Le week-end

We're dashing off to France this weekend for a whirlwind 2-day break in Avignon, where my mum and dad are currently enjoying a well-deserved holiday. That means that (hopefully) I'll have some interesting stories to tell when we get back (and maybe some pics to go with them!). As usual I have a romantic picture in my head of us whizzing around the sunny French Riviera in my cool Fiat 500 (with the Italian flag on the side obviously), hair blowing in the breeze and Audrey Hepburn-style sunglasses perched on my head. Fast forward to Emma and Luca stuck in traffic on the A7, fighting over which CD to put on, arriving red raw from the sun / wind burn of a 5 hour drive with the roof open....
This (very) short break is most definitely needed. Aside from the day to day monotony of car - office - car - home - bed, the past few months have been a real emotional rollercoaster ride, and I for one need to get away! On the plus side, we found a new apartment (yep, again!) and will be moving on the 1st of June. This time it's for real! Completely fed up with the 130 km daily round trip, noisy locals and resident gypsies, we searched for, and finally found a newer, more comfortable place more or less half way between Milan and Pavia. It has all of the things we've suffered without over the last year (dishwasher, double glazing, air con), and - it would appear - none of the things we've had to live with involuntarily (old lady upstairs waking us up every morning with her over-zealous cleaning rituals, noisy road, adjacent field that doubles as a gypsy camp every summer weekend...). The contract should be done and dusted by the end of next week, so fingers crossed! I've tested the drive home and it's a luxurious 25 minutes average - fab!
So, all that remains to say is "Bon week-end a tout le monde, e vive la France!!"

Smart parking

Here’s a little story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
My friend T went to do a little shopping in the centre of Milan on Saturday afternoon. She drives a Smart car, which in theory should be easy to park, but Milan being Milan, you can take nothing for granted, so after just a few ‘giri’ she was pleasantly surprised to find a space. Being careful to check that there were no “No parking” signs, she parked up and went on her way. Two hours later she came back to find her car blocked in by a police car. Upon closer inspection she noticed, in fact that the whole street was lined with police cars, parked side-by-side for as far as the eye could see. Close by was a man standing outside a shop, pacing up and down, smoking a cigarette, evidently waiting for his wife or girlfriend to make her purchases so that they could leave. Seeing my friend’s confusion, he pointed out that the whole area is designated police parking, and the they were in fact standing right outside the police station. His advice to my friend was to go inside and ask if someone would move the car, although obviously they would give her a ticket – not only for parking illegally but for depriving them of their own precious space. Normal, no? So, off goes my friend, more than a little embarrassed, into the police station to confess to her crime. The officer on the front desk confirms that, yes, this area is police parking, yes there’s a sign at the start of the street, and you should know from the fact that the lines around the spaces are yellow and not blue or white. Clear? OK, Now what? A ticket? A fine? License points? What do you think, dear reader?

Firstly the policeman was very interested to know where my friend was from. Canada? Ah what a beautiful country… I’d love to visit…. What are you doing here in Italy..? Do you have a boyfriend….? Blah blah blah. As my friend started to realize that the police officer didn’t seem too interested in doling out the relevant punishment, she decided to tackle the issue of freeing her car. Sadly it turned out that the colleague to whom the car belonged was extremely busy, and may not be free for hours, and with no one else available and the front desk officer unable to leave his post, he simply threw the keys over the desk and suggested my friend move the police car herself. Eh? Cosa? Yeah, just go round the block a couple of times – you’re bound to find a spot. …
So, off goes T, police car keys in hand, much to the shock and amusement of the smoking man outside the shop. A giro around the block and she’s back. Throws the keys over the desk back to the police officer, whose last words are “Don’t forget you can’t park here, bella!” Wink wink.
Only in Italy.

Fa un c***o di freddo!!

.... and this wasn't even the coldest it got on Saturday - 50 kms south of Milan, at sea-level by the way....

Dude, where's my car?

This is what greeted me when I left the house at 7:20 yesterday morning- dressed, hair washed and styled, make-up on, computer bag packed, Starbucks flask full of coffee....... and back to bed twenty minutes later!!

Back to school

It's the first day of school - well, work actually, but I have that first-day-of-school-feeling - and I made it in for 9.36. Not bad, eh? Am sitting in a very quiet office (there's 5 of us in total on the sixth floor), listening to Radio 2 from the UK over the internet. You know you're approaching 30 when you choose Radio 2 over Radio 1. English people everywhere will know exactly what I mean...

Happy New Year everyone!! So far, so good - a few kilos heavier, many hundreds of euros lighter (the pound is at 1 to 1 with the euro - it had to be done), and.... back with Luca. I guess that means I won't be changing the name of my blog to Life & Lavoro. Meno male!!

So, bombshell duly dropped, I must get back to my very busy day of updating my Facebook profile and reading the Daily Mail online.... Work starts "properly" on January 7th....

Ciaooooooo

PS - the pic is of one of my all-time favourite christmas movies.... anyone know it?

Back in the habit...

Long time, no blog!! What can I say? When your life does a 180° turn, it’s hard to keep up!

Last Thursday we had our office Christmas party at the Jazz Cafè. This is one of my favourite restaurant / bars in Milan, and even more so when the boss is paying as it’s more than a little priiiiiiicey. It’s also a staple hang-out for models and associated hangers-on / beautiful people, but I find that if you drink enough you don’t even notice their presence, so the wine flowed a bit too much and the following day in the office I thought I might just drop down dead on the spot. Once a year……

A few days previously, T and I went to see “Solo un padre” at the cinema. I’d seen the trailers and thought it looked cute – or rather Luca Argentero, the main character looked cute – so we decided to give it a try. In reality, Luca Argentero isn’t just cute, he’s a figo della madonna, but that’s kind of beside the point. The film was fantastic – probably one of the best Italian movies I’ve seen. Well scripted, nicely thought out and not at all predictable as the story line led me to believe it would be. And it had the cuuuuutest little baby in it…. Sexy man + cute baby = success!

Work has been insane. I was in the office until nine thirty pm Friday before last, and not because I had no social life, but actually because I was busy! I thought that was a record, until last SATURDAY NIGHT, when T & I ended up being dragged down by certain colleagues, who shall remain nameless, and ended up working until 2:30am!!!!! This is for a particularly big contract with a rather important chocolate manufacturer, so in reality I did it in the hope that freebies will be forthcoming, especially given the season and all that! We’ll see….

Driving up Via Farini on the way to K’s on Sunday, I was minding my own business, listening to the radio, going in a straight line, when a cretino decided to pull out right in front of me and attempt a u-turn. It was dark and rainy but that’s no excuse – rear-view mirrors were invented for a reason, people!! The result was a huge dent all the way down the passenger side, and an hour spent in the rain filling out the extremely long, extremely complicated Costatazione amichevole. Names, addresses, tax codes, licence numbers, insurance company addresses, phone numbers, insurance codes, renewal dates, damage details and a little drawing of the incident -  not easy to accomplish with trembling hands and palpitations…. The only good thing about it is that they’ve given me my favourite car in the world as a courtesy vehicle, so as far as I’m concerned, they can take their time with the repairs!

I fly to England for Christmas with the ‘rents on December 21^st. In spite of everything, I’m actually quite excited – it’ll be my first trip home since last Christmas, and I couldn’t imagine spending it anywhere else. I suspect I will feel pretty out of it at first – for example I have no clue who the people from X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are – but after a few sherries and half a box of Quality Street, I’m sure it’ll all come flooding back to me. New Year will be spent with friends in a villa on Lake Garda. This will for sure be the tough part, as old acquaintances are hard to forget – especially at New Year – but I’m determined to make the best of it. So far my only resolution for 2009 is to try and arrive at the office before 9:30 each day. Now that really will be tough....

Moving on

I have always insisted that I will never become one of those people who stays in the office until seven thirty every night. For me it’s a sign that a person has nothing better to do, and no life outside of work. For the past three weeks, however, the office has become my best buddy, the one place where I can at least pretend that everything is fine, and where life goes on as normal, or as normal as possible, from 9am to 7pm.
It’s when I get in my car at the end of the day, and rather than heading south on the A7, I negotiate the city traffic to reach my friend’s spare bedroom, that the reality of my situation hits home and I almost wish I could turn around and head back to the relative safety of my desk… I guess desperate times call for desperate measures, and these are really desperate times.
The thought of starting again, moving on, organizing a new place in which to live a completely new lifestyle is nothing less than terrifying. I’ve been there, done that, and was quite happy to settle into a stable routine, where Saturdays were for home improvements, and Sundays for ‘us time’. Unlike many girls my age, I didn’t come to Italy for him. I came for work five years ago, lived the single girl life for a while, and would almost certainly still be here had I not met Luca. But I did meet him, so life became about ‘us’, what ‘we’ liked to do, where ‘we’ liked to go and how ‘we’ wanted to live.
Fortunately for me, I have the best friends in the world. Since the day I left, I have been constantly held up by an invisible wire , without which I would probably never have got out of bed, made it to work, got through the day, eaten, slept or generally managed to go on without either falling or throwing myself under a tram. The positive thing to come out of all of this misery is that I will now have way more quality time to spend with my girls, who have stuck by me like glue day and night, for which I am eternally grateful…
No one else was involved on either side, Luca and I are still in touch, and although he’s desperate for me to come home, I know that it’s better this way. At least for now. Some problems are bigger than the person they affect and way bigger than those who suffer the knock-on effect. I’m tired of picking up the pieces.

So, as my mum would say “Onwards and upwards”,,,,,which leads me to my next problem: Cercasi bilocale arredato, nord Milano / Monza, con posto auto coperto….