Genova, of course ... and my playlist.

Hmmm, which order shall I post them in ... the photograph or my favourite music playlist?

The playlist:

Alexi Murdoch - Breathe (it reminds me I must)

Fabrizio De Andre - Creuza di Ma (because it takes me back to Genova, everysingle time)

Amos Lee - Arms of a Woman (love the sound)

Ben Howard - Old Pine (just love, so much)

Brian Eno - By this River (from a movie, it haunted me)

Counting Crows - Sullivan Street (there has to be at least one, of these guys or REM)

David Gray - The One I Love (somehow this one slipped in.  It wakes me up if I'm concentrating too deeply.

LP - Into the Wild (just simply love and adore)

Marc Cohen - Ellis Island (an old favourite)

Missy Higgins - Everyone's Waiting (love and adore)

Passenger - Let Her Go (new big love)

Sarah McLachlan - Angel (old love, and it reminds me of Pippa singing it beautifully)

Van Morrison - Into the Mystic  (hunted this song down and fell for Van Morrison as a result. Loved 'The Newsroom' too)

Yo La Tengo - Green Arrow (brilliant beautiful exquisite)

Zucchero - Dune Mosse (i enjoy Zucchero)

Paul Kelly - Midnight Rain (possibly my most favourite song ever but on his cd, it opens with heavy rain.  I love songs that include heavy rain, like we used to have back in Fiordland, NZ)

So this is it for now.  There are more I need to add but it meets my needs for now.

And the photograph ... Genova, of course.

Here I am ...

Curled up on my borrowed bed in this magnificent Genovese apartment, top floor, listening to my small music playlist of absolute favourite songs ... the ones that I always play.  I should post that list one day, so you can throw your hands up in horror perhaps, but these are the ones that I listen to, over and over, making sharing an office space with me all but impossible.

Or  so I've been told.

I have lived more quietly today.  The result of one of my allergy/anxiety attacks last night - 4am before I slept.  It seems that I am one of those creatures who 'feel the fear and do it anyway'.  It's always been like that.  The desire to go versus my chicken-hearted fears.

Most amusing, probably, was flying to Istanbul when flying wasn't my favourite thing.  Moving to Istanbul alone wasn't the best thing for a chicken-hearted soul to do either, actually.  But there are many things I have done that left me wondering what I was thinking?!

Cairo was both so beautiful and so terrifying for this girl from small-town New Zealand.

Anyway ... it seems, despite being as much in denial as is possible, I have some allergy/food intolerance issues.  Some things affect my mouth, others my throat, a few my stomach and etc.  I'm thinking, after last night, that I might finally get tested because the allergies are definitely increasing and I have say, they're just not fun at 1, 2 and 3am, in a country not your own when you're alone.

And today ... I'm laughing as I write this blog post, it didn't go well at the pharmacies.  They didn't really have English, and I'm famous for not being good at other languages.  Ohdeargod ... so, I have some antihistamine drops (I think), and I'm meant to take 20 drops once a day, (I think) and some asprin too (which I'm pretty sure I don't like). Not really what I was looking for but they're in the building. 

I'm someone who thinks if the medicine is in the building it's enough.  It makes Gert crazy.

But this isn't what I meant to write of ... really.  I had a nice invitation today, to supply photographs of Genova to a Ligurian magazine here.  I love Liguria, there's no hiding that, and so I said sure. 

The bonus was getting a copy of their latest and it contained an interview (and an A4 photograph) of my first football hero.  Well, technically he's my second but as Milito left, I don't talk of him anymore. 

Oh the fickle world of Series A football.  I don't recall New Zealand rugby players doing these things, these transfers, however ... he has promised he will stay with my team next year.

How many readers will I lose for revealing the truth about who I follow in football ...

Last night, after eating pizza at my favourite pizzeria, I was wandering along Via XX Settembre and found the image that follows this post.  I had to move quickly because there were others around and I'm not sure they all saw what I saw.

But this visit to Genova, I have to  say, there has been just so much ... so many good people, so much divine food, and superb wine.  Great music.  Brilliant conversations. 

Genova has been like that ... and so much more.

It was an extraordinary day ... yesterday

I don't even know where to begin ... last night perhaps, when Alessandra organised a dinner for a few of her friends and I was invited along.  It was outstanding.  

Donatella Soranzio sang, with Luciano Susto on bass guitar, and they were sublime.  I felt so very fortunate to be there listening.  Video by Federico will follow, as it was he who packed his camera and filmed events as they unfolded but they are on youtube as Susto e Soranzo.  And you will see, it was one of those 'pinch me, I'm dreaming' moments, there at Stefano Di Bert's exquisite restaurant called Pacetti Antica Ostaria.

And Stefano ... what a host.  He brought out plate after plate of truly divine food, accompanied by the loveliest of wines ... so many divine wines that came along on that gastronomic journey.  Food and wines from both Friuli and Liguria.  Stefano, Alessandra, Federico, and Donatella are all from the Friuli region. 

1.30am saw Stefano, Barbara, and Alessandra walking me back through quiet city streets to my apartment. This morning, I have to admit that I woke, and lay very still ... checking for hangover damage.  It turns out, the story is true, there is no hangover with good wine and believe me, we had had a lot of very very good wine.

It was one of the most enjoyable evening's I've had in a long time.

Today I had appointments all over the city, ending with a Napoli pizza at my favourite pizzeria on Via Ravecca.

Actually, yesterday I also had lunch with Francesca.  'The' Francesca from Le Gramole.  We laughed often but the dish below, the Troccoli, that made us laugh most of all because I told her of New Zealand's Huhu Grubs ...

I have eaten a Huhu Grub and if you clicked on the link you will have seen why I might have found my Troccoli slightly disconcerting.

I'm too tired to write of everything, although I must add that I also had the pleasure of meeting Sibilla Iacopini.  And I'm enjoying this new apartment in another part of the city.  I'm top floor, with a small balcony and french doors that I open each morning as a way of beginning the day.

I'll take some photographs when my days stop spinning but really ... I love the spinning.

In These Days ...

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves

Erica Jong, extract from Women Enough.

I've been busy ... a project, of course.  A new website specifically for the project, and all kinds of other things too.

At night, I shift my aching body from my ergonomically-disasterous desk and creak to my bed ... tired from sitting rather than anything deliciously active.

But the website is almost done.  I'll launch soon, via a newsletter that shall become regular.  I'm eyeing Instagram too ... I'm in Genova next week, it seems like a good time to work out all this social media stuff that I've mostly ignored, as the new project is all about Genova.

I've been cooking and cleaning, imagining myself quite marvelously productive there too, although wanting more applause than I get for fitting everything into my day.  I've always been dubious about this housewife stuff.  It seems to run along the lines of 'if a tree falls in a forest and noone is there to see it ...'  Same with housework.  A clean house is the result of many lost minutes and hours.  Many.

Erica Jong wrote the perfect poem when she wrote Women Enough. 

So precisely, yes.

But I must work.  I have one more in the elderberry series to post.  It's been up to 28 celsius, thunderstormy, calm and cool too.  It's Spring.  I'm loving it.