I Wonder What This Mysterious Update Journal Button Does?

[quillori]

So. An update. Let's see. For various reasons that we need not go into at this time, I am learning Italian and moving to Italy. I'm fairly sure this is a bloody stupid idea, but since I'm going along with it anyway, I might as well enjoy it. At least Italy seems to be well supplied with good bookshops? To date, I very much like Italian verbs, which conjugate prettily, and am significantly less fond of Italian nouns, which come with an unnecessarily extensive and confusing set of prepositions: apparently I'm quite happy to remember whether one uses, say, the dative or the ablative (as in Latin), but confronted by a host of pesky little 'a's and 'a + article's and 'in's I retreat in confusion.

The house to which I will eventually (deo volente) be moving has many attractive and desirable features, although these do not currently include wiring, plumbing or, in some areas, floors. Obviously, undertaking a major renovation of a property uninhabited for at least the last 50 years, in a country the language of which you do not currently speak, with absolutely no experience renovating anything, is a sensible and obvious course of action, and I cannot understand why more people don't do it.

I can't help noting that in the last year – a year in which I was supposed to finally settle down and stay in one place, I ended up at various points in Albania, Chile, Columbia, Croatia, Ecuador, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Panama, Peru, Turkey and the UK, plus miscellaneous airports*. Which does seem rather a lot, when I list it out like that. (And then of course I decided to move to Italy.) Perhaps it's time to accept that I'm just not cut out for this whole staying in one place thing? Possibly the fact I've averaged over my entire life somewhere between two and two and a half years per home might have been an earlier clue to this.

Luckily, even at that far distant point – doubtless considerably more far distant than the current builder's estimate – when the work now envisaged on the Italian house is complete, there will still be a number of areas that could use further work, which is a very good thing, because moving again would be a major pain (both to sell the property, given the less than brilliant state of the Italian property market, and because it will be the first time in 7 years all my possessions will be in one place, and the thought of packing them all up again is daunting even for me) and it hasn't escaped my notice that the moment part way through last year when I hung the final picture, completing the decoration of the last room in this apartment, was pretty much precisely the moment I started making serious plans to leave. I really, truly am abysmal at sticking in one place. (I'm not even going to pretend I actually intend to live permanently in Italy, as opposed to just using it as a base. At this point everyone, including me, would have to know I was lying.)

What else? My grandfather, to whom I was very close as he pretty much brought me up, died in August. Given his great age this was not, obviously, a surprise, although since his age was combined almost to the end with good health, largely unimpaired mind and remarkable strength I had got around to thinking him pretty much eternal. Having seen it first hand, however, I am at a loss to know what is supposed to be so wonderful about dying of old age in you own bed with a suitable grieving relative to hand. To be fair, I suppose the normal descriptor is dying peacefully in your own bed etc; on the other hand, I keep telling people he died peacefully in his sleep (it saves them the discomfort of having to come up with some suitably sympathetic line I will not in any case appreciate), but however peaceful the actual dying bit was it was preceded by a couple of months of extreme illness, and at least a week of lying in bed sobbing and begging to be allowed to die, his hands all taped up to stop him tearing at his own flesh. I'm not in any particular hurry to die myself, but I will in future bear in mind that if I do succeed in getting myself killed in any relatively quick way whilst wandering round ill-advised corners of the world (or diving) I won't be missing out on anything. You can keep your dying in bed.

Well, that was last year. What, I wonder, of the year ahead? I aim to post more (proper meta, I mean, not more self-involved rambling); hopefully also my Italian will improve, or I will find a phrasebook with helpful sentences such as 'Why are there five sets of plans of this property lodged with various government offices, all different from each other, and every single one inaccurate?' and 'But you were supposed to have finished strengthening this wall last week'. Oh, and that meme currently doing the rounds? The one that assumes you have so few books piled up around you that it's an easy task to figure out which one is nearest? Taking my best guess as to the nearest books, my sex life will be summed up either by "In the later Indo-Aryan languages, as in the later languages of western Europe, rhyme became a regular feature of verse" or "However, in 1874 the harvest in Bosnia and Herzegovina failed". Frankly, I find both these options unpropitious, especially the latter: I can only assume I read the wrong sort of books. So I'm unilaterally altering it from the first sentence of pg 45 of 'the nearest book' to 'the book selected at random from nearest bookcase', which gives me the altogether more attractive "Such reminiscences could include youthful liaisons with singing girls, or represent singing girls as part of the beautiful 'scenery' of the far-off land." Dear 2012: I expect singing girls.

* At one point I flew in transit through both Houston and Moscow. In one of these airports: I got off the plane; queued up to show my boarding card; queued up again (while being regaled by tannoy announcements anent not saying anything which might be considered inappropriate nor behaving in a suspicious manner, but immediately obeying all commands); was cross-questioned as to where I lived, what my job was, why and whence and whither I was travelling, and finger-printed; queued up again to pick up my cases; queued up yet again to check them back in; queued up to be given the world's most incompetent full body pat-down (seriously, I have no idea at all what they thought wouldn't be picked up by the regular metal-detector but would by their half-hearted and undertrained groping); queued up at the gate to present my boarding pass once more; and queued up to be lined up against one wall with my carry-on against the other wall for the benefit of a sniffer dog. At the other: I got off the plane, looked round the shops and wondered if I felt like having a cup of coffee. One of these two airports is located in the land of the free and home of the brave, but somehow I'm having trouble remembering which.

Comments

[lastscorpion]

Good luck with your big move, and condolences on the loss of your grandfather. Poor old fellow.

[quillori]

Thank you on both counts.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

I am so sorry to hear of your grandfather's death. It's been clear from your occasional mentions that he should have been eternal, dammit; to have it be otherwise feels deeply and fundamentally wrong.

One of these two airports is located in the land of the free and home of the brave, but somehow I'm having trouble remembering which.

And yet, having had the displeasure of flying through Houston, I have no trouble at all guessing which was which. Oh, my country. Why did any of us decide this was a reasonable response to a bunch of criminals who happened to get lucky on one occasion?

Italy sounds both terrifying and exhilarating, and I look forward with a truly indecent amount of glee to hearing all about every bit of the project. I'm normally immune to stories of houses and renovation and such, but that the place is old enough to have no wiring and no plumbing suggests to me that it is probably perfectly glorious in either architecture or location, and possibly in both. And even if by some chance it isn't, the renovation is going to be an adventure, and I can hardly wait to get to live it vicariously through you.

As that suggests, as I sit here with no knowledge whatsoever of the surrounding facts and circumstances, I nevertheless totally reject your characterization of this move as a bloody stupid idea. You can do it, obviously enough -- I mean, you have all the skills and resources you need to make it work -- and you want to, and those things alone make it an excellent idea. Or so it seems to me.

I should add that you showed great prudence in not picking the Lot or Dordogne for your new permanent base. If you had, I would likely be working out some way in which to hint delicately that you would find your life wildly improved by having a semipermanent American houseguest. With Italy, I can just manage to control the envy. Barely.

Also, I approve of your construction of "the nearest book." Plainly the meme is intended to send you to a book selected at random; choosing the one physically closest to you, if that could even be determined, was not producing truly random results in this case.

Oh, and as a member of a local planning board, allow me to say that you likely do not need to know the Italian for "Why are there five sets of plans of this property lodged with various government offices, all different from each other, and every single one inaccurate?" The officials don't know the answer to the question, but if my brief experience is any guide, they will understand the fluttering of the inconsistent plan copies and the look of despair without a single word spoken. In a better world, they would also be able to help, but in this imperfect one I dare not hope for any such thing.

[quillori]

You have my greatest sympathy for every single trip you have had to make through Houston, and most especially since it's your country, which must make it so much worse.

I really would not advise you to encourage me. It's only with some difficulty I am managing to keep in mind other people are unlikely to find the details as interesting as I do. And online it is impossible to see people's eyes glazing over with acute boredom.

The house is in the centre of a very old hill town, just off the main square. The foundations of the well are Roman, parts of the cantina medieval - which in no way distinguishes it from all the other houses in the neighbourhood, for which the same is true. Some time around 1810 a wealthy mill-owning family (wool, not flour) knocked together three much older houses to make one large palazzo, and embarked on an extensive scheme of redecoration, which continued through until around 1870, by which time they'd successfully married their daughter into the Neapolitan aristocracy. Sadly for them, neither the wool industry nor the aristocracy were destined to have a bright future, and gradually various bits of the house were sold off according to no logical pattern anyone can now discern. Eventually, somewhere roughly around 1960, the remainder was sold to another local family, which while possessing fewer links to the aristocracy did possess quite large amounts of money. The two sons of that family then split the property between them, one taking the cantina, ground and top floors, the other the middle floor (you will observe the pattern of nonsensical divisions is continuing). The brother with the single floor renovated it years ago, and his daughter now uses it as a weekend retreat. The other brother got as far as repairing the roof and restoring all the ceiling frescoes on the piano nobile; given this took him 30 years, I'm not sure his heart was really in it. Anyway, it's that part which is to be mine, plus another part of the cantina sold off at some much earlier date and providentially back on the market.

The place is a rabbit warren: at one point as I was looking around the ground floor, I peered through a hole in the wall and found an entire extra room, large and with a door onto a side alley, quite unmarked on the plans. (It did turn out to be on one of the other plans that I hadn't at that point managed to prise out of the local commune.)

The top floor in particular is lovely, with good views down the valley and attractive frescoes. (Who wouldn't want a gothic revival bedroom, with a ceiling pattern including painted busts of Socrates, Plato, Dante and Boccaccio?) A number of the rooms still have the original wallpaper painted to match the ceiling designs. The expert brought in to quote on the restoration of various wall frescoes (and to pass judgement on the authenticity and quality of the already restored ceilings, since the vendor is charming, affable, urbane and erudite, but I cannot say I'm inclined to believe a word that comes out of his mouth) was exceedingly taken with the wallpaper, and said firmly that we would of course be restoring it. I looked dubiously at the places it was hanging from the wall in ribbons and possibly made a small meeping sound, indicative of financial distress, but if it can be restored it would obviously be terrible to rip it down, so restored it shall be.

I admit it fails to be in France, but the region is very attractively supplied with picturesque scenery, items of historic or architectural interest, excellent lamb and truffle in their seasons, a wide assortment of musical festivals, a mild and pleasant climate and easy access to Rome. And I shall have two guest bedrooms. (Well, possibly one for the time being: an obvious cost saving would be to delay fitting out the second guest bedroom and bathroom, which have quite easy access for later work.) The estimated date at which I could move in has already slipped from October this year to March next year, which I personally consider to be wildly optimistic, but eventually, whenever the work really is completed, you would of course be welcome to stay any time you happened to be passing through Rome.

I expect you're right, and the inaccuracy of the plans will be immediately understood (and is of less importance in the case of an old house with five foot thick stone walls, which are presumed to form the boundary of the property no matter what the plans say, than in the case of land, where the boundary might be disputed). I expect the only surprise felt by the officials concerned will be that I actually managed to get hold of the plans at all: one set of them was eventually hunted down by the daughter of the master builder who will be overseeing the work, though it took her some days; when I saw her in the morning of the first day, she was dressed in a very smart black outfit, when I saw her again in the afternoon, she was grey from head to foot with dust and cobwebs, having been directed to a locked room which, when unlocked, proved to be stacked high with unlabelled boxes, containing several decades worth of unsorted documents.

Anyway, you see what happens when you express even the most pro forma polite interest: bear in mind this was a heavily edited account, lacking much exciting detail and 50 photos of frescoed ceilings. Next time you will know better.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Ah, but I genuinely am interested, and I mean it about living vicariously. Five-foot stone walls! A Roman well, medieval cantina, actual restorable frescoes -- no, I am sorry: this is inherently compelling to read about. I would, indeed, go so far as to encourage pictures of the frescoed ceilings, and of the shredded wallpaper. And indeed of the varying and inaccurate plans, and of the views from the windows. It is not, I assure you, a polite and pro-forma interest at all.

Will you have to find lodgings in the area to oversee the work as it progresses? Because that does sound rather daunting, if it's going to be well over a year before you can move in. (Not that moving in and then having to live in a work zone is any picnic, either.) I can't imagine that you won't have to be on hand regularly to approve what's being done and stop any errors before they're too thoroughly launched, but if that means full time supervision from now until next March at the earliest, you have my sympathies. The last time anyone I knew went through anything like this, it was minimal by comparison: the renovation of a New York apartment that hadn't had anything done to it since the 1930s or so. And even there, my friends were clearly fortunate to be able to live in Boston until it was almost done, and just to have to run down once every few weeks to be sure that the people managing the electrical system and laying tiles for a mosaic understood what they were supposed to be doing. Even on that level it was pretty grueling, and would clearly have been close to unendurable if they had had to do it on a full time basis.

most especially since it's your country, which must make it so much worse.

As I said before, I still can't believe that so many of my fellow citizens were willing to see us do this to ourselves. It's so stupid, and pointless, and it's not as if life is risk-free anyway. These are people who're perfectly willing for random stupid people to be allowed to buy assault weapons and ammunition, for heaven's sake. If they aren't scared of that, why on earth are they afraid that if we don't make commercial air travel a nightmare for one and all, the world will come to an end?

And I particularly hate the degree to which all of this has put me off air travel. These days if I can't fly by private plane (which sounds posher than my actual circumstances admit, I have a couple of family members who're hobby pilots, not regular access to Gulfstream flights), and I'm not going to Europe or somewhere whose advantages are sufficient to outweigh any misery entailed in getting there, I find I don't want to go anywhere at all. Or at least, nowhere I can't get to by train or car. It's just -- well, you know. Houston. You need a lot of incentive for that, or at least I do.

[quillori]

Yes, the sheer idiocy of wasting resources on pointless and invasive security measures, out of all proportion to the threat, or to the degree of success they could possibly achieve, with no result but to waste a great deal of everyone's time... I used to love flying, and over the years depending on the situation I've flow everything from first class on some of the world's nicest airlines to cattle class on some that were doing well still to have planes they hadn't crashed; I've flown ill and hung-over and once with a freshly broken and untreated foot; I've been deeply enough depressed that I couldn't be relied on to drag myself to the corner shop to buy food, but I still managed the significantly greater effort to pack and get to the airport: if anyone had told me one day I wouldn't like flying, I would have laughed in their face. Nonetheless, while I still love planes as much, the experience as a whole is now so ghastly I think of it as the unpleasant price to be paid for getting somewhere, and no longer as a great pleasure I look forward to for its own sake. How much worse must if be for the majority of people, who didn't even enjoy flying in the first place? But at least I currently live near a good airport, and even Rome, while inefficient, in no way compares with the excesses to be found in America: how very unpleasant for you to have to face that whenever you want to fly. (Of course, should you ever happen to passing through Italy, there is a really far nicer and more efficient than it's portrayed train service, which allows for much airport-free travel.)

Wisdom would no doubt suggest I supervise the process at all times, but practicality suggests I have other commitments elsewhere (though not, to be honest, ones I couldn't get out of, just ones I don't want to). I'm flying up to Italy tonight for a couple of weeks, partly to discuss the lighting plan in detail with the electrician and to choose the kitchen and bathroom appliances, and partly to referee a cage match between, on the one hand, the notary and my lawyer, and on the other the estate agent, vendor and builder.

The notary argues, very reasonably, that since 2010 Italian law requires him to ensure the vendor has provided accurate and up to date plans of the property, showing that all work on it has been properly authorised and meets the current local codes. My lawyer adds, with equal reason, that the preliminary contract required the vendor to do so as a condition of the final sale, and required him also to submit my further plans for renovation to the commune and get consent for them. The vendor expresses amazement at this: he had no idea anyone would expect him to do anything so unusual, and naturally, as a sweet old gentleman, he couldn't be expected to have read or understood the contract, the content of which now comes as a surprise to him. (Before his career in politics, he was a lawyer himself, so I'm afraid, much as it pains me to doubt him, I cannot quite bring myself to believe him.) The estate agent sighs and says this is what happens if you go around employing lawyers and fancy Rome notaries rather than the nice local notary who does as he's told. The builder points out that the customary procedure is based on the dictum that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. I, however, feel that in this instance it is better for the locally well-connected vendor and the equally well-connected builder (who does a great deal of work for the commune), eager in the one case for a sale and in the other a substantial contract, to ask for permission, rather than the locally not-at-all-connected me to ask for retrospective permission after the work is completed. In any case, the final sale cannot go through, and thus the building work cannot start, until we reach agreement on this point.

I'll be back in Italy from the end of May to mid-August, and then permanently from October, when I'll rent until the work is completed. The one thing that truly saddens me is that all my books will *sob* be packed up at the end of February and put in store until sometime in 2013. How will I bear being parted from them again? How can I be expected to do Yuletide next year without the resources to come up with deeply obscure references no one but me will appreciate?

I've put up a couple of photos here, although the ones I have to hand are all ones taken for my reference, not to make it look nice, so I don't think they do it justice.

What a lovely and appropriate icon that is of yours, btw.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Oh. Oh.

I am almost wordless with the glory of those photos, and sorely tempted to resort to the netspeak that goes, I, um. Guh. How could you possibly think that this is foolish of you? I can see that the magnitude of the renovation is daunting, but it is so utterly magnificent that I have to think it would be an insult to the world and the glories thereof to not have plunged into this particular adventure.

Is the bedroom ceiling trompe d'oeil, or is that actual stonework? Either way, my God, it's gorgeous. I sympathize with the pain of having your books packed up for a year, but once they realize how they will be housed at the end, I feel sure they will agree that it is all worth it. Even if you do have to do Yuletide from memory and imagination (or perhaps some academic library).

In any case, the final sale cannot go through, and thus the building work cannot start, until we reach agreement on this point.

Ah, yes. I have to agree with you on this entire set of points. It is often better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, but if these lovely and well-connected people have a substantial interest in obtaining the permission, it is hard to believe that they will find it impossible to do so. And there is a certain peace of mind that comes with having all the documents in order, and not needing to be concerned about forgiveness in some uncertain future. Who knows, after all, whether the people from whom one might eventually need that forgiveness will be reasonable, or at all inclined to grant it? No local official holds office forever, even if it sometimes feels that way.

I would be very happy to explore the Italian train system, which I've never used at all. I've only been in Italy on one occasion -- a friend put together a group to rent a hilltop villa in Tuscany for a month, many years ago, and we flew into Milan and drove from there. And I like to drive, especially if offered winding roads through stunning landscapes; but it's not exactly the ideal method of transportation if you hope to spend any time in cities. And really, it's ridiculous that I've never spent time in Rome or Naples. And that I haven't spent more time in Venice, which is so strange and so beautiful that I don't even care that there are ways in which it appears to be nothing but a giant stage set these past two centuries.

. . . although meanwhile, I am in New England, surrounded by rivers and hills, and forests that have bears and foxes and mountain lions in them. Really, when I think about it, I have limited grounds for wistfulness and discontent. It's just, why can't we have all the lives? And live in all places at once? It would be so much better if only we could.

As is yours. In fact, I love our cascade of reflecting icons down this thread. I know I have a fairish collection of Semyaza's icons that I haven't uploaded, too; I need to hunt my file down and load the rest of them.

[quillori]

There is a very nice study, too, not in the album, with a red and blue and green and gold leaf pattern on the ceiling, two full length windows with Juliet balconies looking down the valley, between which I shall place my desk, and a fireplace, in front of which I will be placing my Grandfather's exceedingly comfortable leather armchair, and above which I will be hanging my 7 foot long carving of the Ramayana, so I can console myself over a temporary separation from my books by reflecting how very pleasant my new library will eventually be. (Not that it will fit all my books, obviously, but still, it will fit five floor to ceiling bookcases worth, and the rest can go downstairs.)

The ceiling is trompe l'oeil. I'm very taken with it, and the whole bedroom, which also has a full length window, balcony and fireplace. Of course, even after closing off the door into the entry hall (the door you can see in the photo), I can't help but notice between the door in from the study, the door out to the bathroom, the window, the fireplace and the rather large antique Chinese four-poster bed I seem to have bought for it (entirely by accident, naturally, as one does), there is not actually room for even a small wardrobe, so I am now drawing up designs for a combined bathroom and dressing room.

I have heard rather too many horror stories of people told they must move doors or walls back to their original position, or even that they must move a kitchen or bathroom to some other room, to be quite sanguine about applying for permission retrospectively. By all accounts, this commune is reasonable and not at all given to sudden flights of dictatorial fancy, but then again, who knows who will be in office in a year or so?

Definitely you must come to Italy. The area I'm moving to is full of attractive country roads, and there is a nearby train station from which one may readily reach Rome, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Trieste or Venice. Or, going the other way, Naples. (I will be about equidistant between Rome and Naples as the crow flies, but I believe it's quicker to get to Rome.)

I am still wondering about the whole separated at birth thing - for all I am frequently rather critical of places I feel have turned themselves into Tourist Experiences, I love Venice deeply, and more every time I visit. Somehow, despite the whole stage set thing, it still retains its charm and magic, and there are wonderful things to be found in odd corners and down alleys you will never find again. Also, when you compare it to Florence, where I did a 5 week Italian course earlier this year: in Florence I was actually served bad coffee, and on more than one occasion. Also a fair amount of over priced and second rate food. Is that, I ask you, Italy? Whereas Venice is still full of excellent coffee shops and bars, and little pasticceria and bakeries, and proper Italian food. (You knew I would bring any conversation back to the quality of the food eventually.)

Conversely, I have only been to New England once, and that for only a few days. It was autumn, as I recall, just as the trees were changing colour, and I remember it was stunning.

People sometimes ask me where I most want to live, but how can I answer that? There are so many beautiful places in the world, and so little time even to see them all, much less appreciate them in detail as they deserve.

I love Semyaza's icons: I believe it was you who introduced me to them. I was going to put my masked Venetian as the icon for this comment, but I can't resist matching your snail.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

I would have replied sooner, but I felt the urgent need to go rummaging through Semyaza's archives to find an appropriate icon for talk of cities. I found more than one, of course -- she's scarily good -- but this will do to go forward on.

Now I'm wondering again about the separated at birth thing too. Because I'm not sure I have ever encountered anyone else who understood not only my unexpected love for Venice despite the normally-offputting Tourist Experience issue, but my deep ambivalence about Florence. Where I too have had bad food; but the ambivalence goes much deeper. I don't know whether it's a matter of light, of architecture, of fundamental city structure, or of some inchoate thing I can only call soul, but I failed to love it; while my companions were entranced by every turn, I found it pleasant enough but nothing more than pleasant enough. (Although I have told myself over the years that perhaps my experience was an artifact of being with friends who could not pass either a shoe store or an opportunity to sit in blazing sun and drink coffee. And I lack both their obsession with even the most charming of shoes and their ability to sit for long in the sun. So the conditions were a bit unfair -- still, neither shoes nor coffee keep me from loving Paris beyond all reason.)

As I say, I don't know of anyone else in the world who shares my usual dislike of cities that have become little more than tourist destinations, my love for Venice despite that, and my nothing-more-than-fondness for Florence. Once again, I fall back on the undoubted fact that you are far more adventurous than I, and not at all afraid of ships. And much more erudite, but let us not trouble ourselves with my envy of your library, which is at least offset by my enduring delight that you have it.

People sometimes ask me where I most want to live, but how can I answer that?

How could anyone? There's a reason why people of sufficient means have multiple houses, in many parts of the world (and still, I would imagine, suffer from the inability to live in all of them at once). I can imagine contentment with a single place, but not the kind of contentment that grows from the belief that the single place is also a single best choice, out of all the world's possibilities. It's like, you can choose a single dish from a menu, and accept it as the best choice for the moment; but how could you say that a single dish was what you wanted most for all possible occasions?

Although every so often I catch my subconscious giving it a try. I have a recurring dream in which I'm in a city that my mind has clearly cobbled together from scraps of Venice, New York, and Paris, that is located in country that has been similarly patched together from southwest France, New England, and the Grand Tetons. It has canals, and in a few spots those canals run between glass towers, although more commonly the architecture is more like that of Paris or Venice, and it is ridiculously, extravagantly beautiful there.

Even my subconscious knows better than to believe it's real, though. Last time I was there, I can't help recalling that I wound up in the harbor, which was no problem because I could breath water just as well as air. Yes, even my own dreams are chiming in to tell me, Yeah, in your dreams, sweetie. As if I didn't know.

[quillori]

I find it comforting that you weren't won over by Florence either. I'd only been there once before, for about a day and a half, many years ago, but I confidently expected I'd love it. I mean, 5 weeks walking round a city generally known for art and culture, full of museums and galleries and churches holding organ recitals and all manner of good things: how could I not fall in love? And yet I didn't. I tried to tell myself I was being silly and sulking at the number of bad meals I'd endured, or the heat wave, or because the course was far too easy (seriously: I expected to have to work; if I, with my total lack of ability to master modern languages, could sail through effortlessly, we were clearly not being pushed anything like hard enough), or because something there triggered my hayfever in way nothing else has for years, leaving me with a long list of perfume shops I wanted to visit and a maddeningly reduced sense of smell, but the truth is, I've fallen for cities before in much less propitious circumstances, so perhaps the fault really does lie in Florence itself.

I must, however, regretfully disclaim any pretension to erudition: I am confronted on a daily basis with my own ignorance, guiltily aware how many even of what could be considered great classics I have never read, much less familiarised myself with deeply, and how scarce and patchy my knowledge of even my favourite subjects is. I expect I give a quite misleading impression, the few paltry scraps of learning I possess displayed so as to suggest, at least to the charitable, that they are merely the outward signs of a vastly wider and more profound knowledge than is, in fact, the case.

I have occasionally fancied some city that would combine all the things I've loved best, but I have never dreamed of it, for which I envy you. (At this point, I wanted to say something further about that ideal city, and how it relates to my love of traveling, but I've just got into Rome, where it's midnight, so bearing in mind when I have to get up, I'll leave that till tomorrow; also, I may have had enough sleep by then to say what I want to say moderately coherently.)

That is, by the way, a quite perfect icon. I will resist the urge to look for one equally appropriate, or I shan't get to bed after all, particularly if I start looking through Semyaza's wonderful creations.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Meanwhile, to divert for a moment back to the matter of the sheer awfulness of flying through Houston, have you seen this from James Fallows at the Atlantic? I read Fallows in part because he's a general aviation pilot, as several members of my family are; that, combined with his levels of access to government figures and professional pilots, gives him an interesting perspective on aviation issues in general. Plus, he hates the TSA as much as we ordinary fliers do.

In the post I linked, he's basically making the same point about the difference between flying through Houston and flying through Moscow that you just made. And reminding policy makers that really, it's bad for the country on many, many levels, even the one of pure capitalist self-interest.

Besides. Passing along the link is an excuse to use this icon, with its alternative and clearly more desirable method of air travel.

en route back through Heathrow

[quillori]

Clearly a far superior mode of transportation!

To be fair, it isn't just America - as I was flying through Heathrow the other week, I watched the screener confiscate an almost finished tube of toothpaste from the woman in front of me: she (the screener, not the woman whose toothpaste it was) removed it from the bag, unrolled and straightened it and triumphantly demonstrated that it had originally held 120g, which she equated to 120ml, presumably on the grounds toothpaste and water are identical. There were, she pointed out, many signs at the entrance to the screening area explaining that no containers greater than 100 mls would be allowed through, even if partially empty, and the traveller should have thought of that before buying the toothpaste.

All the same, last time I flew in transit through America, several different people, some of them American themselves, asked my why on earth I was doing such a silly thing, and didn't think the route being hours shorter and much cheaper was a very convincing reason. Which cannot, as you say, quite apart from any concern with civil liberties, be a good way of attracting foreign business to your shores.

New and accurate plans are being drawn up to submit to the commune, which is pleasing to the civil engineer and my lawyer, even if a subject of some puzzlement to everyone else involved. A new problem reared its head: I had thought it desirable to ship my furniture to Italy to arrive when I'm back at the beginning of June, at which point I could supervise its storage in the cantina and potential garage of the building, rather than paying to store everything in its country of origin, which being both short of space and tropical requires fiendishly expensive air-conditioned storage. But ones household effects may not be brought in without paying duty unless one is registered by the relevant commune as living there, and one cannot be so registered until the police have done a random spot check and ascertained one is indeed living at the stated address. How one is supposed to be living there prior to the arrival of ones furniture is one of life's little mysteries. Grasping the difficulty of living in an unfurnished house, and bearing in mind it may take the police several months to do the check, it's generally enough to produce an application for residence; the commune officials however refused even to accept an application for a house clearly not currently habitable. Luckily, this is Italy, and begging the assistance of Claudio, the excellent master builder who will be doing the work and who does much work for the commune also, caused all problems to vanish like morning dew: he had a little chat with the deputy mayor, and then we proceeded back downstairs and magically not only was the application accepted but it was agreed it would be effortlessly granted.

Rather luckily, I'm as much in love with the property and town as ever: it even managed to look charming and attractive in the rain. Also, having being introduced to the bilingual art curator daughter of a local shopkeeper, it was possible to have a clear discussion with Claudio, the electrician and the art restorer which leaves me rather more confident that we are all in agreement as to what should be done. This doesn't obviate the whole financially ruinous nature of the enterprise, but I suppose it's only money, and there have been worse times to be gripped by the whole 'why did I think this was a good idea and whatever made me think myself capable of carrying it out?' feeling. That time half way across a steeply sloping ice floe springs to mind. It does occur to me, though, that the predicted singing girls may not be a reference to the engaging charms of future companions, but rather a dire prognostication of my career trajectory. When I am turning tricks to pay for my taste in bathroom fittings*, I won't be able to say I wasn't warned.

The piano nobile still has its original doors (original to the last time anyone with money owned and redecorated the property, obviously, not to the age of the building in its current form, which I am still researching, but which is clearly centuries older), and some of them still have their original handles, which I was most surprised to learn were original, as I had taken them to be spectacularly ill-judged modern plastic. They are, in fact, glass, presumably Murano, which raises the question whether they are an example of a type of beauty available to people of that time and unavailable to me. Presumably, when they were installed, it was obvious they were glass, and everyone admired their richness of colour, their perfect transparency (not an air bubble in sight), the skill with which they had been carved and polished etc, whereas when I look at them, many decades after the wide availability of cheap acrylic, I fail to appreciate these characteristics (which also raises the uncomfortable question of how our concept of beauty relates to that of luxury: I have very cheap things I consider lovely, but all the same, it's obvious that one reason I dislike the handles is that they look cheap to me). Either that, or bright blue or green handles on otherwise restrained cream and gold doors were always garish and a sad (and unusual) lapse in taste by the last decorator, but it's more interesting to assume they were weren't.

I've also found another little mystery of life: why is it that the Italians, who are happy to keep the window shutters of their homes closed at all times, no matter how dark it makes their rooms, and no matter the beauty of the view they are shutting out, consider that the moment a property is empty it is acceptable or even desirable to leave it open to the elements? I've seen any number of empty houses with glassless, shutterless windows unboarded, and I have still failed to adequately convey to the otherwise excellent and dedicated Claudio how strongly I feel that the property would benefit from being closed to both the elements and the flocks of local pigeons.

I am very pleased with the art restorer, whose charges are, all things consider, very reasonable. Admittedly, given that he turns out not to have a codice fiscale, I can see why. But the local view is that income tax is an optional thing. He has come up with a new possibility for why the centre panel in the living room ceiling is missing: his first thought had been that, given the size of the panel, and that it had clearly been a painting, not a fresco, it had suffered some water damage and ripped beyond repair, a risk for any ceiling hung painting of that size and weight, but on further research, he has unearthed a rumour that the original painting was a Giordano, which, if true, suggests the aristocratic family who ended up with property probably sold it off at some point. My art curator translator is fascinated by the possibility, and promises to look into it, and Claudio has tracked down an elderly man who in his early youth was a servant to the family, who he will cross question. Obviously, this is of only academic interest, but it would still be interesting to find out whether it's true or not. That it is roundly agreed that it may be true indicates the wealth of the old family: it is a repeated pleasure to discover just how well built the house is. We have just succeeded in knocking a pleasing sum off the estimate by the discovery that the chimneys, unused for many decades, far from needing extensive restoration still draw well; better, indeed, than the modern chimneys possessed by the estate agent, who was very envious. (We discovered the state of the first of the chimneys one day when we were walking round the house with the builder and electrician, freezing, and Claudio thoughtfully tore up some cardboard boxes belonging to the vendor and broke up a few unwanted bits of new, cheap wood fittings and proceeded to make up a fire.)

* Another mystery: I am accustomed to bathroom products companies having websites which list the retailers from whom one may purchase the products in question, and at whose showrooms they may be viewed. Not so in Italy. In Italy, if you are lucky, the bathroom product company will have, somewhere well hidden on it's website, a form which, after you have given your full name, street address and telephone number, permits you to request a list of distributors. Then, armed with this list, you can contact these distributors, either by a similar form on their websites or by phone, and request the details of an actual brick and mortar retailer in your general vicinity. Probably you will have to specify exactly which product you want; suggesting you were looking for somewhere that stocks most of the range, so that you can compare them, will get you nowhere. In what sense this is good business practice escapes me.

Re: en route back through Heathrow

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

The story of your glass door handles fascinates me, sufficiently so that I have only with some difficulty restrained myself from attempting to make an entirely new icon to use to respond to it. And I may make that icon yet: if so, it will be made from a picture of a ring I just made out of bronze and copper, set with a lab-grown but nevertheless very beautiful ruby.

And yet, despite my utter comfort with lab-grown jewels, I share your instinctive flinch from things that look like acrylic. Only here I have to stop and ask whether they really do, or whether knowing what they're made of changes your perception of them. For me at least, some of the awfulness of acrylic has to do with the way it feels to the hand: too light, and too -- I'm not sure, but the surface is all wrong. It's almost gluey, and the temperature is always wrong, while glass feels solid and rich beneath your fingers. This is more pronounced, of course, when the glass is textured in some way, but it's always there.

Logically knowing which material it is shouldn't matter to the eye, even with something like a doorknob that is there to be handled. But our minds synthesize information, and I've found that knowing a doorknob is in fact old lead crystal rather than acrylic makes a difference to my experience of it being there. Perhaps it's only that when I look, I'm more likely to be aware of the way light behaves in that glass, which is at least subtly different from the way that light behaves in plastic. But I suspect it's more that my mind is adding in footnotes, as it were, so that behind the pure visual is a set of deeply-embedded responses involving how it retains coolness on a hot summer evening, and the weight of the thing when one turns it, and a few dozen visual overlays of it in different lighting conditions. And so it becomes beautiful even from across two rooms, and in situations where an acrylic substitute, if someone had placed it there as an experiment without my knowing, would be visually indistinguishable until I got closer, or put a hand on it. And even though once I discovered the substitution, it would be irretrievably ugly without changing in a single molecule.

As for the color, I'd guess that's modernity. We have such an extraordinary richness of color available to us, it's easy for brilliant color to look garish and cheap, especially in materials that have a certain brilliance in their own right. And yet, I know that when I was a small child (and I have to admit, to some extent even now) those pure brilliant colors in transparent, glowing materials were astonishingly beautiful to me: chunks of morning light you could hold in your hand, or put on a shelf. Now, with synthetic dyes and pigments everywhere and so inexpensive anyone can use them in abundance, and with glowing screens adding luminosity to the palette of artificial brilliant color everywhere, it's easy to have it all turn to visual background noise. I'm not sure it's even possible for us to recapture the impact those handles may once have had, precisely because they were a few spots of intense and pure color against a restrained gold and cream. It would be interesting to be able to make the experiment, but I don't know that there's a place left on earth where you could avoid modern color for long enough for your eye to readjust.

. . . days later, I find this comment box still open, when I thought I had posted it immediately. I must have intended to say more and been interrupted. You may be relieved to hear that if I was going to rave on about color and glass, I've lost track of what precisely I meant to say. I'm going to post this now as is, and then come back to drool over the rest of the adventures in architecture.

Because, so not bored. I am, seriously, loving every sentence and every detail of this, and hope for similarly detailed reports through every single bit of the adventure.