he’s amused himself with his observation and has to get it out before the lift stops.  ‘Wonder what colour box Islam is in?’  It’s good, it’s contributing, just.  But he can’t leave it and continues by describing an office scene, with dialogue,  to do with what coloured box will be chosen according to its religion.  Then he muses on appropriate colours.  He has appropriated the potential power of that encounter.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, a joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling. The encounter was good; four people interacted, spoke their thoughts and then went separate ways.   I am an older woman now, getting older still next week, so maybe it’s ok to have a voice, to engage people with it.  No bullet in the head for the old.  We fall into the sphere of desiccated experience along with coconuts.  Is women’s fecundity so powerful that it requires entire religious and socio-political systems to control it?  To be a victim is a terrible thing but to live in so much ignorance and fear that that these pernicious systems are your only form of empowerment must be so much worse.  Is it Islam, Orthodox Christianity or something else that strikes you about the photograph on this post?  I’m not sure where one religion ends and another one begins but one thing I know, it’s not women who are man’s enemy or custodians of their comfort.  Both men and women need to find their voice and protest at cruel and devisive structures that prevent all of us becoming who we really are.

This is for two young people who know who they are and what they've got.

Care

Only because it's National Poetry Day... and because putting together Poison and Wine by the Civil Wars change these lines to a place where I used to be once.

The long silent scream

Screams on

Don’t care how many cigarettes you smoke

Don’t care how much you drink

Care how you drink

Exclusively, desperately

Thirst that won’t be quenched

By wine, by time

Made of stronger mettle

Best left to one

Who knows best

For the little I know is enough

Because the night

If I could write I would describe an image: shaded lamp lit faces reflecting each other, reflected back, bliss made real in the glowing warmth of living flesh.

Where one ends and the other begins is the business of daylight for now they inhabit a night of surprising strength, love and compassion.  Dear, dear kindness giving, forever forgiving and never enough.  Never, ever, enough.

Who know where the time goes ...

Exquisite pain

There is a man who loves my son.  He says 'Oh his hair, his lovely hair, I wish I had that hair... oh it's so - oh.' He wants to touch it, he wants his youth, he wants to end his longing. He wants to live his life again. 

He can have him no more than I can because youth goes on while we stand and care.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:

Arise from their graves and aspire,

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. 

There now my friend, I quote some Blake to reflect you.

Day #14

Frail, frail resolve

Day #13

Waning a little

Day#12

Absolutely resolved

Day #11

Resolved to do it

Day #10

Be sure of it

Day #9

Oh yes it will

Day #8

This will be brought up to date

Day #7 Jelsi

Friday, we've arrived in Jelsi.  I was last here 41 years ago and before that 47 years ago.  It seems little has changed in the outward appearance of the buildings.  Within minutes of arriving, a tremendous wind blows up, dried, parched leaves lifted together with bill posters and sent scuttling between our legs.  Dust and screeching between the buildings.

The clock on the municipio sounds the hour on the hour but also on the quarter followed  by a different chime; one for quarter past, two for half past, three for quarter to and so on.  to be continued ...

Day #6

My put-togetherness has changed.  I thought I would shrink into myself when I interviewed my aunts but instead I found myself growing.  Maybe it's the food.  They say death is a great leveller but for the narcissist, it's the beach.  We find ourselves at the end of the season with a day to spare at San Elpidio.  Hot sand, blue sky and warm sea.  Fewer mosquitoes than in Milan.  But here on the beach is the 'looky-looky' man.

I find this day of reflection useful.  I've started to write snippets, thoughts, trails.  Every day a new piece of the puzzle is received, I revise my thinking.  Every day a new piece of the puzzle is assimilated, I want another.  I am impatient to find out the next thing.  I know everything is set up to receive the pieces but I must wait.  And there is always the feeling that I want to go back and ask something else.

Day #5

Great joy I permitted myself when M contacted relatives in Jelsi.  There are people there who knew my mother.  I'm learning more about my mother; who else wanted her and that my father continued to court her from Ancona, returning to visit when he could.  There were descriptions of the gifts he sent, pretty feminine things.

The joy continued.  A relative rang back, I spoke with them, 'don't book anything' she said, 'come to me, stay with me three or four days'.  Her daughter in the background, prompting.  'Don't go to the Agritourismo, stay in the piazza opposite the post office'.

'Where is the post office?!' Zia M demands of Ottorino.  'How should I know' 'he responds laconically 'I'm not the postman.' We all laugh.  Zio S laughs with us.  We love her excess, we love her vitality, we tolerate her because she gives us so much energy.

Day #4

Milan - we arrive in good humour and good time albeit apprehensive about what we will find. The first day passes well and my subject is excited at the prospect of being interviewed.  She is well prepared and her family have all given advice.  Especially pleasing is the acknowledge that this will be a creative project and some things will be 'made up'.  

It is striking how tiring these interviews have been to both interviewees.  Personal memories are strong; there is an energy and alacrity in their recounting.  In Milan we end two extended sessions both exhausted.  I've learnt a lot; mostly that what I am being given is approximate and selective.  I am also learning to respect these experiences and memories, especially when M finishes by saying, 'when people have nothing, they become hard.'

Day #3

I'd underestimated postwar poverty; there is a sense that things were worst than during the war because as Europe was trying to put itself back together, these people had no idea when or how it would improve.  And they had shame to deal with.

As we drive away from the house the mountains are clear around us and we visit the cemetery one more time.  We find yesterday's flowers already wilting in the heat.  Fresh is still best though.

Day #2

Some things are present by their absence such as a central character who is not there.  Here I am to research a book, during the course of which I am constantly confronted by previously-trodden territory as I expected; first by my parents' experience but then by an older sibling. Someone always gets there first.

Day #1

Magny les Villers, a french logis which confines its wallpaper to the walls and has excellent plumbing.  This must be the cleanest place in the whole of french France.  From 5am this morning to 18.06 local time we drove over 500 miles.  Well, one of us did but as we'd both forgotten to tell our banks that we were travelling, at least my Mastercard came in handy when the automatic fuel station spat out our debit cards.

Finally at rest.  Gin and tonic in Beaune sounds crass but it was so good.  However a crisp, cold white wine making the glass sweat would have been excellent with Rissotto Saint Jacques au truffes.  Ho hum  It's a hard enough life but I think I'm getting the hang of it...

The Institute of National Remembrance

Remember the golden nights my love

Remember the joy

Learn to love the moon my love

Long for the joy

Tak

Good financials washed up on my shores this week: parking ticket rescinded, specs and software reimbursed then blow me down if I didn't go and win a lottery prize. Not enough to change my life but enough to change my supermarket for a week.

Then the postman brought a fat envelope. The fingerprint of a stranger.  Unbearable questions surpassed by their unbearable answers.

'In which country would you like to settle?'  (1) 'Canada' (2) 'Anglia'
'On your own?'   'tak'

Restoration

One bad thing: got a parking ticket
One good thing: someone stuck a valid ticket on my car

It doesn't matter anymore whether I have to pay a fine because someone who didn't know me made a kind gesture.

Oh weather

It has not been a good day but two good things happened.

Friday afternoon

Well I read Little Dorrit

In bed

On the sofa

In the garden

At my desk

At lunchtime
In my car
Not while driving
On the bus

I read it

All

Of

It

It took a long time
More than seven days

I like Azure Ray...

Failure

I need to learn how to fail
In a more spectacular way

Is somewhere near a stolen line but as I'm supposed to be working from home today, I'll just drop this anchor and come back when I have time to develop it and possibly remember why it was important in the first place.  All is good, alles wird gut, tutto deve essere buono.

Teaching C how to blog

So just when knowing how to do something becomes important, I no longer know how to do it.  C sits watching patiently as I phaff around and I think she gets it.  Actually,  I think she really gets it but never no mind.

This is how to blog.

Why goats?  Don't ask

Take me home

Displaced by the soft white cotton sheet, the warm air pulled into itself before releasing its soapy fragrance.  In the smell, which preceded the jolt of recognition when the sheet landed in perfect symmetry, the woman recognised a sharpness in its hard-pressed crease.  A crease confirming that its last laundering had been her dead mother’s.

Now she was preparing a bed for another mother; anxious and shortly to arrive to touch her daughter, to count her limbs, seek out her scars and look into her eyes for traces of trauma, pain, uncertainty.  The bed-making woman had wanted to prepare that bed for her own mother; look into her eyes and try to smooth traces of trauma, uncertainty, fear; to launder them away. She cried quietly, no tears falling to mar the sheet.

‘I’m never coming back, Mama’ the younger woman said later; having had her limbs counted, her eyes and scars examined.  ‘No, I know that.’ the mother acknowledged sadly.  In that acknowledgement, her face said, ‘at least my daughter let her limbs be counted, her eyes and scars examined – at least I can see for myself that she’s going to be alright.’ And as she watched her daughter’s gradual relaxation; she knew she was still needed, that she would always be needed. She knew her child.

This should Allison Moorer, Crows album recording of The Stars and I but it’s not on You Tube so have  Broken Girl

Don't worry

Be happy. Friday's come and gone and the presentation's no nearer completion but I've done a stack of work and my chronology is finished with some interesting surprises. Now then, if I use a grey font will it make my writing lighter?  'No' says my new friend, 'it will just make it hard to read.'

Just

... when all the admin's done, 

books are read, 

music,

an idle click; 

whack! 

Going to die, going to die?  

What? what? 

Choose your expletive

This will be my exit, now hastened by a few minutes

Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate

Metaphysical history, colour, and chalky emulsion

I think we can make something of very little if we’re pre-disposed to as W. G. Sebald’s character is described in Austerlitz:

‘… as he talked, forming perfectly balanced sentences out of whatever occurred to him, […] and the way in which, in his mind, the passing on of his knowledge seemed to become a gradual approach to a kind of historical metaphysic, bringing remembered events back to life.’

Reducing this lofty concept to domestic banality then, let’s consider the memory and naming of colours. The bliss of my childhood paint box: burnt umber, raw umber, cobalt, sienna, dark sienna, sepia, lead white and the travels these names carried me on before the concentric circles of my life looked like reaching their limits.

So now we come to the banality of bedroom one destined for Arabian Red which ended being Summer Pudding.  Arabian Red was, of course, entirely wrong but would the name have conjured the occupant’s dreams to smell and feel coarse woven wool, dwindling smoke, freezing starlight, fat low moon rather than a dumpy pudding with a spring of mint on top in a soggy English climate? The pudding, a passing pleasure, the other, connection to a land of pain and pleasure, fear and adventure.

La gitane

Bedroom two became Swedish Blue (with a hint of arsenic green) where at least, with soft white cotton voile puddling to the floor, doors flung open to the garden and a pair of eighteenth-century china dogs on guard, a sense of romanticism could be observed; given a little imagination.

Finally the entrance hall where choice wavers between Maria Theresa Yellow, Sun Yellow or Sun Dust #2 or #3.  I wish Maria Theresa’s colour bore more resemblance to the dress of La gitane by Kees van Dongen, 1910 (L’Annonciade, Musee de Saint-Tropez).   I’m afraid it’s going to be Sun Yellow that lifts us from our grey little lives.  As we admire its chalky texture, we’ll congratulate ourselves on a good choice and remember the places we still want to visit, trying very hard not to remember how little time is left.

Je n'en connais pas la fin

What are blogs for?  This evening it's for gratitude.  Jeff Buckley's on track 11,  sono pieno di pasta arabiata con un buon bicchiere di Chianti Riserva 2008 and the lad will be onto Hallelujah any time soon.  Tomorrow morning at 7.30 when my heart pounds louder than my running shoes I'll regret the second glass of red, red wine but not tonight.

Taking a bend in the road

Walter Benjamin claims what is magical about language is its primary problem. Paradoxically there are, he says, two meanings of language in the naming of an object: its existence as an object in and of itself and its ‘linguistic being’; its existence in language. Of course its linguistic being would be a product of its time.

So it is intriguing then to remember one of my Polish father’s early interactions with the Italian language during the war when he was asking directions and was told to take the next bend (curva) in the road, which in Polish means whore, prostitute, slut or bitch (kurva). Ah me, so much in there to unpick.

The Poles have a lot of sex-related curse words, kurva being one used habitually by some in place of a comma or pause in a sentence. What mental existence then is being communicated in this linguistic recourse, what is being mediated? And what productive force does it contain? The prevalence of that word in the mind is interesting. Rhetorical musings about how the word got there and what it says about masculinity is redundant. It’s been said, and more ably.

But I have witnessed a present-day phenomenon on recent travels in Italy; the prevalence of female immigrants from the African continent who prostitute themselves (or are prostituted) in some quite incongruous settings. It is nothing these days to be travelling by car in the countryside surrounding cities such as Milan or Turin only to find in a bend in the road a prostitute sitting on a garden chair, lifting her skirts or just waiting. Oh the irony.

Tightening in response as ghost rats run across my chest. Phoof, phoof, phoof they go, lighter than cats, heavier than mice. Yes, much heavier than mice. Ghost mice don't initiate tremorous hands and arms. Ghost rats do. Liquid legs, shoulders taught and the old familiar pain burning at the base of my neck as clavicles rear up to produce with depressing accuracy the hunched child waiting for the expected, unexpected blow. A plus and a minus always equal a minus, it's the rules. Suspense, wondering where, how it will fall this time. Tighter than the cooper's hoop, pectoralis minor gets to work as ligaments test their limits, resisting the historical bungee.

Keep running, keep running, keep running, keep running. One day there'll be enough distance, one day I'll outrun it. One day there'll be no judgement.

Fraudulent showmanship

'I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow.'

W G Sebald Rings of Saturn

Femme qui pete n'est pas morte

Famously and fabulously, Fanny Burney's last uttered words were, 'Good, a woman who can fart is not dead'.

And so it was yesterday, toying with increasingly nihilistic feelings, I bought sushi. As each perfectly symmetrical portion entered my mouth, it wasn't just sunshine that played there; a shy smile.

Nihilisim or sushi? Sushi! A woman who eats is still alive. Oh.

Spring is sprung

the grass is ris

I wonder where the birdies is.

The bird is on the wing

but that's absurd

for I have heard

the wing is on the bird.

The wing is also on the bee and the little women are out as soon they feel the sun's warmth hit their cosy hives.

Mention bee-keeping in a civilised gathering and a susurration of approval moves through the room. I've never been quite sure what the approval is but I don't challenge it. Approval in any form is welcome even if it's undeserved.

Furry little brown bodies, unconscious of their human exploitation, they are, for me, heimlich. It is wood, wax, sun, flowers, fecundity. Their food is natural; their industry too. It is clean warmth and dryness. They need clean water to drink and they need to sleep at night. Imagine the quietness of sleeping bees. Do you suppose they snore, just a little? Shall I creep out with a stethoscope to listen in? Maybe when I have a little one with me again.

These creatures have been minding their business for tens of thousands of years.

Early example trawled from t'internet

this morning is 10,000 years ago from

the Matopo Hills of Zimbabwe.

And we've been stealing their industry ever

since.

To host these little ones at the the bottom of the garden is a privilege but its heritage is far more practical than our parvenu middle-class dabbling. Just one generation ago, honey bought a baby's pram. Now it buys approval and the pleasure of giving it to folk we love.

For me it serves an ideal metaphor for everything I want for my loved ones: goodness, sweetness and health. I don't think I could ever sell it, there's more sweetness to be gained from giving it.

Timing

I am breaking
No glue
Too soon
For I am still breaking
Crack, a hairline crack
Too thin to squeeze within
Crack, a look, a stare
Hold me together
Someone
Please
Pass the glue

Nocturn

It’s three in the morning, mountains have proved impossible to complete past Alps, Apennines. I could skip the Bs and get to Carpthanians and Dolomites but integrity grips me. I wonder why I think the quality of sleep would be different if I cheated in my game. I know, I’d stay awake worrying about cheating. So I move onto a novel variation; Algeria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, ... Zambia. Still no sleep. Maybe just a quick peep then on the worries. Like picking a scab, without fail they bloom and flourish from my horizontal wanderings. Does brain blood come to rest in different zones whilst lying prone? Blood fertilizer to nourish paranoia. Maybe. But at least the alphabetical exercise produced a longer list tonight; a sign of recovery from the scrambled egg I’ve been passing off as intelligence these last few weeks.

How long shall I try to sleep before trying to read back to sleep by a low light? One hour, two?

Finally, restarting the paragraph of the night before that blurred into nonsense, my mind is sharp and focussed which means sleep is way off. This is no way to start a day that’s going to stretch long, long.

Think about the wine. Being lightweight in the drinking department, one or two glasses can send me groggy so at least physical damage is limited when drinking to forget. That’s good.

There’s not a story in me. Up Close and Extremely Loud didn't supply it and the Museum of Innocence was a wipe out too. Sense of an Ending wasn't bad. James Michener’s 'towering saga of a proud land and its indomitable people' might do the trick if all the pages don’t fall out first. Vortex spin-off, lack and loss. Let’s play with that.

Hungry people may lack food but they have not lost it. The potential for food is always there but the physical manifestation is not. Tell that to the hungry. Would they feel the hunger less? Tell them there are hungrier people. Would they feel their hunger less? There is a worse war here or there. How bad does a war have to be before fear is validated? Has some agency somewhere graded the severity of war? Even before that sentence is finished one senses that the answer is yes. Which is worse? The worst war? The hungriest hunger? The unloveliest love? Sleep does not come.

I have six minutes

But now it's five minutes. Tch, there goes another one wondering whether to follow this thought and losing the one I started with. I had six minutes in between remote working and lighting the fire and finding the Scrabble and unloading/loading the dishwasher and fetching logs and planning an evening meal for when the hordat descend (don't ask what a hordat is, I made it up a long time ago). So now I have one minute left before the kindly neighbour comes to keep company so I can go to the supermarket to buy the food, to cook, to nourish the hordat, to please, to sink gratefully into a chair and say, 'could someone clear please?', to start again tomorrow, to care, to nourish, to tire. So tired.

There is always music

Not all the time, not always good. But there is always music.

Today is a good day; my fire-lighting skills are improving, the sun is shining, the frost is crisp and clean and the puppy ate his breakfast. An email arrived from an Italian PhD student I met on Thursday, headed 'The Italian Job'; a new friend. I even asserted myself with my sister-in-law. Wow to that. So now it's off to buy some lovely food to share with one of my lovely daughters. Good.