InsideMyHead

Here is my effort for Halloween 2016 And those below are biscuits and cakes from my beloved bakery in Crouch End (Dunn's Bakery) where I buy the best bread in London. The prize for the best Halloween house goes to this imaginative and elegant victorian house.

Why I am not upset that Elena Ferrante has come out of the closet, or to be more precise forced out? Is it because I don’t think the smell of mothball is invigorating for a writer, or maybe it’s because any mystery needs a revelation? Ferrante had become so entangled with her literary persona that in my imagination she was just that: a virtual writer who didn’t need to be real. In a world where virtual reality is as real as it gets and personalities become famous by inventing a captivating personas who needs real people? Ferrante was just that: distant, mysterious, unreal. Adoring fans could mould her into their own image: almost a religious experience. So, are you a stressed out, overworked woman? You could be her walking down the shopping mall with two heavy bags of grocery, and she could be just like you. Are you a desk-ridden translator with literary aspirations who spends all God-given hours of the day and night on a laptop: you could be her; it could be you. Oops! In this

I am a teacher. I teach psychopaths: they know I am their teacher, they don't' know they are psychopaths. I go up the stairs, down the corridor, up the stairs again, into an endless cave of tunnels, corridors and cages, so to speak, little classroom, big classroom. I go in, the tutor is sitting at her desk talking over the phone, and she signals with her hand that she will be with me soon. How soon? I wonder, I take a look around, trying to look normal, trying to look like a teacher: concerned, self-assured, and competent. I am not; I am puzzled to say the least. What do they want me to do? Teach? Baby seat? Tell them that everything is all right when it's not? I could walk in and say what I really think: ‘I would like some normal students please. Do you have any? Or do we just get psychopaths these days?’ I can't, there is a rule and I have learned it very fast, it's called lying.' She is free now; she puts down the phone and invites me to sit down. I say

Devo confessare che non credo negli angeli custodi. Tanto per cominciare se esistessero dovremmo subito prendere atto che sono tra i più imbranati, pigri e inefficienti agenti di sicurezza del mondo. E poi, averci accanto un uomo, che non è veramente un uomo, e per giunta ha le ali da cigno, non è il mio ideale di storia romantico-platonica. Una volta un’amica mi disse con tutta serietà che lei si sentiva sempre protetta dal suo angelo custode. A tale affermazione, prima mi misi a ridere e poi dissi ‘Stai scherzando, vero?’ e lei ‘No, ci credo davvero, tu no?’ Io no? Io, sino a quel momento, ero stata convinta che nessuno al mondo, al di sopra dei dieci anni, ci credesse, e invece stavo parlando seriamente di angeli con un’amica, o meglio collega di lavoro in seguito diventata amica, e dopo quel giorno fatidico finita di essere amica. Voglio dire, ma come faccio a frequentare una che crede nell’assurdo? Non che io abbia niente in contrario all’assurdo ma avrei prima o dopo fin

PART TWO   Astrid wasn’t working anymore. Work was a thing of the past; from 2066 the global workforce had been reduced to 2%. All factories − magicians hats, as they were now called − grew underground hidden by lawns and meadows, buried under hills, so that we could count daisies and look at clovers. Thor and Astrid were relaxing after a night picnic of fruit based meals and drinks for a total calories vitamins ratio of 1/100: a vitamin intake sufficient for the next seven days. Astrid was studying ‘history in the final year of capitalism and the collapse of the last empire’. She yawned thinking how oppressive work must have been, and tried to picture herself getting out of bed every morning even when it was raining but she really couldn’t.  How lucky she was to have been born after the collapse of society, as they knew it. Of course not everything was perfect, it still rained but rain was nice if you could sit in your glass-bubble roof terrace and sip tea. In about twen