Katie and her mental meanderings

We have a car, just the one. We don’t drive to work, either of us, partly for practical reasons and partly for green reasons. The car needed an MOT and the garage will pick it up and return it, but clearly they need the keys so they had to pick it up from my work. So far so good – since I didn’t know when they’d bring it back, and it’s very hard to find parking at my work, I told them to leave the car at my house.

The MOT computers were broken on Wednesday, so they couldn’t do it till Thursday. Now, they obviously didn’t believe me when I said I would manage to get home without the car (how do they think I got home on Wednesday?), and instead of leaving it at our house, they left it at work. In a pay-and-display space. Without a pay-and-display ticket. Oh, they said, we didn’t think it mattered, because there wasn’t a ticket on when we picked it up. Well, they must be blind, because there was, and it was STILL THERE when they brought the car back.

Now, I may be over-reacting, (what, you think? – Ed.), but this whole episode reminds me of the attitude of many “committed drivers” I have met. People who regard it as essential to have a car for every single journey, and to have the car as close as possible to oneself at all times. People who regard notices about parking as mere suggestions, not relevant to themselves. I originally thought they were just not listening when told to take the car to our house, not my work, when they brought it back. But apparently they thought they were being helpful, as they could not believe I could get home any other way. Of course, I slept in the office on Wednesday…

In the last ten days we have:
- Been to three capital cities
- Spent a very large amount of time in queues (see below)
- Spent almost as much time trogging round looking for left luggage offices in large European train stations
- Spent far more time than that on trains, though that was more pleasant than the queues or the left luggage offices.
- Seen the Sistine Chapel, which should be a deeply religious experience, but was somewhat spoiled by the very claustrophobic route into it, and the multiple illegal flash cameras going off in the very crowded space
- Seen some rather lovely modern art at the Vatican, in a beautifully frescoed set of apartments, which was much more appealing than the Sistine Chapel
- Seen the Coliseum (something that old, and that large, just sitting there!)
- Seen the Palatine Hill, the Fora, and lots of bits of Roman marble just lying about the street… anyone could walk off with them!
- Didn’t see Titus or Lucius. Swizz.
- Eaten far too many ice creams, plates of pasta, and cornetti, the latter mainly at Il Gambero (it actually means The Crayfish, but the picture looked like a prawn), a café round the corner from our hotel. Oh, and I forgot the hot cross buns and the Easter eggs.
- Been told about 500,000,000 times by The Spouse™ that our new suitcase is Too Big. Maybe so, but it fit lots of my clothes in… but then I didn’t have to carry it.

Read over the last couple of weeks, mainly in queues:
Bergdorf Blondes, by Plum Sykes. Slightly fluffy on the surface, but in reality a pretty clever takeoff of airhead fashionstas, a la Gentlemen prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos, one of my favourite books.
La Bella Vita, by Vida Adamoli. A really nice account of a small Southern Italian community’s transition into the 20th century (in about 1970). Very visual – rather like reading Cinema Paradiso.
Ripe for the Picking by Annie Hawes – on the face of it, a similar account of a small Italian village, but this time in the 21st century, and with a more positive view of modernisation.
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I’m not sure it would encourage me to read DVC, but it was quite ripping.

In the last ten days we have:
- Been to three capital cities
- Spent a very large amount of time in queues (see below)
- Spent almost as much time trogging round looking for left luggage offices in large European train stations
- Spent far more time than that on trains, though that was more pleasant than the queues or the left luggage offices.
- Seen the Sistine Chapel, which should be a deeply religious experience, but was somewhat spoiled by the very claustrophobic route into it, and the multiple illegal flash cameras going off in the very crowded space
- Seen some rather lovely modern art at the Vatican, in a beautifully frescoed set of apartments, which was much more appealing than the Sistene Chapel
- Seen the Coliseum (something that old, and that large, just sitting there!)
- Seen the Palatine Hill, the Fora, and lots of bits of Roman marble just lying about the street… anyone could walk off with them!
- Eaten far too many ice creams, plates of pasta, and cornetti, the latter mainly at Il Gambero (it actually means The Crayfish, but the picture looked like a prawn), a café round the corner from our hotel. Oh, and I forgot the hot cross buns and the Easter eggs.
- Been told about 500,000,000 times by The Spouse™ that our new suitcase is Too Big. Maybe so, but it fit lots of my clothes in… but then I didn’t have to carry it.

Read over the last couple of weeks, mainly in queues:
Bergdorf Blondes, by Plum Sykes. Slightly fluffy on the surface, but in reality a pretty clever takeoff of airhead fashionstas, a la Gentlemen prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos, one of my favourite books.
La Bella Vita, by Vida Adamoli. A really nice account of a small Southern Italian community’s transition into the 20th century (in about 1970). Very visual – rather like reading Cinema Paradiso.
Ripe for the Picking by Annie Hawes – on the face of it, a similar account of a small Italian village, but this time in the 21st century, and with a more positive view of modernisation.
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I’m not sure it would encourage me to read DVC, but it was quite ripping.

They don’t call them the Lakes for nothing. They are full of water, and so was the sky today as we headed up to have lunch with my friend J who lives the other side of them. But the lunch was very tasty (roast beef and Yorkshire pudding all round, followed by sticky toffee pudding for me), and we had a nice wander round the village after lunch. There was a very kitsch garden centre (though I did get some basil), a lovely, rather pricey but lovely natural cosmetics shop, a sausage shop (but they’d sold out of pork and orange! Boo!). And the Famous Gingerbread Shop. Altogether a pleasing day, as J would say.

Currently reading: God: Stories, by C. Michael Curtis, which I’ve read before, but which is worth re-reading.