Absolutely Not About Hallowe'en

Italy has gone Hallowe’en crazy, several years behind England and many years behind the US. Our local dime store which is hardly in the vanguard of fashion has a whole, erm, department, dedicated to pumpkin-related artefacts. But I did hear one note of sanity on the subject this afternoon. Funnily enough it came from a neighbourhood…

Read More

The Rules of Ice Cream

Mr F and I just had pizza down in the square and, as the catalogue for the LL Bean Expandable Waistband Fall Collection has just been delivered we thought we’d really raise hell and buy ice cream for dessert. We have been buying gelato at the same place for years. A 6 euro insulated vaschetta, to go. Four flavours. But…

Read More

Not One For Grandma

I took a couple of hours off this morning and went with my friend Laura to see the exhibit at the Punta della Dogana. We’d heard that residents could get in free on Wednesdays.Not that I’m cheap or anything but 17 Euro admission sounded pretty steep to me. The old Custom’s House and Warehouses had been…

Read More

Crime Report

I’d like to report a crime. Someone stole the past fortnight of my life. One minute it was September 17th and I was casually throwing a few items in a suitcase for a trip to Ireland. The next thing I knew my most recent blog was two weeks old which, let’s face it, in terms of blog-topicality might as well date from…

Read More