Yes, I am sorry. My mind has been in another dimension as I prepared myself for my trip to Venice and school.
It all began with goodish omens. I was in five rows of business class to Zurich and all by myself. I had a ball!
I connected and got to Venice problem free. Water taxi (sod the expense) to the Campiello dei Felzi, I had barely put foot on terra firma when the agent met me and took me to the apartment. I thought it was large, but like Theseus, I need an Ariadne to provide me with thread of sufficient length to find my way about. Thankfully I have not yet come across a Minotaur lurking in any, as yet, unexplored corners.
When I was planning my trip the second time around, Laing and I were joking about the first day at school. I asked him if he would pack my satchel for me and hold my hand and wave me goodbye at the school gate. He was there very much in spirit, and I went and bought one of those Bic pens with four colours that children always found exciting and a quaderno (exercise book). I have also since bought myself a cartelina, or folder, for my school papers.
My existing knowledge of French has proved to be of use and most helpful, but my knowledge of Spanish is both a hindrance and an advantage. “Per che?” and “¿Porque?” I constantly struggle to use correctly, the same with other similar terms. Nevertheless, I find Italian is not as difficult to learn as I feared, and although I may stumble while reading (you try saying aloud in the middle of an Italian sentence, without prior warning or knowledge, ‘gioielliere’).
I am so desperate to run before I can walk, and my lessons are 2 hours learning and 1 hour conversation, two different teachers, insegnante, an invariable noun in the singular for masculine and feminine and the plural. What is also most enjoyable about the situation being one-on-one is that I am able to explain also in English terms where I find a correspondence, and I have also passed on a couple of French expressions!
Last night was the big test. Stefano invited me out for cicchetti (let’s call them Venetian tapas, though they are not quite the same) and an ombra (literally a shadow, but for Venetians it is also a drink taken in the evening) or two. Our conversation flowed part English and part Italian, I met Sylvia, a very close friend of Stefano. I had the iPad mini with me and I showed them an impossible vaporetto journey from the David Lean movie “Summertime”, starring Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. We fell in with a collection of ‘happy’ guys celebrating a birthday, though we left when the opportunity arose, that’s too long a story for the blog.
Anyway, when it came to ‘buonanotte’ I was talking about Venice and how much I love her (Venice is very much a grand old lady to me) to Sylvia and she said (the second person yesterday who said it too) I am passionate about Venice, just like a Venetian, and my eyes come alive when I talk about the city. I explained I have two states of mind, which exist with equal force, love and hate. There is very little in between (OK, maybe not 100% true, but in vino veritas, the veritas is pretty close). At least there is one thing I and everybody I have met share, my deep profound love for Sylvio Berlusconi is as deep as theirs. It is at this point I wish there were a smiley for IRONY ALERT!!!
To learn Italian, since Laing wanted to retire to Venice, was something I promised I would do. He will never retire here, but maybe, through the fog of early incomprehension, I am seeing possibilities for a future that I never even thought of before, which the learning of a new language has taught me, above and beyond the language itself.
OK, this is enough waffle for now.
Ciao, ragazzi, e buongiorno a tutti!
