Happy New Year!

From the fabulous George ....

...And from me to you.... Felice Anno Nuovo!

Stolen Photos

I did not want to finish the year without showing some photos of festive Italy. Unfortunately I haven’t been there since last summer but I’ve “stolen” photos from my friends and acquaintances who have actually shot them personally. As I said previously, I come from Northern Italy, an area which is often left out by tourists and even Italy lovers, because it is erroneously considered “industrial” or “not holiday-like”. Instead, the North of Italy has got everything the South has and even more …We have the sunshine and the snow, the scenery and the culture, the industries and the music, the seaside and the mountains, the food and the wine (to be honest, the best wines in Italy!), the hills and the lakes….And here are only some samples of the Christmas lights ….Enjoy!

This is Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan, as seen by my best friend Giusy...

....And Milan again with the huge Christmas tree in Piazza del Duomo (always by Giusy)

And the dreamy Venice.....

Via XX Settembre, Genoa, by Roberto

And the Arena of Verona under the Xmas Comet ...

Visit Valeria's blog for great photos of Verona at VERONA DAILY PHOTO

And last but not least our fantastic Turin....

And Torino again, Monte dei Cappuccini, shot by the great Fabrizio at Torino Daily Photo

A Confectionery Shop Window in Milan (by Giusy).....for the pleasure of your eyes....

Saint Stephen's Day

"Good King Wenceslas looked out

on the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about

deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night

though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight

gath'ring winter fuel."

I hope you had all a lovely Christmas and a nice Boxing Day. In Italy the 26th December is dedicated to Saint Stephen, therefore it is called “Giorno di Santo Stefano” (Saint Stephen’s Day).

Stephen was the first Christian martyr, stoned to death shortly after the Crucifixion. He was selected by the apostles as one of the 7 deacons to help with charity work and his task was to look after the poor, particularly the old. It is believed he was a Jew and then converted to Christianity. He was excellent at preaching which made him enemies. This caused him to be charged with blasphemy. At the supreme Jewish law court, the Sanhedrin, Stephen told about the many mercies that God had given the children of Israel, and the ungrateful way in which they had repaid Him. He accused them of murdering Jesus, whose coming, he said, had been foretold by Moses. This angered the crowd and he was dragged out onto the streets. He was then stoned to death according to the law at that time. His stoning was witnessed by Saul who was to become Saint Paul in later times.

Saint Stephen is often represented carrying a pile of rocks or with rocks on his head.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

Granddad is 75

My dad's birthday was actually on 20th December but my parents arrived from Italy late at night so we could not celebrate. And next day he was ill so we had to postpone until yesterday when he felt better. My dad is a special person and the only man in the world I really trust 100%. He had some tough time in his life and we almost lost him four years ago when he had a massive heart attack. But he is a tough fighter and he keeps on going on with his pacemaker, always helping people and cheering us up with his jokes and good words.

Here is my dad with his proud grandchildren ….and his delicious cake made by my friend Lesley….

And here is grandma as well.

We had a little party with just the six of us but we had a serene and happy time together. It is so nice to be all together again! It is really like Christmas :))))

Off limits!

Yesterday I went to Leeds, unfortunately not for my Christmas shopping (still unfinished by the way!) this time, but for work. Still I could not resist strolling along Victoria Quarter and admiring the Christmas decorations.

Victoria Quarter is considered by many the fashion and lifestyle destination of the North of England. It combines exclusive fashion, beauty and lifestyle stores, cosmopolitan vibrancy and breath-taking Victorian architecture to give a unique shopping experience.
It “houses” more than 70 top names such as LK Bennett, Vivienne Westwood, Gieves and Hawkes, Jigsaw, Ted Baker, Karen Millen, etc. and, of course, Harvey Nichols.

Unfortunately, my shopping experience was limited to “window shopping” as, in spite of the early reductions, the prices are still too high for my pockets.

Anyway, window shopping and above admiring the Christmas displays in the beautiful arcades can still be a reasonably good consolation.

It is difficult to see from the photos, but the Christmas tree is actually decorated with diamonds and other gems and sparkling necklaces, all fakes of course!

It's Up!

Our Christmas Tree is finally up! It took me and my daughter half a day last Saturday but we managed to sort it out. It is usually down to my daughter and my dad to put up the Christmas Tree together, but this year my mum and dad are coming over from Italy a bit later than usual so Vicky and I decided to do it ourselves. To tell the truth, she did most of the work herself as she remembered exactly what her granddad did in the past. Our tree is a synthetic one and a bit “strange” as you had to insert the single branches one by one inside the main post and all the layers have different length. Anyway my only task was to pass on the branches to her and towards the end send her out of the room whilst I was trying to untangles the lights and set them up (not an easy task, I can assure you!). I did so because I knew I was going to swear badly and I don’t want that poor 9-year old to listen to my profanities…

Vicky even managed to set up the Nativity scene on her own, and although I tried to convince her that Baby Jesus arrives on Christmas night and the Three Kings on the 6h January, she decided to put all the figurines at the same time.

This is the extent of our Christmas decorations for this year!

Thanks to Sugar of SUGAR SHACK for the beautiful tag!

St Lucy's Day

St. Lucia is the patron saint of the city of Syracuse (Sicily) where she was born and martyred in the reign of Diocletian. One story says that when a suitor admired her beautiful eyes she cut them out and sent them to him, asking to be left in peace thereafter (like most early Christian virgin martyrs, she refused marriage). Now she is the patron of eye diseases and the blind and is often depicted carrying her eyeballs on a plate.

The main celebration occurs today 13th of December and in May. St. Lucy is also popular among children in some regions of North-Eastern Italy, namely Trentino, East Lombardy and some parts of Veneto and Friuli, where she brings gifts to good children and coal to bad ones. Children are asked to leave some food for Lucia (a sandwich, or anything else available at the moment) and for the flying donkey that helps her carry gifts (flour, sugar, or salt), but they must not see Santa Lucia delivering gifts or she will throw ashes in their eyes, temporarily blinding them.

St Lucy’s Day in Italy is celebrated with torchlight processions and bonfires, clear indications of her role as light bringer. Apparently untroubled by the gruesome imagery, we eat St. Lucy’s eyes, cakes or biscotti shaped like eyeballs. In honor of a miracle performed by St Lucy during a famine in 1582 (she made a flotilla of grain-bearing ships appear in the harbor — the people were so hungry they boiled and ate the grain without grinding it into flour), Sicilians don't eat anything made with wheat flour on her day. Instead they eat potatoes or rice in the form of “arancine”, golden croquettes shaped and fried to the color of oranges and filled with chopped meats. In Palermo, everyone eats “cuccia”, a dessert of whole-wheat berries cooked in water, then mixed with sweet ricotta.

An evening with Coldplay ...

...passing through the Manchester Christmas Market!

We’d been waiting for this day for ages, but did not start in the best way. After buying the tickets on ebay ages ago, they never turned up …[Hopefully we will get a refund from paypal!!! Fingers crossed. Beware of buying tickets on ebay!!!] Anyway, my two friends and I decided to go to Manchester MEN Arena and try our luck with a “friendly tout”….Bad weather conditions, roads as frozen as ice rinks, all trains to Manchester full (perhaps because of the concert?), but our “love” for Coldplay is too strong to get stopped by these small details…We decided to park at a Metro Station in Greater Manchester to avoid the traffic in the city centre (the MEN Arena is exactly in the city centre of course!!!). After 45 minutes trying to find a parking space near a Metro station finally we got on a tram towards the city centre.





In spite of not having any tickets yet, we headed toward the Christmas Market. Just to relax and not to waste the day totally. Fantastic! German, Dutch, French stalls offering any kind of merchandises ….




…but above all lovely food!!!!

Dutch cheese(s)...

German Wurst ...

French/Belgian chocs!

Here we are sharing a Super Bratwurst (don't be fooled, we had already a German Flammkuchen…)…

But this one was too tempting to share (for your information, Mini Dutch pancake with Nutella and cream)….

With a full belly and in a better mood we even got lucky with the tickets and went in….and we had quite decent seat positions…



Then finally the Coldplay…..what can I say…..divine!!!!!!!!!

Chris Martin, Coldplay’s frontman and dazzling performer…singer, composer etc etc.

Large globes were suspended over the stage; in them were projected colors, patterns, and footage of the band members appearing in dizzying montages, like here in the title song “Viva la Vida. “Viva la Vida” is their forth album inspired by the (French) Revolution but at the same time celebrating life, freedom and condemning the futility of all wars…

The high points were Yellow with large yellow balloons full of confetti and then Parachutes. As the songs built momentum, what seemed to be millions of multicolored paper butterflies fluttered down from above, a brilliant display that left the crowd's eyes as overwhelmed as its ears.

A performance with a great heart, deep soul, energy and even intimacy from a band often knocked for being expertly bland. We did get all the somehow predictable arena rock tricks – giant balloons bouncing around during Yellow; an acoustic interlude which saw all four members appearing on a podium at the back of the hall. But that’s what I like in a concert, it is not only the good music that I can always listen to from a CD, but show, “spettacolo”, being blown away by colours, music, dancing, singing ….

An evening to remember…

The Wife by Meg Wolitzer

This is a really great book but is totally let down by the cover. The publishers seem to have tried to make it look like a chick lit book when it's not. Which means that half the readers who would enjoy it will ignore it on the shelves. It's a serious read and beautifully written.

I suppose that a novel describing the complexities and nuances on the institution of modern marriage is nothing new, but the dark humor, smart insight and shocking plot twist from the wife’s perspective in Meg Wolitzer’s, The Wife is something you haven’t read before.

The story is told by the wife of a famous novelist, Joe Castleman. Joan chronicles their long marriage with both humorous and poignant reflections on its intricacies and the delicate balance between their expected roles, after this declaration in the opening paragraph of the novel: “The moment I decided to leave him, the moment I thought, enough, we were thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean, hurtling forward but giving the illusion of stillness and tranquility”. (p.9)

You get to know the couple through Joan’s reflections and memories over the course of their marriage. Joe was her creative writing professor at Smith College in 1956, and the two found themselves attracted to one another, despite the teacher-student connection and the fact that Joe was already married, his wife having just given birth to a baby daughter. Joan admits that she was flattered by the attention he paid to not only her, but to her writing, often praising her efforts and encouraging her to consider a career in the field. And that made him almost irresistible to a girl who would often admit: “I’ve always had a fear of being small and ordinary. How can I have just one life? I used to ask my mother incredulously when I was twelve and sat at the dining room table in our apartment in New York after school, eating a cruller”. (p. 41)

But it was Joe’s career that became the extraordinary one. While Joan tended to the home, their 3 children, and Joe’s needs and ego, his novels became increasingly popular and distinguished, and he soon became one of the most celebrated authors of their generation.
Even though she describes the typical marital problems and trials such as difficulties with the children, arguments and even infidelity, it is not quite clear until the end what becomes the breaking point for Joan. They argue, and Joe pleads, “Every marriage is just two people striking a bargain - he went on in a softer tone- I traded, you traded. So maybe it wasn’t even”. She counters with, “No, it wasn’t, I said. It was the worst deal in the world, and I grabbed it”. (p. 207)

You could argue that the choices that the Castlemans make are simply a product of the times in which they lived. Joan describes the writer’s scene in New York during the 60s very well, so that their behavior is very natural to the reader. You could argue that they are both flawed characters. You could even argue that since the story is told from Joan’s point of view, that we are only hearing one side. But the point is, the controversial plot and ending will have you arguing something, because it is too delicious not to.

You may not agree with Joan Castleman’s definition of what the wife is or should be, but after reading this very well-written and piercing novel, you’ll never quite look at that role the same way again.

Snow is here!

Here we go yet again! A few inches of snow and the end result is chaos. Roads are gridlocked, gritter lorries cannot get to treat the icy roads, there are numerous road accidents because few drivers can adapt to these “new and strange conditions”. This is the situation in York and North Yorkshire after yesterday's snowfall.

I love the snow and it is nice to see it around but not if it takes you hours to get out of your village to get to work, when you slip on a pavement that nobody has thought of gritting because it is not a "priority number one" area or when the schools are closed and you have to arrange children care. Other European countries can face better these "extreme weather" conditions, why cannot we in Britain cope?

(Photos from The Press)

The Boys Are Back!

…. And they’re getting better with age…

Having being pretty blown away by Beautiful World, I was wondering if Take That could top it. And yes, they can. Being an avid fan might make me bias, but this is a stunning album. Admittedly, it took a while to get past the first track The Garden which I played repeatedly - it's awesome. The album as a whole carries on where Beautiful World left off, albeit with slightly more emphasis on developing their 'new sound', which does mean a further move away from 'cheesy pop'. All the vocals are strong, Gary being fantastic as usual, Howard always consistent and with even Mark & Jason sounding credible. I think this could well be an album that is huge, not just with existing fans, but that large group of skeptical 30 somethings, who until now, refuse to believe that Take That are anything more than a manufactured boy band.
I’m here listening to it and cannot stop. Maybe - sadly enough - TT are the only ones than can cheer me up at the moment, except for my children of course

…And today I really need cheering up!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zHzMLGH1Rfs

(Greatest Day video)

The Lights of Newcastle

Every year on the last Saturday in November, I go with my neighbours Christmas shopping in Newcastle upon Tyne. Generally I’m not good at shopping together with other people, I prefer doing it alone because otherwise it takes me ages. I do not write down Xmas lists as I’m a bit of an impulse buyer and I end up not to follow the list anyway. But our trip to Newcastle is a sort of excuse to spend a day out together bonding and having a laugh as well. We usually go to Newcastle because, apart from being a beautiful place, it’s got great shops, restaurants and pubs and above all it is only less than an hour by train from York. And as I’m a photo-addict, I decided to compete with Beth of Newcastle Upon Tyne Daily Photo and take some pictures of Newcastle. I have some problems with my digital camera so I take pictures with my faithful mobile photos and, although the quality is not as good, it is easier for me to use.

Arriving in Newcastle, the beautiful view from the train over the bridges.

Here we are in the centre of Newcastle, the Grey’s Monument is in the background. I really like this column, maybe because it is dedicated to Earl Charles Grey after whom my favourite tea, the Earl Grey, is named! He was a whig Prime Minister and lover of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Chatsworth).

And again my favourite column with the Christmas decorations. Lovely blue sky but freezing cold!!!

Inside the Eldon Square Shopping Centre it was nice and warm but terribly busy. So I sneaked around to take some shots and left my companions to their hard shopping tasks!

I was suprised to see a beautiful life-size Nativity scene on the top floor of the shopping centre; maybe has materialism not totally taken over our lives?

The traditional Xmas display in the windows of the Fenwick store is dedicated to Oliver - The Musical. The characters are actually moving and the Oliver's soundtrack is played in the background.

After taking the pictures I realized that I kept cutting through a long queue of people coming from the opposite direction who were queuing to admire the display! Never mind, I'm Italian and we do not know the concept of queues!!!

Finally, after many teas and coffees, something decent to eat! My husband says it looks revolting but it was really very tasty. A vegetarian Japanese dish with miso soup...




And before leaving a last night view of "my" column....



...and of the Christmas lights of Newcastle!