If I ever say I’m moving again, someone throw me in the lake. This last stage of the move here has been borderline crippling with exhaustion; let’s just say that at my age, dismantling one apartment after 21 years while moving carloads in my Fiat 500 (= not a lot of boxes), so I could then clear it out in time for its sale at the end of November, has been an absolute uphill slog. Each day I had to carry boxes down flights of stairs, across the garden and down a rough gravel slope to the carpark and repeat until the car is full. Then a 45 min each way drive and a car unload at the other end. I worked my ass off trying to get a couple of rooms decorated before the lorry arrived from England with all my things from my old home in East Sussex. Then the almighty business end of all of this started… the big unpack. In between there have been IKEA deliveries, several days of flat pack assembly (hell on earth with an Allen key) and a lot of swearing and hammering.
People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time.
Lyrics by: Michael Butler / Ozzy Osbourne / Tony Iommi / William Ward
However, huge apologies to Rosa Anna downstairs for her induction into the more flowery end of British vocabulary. The bastard washing machine blew up (more swearing), knocking out the electrics, and the mains box is almost as far away as the carpark in the other place. More swearing and up and down stairs until I got it sorted. New washing machine eventually arrived.
Lorry Armageddon
I’ve been sorting out a new kitchen as the current one is terrible and even the oven door doesn’t shut, and if you know how much I love to cook this is not good. Christmas day saw me nearly give up as I was trying to cook a chicken with a stool wedged against the oven door to keep it shut but add to that the dial is broken so it involves the use of a wrench and a hope that I’m not grilling food rather than roasting.
In the meantime, back and forth to the showrooms, buying paint, ordering a sofa and couple of cupboards. Back and forth… my life is like a never-ending plate of spaghetti, while I am slowly looking more and more like an extra from the Addams family. I give eye bags a run for their money. I’ve lost weight as would you believe painting a ceiling uses more steps than a walk in the woods. I’ve got blisters on my hands and bruises from holding the ceiling extender steady.
When the tiredness becomes all consuming
I just now need to pace myself with the work and slowly settle into life by the lake. I also need to get my locks changed as one of my new neighbours keeps letting herself in for a chat. She’s an old lady, wears a thoroughly tacky tracksuit and whiffs of fags. She’s tiny, her name is Maria, and she needs little excuse to knock very quietly… whisper ‘permesso’ , literally means, ‘I have permission?’ And appear in my lounge, chatting away at me, usually about her old cat who pees down in the garages and under my entrance stairs, or she wanted to know when I am moving in, or when it’s my turn to pay for the lights on the path, what do I do for work. The list is endless, but there she is like a Swiss cuckoo clock, using my front door as a rotating entrance. I don’t mind. It’s actually very Italian and her curiosity for her new neighbour is funny. Another neighbour appeared last week, to tell me that the day before I’d left my garage light on, she seemed more interested in what I was doing to the place, no surprise there. She’s lovely and we chat over my veranda wall, as she is below my apartment. To be fair even the Amazon man has taken to letting himself through my security gate to leave parcels by my front door, and thinks it is hilarious to ask me random things in pidgin English.
So, life is moving forwards in my new pad, and I’m unravelling all my possessions and finding them new homes, it is indeed like a plate of spaghetti with added swear words. Ironically, Italians find the concept of tinned spaghetti an anathema and more so a total food code violation, it’s almost worse than a cappuccino after 10.30am. The pasta aisles here in the supermarkets are front to back in the stores, every size and shape, fresh or dried and bags of Farina 00 if you make your own. I do miss some of the variety in good UK supermarkets, but the food here is way fresher and tastier, you just get used to shopping a little less and a little more often.
Alphabetti Spaghetti
I’ve filed to change my residency in the new town and am now waiting for the rozzers to come round, unannounced (like everyone else …lol) to make sure I exist, and I am actually living here. Bureaucracy continues to be next level, I went to the comune to make my application, they’re closed on Wednesdays (who knew), so I went upstairs to sort out paying my refuse tax. I knocked on the door which was open, and she asked me to wait outside, meanwhile her colleague walks past and told me to go in, as an open door means you can enter. But this was a ruse, as the refuse lady was on the phone, and her mate in the corridor started to laugh and tell her off for not being instantly available. She then proceeded to give me the door open/ shut protocol, while tutting at the refuse lady and eye rolling. After the comune cabaret you then have to go to the tip, (obvs also closed), to get your card, so I could start to shift the EU cardboard mountain on my veranda. Meanwhile I still have to switch my health card to the new area, I’ll save that experience extravaganza to next month.
I’ve also discovered during this whole process, that no one can pronounce my last name. it starts with an H which isn’t really pronounced here; hotel for instance is said like ‘otel. My name also contains a Y which strictly isn’t in the Italian alphabet, more difficulty … but my Christian name is, to all intents and purposes, Italian. They breathe a sigh of relief while skirting around my surname.
With that, I need some carbs and am off to eat some pasta.
During the infamous fun that wasn’t the pandemic lockdown, like a lot of other bored people at home I got my ass onto TikTok, not so much for my own personal content, but to scroll endlessly and laugh at all the other far more social media creative types on there.
But randomly one day a couple of years later, this entirely legit reel appeared (and yes I checked it all out) asking for someone to write to a life sentence prisoner in a jail in California. I can’t say anymore than that for privacy reasons. And no I hadn’t lost my tiny mind, been watching too much OITNB or fancied a bit of rough on a dark jailbreak night. He was about my age and no, zero attraction, I just thought well… I like writing and he said he loved to read and history and stories. Maybe I could do this thing for someone I will never meet.
And so I wrote to him, no personal details of my address, all through a secure platform set up by the US prison system. Then one day he wrote back and since then we write pretty much every week and I’ve slowly got to know more about him, about his family, his life before he got put away, for now what is over 29 years, and how from the other side of the world we have become sort of friends.
He tells me about his daily life, his cell mate who is also a Latino, his daughter with whom he has now rekindled his relationship- he did some terrible things when he was much younger for which she rightly struggled to trust him again. His son, who is in the US military and quite high ranking and all the comings and goings of yard life in searing heat and his work in the prison kitchens. He’s told me about the 18 years he spent in a high security solitary cell, with only concrete walls and a small skylight so high he could never even touch it. Those years were in part to segregate him from gang members and the risk to his life, as well as meting out his punishment.
But one day I had an idea as he literally devours books and in particular history. I’m a geographer by qualification and I decided to combine the two subjects, but take him on a mini tour of the world – choosing 30 places I’d been to, telling him the history of each, its geography and also a story to add the personal perspective of my time in those countries.
I have his prison PO Box address so every other week or so, I’d pepper his prison platform messages with a real bit of snail mail. The stories lit up his life and he saved each one until after work, reading them on his bunk. I sent him a map of the world with each place listed and marked on, so he could see where we were going to visit on his own ‘world tour’. My idea was to take him to all the places he’d never get to see. I had printed around 4 Polaroid style pictures for each place from my own travel photos and so each story could come alive a little with actual pictures.
One of mine from Siena, Tuscany
It took about a year to complete them all and we both had so much fun, both for me writing them and reliving all those years and holidays and adventures, but also for him it became something to look forward to. And you can argue after what he did, he deserves nothing at all, but I don’t judge and I now know some of what went down. What was also funny was, anything that arrives into the Prison Postal system, as a printed piece of mail, has to be read and approved by someone in the office. Now bear in mind some of these stories were over 4 or 5 pages of A4 long, he one day messaged me to say the most recent letter had been impounded as they said it was printed on cotton. A risk that it could potentially be impregnated with narcotics. We did laugh as it was a bog standard sheet from WH Smiths, but it meant I had to resend it again. This summer I was passing a hand made notepaper shop in Tuscany and started laughing at the shop window… of course I took a photo and sent it to him.
Not to be used for Inmate Correspondence
He told me when he maybe one day leaves, and he’s possibly up for parole in January, as he has done some serious work over many years to get to even being considered, that the letters and photos are one of the only things he will take with him. They’re all now pasted into a notebook and he shares them with his friends. He once told me, ‘we don’t know people like you.’ I sat with that thought for a while, life is full of weirdness and I don’t believe totally in coincidences, people come our way for all kinds of reasons and whether we realise that or even learn from it, is our choice. He even shares my photos with his support groups to illustrate how they have helped him and some of the funny and not so amusing stories we’ve told each other. But also of their importance to him in changing his mindset and perspective on life. And me, I’ve now got a slightly different friend.
We talk a lot about films, and they are allowed to watch some inside – as a now better prisoner he has a tablet, and providing they aren’t hugely violent etc he can view them. Each story, I tried where possible to reference a film he could later watch to give the story of that place some wider context, give it something to bring it alive. So we went around with so many different ones – from The Flinstones, Almodovar classics through to several Bond films, including Quantum of Solace, Spectre (Siena and Mexico City) and also The Living Daylights, which has its opening sequence in Gibraltar.
Gibraltar in The Living Daylights
It’s theme song is about facing the darkness of the world and trying to cope with insecurity and loss. It tells us that we cannot judge another’s life until you have lived theirs.
Comes the morning, and the headlights fade away
Hundred thousand people, I’m the one to blame
I’ve been waiting long for one of us to say
Save the darkness, let it never fade away
In the living daylights
Lyrics by: Morten Harket ‘The Living Daylights’ Sung by Ah-Ha
We also both love music and when I can, I add a song in too – the Gibraltar one for instance, included the story of my uncle, who was a taxi driver. He was picking up a fare from the docks one day, waiting in a line as passengers disembarked from the QE2. A very beautiful and elegant lady got into his cab. He asked her if she would mind if he listened to a Maria Callas broadcast, as she was his all time favourite. If you’ve been reading my blogs from the start you will know my uncle and I used to listen to her cassette tapes when I rode with him in his old Mercedes around southern Spain and Gib. The beautiful lady said yes and as the music was playing, my uncle realised she was singing in the back, in absolutely perfect unison. Now in those days there was no social media including TikTok (where this all started) and pictures on the news or papers only now and then. But there in the back of his cab singing Rigoletto, Act 1 Gaultier Malde – Caro Nome, was Maria Callas herself.
If you’ve watched the incredible film, The Shawshank Redemption, you will know the scene this made me think of, where Andy locks himself in the governors office, puts on a record of “Sull’aria … che soave zeffiretto” which is a duettino, or a short duet, from act 3, scene X, of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492,
Andy Dufresne played by Tim Robbins
Red (Morgan Freeman), famously narrates;
“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
The obvious connection and irony between this story, prison life and my friend far across The Pond was not lost on either of us. We had a few laughs in our next messages.
And so, if you have a minute listen to this, and I hope for a moment it sets you free, as Maria sang like no other beautiful bird;
Years ago, I used to play Pontoon with my father, he was an avid card game player, and while Bridge left me napping on the sofa with boredom (never got past the snooze-worthy basics), I loved playing this particular game with him. The 5 Card Trick is a special aspect of Pontoon that adds to the challenge. Understanding this can help you develop your game. To achieve a 5 Card Trick, you must collect five cards without exceeding a total value of 21, which requires a delicate balance and careful decision-making, and a lot of sniggering at our particular card table.
If you manage to gather five cards under or equal to 21, it counts as a 5 Card Trick. This hand is highly valued and often stands out compared to other hands with a total of 21. Each time you decide to twist, you’re working towards forming this distinctive hand.
Now my papa was, unlike me, little Miss Dyscalculia here, a steely mathematician and somehow, to his dismay he had not only produced someone who was shit at maths, but also horrific at science (he was an industrial pharmacist who studied at Imperial in London). But he didn’t just have a clever mind, he snuck in the sneaky parental trick of helping me a bit with my number ineptness, while dealing on top of that the family tradition of being ultra-competitive. In all he had cleverly found a game that he and I could really enjoy together. The keeping the tally bit for me, played into my will to win, as well as track over time, who won last time, it was like another edge to the game, having those rolling score cards and league tables. It was a smashing way of giving me some number confidence back, as well as spending time with one of my favourite people on the planet.
When my father died, and we were sitting down deciding who had what from the house. I asked for the antique card table, it’s one of those ones that swivels around and opens up with a lovely green baize circle inside. But when I eventually got it home, the absolute gem in my hand was one of our old score cards, still tucked inside the table drawer with a wedge of old wax crayon we’d used to mark the cards. It was like holding my very own King of Hearts.
But more recently, I have just binge watched my way through Sneaky Pete on Netflix. No spoilers but it’s about a confidence trickster, and this got me thinking about not just those sly types that slide into your life over the years, but particularly how money and control, amongst other abhorrence’s makes some people turn into absolute wankers, of this there is no denying.
I’ve met a few tricky sods in my time, but sometimes I’ve trusted my belief in humanity rather than my gut instinct, and you know that’s okay too, it’s their badness, their trickery not yours or mine. I’ll let you into a secret, you can worry yourself about what’s been, the trick dear reader, is to decide how it’s going to be. At the end of the Sneaky Pete series and without giving it all away, we see him realise a lot of things and that in one way or another is a learning for him. By repeating his tricks over and over and by teaching others he sees the value in… well, you will need to watch it to find out exactly what. But it deals back to my experience with my father, that practice is in itself a learning trick, while achieving self-belief is another altogether.
From ‘Sneaky Pete‘ (Netflix)
But what about the tricks your body or mind can play on itself. Fairly recent social media has been covering the so-called rapture, most of which was absolutely hilarious. But some people actually fall for this nonsense, and I’m not talking about your faith but the really mind-bending bollocks that this was.
Religion has a real and defining place in many people’s lives, not least of all mine. I’d go so far as to say, that particular faith aside, being brought up with a belief taught me to be a better, kinder and more honest person. Most people I know will tell you; I find it impossible to lie, and that’s not some religious guilt, it’s just an honest to goodness default setting to be truthful. And that for me is a good trick to have up your sleeve, and no I’m not going to say ‘the truth shall set you free’, but a lie, in my book takes away the person you are fibbing to, their own right to choose based on the truth. If you tell someone you are well, when you are actually sick, for instance, it takes away their ability to care or to help.
I’ve rambled off track here a bit, as usual… but what I wanted to say, that finding your trick, that ace up your sleeve, be that a post-it note stuck to your forehead, or a rhyme that helps you remember; – that version of your own card trick, which can be as mind bending as a mathematicians puzzle or finding your own equivalent of that old Pontoon scorecard, to remind you, that like me, you can at least now add up to 21. There’s no gambling with those odds, but your chances are always good if you play life with truth and love at the centre of your deck.
How do I do it, what’s my trick with for instance my recent country-moving decision. Yes, I get scared sometimes, like for instance, have I done the maths correctly (eeek) have I got enough in the tin to live off until I shuffle off this earth? Fear is just that, it’s a mind trick – it’s a feeling rather than a reality, the reality is I’ve got this far on my own, and now moved to another country. So, excuse me if I dust off the superwoman pants even for a moment.
Tricks aren’t just for the brave or the calculating miscreants, we all have them up our sleeves for when we need them. Call it self-belief if you want to.
You can go your own way
You can be true
You can go your own way
You can be true
Lyrics and Song: ‘Sail with Ease’ by Liam Bailey from Sneaky Pete, soundtrack
P.S My papa was one for some hilarious top tips, he once told me while helping with the Sunday lunch, that the best trick to get clean finger nails was to make a crumble. And that is exactly the person I got my sense of humour from, …well, I did warn you.
Cats and me we go way back. Aged two, and Lion number 1; the fam were on a camping holiday in Europe, we went to Barcelona zoo where, as a tiny tot I managed to breach the fence and get into the lion’s enclosure. Cue a security alert and my mother losing her shit while wardens went in with precautionary stun darts, to whisk me out.
Dinner Time
Years later we had a tabby cat show up with its face pressed against the French doors. I’d been begging my 11-year-old arse off to try and persuade my parents to let me have a cat, they’d stoically declined. We’d had goldfish, budgies (which are seriously boring btw) and a hamster which had escaped, chewed through an electric cable and fused the boiler. My father in a bid to save her little life, dosed her up with half a Junior Disprin and some whiskey administered from a thimble. Still not responding he proceeded to give it heart massage, aka prodding gently with his finger. Right… we all know how this ends, she carked it. So armed with a family ability to not look after pets so well, my incessant bidding was declined.
But by now the cat distribution system had spoken, and there she was miaowing at the drawing room windows. ‘You’re not to feed her, you’ll encourage her,’ was the stern warning. I went off to school and so this went on for several days, me rushing home to see if she was still at the windows, looking hopeful. Then one day I got back from school a bit early, it was summer so I popped open the fridge in search of something cool to drink and oh my days there in the door was not only a can of cat food, but it was open and half empty. Hmm… didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to suss that someone was feeding the cat. The story didn’t stop there, turned out my papa was feeding her out of the boot of the car and my mother had said can on the go in the fridge. Anyway, Matilda, and for this story, the half lion, was with us for many years, as you’ve no doubt worked out, she was shortly allowed inside … forever.
Time passed and several cats later, as clearly one wasn’t enough, and while working for a tea company in my 40’s, I came up with a stellar idea to set up a charity arm to my employer and give back to the part of the world from where the tea originated: southern Africa. I was responsible for setting up a fundraising campaign which ran in various guises for 16+ years, raised money for boreholes for 10 villages for the Kalahari Bushmen, a school, an art & literacy project amongst others, and I had some of the most incredible life changing adventures in Namibia and Botswana. On one of them I was with a group from Barclays who were on a leadership management team building thing, during which we visited an art project in Botswana. I’d seen some of their work online before we went out, but seeing it in real life, meeting and talking to the artists, left a massive impression on me.
Gamnqoa Kukama at work
Art is something that should make you feel something whether it is laughter, tears or OMG that belongs in the charity shop up the high street. Feel something you should. I did. As I sat talking to them and looking at their work stacked against the walls of the tin roofed studio in ridiculous heat, I made them a promise – to not only come back but also to bring their art to London for an exhibition and tell their stories.
Ancient Bushman Rock Art – Cederberg Mountains, South Africa
It took a while to persuade the boss and also make a couple more trips out to build a set of paintings and lino prints, to fill an exhibition. Along the way I also discovered an art project in a township in South Africa, they make incredible pieces using tea bags. Well that was too good an opportunity to miss and so I got them a ton of tea bags sent direct from our supplier in South Africa and we began working on some ideas to incorporate them into the exhibition. Now before lion number 3 comes along, I need to tell you about lion number 2, need to keep this stuff in sequence and all that.
It was after one of my trips to Botswana and I was doing the long drive south from Ghanzi to Gaberone, for my flight. If you’ve ever driven over there, you’ll know those endless roads, and much of Botswana sits on a flat plain. The roads are unlit and animals from donkeys to you’ve guessed it, wander around and cause some horrible accidents, particularly in the dark.
One of those long dusty Botswanan Roads (cow subbed for lion)
I was trying to reach Gaborone before dusk, but after a day at the project I was really hungry so I stopped to buy a bucket of chicken wings and some cola. Rather than eat inside I quickly ate a few in a lay-by a little further down the road. Picture a lovely warm African evening, and I was eating my wings and watching the sunset in my rear-view mirror, and the driver’s window was down to let in the slowly cooling air. Something caught my eye, just moving almost out of view. Now a lot of wildlife has been perfectly created to blend in with their natural surroundings, lions not being any different. A quick glance and I couldn’t see anything more than some wafting grass. Back to the chicken and then …OMAFG there she was right by the door, (window still open btw) and eye-balling me and the chicken. She was a stunning adult and hungry lioness, and as much as I wanted to stop, take a photo and enjoy being that close to her, I donated the chicken at speed out the window and hit the pedal. I didn’t so much as stop for a pee all the way to Gaborone.
Now then, lion no. 3… back to the tea bags, and Imizamo Yethu, in Hout Bay. They were going to produce some large pieces of art for us and would be shipped over to London in time for the exhibition. But as, and I believe these things happen for a reason, I was contacted by another charity, one that works with lion rescue and protection. They were about to do a fundraiser with a set of around 30 life size lions; would we like to support one? Didn’t take me long to say yes and as luck would have it (no coincidences in this story), they were being produced in South Africa. Rooi as he came to be known (meaning red in Afrikaans, like the colour of tea) was delivered to the tea bag art project, and while I was kept up to date with the design and it’s creation, what arrived in London (thank you Kenyan Airways for flying it back to London for us), was incredible. Rooi took a focal point in the art exhibition and his auction on the opening night raised thousands of pounds, in addition to the quite beautiful collection of wildlife paintings from Botswana.
The Beautiful Lion, ‘Rooi’ at the Bushman Art Exhibition.
Bushmen believe that during their trance dances, shapeshifting into a lion’s form is one of the most powerful and spiritual forms they can take. They believe that they turn into an actual lion, travelling between the heavens and the earth. The exhibition focused on the importance of wildlife to the San peoples across Namibia and Botswana, and as one of them told me, ‘Wildlife is part of who we are, our art lifts us out of the darkness.’
‘Hush, my darling, don’t fear my darling
The lion sleeps tonight’
Originally written in the Zulu language, The Lion Sleeps Tonight was recorded by Solomon Linda in 1939 in South Africa, but called ‘Mbube’. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that it became a global hit with a new title, by The Tokens
Am drifting back to an earlier Clint inspired post here, but you know when you watch an old spaghetti western, when the desert heat is palpable in those hot, dusty and sweat drenched, exhausted faces; that lingering quiet in the highest temperature of midday, just as a dried husk of tumbleweed rolls and bounces past.
Well, in case you’d not been reading the news, Italy is in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave since early June. It’s normally not this hot until mid-July, but day after day it’s been hitting the 40s centigrade or very close. Your skin feels like the moisture is being desiccated by the second and on top of that the mosquitoes have been out in force. My back looks like a join the dots map of Italy and I’ve been eyeing the spare cheese grater as a means to reach those places in the middle of your back, you know the ones where only those with arms like an orang-utan could have a hope of reaching.
Mosquitoes, the world’s most pointless insect after wasps.
Once the sun sets and the air cools a few meagre degrees, windows are opened to let in any semblance of cool night air. I’ve got a fan running non-stop to keep my two cats at a comfortable temperature. Although after one of them took to sleeping in the bidet I bought her a pet cool mat. On the upside my laundry bill is minimal as unless you are going out, seriously who wants to wear anything more than the essentials in this heat.
In other news I’ve been sweating my way through appointments at the local municipality office as I went through applying for Italian residency, while on the other side of the security screen there is a whirring A/C, my face is dripping. I’m literally sweating like a nervous dog. But some good news, I am now officially a resident here, and one step closer to Italian health care and have been able to sack off hiring a car and buy one. Having finally stopped getting rinsed each month, I’ve splashed out and bought a little Fiat 500 in pale blue. I am pretty sure Avis are glad to see the back of me, as two weeks ago I was driving down the hair pin bends from my apartment to the main road below when an old man was coming the other way and didn’t see me swerving out the way or honking my horn like a loon, and smashed into the front of my car. My driver’s side door wouldn’t open, my leg was whacked against the steering column (nothing cut or broken so phew…) and I now have a smashing (‘scuse the pun) bruise and a bump on my shin. But thank the car hire gods for reminding me to take the extra insurance as all covered, as it was close to a write off. I had a few days of feeling the shock and felt a bit wobbly inside, but I spent the weekend making deserts for a friend’s barbecue and helping out with the catering at a pizza party, which helped to take my mind off it all.
Pear and Gorgonzola Pizza (which was divine)
I’ve also been house hunting and had found a lovely apartment made an offer which wasn’t accepted but was told the owner would only take full price. So, I upped it and then he decided he couldn’t be arsed to sell and took it off the market (silent inward screaming).
Back to the drawing board… and I found a little Cielo-Terra (means sky – earth) in a hill town. About 500 years old and restored, lovely … however, the ground floor rooms were so damp the plaster was coming off, the owner is an architect so he should know better but he not only hadn’t got permission for all the alterations he’d done to a very historic building, but he’d also neglected to get a certificate of habitability. We all know what happened next… back to the drawing board.
I’ve now found another apartment near the lake here in Umbria, and the other day got the magnificent news that my offer has been signed and accepted and should be moving in late September. It needs a good decorate and freshen up, but I will have all the time to do it up and make it home. I will be sitting on that veranda with the lake in the distance having a well-deserved Aperol.
Lake Trasimeno
It’s 3 months since, I arrived, and it’s been baking hot, tiring and at times bewildering; the cats are slowly accepting the new billet, (little do they know we’re moving again) and Jack as per the pic below, has taken to sleeping in the bidet when it gets super hot.
But my Italian is slowly improving thanks to weekly lessons, and I have not once regretted coming here and taking that enormous leap. So, you could say, car crashes aside, Italy so far has my heart.
Ricordo ancora il suono: “Click, boom, boom, boom” Senti il mio cuore, fa così: “Boom, boom, boom”
Lyrics By Rose Villain
(I still remember the sound, Click, boom, boom, boom
Feel my heart, it goes like this, boom, boom, boom)
No, not that kind of breakdown, I mean the sort where we look at our emotions, take them as categories, if you will, of feelings and our response to life situations. Examine them like an emotional science project. What causes us to feel like this, and we’re talking the good, the bad and the ugly here.
Zero apologies for using this image
Can we square up to them and see what’s contributing to our emotions and how when we need to cope better or even just a little, how do we do that. Well, this is my take on all of this, so if any of this helps spin that wheel of emotions, read on as I’m going to take a little dive into some of the following.
What’s contributing to this
How does loss grief impact us
Are emotions whatever they look like, okay?
What has helped
Why do we push through
Coping strategies
I finished my last blog with how music and also notably bad dancing lifts me up and how in addition, I guess, writing and art are important to me. Not just as coping strategies but also just as part of who I am. They are a core that runs through personality, I try and see life around me as art, whether that be my shoes, a plate of food, a painting, an advert, the way someone moves, life is all about art, and without it we become lesser beings. In my view anyway. Paul Cézanne the French Impressionist painter when he wasn’t swigging Absinthe with Vincent Van Gogh, summed this up, perfectly.
“Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it”. Cézanne
I curated an art exhibition once, it was one of those times in my life I will never forget, I got to organise and buy art for an incredible gallery in London. It was my kid in a toy shop moment. Making it all work, look right, sell right I just had the best time those weeks of planning and proofreading, learning how to hang not to mention carry a life size lion up The Mall. So, ask me again what helps me push through, what’s one of my coping strategies, it’s invariably a painting so beautiful it makes my eyes leak. Whether you like a painting or not, it should conjure some emotion, even if it’s just a snigger, and you see that’s that flipping emotional wheel exactly to a tee. If something helps you, you use it, if it doesn’t find your thing and hold it close for when you need it.
I was watching an Italian series on Netflix the other day, it’s called Storia della Mia Famiglia, (The Story of My Family) and I highly recommend it, even if you need subtitles. I’m not going to go all waxing lyrical about my own family, but the series is a masterpiece in what life is like, the shit end and the bloody funny end. It tracks across a vast array of human emotions, taking in grandma to the children, it somehow (spoiler alert), meshes in drug use, mental health, cancer, death, fear, self-forgiveness and the importance of dancing or at least finding your equivalent thing; remembering what gives you joy or calm, peace or a smile etc, That it is okay to grieve, to worry to be angry and to also (as this was Italian)… throw plates. Italians do emotions out loud and, in the film, each character encapsulates all the sentiments we can think of on that pinging back and forth emotional wheel.
They lie to each other, they are angry, exasperated, happy, hopeful, impatient (of course), they show contempt and are judgemental, even the nuns upstairs are included with their gratitude, sense of humour and belief. But this shows us with every moment, that they are all real emotions, and they are all part of life.
Then the main character dies (more spoiler alerts), with the story moving between before and after his death and how he knows each of his family will suffer, but also how he knows them and what might be their way of coping, not forgetting him, or not feeling sad but of a way to see the light. What emotions he aligns with each of them and how he can get them to see, after his death that they can be happy again. He gives them each the gift of a personalised coping strategy, in asking them to tell him what they love about him, it’s his way of opening their eyes to help them when he is gone.
He says this so perfectly with the words.
‘Ragazzi quando sembrate tristi semplicemente ballate,
ballate perché quando ballate la tristezza si disintegra’
(Kids, when you seem sad just dance,dance because when you dance the sadness disintegrates)
So how would you describe yourself, be honest? People tell me I am funny, confident and smart – that I have great style. (I spend a literal fortune on shoes, I’ll have you know). But I don’t see myself that way, well not always. Been times when I have felt like I am sitting on the outside of everyone around me. They’re in the middle having fun, chatting, getting on, I’m looking for a quiet corner alone. I thought this was because I thought no one liked me or wanted to speak to me, or that I didn’t know how to articulate my feelings, my brain didn’t know how to even begin to express all of this.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I think I’ve realised that I did as a child, on occasions, feel stupid, plain, less well behaved, less valued. So, I backed myself away into that quiet corner, over and over again hoping no one would see me or notice. Then I could disappear and not have to face someone telling me again I was less than them. Eventually, I didn’t know how to get out of that corner, so for so long I stayed there, thinking that it was my safe space, but the truth is, that all that corner did was solidify those feeling of being ‘less than’. That it was in fact contributing to how I was feeling. It didn’t matter if they wanted to sit with me or not, it was about how and why I was feeling. It was about allowing myself to accept the bare minimum. What has helped, apart from Fausto getting us all to dance (and he was right by the way). Recognising those emotions and then unlearning those behaviours is vital, knowing that they were never too much.
You know what else; everyone is scared sometimes and that’s okay. At least I’m not always alone in my corner. The film uses all the emotions and gives them all free range to be what they are, and it also teaches us that happiness and joy and all the other thoughts and feelings, however big or small things have a place. That mental health, fear, sickness, love, openness, humour, etc are all normal they are all 100% bloody okay.
This is all about finding a way to turn around and look at life’s emotions in a different way, which has at times been very hard and I’ll be honest at times I didn’t even know it was possible or a thing. I just thought that corner was where I belonged. But now I have to trust myself to turn up the music; to find my tune and to trust that not everyone wants to see me alone and that indeed if they do, they are not worth my time or my joy. My joy is all mine, better still, it is actually there in front of me, not behind, or in that sodding corner.
A real lesson in that Italian series was that sadness can be a good thing, like any emotion, and I mean any of them. Do not shy away, you just need to look hard at it, without fear and discover what is causing those tears or a downturn in your smile, is it grief? And that is totally okay to feel loss and sadness, to be bereft of someone you loved. We need that to understand how to feel happy again. To find a way out but without being scared of going back. Sorrow, sadness or even fear are all emotions that we should respect and sit with them while we can see why and where and how. Then we can find the love again, but knowing that sadness and all the other emotions will pop their heads in from time to time. When we are really happy, and calm and at peace, what and why are we feeling that, can we pop that down in a notebook, can we take a photo to capture it? So then we know when another day or week is causing us to feel the flipside, we can use that time of happiness to cope.
I’ll give you one of mine, (back to music again, by the way). A few years ago, I went to a Peter Gabriel concert, anyone who knows me will tell you he’s my all-time favourite. I’ve not missed a tour since I was 16. I’d been given VIP seats; 4th row from the front and to see the soundcheck and meet Peter. I was beside myself, but then it got way better, I got an email asking me to be on camera for a film they were making about the tour. Not only was the whole evening amazing but just look at my face. I’ve popped that whole evening in the coping bucket, it’s there when I need it and it’s there when I don’t just to make me love that whole concert all over again.
‘This is the new stuff (This is the new stuff) I go dancing in, (We could go dancing in)‘
From Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
But back to emotional stuff, I wonder sometimes if grief is so hard because we have to eventually find a way to even let go of that sense of loss even a little, in order to have a better life ourselves. But that very letting go, can maybe seem like you have forsaken that memory, but the truth is maybe a little different; what if that letting go was just allowing our pain to ease but that we never forgot the good times and that we take inspiration from those moments.
When we experience a traumatic event, we can sometimes pre-empt any kind of joy, by a sense that it won’t last, or that it might be too good to be true. It’s our way of self-preservation. On the days when our hearts feel full, and to others we seem really happy, we have that sense in the back of our minds that it will be stripped away from us. The thought of this happening can be so detrimental, adding to that cycle – and we can be especially vulnerable to this if you’ve had your happiness crushed by someone, or lifechanging trauma. It becomes like a constant state of preparedness, the bad news, the let-down, for something to go wrong. It makes that corner a safe space, in both our hearts and minds.
Working towards hoping for the best and allowing it to happen if it does is a step forwards. But also understanding that a bad day, doesn’t mean a bad day, every day. But this hoping for and that state of preparedness can trap you in a constant ‘pause’, from life, from, well… from being entirely there in that moment. Think back to me in my corner, what might be your equivalent.
Not wanting to go all psychoanalyst here, but you know what I mean, if you have one foot on the brake, you can never actually drive down the road into the proverbial sunrise. And as Fausto rightly said, when you dance the sadness disintegrates. Its understanding that balance, that need to let go, to remember what it feels like to ‘dance’ or whatever your release is, and to know that it is perfectly okay to feel crap, to process that and to understand what that crap feels like, but also allow yourself to have that dance, it’s your life after all.
And so that’s the point of this one, is that no matter how back to front we feel (Peter Gabriel fans will get the pun), or right way around, or inside out, its actually the right way, for right then. Whatever brought us to that space in time, is right where we are meant to be. And trying to do what I usually do, and block any fearful feelings is not what the universe has in mind, we’re supposed to sit there and experience all the fun, the crap and the in between stuff. Its life.
If you don’t learn how to embrace your emotions when they happen when you feel them, then to protect yourself you go and sit in that corner, and stay there until you find your song, your light switch, your poetic confidence, your favourite shoes, the beauty or energy to see it and not hide from it. Because that hiding keeps it there, trapped, and each time you don’t look at that moment of less than perfection, square in the face, no matter how hard it is… well guess what, it just grows each time you add another piece of sadness, anger, worry… grief. The bucket gets deeper.
If you were lucky enough to grow up with someone who showed you that it was okay to be sad that if you felt sick that was okay too, you had support, someone to explain and sit with you, rather than maybe gaslight or even punish. Not everyone keeps their dream job or has a parent who tells them how amazing they are, passes all their exams and doesn’t miss their train on a cold dark night. Although it may seem like one more thing, or a why me moment… it is absolutely okay if you feel like crying, hiding or even running away. If you hold all that inside you, all those things you hid from in your corner, that pain let me tell you is a sneaky joy sump right there. But you can come back. You can always come back, that’s okay too. It’s life isn’t it. The ups and the mother fucking downs. If you need help or just a hand to hold. Ask for it and keep asking until you find the right support. We don’t always meet the right person first time you look for love. Same goes for support, sometimes the strangest opportunities and people fill that space for you, when you’ve felt others have let you down. I’m telling you, don’t give up.
To finish up with some emotional cheese. How can you help deal with foreboding joy?
Practice gratitude: Try writing down what you’re grateful for and why you’re grateful for it
Practice mindfulness: Pay attention to the present moment
Thank your worries: Acknowledge your worries and dread, and tell yourself that they’re no longer needed
Stay until your love is, alive and kicking
Stay until your love is, until your love is, alive
As a creative copy writer, my thoughts always veer towards the opening line – the how you engage, hook, and interest your reader and audience. But recently and for the worst kind of reasons, I’ve started thinking about those last words, their impact, their outpouring of emotions or are they stifled and trapped inside, taken with us and leaving a space of doubt, hope and a helpless void for the one left behind. In whatever form that takes.
How do we want to end what we say – be it that last sentence in a blog, book, press release, words to our family as we leave in the morning, or those actual very ‘last words.’
A friend of mine is struggling to breathe, cancer is consuming her, and she is giving it her everything to stay here and live. Keeping on talking to our little group of friends in our WhatsApp group. She’s written letters to leave behind and a book of instructions for her funeral. She’s prepared in all the ways she can, apart from the sadness of knowing it is hurtling towards her and what to say, what can you say? But say you must.
Over the years I have become a firm believer in telling people that you love them, showing them that you care – they are in your thoughts. You don’t always get that other chance to say or show it, when that moment, that breath of tangible air sits between you and the other to speak your truth. And that is how my friend is living, what I hope will be more than her last days, but I’ve told her – in the middle of the night when I know she is awake, IV stuck in her vein; on a card, on a call – I’ve shared how I feel about her.
When you are writing, recording, filling in those blanks in your email or whatever, think about what you are saying, and not just how it starts, but how it finishes. What will you leave in that space at the end, what do you want to say that counts.
Then write it down and say it.
For Jenn.
All our love and all our pain Will be but a tune The Sun and the Moon The wind and the rain Hand in hand we’ll do and die Listening to the band that made us cry We’ll have nothing to lose We’ll have nothing to gain Just to stay this real-life situation For one last refrain.
Songwriters: Nicky Holland / Roland Orzabal (from Famous Last Words)
I have a thing about hands, they hold us as humans, tightly together, they reach out for us when we need them most and they can hold a pen to write or type out our thoughts and emotions. They are practical and sensual all at once.
Hands can be delicate and strong all at the same time, yet in the most powerful and emotive ways. You know that sensation, when you stick your hands into a warm sandy beach and all at once you feel the enveloping heat and at the same time, the scouring of the grit, forming a collision of senses. Well, finding what is the beating heart of your brand is often very similar. You need to find what inspired you from the outset – what was your heat, what touched your heart? And then mix that, with the gritty reality of securing your company or your brands future.
Now, if you squeeze your eyes tightly so they are almost completely closed, so that the darkness on the inside of your lids just lets in the smallest slice of light, but yet one that shows you the most beautiful of views, then you are close to where I am going with all of this.
Umbrian olive trees at sunrise
I was speaking with a client earlier this week, planning and creating a brochure for their Italian home and also their business. It is in the most breathtaking location, surrounded by olive trees, a castle in the distance, and the occasional wandering wild boar. Intrinsically it is immediately, more than just what we regularly think of as a brand product or a price tag. For them it’s about a conversation that opens up their hearts and minds, that will allow you as the reader to dip inside just long enough that you are able to read the words that they are only imagining; then, through that beam of light, you can see when you almost close your eyes, concentrating their vision onto a page so it engages and enthrals the reader, or a potential buyer or investor.
My words as a copywriter, must tread between those two universes, meshing the fingertips together so that as you read, your heart and mind pull tightly close together and as you exhale, know that those words have captured both elements in that enthralling single breath.
And just like that they had their mission statement.
‘As humans, by sharing our view, we can create a better life‘
Someone asked me the other day about what I love most about writing, honestly, I think it is about telling a good story – getting underneath every layer of it, whether that is my story, your story, a brand, a moment in time, an emotion, or a song.
That got me thinking about the importance of song lyrics and how for many of us we connect to moments in our lives with music; whether we were on holiday, a broken romance, a truest love or a long journey with the window down, rain trickling through the gap while belting out rock n roll, so loud as we stay awake for those last few miles home.
I was driving around the M25 one evening, heading towards East Sussex, it was the day after Meat Loaf had died, in a year when way too many people had lost their lives to the pandemic that was 2020 and 2021.
I had remembered when the story broke on the news, about a time when I was singing one of the songs from the Bat out of Hell album, the duet with Marion and Meat, really (really) badly with one of my school friends. It was just after the record first came out; we were all obsessed with it. I even had Bat out of Hell on a 12’’ blood red vinyl special edition. Anyway, I was Meat, as back then I had all the hair. We were appalling, me especially, I have never, ever been able to hold a tune – but we loved the album and the unrelenting passion it had for life, love, and those skin-peeling raw emotions. It was bare your heart out stuff and that’s right where we were as angry teenagers. We were living life loud and with nothing held back, at that moment, dancing on the desks at school.
I think I could genuinely think of a music lyric that connects any emotion to a song, that has in turn meant something to me. It seems completely right when explaining why lyrics and my love of writing are so interconnected as they join those emotions and passions – with barely a visible seam, pressed together sharing words in that moment. I guess, what I want to say more than anything else, is that even when we are at our lowest point, or conversely, even when we think life couldn’t top that precise moment of joy, when telling and living our story, that there will always be so much more.
You just need to find it and live that second. Like a bat out of hell.
And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell And the last thing I see is my heart, Still beating still beating Still beating still beating Breaking out of my body, and flying away
Like a bat out of hell
By J. Steinman
With thanks to Marvin Lee Aday, for allowing me to realise what a good story really means.
While I am no scientist, although I did used to read Gray’s Anatomy in the bath, as there was invariably a copy lying about the house, and once I dressed up my brother’s skeleton on the dining room table. That aside, my skills are more on the right side of the brain, I’m the arty creative one in the family. But that doesn’t stop me from having a huge heart and wanting to use my skills to improve patient to physician communications, to encourage better understanding of treatments, drugs and ultimately to improve the health and lives of others.
Grays Anatomy
Years ago, I spent a year studying anatomy and physiology, then another two years training as an aromatherapist and complementary healthcare practitioner. Consumer health for me is a page that should not be left unturned. I spent many hours while living in New York as a First Responder and was part of my towns Emergency Rescue Squad. Weekends saw me driving the ambulance and supporting the crew on everything from bar brawls to transporting critical care patients to high level facilities.
While working for a herbal tea company for about 18 years, I promoted it’s health giving properties – notably for digestive issues and benign skin conditions. I collaborated with dieticians, herbal practitioners, writing and even speaking to nursing staff on continence care. I raised thousands for causes in South Africa, where the tea originated, aligning with key UN Millennium Development Goals around healthcare – in particular, HIV, Malaria and TB. I also volunteered for a year helping a London women’s charity, with their social media on FGM. It was harrowing interviewing and meeting women who had been cut, but each time it just reaffirmed to me that I was using my writing and marketing skills in the right way.
Eventually the pull was so strong that I made a huge decision to step away from the brand world and retail marketing and step into working for health agencies as an Account Director. It’s been tough during Covid (timing wasn’t my strong suit!) but the ingenuity of the teams that work across medical education, digital platforms, media, new drug launches, patient and practitioner campaigns, is endless and never ceases to amaze me and to feel incredibly proud to be part of changing patient outcomes. It has without question given me a fundamental sense of purpose, a long day becomes something incredibly worthwhile, an early meeting has focus, all the while working with a team of like-minded people.
My advice to you is that you should always follow those dreams and passions. Because those goals are what you aspire to be or do, they give you a sense of meaning and purpose.
Your dreams are something that drives you on those long days. By following your dreams, you’ll become a better and happier person all in that one process.
‘Let your heart guide you…it whispers so listen closely. ‘
WALT DISNEY
Sometimes it may feel that your situation doesn’t allow you to fully pursue your dreams, but often there are some tiny steps that you can make – and many tiny steps are as good as one big step. My tiny steps were training in anatomy and physiology, finding ways to use my love of the written word combined with marketing skills to support those in need of better healthcare. Remember when it feels hard that this is your dream and inspiration.
Find what not only makes your heartbeat but what knits your heart and mind together.
Write Up My Street 