Michaela Penelope Parris-Lord

ITS A DOGS LIFE !

2008-12-09T02:11:00.000-08:00

There are advantages of living without a man in the house, one being that my dog Raffles is who getting a little old, likes to have a kip on the bed and puts his head on the pillow , when I approach him, he looks a little guilty but doesn't move, I know for certain that no man would tolerate it, I have never really understood why, is it for hygienic reasons ? or simply a little bit of jealousy or maybe its an old instinct of territory ! If you do know, let me into one of the mysteries of life !

If you do know a man who allows such behavior, please let me know, I might be interested!!!

I love my apartment block !

2008-12-05T04:25:00.000-08:00

To be perfectly honest my son and I are probably" the neighbors from hell," I am not even sure that I would enjoy living next to me, for the reasons being

1. we love loud music

2. we watch television late into the night, because we fall asleep and leave it on.

3. I go away at the weekends and leave my son to entertain his numerous friends and God knows what goes on during that time!

4. We have a dog that goes out by himself and barks to everyone to let him in again and a cat that sometimes get lost on the staircase and then hides in the gas boxes

5. We have lots of guests staying overnight . and we have at least one rowdy party once a year in which the furniture gets moved out so that the people can fit in.

So you can imagine my surprise that when the door bell rang and it was my downstairs neighbor telling me to rush downstairs as the police were in the act of removing my car and it was being towed away , I didn't get there on time, it is four flights of stairs and when I arrived there was my neighbor looking very forlorn and as unhappy as I was.

He couldn't take me to the deposit place because he is a flight assistant and was leaving in his uniform for a flight, but he did offer to lend me the keys to his car for the four days he was away.

Being greeted with such a warmhearted generous offer helped to subdue my rage that I get into in these situations , the main problem being that I needed a companion to go with me as you can't drive two cars at the same time so I trudged back upstairs with a very despondent step and met the young actress who lives above me with her very handsome boyfriend. She immediately offered to take me to the deposit to pick up the car , she has a smart car and raffles my dog sat in the front with me , she even let me smoke in her car. To cut a long story short or as in this case a short story , because the whole operation of getting back my car took half an hour ! And that is thanks to my wonderful neighbors that with their good will and generosity took away the pain of having to pay the 70 euros to the car people !

So let me say it I LOVE MY NEIGHBORS and somehow, weirdly enough, I think that they must love me !!!!

Nick's hair cut !

2008-11-19T01:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Nick decided to have his hair cut, so I grabbed my keys and my camera and rushed him to my friend Antonio ! Now we are both in shock!

The hair got shorter and shorter

I am so excited, Nick my son has got a hair cut! It's taking me a little time to get use to his new look and I am not sure if he looks better, now all I have to do is change the inside of his head !!!! Would appreciate any ideas ?

2008-11-18T00:14:00.000-08:00

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452323111/bclid416330929/bctid1797097875

Obama !

2008-11-05T01:38:00.000-08:00

Thank you

AMERICA !

Mat the bat !

2008-10-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

When the gods were making creatures

They simply couldn't agree

Excatly what kind of thing

That I was going to be!

They gave me pointed ears and teeth

And the body of a rat

They gave me wings and tiny eyes

And then they said "Thats that"!

I should be wearing glasses

To help me get round town

But they'd keep on falling off

Because I'm always upside down!

I know I should be grateful

But I think it's rather mean

That people only think of me

The night of Halloween!

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T15:58:00.000-07:00

I will leave it up to you to decide which of these three photos is the most frightening !

The silver sea

2008-10-25T03:40:00.000-07:00

Doomed to Disappear

2008-10-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

Now that I am back in Rome, and getting ready to hibernate for the winter, one of my favorite pastimes is to go to the street market below my house and smell the wonderful aromas and listen to the general chatter and banter of the people who parade up and down.

The familiar faces and street vendors are part of the pleasure , the old ladies stroke Raffles and fuss over him, the lady at the bar brings me my black coffee with the special sweeteners and I read my newspaper , slightly distracted by the noise and the general confusion surrounding me.

I feel a sense of belonging to this community and even though I am not Italian, I immensely enjoy the total chaotic, somehow coordinated magic mess that this street market offers!

As you can see they sell absolutely everything from fruit, fish, old clothes, pictures, second hand books, handbags , shoes, and lots of tempting articles that are useless but that are just fun to buy !

However this wonderful street is all about to change, amongst the shouts of the vendors and the old ladies gossiping and complaining , there is a distinct, sound of building and construction noises humming away in the background and I fear that in the near future , this wonderful and sensuous street market that unites everybody in the morning, is about to be shoved inside into a ghastly shopping mall !

Thank god that these things take time in Italy !

I am feeling very frivolous today so here you are

2008-10-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

"Next Life" by Woody Allen

In my next life I want to live my life backwards.

You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day.

You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.

You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born.

And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila....You finish off as an orgasm!

WHAT DID I DO THIS WEEKEND OF FINANCIAL DISASTER !

2008-10-13T00:39:00.000-07:00

SUNDAY

SATURDAY

Beautiful Beautiful Istanbul

2008-10-11T00:20:00.000-07:00

This Picture says it all !!!

2008-10-11T00:09:00.000-07:00

Images of Italy and doubts for the future!.

2008-06-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

Things are becoming very complicated in Italy, there is a general feeling of repression, an economic crisis leading to a backlash against immigrants , talk of order and of putting soliders in the cities, to replace policmen. I am feeling a general sense of unease about living here, so here are a few images of daily life when times were more pleasant !

My Mother's Birthday

2008-05-20T01:45:00.000-07:00

This is a day that I could never dare to forget, it was my mother's birthday, she died in 1995, and I thought it might be nice to celebrate her birthday with a few photos.

check this band out

2008-05-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

Information about

Palomino blitz represents an innovative challenge in the world of pop/rock.
The band proposes a re-formulated sound reaching to its roots of contemporary and experimental music.
Joiniwww.myspace.com/palominoblitz Palomino blitz represents an innovative challenge in the world of pop/rock.The band proposes a re-formulated sound reaching to its roots of contemporary and experimental music. Joining the ten year collaboration and friendship between Flavio Guarnieri Pasquetto, Simone De Filippis and Alessandro Tibaldi, is the italo-american singer, and pianist, Mia Julia Schettino.This interesting combo defines a new purpose and sound continues to evolve.Not to Miss!

Party Time !

2008-05-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

Raffles in his silly hat

2008-05-16T04:54:00.001-07:00

MORE THAN A LOT IN COMMON

2008-05-07T02:03:00.000-07:00

yesterday Raffles my best friend was operated on a very delicate part of his body , lets just say that he won't be chasing lady dogs ever again, my heart bleeds for him, he looks cross and betrayed and I can't help feeling the same way!

The End !

2008-04-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

He's back, I am so depressed, I am seriously thinking of leaving Italy! Feeling too low to write anything.

EASTER IN COPENHAGEN

2008-03-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

Living in such a chaotic city such as Rome with all the traffic noise and police sirens , it was a great pleasure to visit such a quiet city as Copenhagen , you need only four days to explore it, the clean line minimalistic beauty, wooden floors, warm fire, ground floor apartment, pure bliss! It was freezing and I was traveling with my son and his friend both aged 16, what could have been a recipe for disaster, turned out to be fun and restful . Here are some images of Copenhagen from two points of view !

Our beautiful apartment

Public Toilets !

Blankets waiting for customers

Don't ask?

Happy Easter

2008-03-18T01:10:00.001-07:00

Death and Rape in Goa

2008-03-14T00:23:00.000-07:00

Sky's Asia correspondent Alex Crawford gives a personal account of meeting the mother seeking justice over the murder of her daughter Scarlett Keeling in Goa.
OK, Fiona MacKeown was unwise. OK, she was naïve. OK, she may live a very unorthodox lifestyle. But let us remember, please, that she has lost a child in the most horrible of circumstances.
From the reaction of some commentators, she might as well have been running a brothel, sold her daughter into sex slavery and then watched while she was slaughtered. The reaction among some is staggeringly unsympathetic - and a lot of it, I would suggest, is based on prejudice.
Yes, Fiona MacKeown may have had nine children in Britain, where that is viewed as wanton irresponsibility by some. Yes, they may have different fathers, at least four. Yes, she lives with her large family in a group of caravans on a nine-acre site in Devon. Yes, she has tattoos and a lip ring.
But where does that translate into bad, uncaring mother? Perhaps in bourgeois Clapham or in the Home Counties where most of the tabloid female writers are penning their scathing commentaries? And yes, they are mostly female, I am ashamed to say.
My crew - cameraman Jamie Matthews, producer Neville Lazarus and myself - have spent most of the past nine days in Fiona MacKeown's company. Until her children were sent back to Britain, we spent a lot of the time with the six children with her too. Unlike the tabloid newspaper writer who seemed to suggest Ms MacKeown's lack of tears made her want to 'scream at the TV', we have watched while she bent over double with grief, her body heaving with sobs as she showed us pictures of her daughter's battered body.
I have hugged her, unable to offer up any comfort while tears ran down her cheeks. She is cool, she is composed, she is assertive and articulate in front of the cameras, but please don't suggest that she isn't hurting, that she isn't feeling remorse and wishing she could turn back the clock.
We were the only TV channel in town showing any interest in her allegations and Ms MacKeown was desperate to get someone to listen to her, to get someone to believe her. She had forced herself to go back into the mortuary having already been there once to identify Scarlett, and she took photograph after photograph of her daughter's back, arms, legs, even her genital area to show the extent of the bruising and abrasions.
Now imagine that. Her child is dead. She is lying on a slab with her face cut from ear to ear by the initial pathologists who were told she was an unidentified body (and had to take dental records). It takes a certain steeliness, strength of character, determination, call it what you will, for a mother to do that.
The police were telling reporters that Scarlett's body had no marks, that she had been drunk and her body had been found 'floating in water'. She had drowned and there was no suggestion of foul play. Just another tourist who had soaked up too much of Goa's paradise.
Short of dragging reporters into the morgue and tearing off the sheet covering Scarlett (which at one point she threatened to do), she felt driven to take the photographs to try to prove somehow she was right.
Nearly three weeks after her daughter was found dead on Anjuna beach - she has a) instigated a second post mortem b) managed to get police to launch a murder inquiry c) prompted an internal police inquiry to find who covered up the crime and d) provoked questions in the Indian Parliament questioning safety in the tourist hotspot.
Now in any other world that would be pretty damn amazing, but instead Fiona MacKeown - a single parent who doesn't conform - is being roasted in parts of the media for somehow being partly to blame for her daughter's death.
There's no doubt she made one heck of a bad decision to leave her behind while the rest of the family travelled to nearby Karnataka. It is one she obviously regrets and no-one would attempt to try to explain that away.
But let's remember Fiona MacKeown had been in the country for nearly three months by this time.
She had befriended the people Scarlett was staying with. They were an upstanding church-going Roman Catholic family and although Scarlett had struck up a friendship with a 25-year-old tourist guide called Julio Lobo, like many Indian families, he continued to live with his older aunts. The two families had met, had shared meals together, and felt they knew each other.
Fiona MacKeown didn't feel she was leaving her 'alone'. She felt she had found an option which suited both - it gave Scarlett the freedom and independence she desired and her mother peace of mind that she was being looked after by caring and responsible adults, albeit a family she had known for a relatively short period of time.
Scarlett came and joined the rest of her family for two or three days every week and there was phone contact every day, her mother says. She has found out through reading Scarlett's diary that she was having a sexual relationship with Julio and says she knew nothing of that before. But even if she did know, even if she made a mistake by leaving her behind, my goodness she is paying for that error now.
Surely we should have some compassion for a woman whose eldest daughter has been violently killed and who is trying to do the right thing?
One British journalist wrote: "Since Scarlett's brutal killing, Fiona MacKeown has fought for her daughter. Would that she had exercised half that dedication and sense of responsibility while Scarlett was alive and in need of a mother's care."
I am sorry but does that writer know anything about what sort of a mother Fiona MacKeown really is? She may have a lot of children but does that give the journalist the right to suggest she somehow loves any less or cares for them any worse?
Ms MacKeown seems to me to have an independence which is admirable, a strength of mind which is remarkable and a determination which is born out of love for her children. She frankly doesn't give two hoots what people who don't know her think of her.
"They are making judgements and they don't know me or my kids," she says. "Anyone who knows me knows I am a good mother and I love my kids."
She is not, as the writer assumes, a "middle class person who should know better". She lives on a farm feeding her kids with vegetables and fruit they grow themselves. Home for them is a series of caravans with no mains electricity - just a generator - and no heating.
She lives an unconventional life and sends her oldest children to an alternative, liberal charity school in Devon. Yes, she does claim some benefits but she raises money through the farmers' market to help pay for the schooling and she cooks there two days a week to help out. Education and the right sort, is a priority. She has even home-schooled her children and during the long holiday in India, she had arranged for them to do remote learning. Her partner Rob Clarke did not pay for the holiday as one newspaper suggested. The family saved up for about nine months and when they still didn't have enough money, they sold some of their animals to cover the costs.
Yet despite money being an issue, she turned down £10,000 offered by a British tabloid for her exclusive story, believing she needed ALL the media on board to get to the truth.
Having spent many days with them, the children appeared polite, well-mannered, well-fed and loving. She seemed patient, caring and reasonable with them. They in turn, are not loud, spoilt or mercenary. They sat quietly for hours drawing pictures, playing cards, occasionally watching television (which they don't have in England), while television crews moved around them and reporters took up all their mother's time. There weren't the loud, noisy squabbles that I am constantly having to monitor with my own children. They didn't have the modern-day accessories of iPod, laptop, Playstation or Nintendo which seem to be necessary to appease many children. I never saw her shouting at them to get them all out of the door and on the way to her various appointments. She had a natural authority with them and they respected her and were demonstrably affectionate with her.
"I don't know anyone who is with their kids for 24 hours of the day," said Fiona MacKeown.
She's right. I know plenty of my friends who have teenage children and who often leave their older kids at home while they have a night out. Occasionally there are wild parties and too much alcohol drunk and lots of clearing up to do in the morning and groundings to be handed out. But please, if Scarlett Keeling had been murdered on one such parents-night-out in the UK, would we still be having this holier-than-thou debate?
Let's remember the crime here is rape and murder. Not going on holiday to India, not leaving your fifteen-year-old behind, not having tattoos or an alternative lifestyle.

Spring Time!

2008-03-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

My Twin !

2008-02-29T23:41:00.000-08:00

I found this picture in a card shop and I've always teased friends with the fact that this is me in Australia, but it isn't ! . I have a twin sister somewhere !!!!!

See if you can guess who this is ?

2008-02-23T03:51:00.000-08:00

I keep finding strange photos in my mothers collection , I can't be sure who this is but I have my suspicions, see if anyone else has seen a resemblance , ! I love the car

Should I pay or should I no

2008-02-19T02:32:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago , a police man arrived at my door and presented me with eight parking fines, which I must have received whilst showing two slightly older friends, the pleasant sights of Rome, and last week a woman turned up dressed in a wierd kind of uniform, claiming to be a some kind of official from Rai television. Hearing my protestsand lies of having no television, she then threatened to send me a real policeman to check if I had a television because I haven't paid my t.v. lincence .

I am one of those perfectly respectable people that do not pay their t.v lincenses and now I have to join the ranks of all those little old ladies who are bullied into doing so just for a little peace.!!! Why are they not chasing mafia bosses and solving unsolved murders and etc. etc.................

The reason I don't want to pay for my lincence is :

1. I never, ever ,never ,ever watch Rai television!

2. It is not considered cool , and will ruin my reputation as a liberal, free thinker, femminist if I confess to paying for it! (ha ha)

3. I already pay for Sky, which is enough rubbish to pay for already and were probably the spies that sent that nasty woman to my door in the first place.

4. It was my last thing to be naughty about and doesn't that sound sad!

5. Once I have paid, I will have to pay forever until the day I die!

Maybe I should just pay and find a worthier and more important cause to fight ! Or better still , just ignore it all and wait for them to barge into my house and set their eyes on my television set and delight in giving me an enourmous fine , you never know they might not come ! OOOh

the excitiment is killing me !

2008-02-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

This is my Rome Kitchen, as you can see, it is very small but it has a washing machine , tumble dryer, dishwasher, gas cooker, microvave, fridge, kettle, coffee maker, orange squasher!, and a sink. I didn't get expert advice , I just shoved it all in there and built a wall around it !!!! ...The only thing is that if I get too fat , I might not fit in there!!!

Winter Blues

2008-01-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

Oh Christmas is so over, and now we are braving January which is a month I detest , its gloomy , the skies are grey, my friends are all hibernating trying to recover from all the overeating .

The decorations have to be taken down and the flat looks miserable and neglected . one feels like escaping but it is impossible.

However let me reflect on the good things about last year I will make a list and cheer myself up

1 Liz's wedding, (so romantic !)

2. Dominic's wedding, (So much fun !)

3 Meeting Tyla

4 Getting interviewed at the Rome Gay pride even though I'm straight !

5 My friend Charles winning the O Henry Prize 2007 for short stories,

6 That day in Dublin with Nicky,

7 Giuseppe's birthday party,

8 Taking the Irish around Rome,

9. Taking the Australians around Rome ,

10 My new second hand car ,

11 Spending time this summer with my weird, wonderful, fighting family!

12. Venice with Anne

13. Receiving a very special gift in the bank !

14 Christmas day with Sally and Giuseppe in front of a wonderful roast fire

15 Meeting Roy and being dragged all over to see war memorials !

There ! feel better already !!!!

Images of Christmas

2007-12-20T15:53:00.000-08:00

christmas lunch

2007-12-20T15:31:00.000-08:00

Christmas lunch with my grandparents with a sixpence hidden in the pudding !

Family Christmas lunch last year, less formal, no sixpence in the pudding , but still fun !!

Sisters

2007-11-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

We look nothing alike,

She came ten years after!

She is generous and caring,

Infuriatingly boring when she is drunk

An angel when she is sober

And life would be very bleak without her !!

My beautiful sister

2007-11-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

Window shopping and a very wet Venice!

2007-11-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

I am such a lazy blogger, I think it is because when I get inspired , I sometimes suspect that there is nobody out there , anyway this month, I have a wonderful excuse , I have been very busy showing all my relatives and friends around Italy. I am an extremely reluctant tourist and would rather be under the covers on my beautiful soft couch but really having being dragged out to see things I really do love the world around me !

JUST FOR FUN

2007-09-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

SMOKING GUN !

2007-09-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

I found this fascinating photo of my mother Madeleine, she was a fleet street journalist in the heady era of 'check book journalism ', I have no idea what this strange picture was connected to but I imagine that she was probably writing an article of how woman had become sophisticated smoking in bars and flaunting their new found freedom ! I can also imagine that since she had to rush the article for the Sunday press she used herself for a model and probably charged the newspaper the expenses !!! I really have no idea but I love this, today naughty image !

THE BEST OF THE ITALIAN SUMMER

2007-09-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

Our Summer holiday

2007-09-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

Henrietta, my sister looked quite smug, as she mused the future holiday, " this time it will be wonderful , we have a villa with a swimming pool and I have checked everything , not like last year in that grotty apartment that you chose " . I had already hung my head in shame remembering the last year which had proved very disappointing in a tiny apartment with no room for us , so I was quite happy to let her organise this year .
It had been my suggestion from the start to exchange our summer houses in order to see other places and give our children other experiences and it seemed a cheap way of arranging accommodation. so I was quite happy with to let her get on with it and didn't even check out the details of where we were going until the last moment .
We were heading for Alicante in Spain and as we landed,it did seem rather barren , there were no trees or green, it all seemed rather dry and lots of building cranes around but as they are always building around airports I still had my hopes quite high and even ignored the comments of my driver who asked me why on earth we were coming from" beautiful Italy "to this place, however he did manage to make me feel slightly uneasy as we were zooming up the motorway and the scenery was not improving . in the distance, I could see rows and rows of little white houses and even more building cranes, I was still feeling optimistic and was looking forward to arriving at our private villa !

Our villa was horrendous , it was a tiny bungalow , we could hardly get in it for ugly furniture, the bedrooms were very small and poky , It was unbearably hot and the sun terrace was just the flat roof of the building, with a view of a main road and a sofa factory . it was so ghastly that it was beyond description . The area was a kind of neglected, newly built ,shanty town with only for sale signs outside, the area had prostitutes on the corner, the beach was a least half an hour away , drug pushers were on the other corner and it had a little supermarket and one pub, the swimming pool was to be shared with all the other poor victims of the shanty town . There was only one thought in my head when I arrived, it was to ESCAPE !!

(more on this another time !!)

Hot in the City

2007-06-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

Help !

2007-05-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

Marco

2007-05-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

All's well that ends well !

2007-05-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I spent the day with my dear friend Marco, we had lunch together at his country house , while we were listening to the birds chatter and the dogs were prancing around the garden, we started musing about the incredible circumstances that had allowed us to be enjoying such a pleasant time in such lovely surroundings, and he gave me permission to write on my blog his uplifting story

Marco has been one of my closest friends since the day he turned up at my door in a very grave state of depression , reeling with shock by the fact that his girlfriend had fallen in love with a woman and from one day to the next he had been kicked out of their shared home and his personal belongings returned along with all their personal photos cut in half !
At the time we were all single in our twentysomthing , relishing freedom , listening to beautiful music, flirting with ideals, experimenting love affairs and the makeshift dinner table was usually a mixture of spaghetti and wonderfully amusing conversation ! Marco blended in beautifully, he was very ironic and his sense of self depreciation were sometimes gloomy and at other times hilarious .
He lived in various accommodations, renting rooms and sharing flats all over town, and love filtered into and out of his life with always disastrous consequences . (not that we were doing any better) but Marco's stories were always touched with unusual aspects , he had parked his old banger of a car outside the Brazilian embassy in Rome, a bomb went off and destroyed only his car and the insurance refused to pay for the damage! . Who has ever heard of Brazilian terrorists anyway !

Eventually he ended up living in a tiny hovel in Via del Orso, which is a charming cobbled stoned street round towards the back of Pza Navona, his place was on the ground floor and damp and was positioned in a tiny courtyard. He shared it with his cat who seemed to be constantly pregnant! Every time I used to visit him, there would be always a new batch of kittens mixed in with his books .
To make matters worse, they started to build an elevator in the courtyard and after the noise of the building there would be a whooshing noise every time that they called the lift .

I would go often to Marco's hole (as he called it) and we would eat together with the whooshing noises and then go out for a coffee, he was becoming slightly despondent and his search for true love was diminishing as he felt he had nothing to offer. I remember one night particularly, it was raining and I could hear the noise of the drain pipes along with the damp on the walls and the kittens at my feet that I began to agree with him and could offer no consolation .

However I had my own life to worry about and one night I was watching the news on the television, and the sight of Marco's building flashed onto the screen, and I turned up the volume and there was the description of how an old lady on the top floor had left the gas on , and there had been a terrible explosion and had caused the complete collapse of the building , It had happened at lunch time and fortunately Marco had gone to meet friends for lunch but his cat was somewhere under the rubble !

Unlike, the car insurance people, the Rome authorities had a obligation to rehouse Marco in exactly the same area , and they gave him a beautiful apartment for a council price right next to Pza Navona, one of the most prestigious squares in Rome, we all danced with glee, it was like winning the lottery

.Eventually , they offered him the flat to buy and Marco bought it with someones money and made a high profit. He then proceeded to buy a villa outside of Rome and lives there with his young beautiful wife called Carla. His dusty (now sterilized) cat was found under the rubble three days after the collapse and spends her last days lying on his bed in the villa, with a smile on her face !

Dreaming !

2007-05-04T05:28:00.000-07:00

I always thought that if I became a rock star (hardly likely as I can't sing or play any musical instrument!) I would have liked this photo of myself for my album cover !

Sally's beautiful plants

2007-05-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

Summer Time

2007-04-15T02:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter

2007-04-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

Packed off to Boarding School !

2007-03-23T02:37:00.000-07:00

Can you resist a face like this ?

2007-03-16T02:41:00.000-07:00

More about the enticing Charlotte another day !

Yer blues

2007-03-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

Lazy Sunday Afternoon !

2007-03-10T02:51:00.000-08:00

Before I forget, If you are in the Bristol area in England, and if you want a pleasant Sunday afternoon, check out Paola Casalino's , exhibition , her paintings are wonderful, wild and vibrant !

Faces of Nick

2007-03-09T01:01:00.000-08:00

RAFFLES

2007-03-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

Raffles , my dog, is really a dignified creature, he enjoys an enormous amount of street cred, he wanders around the streets of Rome and Fondi without a lead , he goes to the best restaurants in town and they let him in, because they know that his behaviour is impeccable , He visits friend's houses by himself maybe looking for me, and helps himself to a bit of food and then he politely departs . He waits outside the supermarket for hours on end having to put up with little old ladies fussing over him . He goes to the beach in the summer and sleeps under the umbrella and pops into the sea to cool down.
He has two girlfriends, Polly, who is nice to him and Toffee ,who treats him mean and keeps him keen ! I met him seven years ago outside some scruffy hotel hanging out for a bit of pizza, he was covered in car oil and fleas, he had short legs and a long body and he wasn't at all appealing and I needed some convincing to take him home , but thank goodness I did , I called him Raffles after the best hotel in the world and ended up with the best dog in the world ! He so impressed a friend of mine from America, that she sent him this pink coat to keep him warm in the winter!, Raffles would not be seen dead in this coat on the streets, it would ruin his reputation , but he did pose for the thank you photo with as much dignity that he could muster !

My kitchen in Rome

2007-03-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Bruna

2007-03-02T00:53:00.000-08:00

Today I am going to this beautiful little square in Rome known as " the square of the turtles," it is a little secret square that the Romans keep very quiet about and tend to show it to you on romantic visits at about 5.am in the morning before taking you for a hot croissant ! Anyway, those days are gone and today I am going with my girlfriend Bruna and six other friends to have a Turkish bath ! It is Bruna's birthday and she is offering an afternoon together, lets hope there is a lot of steam so I can hide my not so perfect body !!!

A Valentine snippet !

2007-02-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

"I want to kiss you in the shadows of the Colosseum,

and whisper sweet words to you

conveyed by roman winds "!

These words were sent to me in a love letter , by Antonio, (who I'd met on holiday ) I was aged fifteen at the time and I was a spotty teenager and my teeth were slightly prominent , the letter was sent to my all girl boarding school and caused great amazement and admiration from my school friends . I shrugged my shoulders and acted very cool but I was stupefied , because I knew that Antonio didn't speak one word of English !

I have since spent thirty years in Rome, we might have brushed passed each other on the bus or the train but I never saw him again, but today I would like to thank him and his romantic translator !

Reflections

2007-02-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

2007-02-09T13:26:00.000-08:00

Madeleine

2007-02-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

....more than kisses,
.....letters mingle souls.
John Donne
1571 - 1631

The Fragility of time

2007-02-03T02:36:00.000-08:00

I’d love to know
I’d love to see
What kind of man
You'r going to be
It breaks my heart
To see you grow
Just to have to
Let you go !

Lice are nice !

2007-02-02T01:05:00.000-08:00

I’m a very little bug
Actually I’m a flea
I’m getting quite a complex
Because nobody likes me!

I live in cozy hair.
And lovely thick rugs
And sometimes have the pleasure
Of meeting other bugs!

I jump about and skip around
And try not to intrude
But when people discover me
They really are quite rude!

They write letters from school,
Oh really what a fuss!
Imagine! letters from school
About the likes of us !

I love to go to school
All my friends are there
We jump and change colors
On everybody’s hair!

We have another names
I think its nits or lice
It makes me feel important
It sounds rather nice!

I seem to make them itchy,
They rummage and they scratch
But I really am too busy
With all my eggs to hatch!

The mothers go crazy
They moan and they complain
They buy this stinky soap
And I’m off down the drain

I’d love to stay around
It’s good to have a chat
I have laid lots of eggs
And will probably be back!

mad about crips

2007-02-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

Daniel and Max

2007-02-01T00:33:00.000-08:00

2007-01-31T05:01:00.000-08:00