Further impressions

We don't seem to be getting very far from Pompei, mainly because we're having difficulty with the driving around here - for the problems see the Fox's blog. We did try to get to Castelmarre di Stabia to get totally lost. We did discover Pompei's out of town supermarket. We decided to get some bottles of water & some wine. We returned to discover some vandal had scratched right along our hire car. There goes our 600 euro deposit!

A trip to Salerno did actually find us there, but unable to find a parking space. It looked beautiful with a long, flat promenade, the lungo mare, along the Mediterranean Sea. We're thinking we might try again sometime midweek.

We have now made various discoveries. Disabled parking spaces are delineated in yellow/orange, the colour of Italian disabled badges. That should make finding parking easier.

Lacrima Christi wine, a grape only grown on the lower levels of Vesuvius, is delicious. It's slightly more expensive than some but still reasonable compared to English prices. Definitely something we will look out for when we return home. It comes in red, white or rosé.

We've also found a very good restaurant just around the corner from the hotel. We keep surprising the waiter by choosing items that are on the Italian version of the menu, but not on the English. The spaghetti con vongole (with baby clams) was delicious. Yesterday we both tried the risotto con funghi porcinini - obviously the Italians share the French opinion that the English don't eat mushrooms so there's no need to translate - & shared our first real Italian pizza, quite unlike those you get in England. Even the bread is different, made with olive oil & baked in special wood-fired ovens. As for the tomatoes, they have an intensity of flavour never experienced in England.

We've splashed out on an extra map, which hopefully means we stand a chance of getting where we want to. I wouldn't guarantee that when few roads have road signs or directions. I just hope we will be able to find Naples airport before the plane takes off when it comes time to return home. We're intending to allow plenty of time for that trip.

We've also bought a dictionary. The phrase book is not sufficient. Contrary to what the guidebooks say few people in Pompei speak English so we need some extra words. But then the town itself is not an obvious tourist place. Most visitors prefer to stay in Sorrento, on the Amalfi coast or in Naples itself.

We're also struck by the level of poverty there is in the area. The roads are in bad repair. Much of the housing is uninspiring concrete blocks of flats. And yet some things are expensive. We've met one English couple whose bags got left behind at Manchester airport. They had to do some hasty clothes shopping to find a T-shirt could cost 250 euros! They were relieved to find a cheaper sports shop but even so it was nearer £25 for a basic T-shirt. Their joy when their suitcases caught up with them was all too apparent.

The adventure continues.

Arrival & first impressions

We've made it, though I'm already wondering if I'll manage to write anything comprehensible on this ancient keyboard. It certainly isn't suitable for touch-typing & the layout is quite different to the British one. I'll persevere. Hopefully it will get easier with practice.

We are just about recovering from a traumatic arrival in Italy. We landed at Naples airport, which is more like an old hangar than a modern airport. We could see no sign of the car hire desks to collect our prebooked car. There was nobody at the info desk. We eventually asked a Thomson rep - we thought she might at least speak English. She suggested we tried the other terminal. We did our best to find it but found ourselves outside. The taxi drivers did directed us to where the car hire car park was. Off we set. A long way it seemed to be. The Fox took the cases & I pushed myself. It felt like I'd done a marathon by the time we got there after crossing roads, going up & down drop kerbs(?). There we found the office closed. We had to go back to the terminals! We discovered there was a courtesy bus to the airport but it was not accessible for me. We decided I'd best wait at the car park with the bags, while the Fox caught the bus back to the airport. He eventually found the car hire desks in the departure lounge rather than arrivals. He got the keys to find he couldn't find where the bus went from to get back to me. He set off by foot, once more, getting lost a bit en route. Eventually he got back, hot, sweaty, thirsty & exhausted.

After a sit down, he set off on the next jaunt to locate the car - the far side of course. Eventually he found it. Naples airport is right in the centre of the city so we were straight into busy city traffic without chance to get our bearings or get used to the car or Italian road signs. Somehow we manage to find the motorway out of the city to discover the car was a joint manual/auto &, from the sound of the engine, we were stuck in manual. The book that came with the car was in Italian only. We eventually managed to work out how to get into auto mode & go at a better speed.

We finally got to Pompei to discover the left fork we were directed to go along was the second right on the roundabout & we had taken the first. Fortunately we had a street map of central Pompei & managed to find the hotel. We then had difficulty getting into the hotel garage, scraping it against the wall. Staff came running out of the hotel, & had to manually lift the car away. We discovered then that guests are supposed to park in the reserved parking across the street & the staff put the car in the garage as it it so awkward an entrance.

By this time our nerves were raw. We collapsed for a lie down. The car remained in the garage until yesterday. Meanwhile we've been catching up on our sleep, discovering Pompei's restaurants & generally strolling around the town. Over the weekend the excavations have been free entry so we had a look around some of them. It's a hard push. Unfortunately I couldn't see much, just sufficient to whet the appetite, but at least the Fox has been wowed.

Life in Italy seems quite different from that in England. Everyone seems out on the streets once its dark. People have been very kind & helpful. Few speak much English. In fact our best conversations with others have been in French! We're managing to survive. We even impressed the waiter at yesterday's restaurant by chosing & ordering something off the Italian menu which never appeared on the English translation version of the menu. Italian drivers seem to be as mad as expected, driving up one way streets the wrong way. That's not just us! The theory seems to be keep your eyes open in all directions. Anything can happen. They don't hesitate to do a U-turn in the middle of a busy street!

That's it for the moment. I'll maybe try to write a bit more another day.

PS Forgive any mis-spellings but the spell check doesn't seem to work in Italy.

Holidays & calculus

I've just been listening to some of "In Our Time" on BBC Radio 4. The topic under discussion is the battle between Isaac Newton & Leibnitz over who invented calculus. This is a heady topic indeed for someone who can barely remember what calculus is or its purpose & value.

I always find this a strange programme. I'm all for having some intelligent programmes, something intellectually stimulating. So many programmes are just lightly entertaining, & that's no bad thing. I think my real problem with the programme is the timing. These days I'm rarely sufficiently with-it to follow all the arguments. 9am didn't bother me in school & university days, but these days I'm still in the process of waking up. I know the programme is repeated at 9.30pm but by that time I'm relaxing, if not falling asleep again.

I do better when the topic is one that relates more to my own interests. Generally I follow the programme better when it's to do with history, particularly classical Italy or Greece, the Tudors & Stuart times in Britain & Europe, or the 20th century. I also appreciate discussions on literature & art. Theology I'm interested in but don't always follow all the nuances. (There was a recent programme on Thomas Aquinas, for example.) But science & maths is quite a different matter. I end up being grateful that Melvyn Bragg, the leader of the discussion, does remember that some of his audience are ignorant, or at least sketchy on the subject, & bring the experts back to ground as they strive to disappear into the intellectual ether.

Enough of that. As readers of the Fox's blog will know, we're off on our hols today. I was looking forward to it, but now I'm not so sure. It sounded an exciting & lovely area to visit, but I feel I've heard nothing but negativity coming from the Fox for weeks. All he seems focused on is the difficulties. Firstly there's the language. Italian proved not to be the slight variation on French he thought. Yet we managed in the Netherlands without a word of Dutch, armed only with a phrasebook. His researches have made him aware of the amount of crime in the area of Naples. Despite the fact thousands of people go there every year & have a great time, he's convinced we're going to be mugged, robbed or kidnapped. Italian driving doesn't reassure him even though he's driven often in other countries with erratic drivers with no problem. I've got to the stage of almost dreading the holiday. I can't help feeling his negativity is almost sure to make the trip into a disaster. And to add to it, I'm going to be blamed for it. He's already blaming me for the choice of destination despite the fact it was he who first wanted to go to Italy & dismissed the northern lake area & Venice as too touristy!

Well we shall see. But my hopes aren't very high. We're not taking the laptop with us so there probably won't be any more blogs until we're back. I hope all goes well for you all, as well as for us.

An old friend

Time for the pack this afternoon. The holiday is fast coming upon us.

I rang an old childhood friend last night to see if he was free to join us at the hotel the night before our flight. He really didn't sound well. For years he has been massively overweight. For the last ten years or so he has been fighting valiantly to lose weight, not easy when he's on the road a lot of the time as a sales rep & so eats out a lot. When I last spoke to him, he'd got down to about 17 stone, but now he's down to just 14 stone, which the doctor reckons is too light since he is over 6ft tall. He's been suffering from a virus that affects his metabolism. He's now been put on a diet full of cream & other fattening stuff to put on weight! (Oh what an excuse to indulge in chocolate with a free conscience!)

I'm glad to say after our little chat & knowing we're meeting up later this week, he sounded considerably more positive, stronger. The call obviously gave him a morale lift.

I wonder if he'll look like the extremely slim man he was in his teens/early twenties before he got married & piled on the inches. We'll see.

Hair cut time

It's hair cut time once more. The Fox managed to get his done yesterday. I'm off later this morning. As you may remember, I find this a necessary evil rather than a source of pleasure or relaxation. The old English sheepdog look has got to go.

I'm hoping the weather will brighten up so I'll be able to go in the Mean Machine, my electric scooter. At present the road the salon is on, is dug up for new gas pipes. It's in the midst of four sets of temporary traffic lights. The pavement looks reasonably clear so the Mean Machine shouldn't be a problem. But if it's very wet, I doubt I'll be able to park within my limited walking distance.

My main reason for using this hairdresser is its ease of access. It's usually possible to park immediately outside the salon, but not at the moment. Oh well, fingers crossed!

Holiday countdown

It's countdown time. We're off on our hols later this week. I've just picked the apples & pears off the tree. We'll probably be going to the Pub this afternoon. PD is hoping to see us there. We'll take the excess fruit with us. They always appreciate the fruit for making desserts. They've even been known to cook some there & then so we could sample poached pears in chocolate sauce, for example, just by way of thanks. Some I've wrapped up to keep us going through the winter months. It doesn't seem to have been a good year for fruit. We had far too much rain & wind in blossom time. Even in August the gales were blowing the fruit off before they had chance to ripen.

On Saturday we finished the last of the Fox's carrots. We wouldn't want them to go to waste. He's still feeling encouraged to have another go next year. He's even thinking of extending his range of crops!

We're having our use-up stir fry for dinner tonight. I thought we'd use up some left over chicken, rather than prawns, for a change this time. It will be a right mixture. We seem to have a fair number of peppers, both red & yellow. There's a quarter cucumber in the fridge. We tried cucumber in a stir fry not so long ago. It was surprisingly nice, though you do have to dry it out a bit. Just scoop out the seeds. Salt it well to draw out the water. After 20 mins or so rinse the salt off & dry on kitchen paper. We also seem to have a piece of stem ginger & loads of chillies. (It's one of the things that gets to me is that you end up buying a whole packet of chillies, when you only want one. Chillies can stretch a long way.) Oh, and there's some spring onions & shallots. We'll also add a few extra veg from the freezer, probably broad beans.

That only leaves eggs to be used up. We have a half egg which will probably end up in floddies (small bacon fritters) or mini fish balls. After that it will probably be something like an omelette or a rice & egg meal. I'm determined not to leave anything to go off. The potatoes will keep until we're back.

Sleep at last

At last I've managed it. What's it? Sleep.

For some time I've mentioned just how tired both of us are. It's been a stressful year with the new kitchen and the long illness & eventual demise of MK, not to mention the deaths of our friend Dave C & our neighbour Geoff, both just 56. I've not been sleeping well. I rarely do these days between pain, restless legs & burning knees. Somewhere in the mix is a certain amount of mental turmoil. I have the odd sleeping pill when I'm getting too tired, but I've been determined to make the packet last until the hols. I don't want to become addicted to them &, on the whole, I don't find drug-induced sleep refreshing anyhow. It's just the time comes when it becomes essential.

On Friday one of the reasons I went to see the doctor was to get fresh supplies. I knew I had to get some sleep before we went away & I was on the last couple in the packet. Now I've got a new prescription I duly took a pill on Friday night. Unfortunately I was just so tired that even that pill wasn't sufficient to knock me out. Instead I woke up several times, though less than usual.

Last night I tried again. The pill took ages to have much effect, but when it did I was out like a light. Total oblivion. I woke this morning, very heavy. I told myself to take my time. There's nothing to rush for. I'm sure God will forgive me if I don't get to church. Eventually I emerged around 9am, late for me.

Now I'm properly awake. I feel more with it than I have done for months. I'm sure by the time I've done my Sunday chores I'll once more feel shattered but hopefully now I'll be able to drop off naturally. I know it sounds silly but there just seems to come a point where your very tiredness seems to prevent you sleeping. At that point I reach for the pills. Maybe this time I left it too long.