Outings, summer 2015

The move from Lancaster to Surrey took most of our energy and time so we didn’t have much time left for leisure, outings or holiday trips. Besides, Valentina, my autistic daughter, was at home with us all the time so we had to take turns to have a bit of rest.

My eldest daughter and I decided to book to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition, Savage Beauty, well in advance in order to not have any excuses and miss it. On the day of the exhibition we left the house, still full of half unpacked boxes, and had our day out in London. We forgot all the stress of the move as soon as we got on the train to Waterloo, everything in the city was as lively and exciting as ever and the V&A was in full charm.

The Alexander McQueen exhibition was dazzling, total creativity expressed in sheer artistic constructions. At the entrance there was a huge photo of his face (an ordinary British bloke) that slowly changed into a skull mask (the same image is on the cover of the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition’s catalogue titled Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty) that welcomed the visitors. It set the tone to the whole exhibition: beautiful, weird and unsettling but also clearly made up in its unique entertaining aim to provoke and appeal in a subtle game of pleasure, shock and horror.

All his most famous collections were there: Nihilism (spring/summer 1994), Birds (spring/summer 1995), Highlander rape (autumn/winter 1995), the Hunger (spring/summer 1996), It’s only a game (2005), the Widows of Culloden (autumn/winter 2006) and Plato’s Atlantis (his last collection, spring/summer 2010). His precision in tailoring, pattern making and placing was pure perfection, combined with utter renewed originality. He was often inspired by the wilderness and beauty of the natural world but also by historical events and art in general. A tamed savagery, well cut and perfectly sewn, horror and romance, what the Romantics would call sublime.

His collections always had a story, a narrative that was inspired by his interests (e.g. nature) or his Scottish background, revisited in a continuous tension between wild imagination, technology and showmanship. It was a unique experience, I could see again my favourite dress (I had seen it in another exhibition at the V&A, titled Ballgowns, in 2012), a black and white organza dress with a symmetrical pattern of two praying women with crows soaring above them on the front of the dress, innocence and darkness facing each other in a never ending confrontation.

I spent a long time sitting in the central room of the exhibition, the walls covered with his fabulous headgears, alternating with corsets, shoes and other accessories. Video clips of his catwalks on the wall bewitched the viewer. In the centre of the room there was the famous spray-painted dress, it was robot jet sprayed during one of his best and most entertaining shows.

After Savage Beauty, my daughter and I thought we hadn’t had enough and opted to go see Shoes: pleasure and pain, in the V&A fashion wing. It was interesting, though after Alexander McQueen everything else seemed dull. The shoes on display were from several countries and ages. The leitmotif was “Cinderella shoes that can change life and transform who you are” for better or for worse. Other popular shoes from folk tales were taken into consideration, like the red shoes from the Danish story and the seven leagues boots. Shoes are a status symbol undoubtedly, to constrain and show off, sexy shoes like stiletto pumps, platforms as symbol of power, heel-less shoes, shoes with turned up toes or iron spring patterns, clogs and tiny Chinese lotus shoes. And who ever believed that shoes were only made to walk comfortably will be proved wrong, they represent an identity, send a message and embody a character.

On another day we also managed to go to the cinema and watch Inside Out by Pixar Animation. I enjoyed it very much, the idea of describing only a few days of a girl’s life through her emotions was ingenious. Her crisis, the characters representing her emotions, the humorous bitter-sweet ending, everything was so well narrated, gripping and entertaining that I had a total catharsis at the end.

A part from shopping (my husband had run out of trousers and jackets, all worn out, so we spent a whole day looking for a big M&S store in the area and then had the rest of the day in it while he tried on one item after the other), my most exciting outing was going to see Les Misérables the musical, at the Queen’s theatre in London. It was wonderful; I loved the film, still watch it on the DVD and listen to the soundtrack from time to time, but the live performance blew me away. It is so much more involving in a theatre, so alive, real, mesmerizing. I loved it.

After the show, we walked through Chinatown in a mild drizzle. We bought some Chinese treats (sticks with peach, green tea and strawberry flavour called Pocky) and took photos of some amazing Chinese cakes.

It wasn’t much but I thoroughly enjoyed all of it!

A new phase of my life

Last year I commuted from Lancaster to Woking for my new job at an international school. It’s a fulfilling and rewarding job I thoroughly enjoy. What I do exactly is teach Italian Language and Literature following the IB (international Baccalaureate) programme for middle years and for diploma, which is for high school years (year 7-13 in British schools).

We don’t have a specific book to follow so we prepare our own curriculum, structure our own units and find and adapt resources for the lessons. It’s a very targeted programme, tailored to the students and aiming to train them for the final years studying the diploma programme, when they will be assessed externally on a specific curriculum. It’s challenging and always new, two aspects I love.

This year I am also the subject leader for Language and Literature, that is I support the other language and literature teachers in the school (being an international school there are about fifteen of us from different languages and cultures) and share the resources I prepare with them.

This is definitely a big change in my life, my career has soared compared to what I used to do in Lancashire (a few hours of Italian tutoring in adult education and DP). This is a proper job, highly satisfying both from an intellectual and a financial point of view (which is not to be overlooked as two of my children are at university). The reason why I could achieve all this is because my family supported me (above all my husband), especially in taking care of my autistic daughter Valentina when I was away (that was for three days a week).

Unfortunately Valentina’s behaviour has been deteriorating more and more in the last three years. She had had similar problems at school and respite care before, but until three years ago we could still cope with her at home (it has always been hard with her but the situation was still manageable at the time). Three years ago we had a holiday in Northumberland, there were six of us plus my parents. It was a beautiful holiday, we visited part of Yorkshire as well, Alnwick castle, Fountain Abbey, York, Durham and the Hadrian wall (I wrote a summer journal as usual, you can find it under Summer 2012 in this blog) but Valentina was very unsettled. She was aggressive with my parents, couldn’t bear the moving from one place to another or travelling in general. She made several attempts to damage things (e.g. ripping the car upholstery, which she did eventually manage on another occasion a few weeks later) and we could barely prevent it. I reported everything to her social worker and asked if it was possible to have Vale at respite care for a week in August so we could have a week holiday in the future. This never happened and we stopped having holidays as it was too dangerous with her. We took holidays in turns, but it’s not the same thing. I haven’t got a week or even a weekend off with my husband in a long time because we always take turns looking after Valentina.

From 2012 on her behaviour kept deteriorating both at school, at respite care and at home. In 2012 she was excluded from a school and a few respite care centres for one reason or the other. We went a long time without respite care, which added to the stress. We spent more and more time at home with her as it was too dangerous and unmanageable to plan any outings; the rare occasions we did, it always ended with some incident or more stress.

We asked for more help again but nothing definite was provided. Specialized day school and, when possible, respite care (one night per week and a weekend every seven weeks) was all they could do. We asked for a residential placement and thought this was the best option for her because we couldn’t manage with her aggressive behaviour anymore and in the future it would get worse and worse, as she would get stronger and we would get older and weaker. Nothing happened.

In the meantime she was assessed by CAMHS and they said she had no mental problems only sensory problems so no medication was added to what she already took. Her behaviour deteriorated further, at school she had incident after incident, attacking staff and pupils, serious self-harming and ripping clothes. They locked her in a room in her worse moments (we gave permission for it as we saw there wasn’t another way). At home she had a similar behaviour and I didn’t know what to do being alone with her most of the time. She did a lot of damages to the house and hit herself repeatedly. She had bruises all over her body even on her face as she aggressively punched herself.

Everything became impossible with her. We carried on in a constant emergency balance, hoping that nothing serious or irreversible would happen. Last year in Lancashire we asked for a residential placement again as I was away three days a week. After several months they finally said they couldn’t do it and gave her two respite care nights per week. We barely survived and Valentina had very bad moments. The school asked for emergency meetings and for more meds, but the people responsible for it had no solution.

We miraculously managed to end the year and move to Surrey. Here the assessment was quick and efficient. They gave us 52 weeks residential school and placed her in a temporary five days a week respite care, which gives us time and energy to work during the week. In the meantime they are looking for the residential placement. It is heaven compared to what we had in Lancashire (and it was heaven in Lancashire compared to what we had gone through in Italy, see my blog Living with Valentina).

This year having five days a week without Valentina changed my life completely. Finally I can dedicate time to my career and I am planning to widen my horizons. Also all my other children are away: my eldest one graduated in July and now lives and works in Leeds, my second studies at Edinburgh University, my third one has just started Physics at Oxford University. My job as a full time mum has ended; I am going to have much more time for myself, which is definitely a new phase of my life. This hasn’t happened since I got married and had my first child twenty-three years ago.

My plans are simple; dedicate time and energy to the job I like and carry on with writing and painting. Researching, preparing and delivering lessons is something I am fond of and I am lucky I can also earn my living from it. I believe that I am going to enjoy it to the fullest and am looking forward to more opportunities and changes, who knows what the future holds in store for me.

Halloween biscuits

This year I decided to prepare Halloween treats with my youngest students (two ten year old Italian girls) at the international school where I teach. We looked at Halloween traditions, read horror stories for children and made some craft decorations. Browsing on the internet I also found some biscuit recipes that we adapted to our Italian taste. Here are the recipes and the photos of the biscuits we made at school, we stuffed ourselves and had great fun!

Almond bats

You need: 150 g flour, 70 g sugar, 1 egg, 50 g butter, 70 g ground almonds, 1 tsp of baking powder, 3 tbsp of milk and black icing to decorate.

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and the egg in a bowl, add the milk, ground almonds and melted butter. Knead the dough and let it rest for half an hour in a cool place. Roll out the dough and cut out bat shapes with a pastry cutter. Set them on a greased oven tray and bake for 15 minutes, 180°C. When they are cool, decorate with black icing, rolling it out and cutting the shapes using the same pastry cutter.

Full moons

You need: 200 g flour, 100 g brown sugar, 50 g butter, 1 egg, half a tsp of ground cinnamon, 1 tsp of baking powder, 50 g of raisins, 100 g of pumpkin puree and icing sugar to decorate.

Prepare the pumpkin puree cutting the pumpkin in cubes and boiling it in some water with  50 g of brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. When it is soft mash it with a fork or using a blender and let it cool. Beat the butter with a wooden spoon in a bowl till it is smooth; add flour, baking powder, the egg, the rest of the sugar and cinnamon. Add the pumpkin puree and knead the dough then chill it for half an hour. Roll the dough out and cut round shapes (you can use a glass or a pastry cutter). Bake on a greased tin for 15 minutes, 180°C. When they are cool, sprinkle with icing sugar.

Stuffed pumpkins

You need: 200 g flour, 100 g sugar, 50 g butter, 1 egg, 1 tsp of baking powder and grated lemon zest.

For the filling: 100 g of pumpkin puree (see above).

To decorate you need 4 tbsp of icing sugar, lemon juice, 1 tbsp of water and green and orange food colouring.

Prepare the dough mixing flour, sugar, egg, melted butter, grated lemon zest and baking powder. Knead the dough and let it chill for half an hour. In the meantime prepare the pumpkin puree (see the previous recipe). Roll out the dough and cut shapes of pumpkin with a pastry cutter. Fill the middle of each shape with a tsp of pumpkin puree and cover with another pumpkin shape. Bake for 30 minutes, 180°C on an oven tray. When they are cool, prepare the icing mixing 4 tbsp of icing sugar with a tbsp of warm water, one tsp of lemon juice and some drops of food colouring, green for the stem and orange for the pumpkin. Decorate the biscuits and go stuff yourselves!

Summer 2015, part 3

The compound where we live is lovely, a piece of heaven. When you enter it you are met with soft grass and high trees on one side and a pond with ducks and even a heron on the other. Town houses of various sizes stretch around a ring of tarmac (which we are not sure we need to drive clockwise or anti-clockwise as there are no signs and people go both ways causing puzzlement when two cars meet face to face). In the centre there is a garden patch beautifully kept. It’s peaceful and environment friendly, as we all have biomass central heating and low electricity lights around the compound (which means it’s pretty dark at night).

The other environment friendly thing I wish to mention is the amazing recycling centre we have in Woking. It was our most visited spot for about two-three weeks after the move (though we kept so much we also threw away big amounts of cardboard, plastic, soil, wood, electrics, etc.). it’s a big recycling place you can drive around and stop near the section you need. There is not only plastic, glass and paper, it’s much more detailed and has furniture, paint, foil, mobile phones, carpets, printer cartridges, tapes and discs or bathroom suite posts. An ideal place for a committed recycling person like me.

Though the village where we live is small, we are lucky we have all we need: a church, GP, dentist, pharmacy and post office. There are also a few nice shops, restaurants and two supermarkets.

Our first concern was to register with the GP, mainly because I take regular medication and needed some checks. The other concern was about my autistic daughter Valentina, she needed CAMHS referral as her meds can’t be prescribed by a GP. The checks with the GP left me puzzled, I was definitely fatter and shorter than I remembered and my blood tests were not completely right. But never mind, I tell myself it must be the effect of ageing, which is natural.

We all had appointments at the dentist’s as well, which resulted in investing a significant amount of our monthly income in tooth saving and maintenance. It’s a sort of annual taxation I have to come to terms with, bad teeth need to be taken care of without a doubt.

My daughter and I couldn’t help visiting all the shops in the main street and buy a few more clothes to update our wardrobe. The two woman clothes shops are interesting; one is more casual-smart, the other has more formal kind of clothes. Both have good quality articles and, if you are lucky, bargains.

I also had a haircut in a hair studio which satisfied me as never before since I moved to England. The fact is that I am so used to Italian style cuts and am in general very picky about haircuts, so it’s difficult to please me. But this time I was definitely happy.

The church is a beautiful Norman building dedicated to St. Lawrence. It has chalk pillars and Norman arcades on the south aisle while elegant capitals engraved with grapes and leaves embellish the columns on the opposite side. The pews are decorated with symbols linked to the origins or interests of parishioners like a cradle, a map of Devon and Cornwall, shamrock and dolphins, croquet and dogs, a loaf of bread, a sheaf of corn, Scottish flag and thistle and so on. The tower was built in 1400 and has an unusual herringbone spire, a remarkable church I think I am going to visit again.

At the Phoenix centre in Woking the stanza group meets once a month; it is a group linked to the National Poetry Society and for me it is an opportunity to meet people who love, write and enjoy reading poetry whilst inspiring each other. I happily joined them hoping to carry on writing in spite of all my working commitments. It’s hard but possible if I keep organized, dedicating all the time I need to my job (which is mainly preparing lessons and meetings), then switch off for a while and devote my soul and heart to art. As I am a teacher, one activity nurtures the other in some way. I haven’t got much time for proper leisure activities at the moment but doing what I like is a kind of leisure.

Last but not least, in Knaphill there is a huge Sainsbury’s I adore. For a busy working woman having a place where you can find everything (from de-ionized water to towels, shoes and all kinds of food, drinks and vegetables) is the ideal thing. More shops are in Woking of course; two shopping centres, theatres and cinemas which is just fifteen minutes drive from where we live. For charity shops, Aldershot in Hampshire is the place to go, where we did lots of shopping for my daughter Valentina, who still enjoys ripping her clothes.

After all of this, I now feel I’m settling very well in my new environment.

Summer 2015, part 2

The new house

has unfilled spaces

I measure with my thoughts,

wide windows and verandas

bursting with light,

a white staircase spiralling up,

knots in the honey wooden floor

like dark birthmarks or gigantic ants

I skip by instinct.

The corners are sealed with golden velvet,

the walls are cream.

On the roof the skylights mirror the blue

in trembling reflections.

I lean from the balcony drowsily

looking down at the grey tarmac,

a pool of flames.

 

This is a poem I wrote on my new house just after buying it. It gives an idea of how spacious  and full of light it is. It looks smart and clean as it is only a few years old. We didn’t need to do much refurbishing or redecorating but we decided to get rid of the carpet and have engineered wood flooring, a warm dark honey colour that gives a pleasant atmosphere. I found the person who made the job by chance on the internet (http://www.surreyflooring.co.uk/ ), which was very lucky, it was such a perfect choice that I absolutely recommend him for his precision and professional finish.

As I said in my previous piece, during the process of the move we realized we had too much of everything, above all clothes, books, photos and paintings, china things and other glass or ceramic objects we brought from Italy, reminders of weddings, birthdays, christening, etc. We didn’t have the heart to getting rid of them. I know a move is a good opportunity to make clear what you really need and what you will never need again (and this was the attitude we had when we moved from Italy to Lancaster, but that was a more radical kind of move), but this time we decided for a more moderate approach. We were just moving from the north of England to the south of England after all, we weren’t properly downsizing so we didn’t need to be so drastic. We kept almost everything included all the photo albums, our children’s childhood books and teenage books, both in English and in Italian (they may get handy with our future grandchildren), all DVDs and VHS. The problem was that we didn’t have enough cupboards and bookcases for all of them, so we decided to buy more. Our favourite place to buy furniture is Ikea, of course, cheap  with simple kind of furnishing adaptable to all kinds of spaces.

Our Ikea mania started when we spent a year in Stockholm about fifteen years ago. It wasn’t so well known in Italy yet and there wasn’t one in Rome. It was all so new and exciting for us, especially for the children, who were very little at the time. We spoiled them with all the colourful soft toys, puppets and cosy children furniture.

There are two easily reachable Ikeas in the south west, one is in Croydon and the other in Southampton, plus another one in the north west of London. We visited all of them more than once. Though all Ikeas look pretty much the same and have similar things, we wanted the whole tour just in case we missed an offer or a piece in a slightly different colour, but above all because we enjoyed it. Maybe this is because I link it to the happy memories we had in Stockholm and to all the fun the kids had there. We bought bookcases and shelves, as many as our lounge, bedrooms and even the kitchen could fit. Then a sofa (the two big ones we had in Lancaster we gave to charity), some chairs and innumerable bits and pieces, lovely things you can fill your house with, like wooden chopping boards, cool rags, frames for new photos (the ones of my son’s graduation), bright plastic bowls and boxes,. Needless to say we couldn’t miss out on the Swedish meatballs (köttbullar), the ginger biscuit (pepparkakor), various other biscuits and the rye and bran crisp bread (knäckebröd). It was like being back in Sweden in a way.

We spent a few days assembling the furniture and filling it. Then we realized we needed some more chairs for the lounge. Unfortunately Ikea ones were not strong enough for my autistic daughter Valentina, she would break them in no time. We needed a different solution. Strolling in the centre of the village where we now live, I spotted a few shops with new and old furniture, sort of antiques at its best. I browsed around and was struck by four sturdy wooden chairs perfect for our needs. We needed six though, but looking more carefully there were two bigger chairs which would be ideal at the two heads of the table. The colour and the shape matched with our table and with the lounge perfectly. We tried them and they were comfortable too. It was a deal, no sooner said than done they were around our table.

Home base was the other regular stop for different kinds of tools and for flowers, especially orchids, which my daughter became fond of. She collected about ten different types from big white ones with a pale yellow core to deep purple, yellow with red freckles, cream with violet spots and so on. They are all beautifully displayed in her room now, which is the biggest one on the top floor.

In spite of all the space and storage we managed to fit in the house, eventually we realised it was not enough. We needed a replacement of the garage we had in Lancaster. “What about a shed?” My husband suggested. So it became his task to find and order the right shed to store all the stuff we rarely use but that might become useful in the future. He found a nice one made by a company in Kent. The only problem was that to make it more stable we needed  paved ground, or so they said. Our garden was half paved and half lawn. Caught up in the excitement, we decided to pave it all. Cutting the turf was not easy but digging the ground 10-15 centimetres deep was much harder. We hoed and spaded, then filled bag after bag of soil and emptied around a hundred of them at the recycling centre. In the rain and sunshine we worked for a week, a huge effort but eventually the big hole was done. Then we had to fill it with sharp sand (as per instruction on youtube video clip) and used a mixture of quick sand and cement to fix the slabs on top. The final result was all right, not perfect but we were happy with it. It was only fourteen square metres but all made by hands, no diggers or other machines involved. A big and strenuous achievement.

Unfortunately all the digging disturbed several ant-nests. The ants retaliated by wandering everywhere, ending in the lounge and from the lounge into the kitchen. We weren’t worried at first but started to be when I found them inside the kitchen drawers and cupboards. An ant phobia began. My husband placed ant baits everywhere, I cleaned meticulously the kitchen tops and floor twice a day and sealed sugar, flour, coffee, biscuits, chocolate, everything ants could be attracted to into tins, jars and Tupperware. All of it seemed useless, they had found the way and kept searching for any tiny remnant of food sticking to a wooden spoon or to a few crumbs left on the kitchen top or to grains of sugar accidentally fallen in a drawer. They were driving me crazy. I dish washed all pots, pans and cutlery. During the day they seemed to slow down but at night they spread again and in the morning they would be everywhere despite the kitchen never having been so clean. Finally my husband sealed all the possible holes, slots and chinks with silicon which concurred with a few days of torrential rain and the ants magically stopped. I don’t know if it was the rain, the silicon or my obsessive cleaning, or all three together, but now not an ant has been around since. So we could go back to our moderately dirty standards.

My summer holidays 2015, part 1

 The most exciting, touching and uplifting moment of my summer was my eldest son’s graduation ceremony at Whitworth Hall in Manchester. The ceremony was simple and beautiful, my son was happy and pleased of his achievements. We were all incredibly proud of him. I must say, it was a big moment for the whole family. My parents and parents in law were there as well, we took a lot of photos, kept smiling and congratulating him. We were overjoyed, maybe looking a little silly but it didn’t bother us.

After the ceremony we went to celebrate in an Italian restaurant, Al Bacio, in the centre of Manchester along with the family of my son’s girlfriend. We had great fun and ate so much food. We started with almost all the antipasti available (except soup), that is fritto misto, caprese, bruschetta, aubergines, squids, salami and cheese. Then we chose a main dish each, lasagne, cannelloni, gnocchi, linguine and/or steak, veal, fillet. We had plenty of side dishes and desserts of course, and a surprise from the chef: a pineapple cut in the shape of a swan soaked in sambuca. Everything was delicious. Old Italian songs were wafting around, all pre-WW II songs, or just after it, my parents’ time songs. It created an atmosphere of old times that I was not sure my children were aware of, except from what they’d seen in films like The Godfather. It was a great day and my son clearly appreciated it.

After the graduation, my parents and parents in law were with us for about a week. We couldn’t go sightseeing as we were already busy packing and preparing for the imminent move. They helped us of course and we took them around Lancaster for some shopping. Even if it was only for a week they were very happy to see us and to attend their first grandson’s graduation.

We had started packing our stuff more than a year before the move but very slowly. During the last week we rushed things up and boxes suddenly started piling up in the lounge and in the garage, the only places we didn’t need for our daily life. The night before the first official moving day we worked till exhaustion. At the end my husband and I felt so tired that we left my son and daughter to do the last bit and went to bed.

The day the movers arrived (a team of eight sturdy guys who emptied our house in about four hours) we grouped in the kitchen to sort the last things out. More and more things came out from cupboards and drawers. All coats, dresses, trousers and suits were moved from wardrobes to wardrobe boxes (we filled ten of them!). On the whole it was quick and efficient, which left no time to think or regret. Finally we cleaned the house (it was easy to vacuum empty rooms and wipe clear cupboards). In the afternoon I drove south with my daughter. My husband came the following day with the rest of the family.

On the third day all the stuff arrived in the new house in Surrey (a huge truck completely packed with our belongings). It was a cold and rainy day, I mainly looked after my autistic daughter Valentina who was quite unsettled, which was understandable as she hates changing places and routines. The kitchen was again the only safe place we could find. The rest of the house was in the hands of the moving company’s staff (only two of them this time) and the rest of the family, who helped them for the whole day in and out in the rain. At the end they were wet, cold and drained.

We found ourselves surrounded by a huge amount of boxes and half assembled furniture. And the best part would still be to come. The following two-three weeks was an unpacking ordeal, at a certain point I thought it would never end. I remember sometimes I would take a quick break and rest on a half unpacked box before starting on again after a while. Too much stuff was my conclusion, we accumulated things without being aware of it and this was the price.

While I am writing, there are still a few boxes in the lounge. Some of them will be soon placed in the shed that will be ready in a few days, the remaining ones are full of my collection of dolls and puppets that I need to set in cupboards and glass cabinets, and last but not least photos and paintings. There’s no hurry, we’ll finish well before Christmas.

It’s great to be in the new house. It’s a town house in a beautiful gated compound with a small park for children and a pond. It’s peaceful and green. The nearby village is lovely with nice shops and all the necessities we need but I’m relieved the move is finally over.

My summer holidays 2015

My summer was definitely hectic, tremendously exciting and tiring at times.

I had the move from Lancaster (Lancashire) to Chobham (Surrey). Before it, I had the wonderful experience of my eldest son’s graduation in Manchester while at the same time my parents and parents in law came from Italy and stayed with us for a week. Only a week after they left, we had the move. A packing fever gripped the whole family, we worked day and part of the night to empty our house of all the stuff we had accumulated over eight years. The move lasted three days and left us exhausted in the new beautiful house, surrounded by more than a hundred boxes on a rainy cold day. It was the end of July and we had about a month before work started again...

I will post more about my busy summer from next week.