The trials and arrows

......................and by thus defeating end them.
Schoolboy memories.
We were in a restaurant just around the corner from our art show in Padova and Lorenzo's dad asked me to write something on my serviette. Like what? anything he said, so I did the schoolboy rote memory bit.
Hey, he says, this indicates to me that you have a great clarity inside you but you show chaos without... but that's OK because you use this in a creative way.
Ooh, I like that I say, but get uncomfortable, doubting looks from the other dinner guests.

Currently Bernie and I are continue to suffer the trials an arrows of new technology.
Yes, you guessed it, Fidoka, the wireless wizards..... More later.

You see, we have on loan from them a whole boxes full of wonders...wonders to charm the most illustrious of sheiks and international arms dealers. And with what we have in these boxes, Bernie (according to Fidoka) can wander great distances from this flashing blue beastie on my desk, the router.......


...and still pick up a signal and write an article for the Buenos Aires Herald (were there such a thing, could be, could be). It would be like throwing a paper dart into the sky, he says,.. as easy as that.




No such luck., not today, not today. Today which has the mountains covered with fresh snow just as they were at the beginning of June last year










.....and here we are wearing winter woollies, winter wellies, again. Today is a bad Fidoka day. You see how that word has already entered the main stream of ex-pat English here?...'Hey, come on, you're fidoking with me' and similar configurations of la lingua inglesi.
But, you know, I shouldn't be so hard on this little pioneering company.
Truth is, we got the wires mixed up in this wireless escapade,



I mean, just look!



Yep, all it needed was a bit of fiddling around and Bingo! we got the router to work. And yes , Bernie walks in a straight line up the road from the house, slowly disappearing into the distance cuddling his apple laptop , shouting 'I'm still on, I'm still on!'
And now there's only one problem...when he's on, I'm off!
We can't get both on line at the same time. It's like he's sucking the lifeblood from my PC with his fidoking Apple.
So off he will go to Fidoka this afternoon to sort out those techies once and for all.
If only, if only he understood Nerdish.
And he comes back and says I've got it sussed, I've got a diagram. OK let's see it I say, where is it? It's in my head he says. I groan and head for fridge. Mind you, to be fair, I must admit that things (instructions) do get lost in our heads sometimes (I'm talking about men here) Just this week I was sent to the supermarket with a shopping list for a dinner party that evening. Now, I always go into a state of panic and become word blind when I enter supermarkets and somehow just buy stuff which is immediately in front of me; shampoo, biscuits, baked beans. So instead of steak of vitello to make pancietta rolls, I come back with stewing beef! Can't tell you how it happened. I said I'm sorry but...
Hey, you know, the dog box ain't so bad a place to hang out of an evening.
With Bessie and her sasso museum.

We visited some friends up in Treviso on the weekend who live up in the sky in the middle of the historical centre. If you look up at their apartment from the piazza below, you see only what looks like a terraced garden. But up you go in a lift and low and behold they live in a wondrous rooftop palace with five children and this is what Francesco tells me about life up there.
We only watch SKY between channels 400 and 500, he says, and have our ADSL on all the time
to be in contact with the world outside, Why? To get reality, not the Italian version but info from the world outside (what does he mean, I'm thinking)...because nobody understands them in town and their need to think outside of the mainstream and they very seldom venture down, except to work (they are both dentists). Up in the sky they have everything, even a bonzi garden to care for at weekends. You must, he says, read up the Red Ocean, Blue Ocean Strategy. There are parallel possibilities in the main stream of life. So, I've ordered the book from Amazon. You know, we've gone wireless, I tell him. He gives me an empty look. Couldn't take the risk, he says. I let it go.

The kittens?

We've found a home for all of them, they are going in pairs, Socksie with Pix, and Pipo with Panda, his sister, who is somewhat strange with a long nose (picture)











Our battle with the neighbours?

They are such intimidating morons that they are not worth even the tiniest space in our minds, so I'll be brief. Suffice it to say that our lawyer says it could take 30 years for the case to be settled. Should turn out to be an interesting outcome for the 83 year old instigator of the whole mess. Climate predictions are that by that time this area of Italy would have become an extension of the Sahara desert, so their jealous eyes on my plum and apricot trees stare enviously and in vain.
And only the photographs will remain, only the photographs with submitted to our lawyer of their misdeamenours, like the photos I saw in the comune this morning as I was waiting to pay my parking fine. Pictures from the thirties: beautiful people on the Sarnano ski slopes, so elegant and cool and fashionable. And not even one of them could still be alive. Such stories there, such stories,