MEDIA MENTIONS

 It's been a while since I mentioned my book, A Place Called Siracusa, and I have just realised that we are approaching the end of the year, so I thought I would tell you about a mention of it in the daily newspaper La Sicilia back in May. For those of you who read Italian, here is the link to the story online.

I am still working on the file to put the book on Amazon (I'm sorry it is taking longer than I anticipated) and I hope I'll be able to do this by the end of the year. I will keep you posted.

This week I received another media mention, this time about this blog and it appears in issue 92 of the British magazine for women who write, Mslexia. I always look forward to reading Mslexia, as it encourages me to keep going and it was in fact this magazine which inspired me to begin blogging, back in 2006. Therefore it is a great pleasure to see my blog featured in it. 

I'm going to get back to that file now!

AND NOW WE ARE 5!

Yes, this blog shares a birthday with Queen Elizabeth 11 and is five years old today!  In celebration, I am republishing the very first two posts I wrote on that April day when I had no real idea what I was doing:

From April 21st 2006:

TANGERINE LAND

When I was a little girl, in Bristol, England, in the 1950s, you could only get tangerines at Christmas. They were about the most exotic food you could buy and we didn't differentiate between tangerines, mandarins, satsumas or clementines. Any round, orange, citrus fruit that was too small to be an orange was a tangerine!

I can still see my father's delighted face as he came home on winter nights and produced a tangerine from each of the pockets of his long, dark blue overcoat. I thought the smell of the tangerine was heavenly and even now, it signifies Christmas for me. I didn't know where the fruit came from but I knew I wanted to go there!

Coincidentally I am writing this almost 33 years to the day since my father's death. How happy he would be to know that I have come to live in the land of the tangerine!

BUON COMPLEANNO, MA'AM!

I'm not even a royalist so I am surprised to find myself in the least affected by the Queen's birthday.

But one of the elements of culture shock, about which I have done a lot of research, is that an event in your country of origin which wouldn't even interest you, were you there, can suddenly take on importance for you as an ex-pat. As an Italian linguist and someone who knows and loves the culture of my adopted country, I didn't expect to suffer from this condition: but, as my research bears out, the more you do know and love the adopted country, paradoxically, the more you are likely to suffer to some degree; it's as if, at times, your very perceptiveness works against you.

So today I, the Republican par excellence, found myself feeling strange because it's Lizzie Windsor's birthday and very few people here know about it or give a damn! - and, indeed, why should they?

This morning I talked to the nice old gentleman who always greets dog Simone and me on our walks and for some reason I found myself telling him that the Queen - I did add "of England" as he looked a bit puzzled - is 80 today - and, whilst he didn't exactly shrug his shoulders, I could see that he was wondering why it should matter.

And why, indeed, should it matter to me, of all people? It was one of those times when you can feel a bit isolated, that's all, because if I had been in the UK on this day I would have been arguing about the occasion with everybody on the bus and being my iconoclastic self.

It's a very British thing, this "collective memory" that the Queen represents: it's hard to explain to others. It's just that, whether you are a monarchist or not, you do remember her being "there", at every important national event.

And for me, the monarch's ageing is a reminder of my own: I was 3 when she was crowned and I thought it was like the Presidency of the USA - I thought anybody could get to be the Queen [or the "Preen", as I called her, as I couldn't pronounce "Queen"] . Then my Dad explained that I would have to marry Charlie to be Queen, and that certainly didn't appeal! Then, as I grew up, the whole absurdity of the monarchy as an institution struck me.

Nowadays, whilst I am quite happy to wish Her Majesty a happy birthday, I cannot understand these "fans" of her gracious self who send / give her cards and flowers! [And I couldn't understand those who did the same for her mother, either.] Why don't they go to their nearest care-home and do something [ in Her Majesty's name, if they must!] for those who are really in need?!

Incidentally, every Italian I have spoken to today thinks that "gli Inglesi" are a little mad. [Being Welsh, I can happily dissociate myself from this, of course!]

Not a word about any of it in "Corriere della Sera" today - at least, not in the edition I read at lunchtime for, hypocrite that I am, I strolled along to my favourite bar to read the paper and drink to HM!

22.4.06: Incidentally, HM is referred to as "Queen Elizabeth", not "the Queen" on BBC World and "la regina Elisabetta" in the Italian press. I note that the event is covered in "Corriere" online today.

Well, now Lizzie Windsor, my blog and I are five years older and I think it's fair to say that we are all three still going strong!  If I didn't know what I was doing on 21st April 2006 I had still less idea where it would all lead:  My blog has disciplined me as a writer, enabled me to see my own country through Italian eyes, helped me settle in Italy and indirectly brought me paid work.  But most importantly, it has brought me into contact with you, my dear readers and today I would like to thank you all for your pazienza, encouragement and friendship over these five years.  Cincin!

FRIDAY FUN - I WRITE LIKE...

I found this over at Liz's blog.  You paste something you have written into the thingamy and it tells you who you write like.  I just had to have a go so I pasted in part of a blog post and here is the result:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

H P Lovecraft? Well, Wiki does say he wrote weird fiction...


Then Simi wanted a go so we pasted in her latest blog post:

Liz, who apparently writes like Cory Doctorow too, will be thrilled to know she writes like Simi!  Like Liz, we didn't know who Cory Doctorow was either - no offence, Cory - so we looked him up.  I always knew Simi was an intellectual.

Finally I pasted in part of one of my Italy Magazine articles and I'm sure my colleagues there will be pleased to know this:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

TODAY...

.... has been a very big day for me, as my first two articles as a regular writer for Italy Magazine have been published here and here. I hope you have time to take a look and enjoy them. Italy Magazine was one of my favourite reads when I was in Britain and I never dreamt I would become a member of their team!

myspace layouts

UNA STANZA

On Sunday James began a discussion about ideal rooms, asking us to post a picture of what, to us, is a liveable room and then send him the link. I've thought a lot about this and have decided that any room I spend any time in has to have books and has to have clutter. By clutter I mean objects that mean something to me and rather a lot of them. No minimalist, me! In fact, when I was selling my house in Britain and an estate agent suggested I "declutter a bit" I cursed, stamped and screamed for days and refused to do it, for I do not understand why people want to go and see a virtually empty house. Can't they imagine their own things in a house as it is? Or is it that they don't collect or keep things? Anyway, my mother, who, along with Dad, abhorred clutter [I suppose they were rebelling against an earlier age] used to say I'd have made a "good Victorian". And, indeed, I love Victorian rooms and could quite happily have lived in the Dickens House in London, for instance, assuming I had been a rich Victorian! [I cannot find pictures of the interior.]

My heroine Simone de Beauvoir used to keep all her books on a shelf at picture rail level which went right round her tiny, neat Paris apartment. I have pictures in a book of the house of Marguerite Duras [again, I cannot find these pictures online]; it is not modern, but has cool, clean lines and white decor, and, as uncluttered living spaces go, I think I could cope with it, for there are books. In the same volume there are pictures of Marguerite Yourcenar's sitting room, which is booklined, has personal objects everywhere and has homely shawls gently draped over the armchairs. That would definitely be more "me."

Then I think of the writers' and artists' houses I have visited, particularly in Italy, among them the Bellini house in Catania, the house of Carducci [ a poet who caused me much misery at university] in Bologna, the poet Quasimodo's house right here in Modica, Pirandello's birthplace near Agrigento, the Leonardo Museum and nearby birthplace at Vinci, the Verdi birthplace at Roncole and his Villa Sant'Agata. All are fascinating and I could linger for days happily in any one of them. And I could certainly live in the rooms of the Castello Nelson near Bronte, about which I posted in January. But for one room my choice has to be D'Annunzio's magnificently cluttered study at the Vittoriale on Lake Garda. Imagine working and writing in this room! I'd be in heaven. Just one thing, though... Where on earth would I put the computer?

TANTI AUGURI AL BLOG

My blog is one year old today! Prior to starting it, I knew about blogging, of course, and was reading news and political blogs in order to keep up with events in the UK. Then I read an article about blogging in Mslexia magazine, to which I subscribe [I recommend this magazine to all women who want to write] and began to think that maybe this was something I could do. I looked at all the blogs mentioned in the article and, well, you know what it's like; one blog leads you to another and before you know it, you're hooked! So I decided the only way I was going to find out if blogging was for me would be to give it a go!

I perused all the blog hosting sites I could find and concluded that blogger had the clearest instructions and the most help topics for a technical nitwit like me [and for all its faults, I still think this is so] then finally, with some trepidation, I wrote my first post. It was with even more trepidation that I uploaded my first photo; I didn't even know there was a zoom thing on the digcam! [OK, I could have read the instructions but I do like to imagine that I have a sense of adventure.] It was all trial and error at first and I didn't really expect anyone to read my blog, though of course I hoped that they would! I was terrified and thrilled at the same time when I received my first comment and it was a while before I found the confidence to comment on other blogs myself.

Later I joined blogpower and that was the injection of adrenalin that my blog [and I] needed: I've found so many "daily reads" among its members and also so much support, both technically and emotionally. I've also found blogs that have changed my mind about various issues, for blogs, like travel, have the ability to do that.

I am not a very disciplined person [except when I'm out at work or have a deadline] and blogging has disciplined me into writing something every day, or nearly every day. Because of the need to write, I feel I observe my surroudings more acutely than I would otherwise.

But the best part has definitely been finding, meeting and corresponding with so many interesting friends, all over the world.

Now I am wondering where this blog goes from here. I know I have veered off the topic of strictly Sicily once or twice lately, though I have tried to confine myself, in such posts, to writing about events that have led me here or affect me here. I have contemplated widening the scope of the blog and writing not just about Sicily but about the world as I see it from here, for when you move to another country your perceptions of your own and of the world change: it's as if an "extra layer" is added to them. [It's rather like the time I went, with friends, to a Chinese restaurant here: for them, it was a Chinese restaurant in Sicily, which was novelty enough; for me, it was a Chinese restaurant in Sicily which is different from a Chinese restaurant in Britain, so my experience of it and the judgements I was making were very different from theirs. ]

But I don't want to alienate or lose readers. I suppose it depends whether what you all come over here to read about truly is a slice of Sicilian life. My guess is that it is but I'd love to know what you think.

Meanwhile, thank you all for reading and commenting during the past year: you keep me going!