InsideMyHead

WE ARE OUT. How sad. Are you serious people, is this what you want, a country without courgettes and a clown as a Prime Minister? Shame on you! This was my outburst the other day, when I woke up, turned on my ipad and looked up the results of the referendum on the e-guardian.   The night before I had stayed up till midnight and my initial worries had subsided, comforted by the reassuring voices of the journalists who, even before the counting started, where declaring the IN votes as the winners. When at 6:30 in the morning I found out about the results, it was such a shock. Unbelievable. I spent the rest of the day in a surreal world − starting with the wrong Front-page headings on the daily newspaper (I wished I kept it as a memento), while I felt as if everything had collapsed around me, and all of a sudden I had turned into a ghost, or was I merely a guest, an unwelcome one? Or is it the same thing? Ghosts are, after all, unwelcome guests in old, rickety dwellings, and Eng

WE ARE OUT. How sad. It's like waking up in Nazi Germany. Are you serious people, is this what you want a country without courgettes and a clown as a Prime Minister? Shame on you. (to be continued, too shocked and sad at the moment for reasons beyond my control)

  Vorrei rispondere ad alcune riflessioni che Annapaola Paparo ha fatto nel suo interessante ultimo articolo, ‘Come Diventare Famosi’ ( https://scribacchiniinfuga.wordpress.com/2016/06/20/come-diventare-famosi/#more-697) Sono perfettamente d’accordo con l’analisi di Annapaola per quanto riguarda i casi di Amanda Hocking, J.K. Rowling e E.L. James ma non per la Ferrante. Pensate davvero che sia una sconosciuta o uno sconosciuto? A me sembra proprio il classico esempio di una raffinata strategia di marketing ideata a puntino dalla casa editrice. Altrimenti, se così non fosse, chi pubblicherebbe mai una sconosciuta e per lo più anonima? Ma forse mi sbaglio, non ho mai lavorato in publishing e non ho nessun contatto nel ramo. Io non so cosa vogliano i lettori quando aprono le prime pagine di un libro o girano la schermata del kindle, ma so cosa cerco io quando sfoglio un libro. Voglio che le parole siano come perle che scorrono sul marmo, e ogni tanto una salta e rimbalza. Sono q

London is changing – where have all the queues gone? After the outburst in my previous article “Brexit and the upheavals of doing a place up in London” to balance things out I want to write about something ‘English’ I really love. Actually there is a lot I like about London, but here I am talking about culture and traditions. Although I remember the time when it was impossible to find a courgette, and broccolis was a swear word – I am talking pre-EU times – I am very fond of the, good, old, very English, queueing system. And why wouldn’t I be, I come from a country where people overtake at any opportunity, not just when they’re driving. My memories of buying something at a busy shop are irremediably linked to waiting, waiting, and more waiting; and by the time I opened my mouth to formulate my request, three or four people had already come in, bought, paid and left: the veni, vidi, vici of modern times. Once upon a time, in London, people queued up for buses

I have a new decorator; the old one abandoned me after a week. He just left one day and never came back. I believe he was too rich for this job; he lived in Fulham and had just spent £30,000 on implants for a new set of teeth. My new decorator is very keen. His name is Sergio and comes from Albania. Yesterday he asked me if he could come and work over the bank holiday weekend; he loves his job and works really hard. I was trying to convince him to take a break. ‘No, no’ he said ‘you don’t pay me to have tea breaks’ it’s all right Sergio’ I said ‘you’ve been working all day. It made me somehow nervous watching him work so conscientiously and with such passion, plus, I needed a break too. Sergio loves his job and is very proud of what he does. Everything must be perfect, and I must say that, indeed, it is. The one hundred years old bay window has just had a face-lift. All the cracks have been filled in, the wood has been smoothed over, and three coats of paint ha