trick or treat

What should have been a wonderful evening started traumatically before becoming merely stressful and eventually ended up at what can be best described as muted disappointment.

So what went wrong? Let’s back track a bit…

maybe in milan

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Milan. I’m meeting Lynsey there (she’s flying from the UK) and in the evening we’re off to see Robbie at the FilaForum. It’s an oft-repeated cliche about Robbie but he is an entertainer and I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve never been to Milan. I hope it’s nice.

marathon

Today at work, I was in a meeting that lasted ten hours! Aside from the actual content of the meeting, it confirmed one or two things in my mind.

Reminds me of this!

computer love

Today I finally got around to ordering the bits for my new PC. In the end I had to order from 3 different suppliers which makes the whole experience 3 times more stressful. I will be very surprised if this goes smoothly – nothing does here in Italy. I tried very hard to keep the cost down but at the last minute splurged on some extra memory! Oh and a TV card too. Well I haven’t got a telly and there might be the odd footy match that I want to see.

the bells

Lying in bed this morning (under my new Ikea duvet set!) I planned my day. At one point the nearby church bells began ringing. As I often do (I don’t know why) I counted the bongs. I chuckled to myself as the bellringer miscounted and rang one short. Later after assembling my new Ikea computer desk, I noticed the clock on my laptop was two hours slow. My first thought was that as I wasn’t on the network so it hadn’t picked up the correct time from the time server. Then I remembered what time of year it is. I called Lynsey and asked if the clocks had gone back in the UK. They had, which means they had in Italy too. Damn! I could have had an extra hour in bed.

Seeing as I don’t get much exercise out here I decided to go for a long walk before lunch. Unusually there were a few market stalls setup in the little square beside the Marchegiana resturant and the church. “That’s nice…” I thought as I turned to go down the hill into the centre of town. More stalls lined this road and I began to get slightly concerned. I rounded the corner and all I could see was market stalls. “Oh fuck!” I thought. Even before I reached the entrance to the market square I knew by the number of people around that there was a market underway. Pushing through the crowds I actually thought maybe this was an impromptu type of market and they would have setup some of the stalls around the parked cars (including mine). That was one of the stupidest thoughts I’ve had in a long time because of course my car had been towed away!

The car was impounded at Jolly Cars (seriously) which is run by the most comically ugly man in Fabriano, if not the whole of Italy. He looks like someone has had some fun with photoshop’s bulge tool on various parts of his face. In the office were his two teenage sons both sporting mullets to go with their distorted features. €50 got me the car back but with the market still in full flow there was absolutely nowhere to park near the apartment so I ended up about 20 minutes walk away on the other side of the park.

I went out at 7 to bring the car nearer, thinking the market would have gone and the streets would be returning to their normal deserted state. But no it’s still going!

it’s like a religion for me

On Saturday I took the Autostrada to Bologna to go shopping at my nearest Ikea. It’s a 3 hour drive but having trawled Ancona for well designed, reasonably priced stuff and finding nothing, I felt it was worthwhile. Many of my shopping experiences in Italy have left me confused so it was nice to go somewhere “normal”. I probably spent too much but the apartment looks a lot better for it. It was depressingly stark before.
Beside Ikea there was a large commerical centre where I got a new LCD monitor – an Acer AL532. It’s lovely. I managed to lose my sunglasses though which is a bit annoying.

I parked outside the apartment to unload the car before setting off to find a parking place for the rest of the weekend. I ended up parking in the market square as all the streets nearby were full. Saturday is market day in Fabriano and you can’t park there but by this time the market was long gone.

shouting europe

A horrendous evening… my salsiccia butties did not agree with me – we had a long argument about it during the night and in the end, they won. Today I feel like shit.

Giro Turistico

I’ve added a new photo album “Giro Turistico” – mostly pics of Fabriano but some other places too. All taken ages ago when I first came over here with my tiny digital spy camera so they’re not the highest quality. I’ve just begun using this camera again because it’s so easy to carry around with me – a cool little gadget.

here comes the flood

Lynsey called tonight in a panic because our downstairs “cloakroom” was flooded. It’s difficult to deal with things like that when you’re thousands of miles away. I gave her the best advice I could (it was lame – I’m not very good at stuff like that) but she was phoning her dad next and he’s brilliant at that sort of thing. I’ll probably have to re-lay the laminate floor in the bog though. Bummer.

I’ve been sorting through some photos that I took around Fabriano ages ago when we (me, Gerd and Max) first arrived here. I’ll create a new photo album for them tomorrow when I’m online. They’re not very good quality (I used my “spy camera”) but they give you an idea of what it’s like here. I’m looking forward to getting my DV camera out here so I can do a travelogue of the place.

Now I’m listening to Cornelius and wondering what to do for the rest of the evening. My choices are limited: watch a dvd, read, photoshop (nice the way that’s become a verb), or muck about with Reason (I can’t do anything serious with Reason on my laptop because it’s decrepit). Add in “nothing” and “go to bed” and that’s 6 choices! Now I can’t decide what to do!

In the end, I stayed up ’til 2 playing with Reason. It’s been a while… I’d forgotten how much I love it, especially the Malström.

The Manual

The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way)

“a hugely cynical yet oddly accurate and savvy account of the steps, from recording to marketing, one could take to hit the top of the charts.”