Moved...

Having remembered my other Google password I have moved my blog to what was its original home before I had the blip.

Corso Sant'Anastasia.

View from Here

This is the view from my window today. It's pretty much always the view from my window but I'm especially irritated today as I'm off work and yesterday was actually pleasant and sunny. I was (insanely) hoping to go out for a walk this afternoon but I have a headache and feel a bit sick so it's probably not a good idea in the rain and wind. It is, as I type, 21C in Verona.

Well, off to Amazon for a juicer and P&P 1 and 2 on DVD as I'm about to get rid of the television set and won't be able to watch videos anymore. I don't know what to do with all the Jane Austen videos. I suppose I could email round the girls at work offering them free to good homes.

And this was the view from my window almost exactly a year ago...

Re-learning Italian

I need to go shopping for a pair of fleecy socks to replace the ones I lost betwixt the washing line and the house a fortnight ago. Such are the thrills of sleeping alone in Scotland in spring time. I think I will smack the next person who questions why I want to go back to Italy. The Veneto, well Verona airport at least, has been consistently 8-10 degrees warmer than Edinburgh every day for the past three weeks which is when I started checking daily. Last night I was so cold in bed I could barely sleep. I know I slept because I can remember some odd dreams but the general effect was of lying awake all night immobile with the cold and that spilled over into being non-functional at work all morning and, despite an almost warm sunny day, being too tired to go for a walk at lunch-time hence the old pedometer is barely registering 5000 steps.

I have just ordered "Italian in Three Months" from Amazon which is a bit more basic than I need but I think I should re-ground myself and really seriously go over and over the basics and then register for an intermediate class in the autumn. I will have one year from then to get good enough to live there. When I lived in Italy before I was happy just to "pick it up" but now that I am old, well, middle-aged, I am panicky and finicky and can't wing it the way I used to.

I have just returned from Denver with temperatures of 68F and above every afternoon to this...

... and yet I have to keep explaining to people why I don't want to live in Edinburgh.

So far today it is too cold and too wet to leave the house. I realise I need to do it some time as I have nothing to eat, no more green tea and desperately need some of my 10,000 steps but it is not a pleasant prospect. On Wednesday in Denver I did 13,403 steps without even realising it. Everything is so much easier when the sun shines.