..or should I say Venezia. I am enjoying learning Italian with my excellent teacher Luisella. She speaks a lot in Italian throughout the class - talking quickly, translating as she goes, insisting we listen, listen, listen and talk, talk, talk. She goes at a challenging pace!

A challenge I had not anticipated was being unable to read the whiteboard when Luisella uses a coloured or faded pen. I had to explain that I have an eye problem. (I have AMD, a degenerative eye condition.) Until now when out and about or meeting new people I get away with not saying anything, but we are asked to work in pairs and read to each other from the textbook. If the lighting is not good - and it isn't - I can't see the words. I am still so shocked when this happens! So of course I have to say 'I'm sorry I can't see that'. I have a tiny torch the size of a credit card (thank you Lynne, what a thoughtful gift). It helps but makes me very  slow. I've never before in my life been slow in a learning situation. It is so hard! It makes me feel foolish and so self-conscious. I know I have to get over those feelings and find ways of coping.

It also makes me feel humble when I see people coping with far greater difficulties.

I enjoyed this post on a favourite blog about Venice.

(This post explains why I am learning Italian!)

An interesting blog from Venice here.

Some fun calligraphy to try here.

And a smile at the date of the original essay about The Diderot Effect here (thank you Julia and Angela!)

Enjoy if you have time....

This is a coat.

In a bag about a handspan long and weighing next to nothing.

A warm winter coat.

Good for travelling.

To Venice.

I bought it from new-to-me Uniqlo.


 And this post made me think about what else I will take.

It was dark and late as the old vaporetto chugged its way to the Piazza San Marco, calling in at dimly lit stops on the way, the buildings only appearing out of the hushed  darkness at the last moment, and one or two people embarking or disembarking quietly as the rugged engine changed sounds. and the sounds floated over the water of the lagoon

We disembarked and walked across the empty silent Piazza in moonlight and the two unseen figures struck the bells of the clock high on the Clock Tower:  midnight.

Magical.

I always knew I would go back.

A little background if you are a new reader here...

I used to dislike February (see here ) and chanced upon a way to make it more fun (see here) Little did I know February would become the month I looked forward to most! (Lots more under Simply Write should you have time to browse.)

This year we spent the whole month in a friend's house in Buckinghamshire which we found wonderfully enjoyable, and although I was writing a few hours a day, we still had lots of time to explore. See posts for Fabruary 2015 on side bar..Oh I love that typo and will leave it in!

FABruary.

Yes.

Next year in Venice.

I have quite a few books about Venice (which does make me think this idea has been simmering for some considerable time) and I am working my way through this beautifully illustrated one a page a day by leaving it open under the lamp in the sitting room..

I'm also reading Venice by Jan Morris, and Venice Pure City by Peter Ackroyd and have just re-read Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers, which is set in Venice.

If you have any recommendations I would welcome them....

..if you find yourself anywhere near Edinburgh before the end of the month!

I loved the two main exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery, and we went to look at the Venetian Old Masters in the National Gallery.

Charles Jencks Landform at the Gallery of Modern Art looked serene in the rain, although the weather was lovely except for this hour or so. (Good café in beautiful garden too.) The exhibition Heads - drawings, paintings and photographs - was so absorbing I didn't get further than the corridor they were displayed in. Wonderful. It included an Augustus John drawing that looked like a Raphael.

I've added a couple of links to yesterday's post.

I expect a lot of Edinburgh residents find the Festival disruptive, but we were with my 95 year old Edinburgh resident Uncle (I've mentioned him before. He is the one who when asked if he ever takes taxis said 'I will when I'm older'.) Uncle John attends concerts, opera, theatre and book festival talks. He is stimulating company, interested in politics, economics and philosophy as well as the arts. We try to keep up with him!

Do you have a favourite arts festival?

Or a favourite uncle?

Maybe it was the Marie Kondo clearing which made space in my head for the idle thought which popped into it one quiet evening and made me ask Barry

Will we go away for a month again this winter?

Yes.

To Venice?

Yes.

Hmmm. How can I make this happen I wonder....



I took the title for this post from a fascinating blog I just discovered via Cornflower Books - it seemed so apt!

Am going to live in Venice for a month (my rather grandly named Writing Month) next winter!

Soo exciting.

I've completed my 30 day challenge! (See here.) Have you? I missed about 4 days. I do it at night and several nights I was out and once I just forgot.

I now have 96 words of Italian - that's about 90 more than I had on day one. I have reached level 5, earned 22 lingots (whatever they are), kept up my strength levels on Basics 1 and 2, phrases and food, am 15% fluent....and can be polite and order coffee.

Useful.

Fun.

I think I'll keep going..

I gave up on Busuu as they kept trying to sell me stuff - emailing and blocking the free part of the course,  and stuck with Duolingo and BBC Languages Italian (archived but still useful).

Have you tried learning a language online?

Or anything else?


And for my next 30 day challenge...

Actually I can't decide. I had thought of working for half an hour a day on the things on my To-Do list that I never get around to. Doesn't sound much fun, but the sense of achievement at the end of 30 days would be HUGE.

I'll sleep on it....

Buona notte!

Coming home on the ferry today, the spray was over the top of the bus!

After a long and complicated day, I had to read my work (see here) aloud to the creative writing class.

My voice was shaking, just a little.

How embarassing!

But I did it.

Homework is a piece entitled or beginning with the words The clown was suicidal....

A little more about my class (I'll change the subject tomorrow - promise!). There are 17 students, 7 men and 10 women, mixed ages but predominantly young. The tutor, Alan McMunnigall, is experienced, organised, friendly and relaxed, and highly regarded. I think the discipline of attending and doing assignments, and being in the company of other aspiring writers will be the motivation I need to get down to some serious work. It's quite a long journey there and back and I'll use the time to work on a few pages of the novel each week.

That's the plan anyway - and don't worry, I'm not going to post all my assignments on the blog!  Thanks for the encouraging comments....

Some of you may remember I am writing a novel (see post here). It began as a fun way to get through February which was my least favourite month of the year. The first February (2011) with the aid of a book called No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty, I wrote about 25,000 words - half a novel. In February 2012 I wrote the second half, and the third year I began to edit. February 2014 I aim to have my final draft. (I've only worked on it in Februaries so far, but very intensively - see posts under Simply Write.)

I knew by now that I needed some help.

As a painter I am used to seeing all the elements of a piece of work at once - they are all there, visible on the canvas, and if I make a change I can immediately see what effect this has on the rest of the composition. With 50,000 words on I've forgotten how many pages, I find myself struggling to see the overall shape and structure.

I am now floundering in it so badly I enrolled in a course Writing Fiction: The Novel to help me along. The class is in the Open Course programme at Glasgow University - one night a week.

I have never been on a writing course before, but I think I have struck lucky....

Well, here goes! I've joined a writing course - (more about it tomorrow). I think it is going to be great.


The Tutor's First Assignment.


Write to me of Love, he said,

write to me of Love.

Of love, in love, love-fifteen.

Maternal love? Love of life, love of fast cars, of crochet, of comic books, or cupakes?

Love of nature, for the love of God!

Unrequited or quited, love eternal, love divine. Self love and the love that dare not speak its name.

Love-in-a-mist, love is all there is, All You Need Is Love, especially In A Cold Climate or In The Time Of Cholera.

Amo amas amat, amour, and how many words do the Inuit have for snow, or the Masai for brown? The Greeks have agape, philia, eros, storge and more. We have Love. Oh, and Luv, luv, then there's luurve..and that little heart thingy, as in I Love New York.

Free love (In The Afternoon) in a love triangle perhaps.

It has its downside, love: you can be love-sick, you can't buy it, it's sometimes blind and Love Hurts you know. You can love someone to death....and it's Labours can be Lost.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, and have you tried to love your enemy?

There's the love them and leave them type, and the love-child, poor mite.

Love Me Tender and love my love handles, Make Love Not War, in A Summer of Love. Love is never enough they say, but don't forget:

Love Conquers All

Got out my satchel - I'm a student again. Yay! I always say I feel most alive when I'm learning....

What makes you feel most alive?

And can you fit more of it into your life?

My (self imposed) task for February 2013 was to do some editing and rewriting work on my novel, but the underlying reason was to get through February without feeling a bit low as I used to always do at this time of year.

It worked. I've had a lovely February!

Editing is a very different thing from writing, as I'm sure you know. Writing my novel the NaNoWriMo way (see here) was like a fast sprint - exciting, all consuming and very challenging - a lot of adrenalin going around.  Editing on the other hand is a more plodding activity. Not as much fun I have to say, though just as challenging. Part of the challenge is to be objective about this creation you have grown to care deeply about and to try to get into the mind of a potential reader and see if it still makes sense!

So I have plodded gently through February this year, enjoying it, with plenty to occupy me and plenty to do still. I will be working on my novel for some months yet....but as the gardening season approaches, and with commitments to teaching, painting and community projects, I won't be as single minded about it as I have been through February.

I am so lucky to have work that I love, and to have found a way of making this month a month that I love too!

Did you have a good February?  (Or can you think of a way to make next February more fun?)

Yesterday's ending was from Counterparts in James Joyce' s The Dubliners. It chokes me up every time I read it. What can I say, except sorry to end the endings on such a tragic note....

Yesterday's words were of course by Vita Sackville West in her son Nigel Nicolson's biography Portrait of a Marriage. I love her garden writing about Sissinghurst best.
 
Warning! Today's last lines could break your heart.

I've been thinking for days about whether or not to use these - the saddest closing lines I have ever read - from another short story by a great writer whom I have quoted already....but it is such a powerful example of courageous and compassionate writing that I felt I should include it..

Oh Pa! he cried. Don't beat me, pa! And I'll...I'll say a Hail Mary for you...I'll say a Hail Mary for you, pa, if you don't beat me....I'll say a Hail Mary...

Author?
Title?

Couldn't resist illustrating yesterday's quote with my own jug, sitting on the table shouting 'Spring!'

The line comes from Doris Lessing's The Pit.

Today's closing lines are Scottish, and sad, from the author of a famous trilogy:

But she still sat on as one by one the lights went out and the rain came, beating the stones about her, and falling all that night while she still sat there, presently feeling no longer the touch of the rain or hearing the sound of the lapwings going by.

Author?

Title?

The risk with printing endings is that they can be a bit of a 'spoiler' I realise. Sorry!

The triumphant ending of yesterday's novel Grace Notes by Bernard Maclaverty won't, I hope, spoil this lovely novel for you if you have not read it before. The author makes you experience the world through the mind and the ears of a young composer....I reread this one every now and then.

I've not read this one, and don't remember how I came to find the opening lines:

A final sprig of flowering cherry among the white lilac and yellow jonquils, in a fat white jug...she stuck this in judiciously, filling in a peetern that needed just so much attention. Shouting  'Spring!' the jug sat on a small table in the middle of the room.

This rusty candle ring which I hang above the table on special occasions is a favourite thing.

Birch twigs now, and tiny flower shapes made of card,

glittery bits and gypsophila for Christmas 2012,

twinkling stars Christmas 2009, and at other times I use just ivy or some wild flowers, (though I've not photographed these, yet).

Love it!

Did you like yesterday's closing line? An unusual way to end a novel, isn't it! It is A S Byatt's The Virgin in The Garden.

I've got my camera back, and my husband - they've both been abroad. This was my Valentine's 'card' for him on his return....The paper hearts are made with a clever little punch, glued onto birch branches with PVA. Fun to do..

Quote for today! These are the last lines of a novel which won The Scotsman Scottish book of The Year in 1998 (I think):

Randel came back and pointed to various sections of the orchestra, and they stood. He looked down into the audience and beckoned Catherine with a high wave to the podium. Bravo. She rose.

Yesterday's opening lines were from Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim who was 'always happy out of doors...for indoors there are servants and furniture'. A delightful read.

These are the closing lines of a book (from which I quoted the opening lines)

That was not an end, but since it went on for a considerable time, is as good a place to stop as any.

Author?

Title?

Yesterday's quote was - Linda Grant's The Thoughtful Dresser.

Can you take many more of these I wonder....not sure if I can!
 

I ordered flower seeds from Sarah Raven today. Though many things in her catalogue are expensive, seeds are mostly  a reasonable £1.95, and if you have the code from Gardens Illustrated there is 20% off.

Visions of a flower-filled garden, jugs of sweet peas, scent, colour, warmth, sunshine, abundance....

Here are the opening words of a book I'm sure many of you will have read:

May 7th. I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late afternoon loveliness, much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower. Two owls are perched near me, and are carrying on a long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales.

Title?

Author?

I wish!
 
Is there any writer more original and poetic? Earthly Paradise, a large anthology of Colette's writings is probably the book I would take with me to that desert island...here are some opening lines of hers which I think are brilliant:

                            I have not had to go out of my way to be let in on masculine secrets.

Always up at dawn and sometimes before the day, my mother attached particular importance to the cardinal points of the compass, as much for the good as for the harm they might bring.

It was the reflected glow of your blazing line along the terrace O geraniums, and yours, O foxgloves, springing up amid the coppice, that gave my childish cheeks their rosy warmth.

Which book would be your desert island choice?


Thank you so much for your encouraging and helpful comments on yesterday's post, and for staying with me and my  February posts!

I am missing my camera, especially as it snowed gorgeously today, and by the way - do you think they have taken the malt out of Maltesers?

Edna O'Brien has you curious with the first line of Mrs Reinhardt..

And today's line is:

                                  Four thirty in the afternoon in Berlin,  three thirty in London.

Another tale of two cities?

Any guesses?
PS some clues in comments...

Yesterday's opening line was from A S Byatt's The Virgin In The Garden (which I've just finished).

It's the words malice aforethought that really make you want to know more...

Today?

                                          I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

Author?

Title?

And who starred in the film....