Marvellous Florence

After the Chaucer congress I'm taking another two days' holiday, and have just returned to Rome from Florence. The first night, Jeffrey and I arrived around 5, checked in, then regrouped at 7.00. Our hotel was gorgeous; and I lucked out with an enormous and serene room on the third floor and my own little balcony looking down into the courtyard and its terracotta rooftiles.

Armed with a map, and about twenty recommendations for restaurants, we found our way to the Mozzarella bar I remembered from September, in the pillared courtyard of an old bank. We started with a glass of prosecco and a liberal serve of antipasti. Mozzarella was promised, but never appeared on the self-service bar, so we had another look at the menu and ordered up a degustazione of five different mozzarelle, on a huge platter of greens and cherry tomatoes. They ranged from delicate to smoked, and there was also a ricotta style. But the highlight was a bowl of creamy mozzarella burrata, which I have discovered is my favourite thing to eat in the whole world. I ate it in Siena (and am waiting for Tom's photo), and it is creamy, with a tendency to form slight threads — I've seen it described as stracciatella, too. It is so soft they pile it on the plate, where it looks like a meringue about to go into the oven, or into a bowl, or even twist a little knot into the top. Sigh. Such sweet creamy goodness.

This was supposed to be a pre-dinner treat, but we were unable to contemplate eating any more, so we just walked and walked, across the Arno, along its banks, then back across the Ponte Vecchio. During the day, it just looks like a bunch of jewelery shops: at night, it's clear that they are more like little market stands, though locked up with ancient wooden panels and heavy black metal clasps: an odd mix of transient and secure. The half-moon shone over the water, as we found our way to the Palazzo Vecchio. Curiously it was open, so we wandered through its vast hall and endless suites of rooms upstairs, out into upstairs loggias with wonderful views of the city and beautiful breezes. Many of the rooms had their windows open - perhaps to clear out the air after the day's heavy traffic - and there was hardly anyone there. We found the little studiolo where Machiavelli used to work; and marvelled at the choice of the rape of the Sabine women as decoration for the rooms for the Medici's waiting women.

Emerging into the piazza della signoria, it was time for a midnight gelati: I had amaretto and pink grapefruit.

Well, you know: we work pretty hard. It was good to have a holiday. And there was more to come the next day. But that's for another post.

Last night in Rome

What an amazing city! I love it here. Everywhere you turn there's something else to look at: Roman ruins at the end of the shopping street; a farmer's market (oddly-shaped sausages, perfectly round cheeses, jams, eggs, flowers, vegetables) on a back street on the wrong side of the forum — the side where the entrance isn't. The people? wonderful. Billions of tourists like me; but an interesting bunch of wedding parties gathering for photos around the enormous Victor Emmanuel monument, which everyone fittingly describes as the wedding cake. I was there on Sunday, devouring my macedonia and coffee with the other tourists, positioning ourselves under the evaporative fans, when a bunch of very fancily dressed bridal guests turned up in their silks and satins and high heels to eat gelati on the rooftop terrace, too. There's an endless variety of people to look at. I wish Paul were here with his excellent photographer's eye — and his camera.

It's very hot. I packed very lightly, but clearly had a failure of imagination, unable to remember what a hot summer is like, as of course it is mid-winter at home. I had to go shopping today for sandals, a frock, a top and some linen pants. Nothing very spectacular: just European high street brands we don't have in Australia. And everything very cheap in the July sales.

Last night I found a Bach organ recital in San Antonio dei Portoghesi, between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. Away from the Piazza, the streets were quiet, windy and narrow. I was early, so I sat in the Piazza a little. There was an old man "busking", with a tape playing "nessun dorma", and holding a microphone and lip-synching, in the vaguest and most minimalist possible way, with a few hand gestures to signify the great drama, as Pavarotti vowed to prevail... The bells of the church summoned me back in time for the recital. It was one of those incredibly ornate baroque churches. The organist struggled a little with some of the rhythms, I felt, but really let fly when it came to those ringing last movements. In the pew in front of me, a woman a little older than I am, quite elegantly dressed, moved arhythmically, perpetually, in response to the music.

When I'm travelling on my own, I stay and eat in cheapish places, unless I'm feeling particularly sorry for myself with homesickness. I really lucked out with this hotel, though. It's 10 minutes from the Termini station, in an area where every tenth building is a hotel or a restaurant. You press the buzzer, and the door opens and you are standing in a cool, dark, tiled vestibule, looking into an ancient courtyard with a moss-covered statue. The office is around the corner. Everything downstairs is tiny: the reception area; the breakfast room — and the breakfast. But upstairs, my room is spotless; my bathroom is clean and new; my sheets are fine cotton linen; and it's quiet, as my window opens onto the courtyard. I can hear a family laughing and playing; and a cat miaowing. It's nice; hearing these sounds in the summer evening.

There'll be time for fancy dinners at the conference; I've been happy on my own, dining at little pizza bars and cafes. Tonight, my pizza was served on a beautiful ceramic plate. It was fragrant and thin, as a pizza is supposed to be. It had carciofi (artichokes), salty black olives, truffle-flavoured mushrooms and some fine prosciutto. Not scattered evenly over the whole pizza, but artfully arranged in groups. This, plus a little red wine, came to eleven euros, in a cafe directly opposite the station.

And how weird: the "preview" I just checked appeared with a banner across one corner of the screen, saying "anteprima". A little new vocabulary every day.

Time, now, to go back to Wolf Hall (does anyone else think Hilary Mantel has read her Dorothy Dunnet *very* attentively?)

You know it's really too hot to ride home when ...

... the water in your water bottle is almost too hot to drink.

It was not too bad when I left the house this morning, but after three hours of intensive Italian (sono nel livello quatro, ma forse questa classe e troppo difficile per me), the temperature had soared. In at the office, someone had sensibly turned off most of the lights in the corridors, so it wasn't too bad. I did a few emails, started some desultory filing, booked a ticket to Perth, filled out a bunch of travel forms, then rode home, very slowly.

When I got home, I felt a bit weak. After all it was 42 degrees out there (now 43). I had something to eat, then drank a couple of litres of water to replace the fluid I'd lost.

Now, a little Italian homework for tomorrow, then back to my paper for Wollongong. I finding myself running this very elaborate argument that the medievalism in Australian parliaments helps to define Australian notions of modernity. I might try and post a bit of this work soon, but I have to finish by Friday, so I can fly up to Sydney on Saturday morning.

The house is feeling quite schizophrenic. Downstairs and in the front, the rooms with brick walls are still pretty cool, because although it's been warm, it's not been ferociously hot till today, but upstairs and out in the back added-on sections, which are made of wood, it's downright steamy. It's going to be a hot night (maybe getting down only to 30), so no one in Melbourne will get much sleep tonight; and then the change will come through early afternoon. And then the back sections will cool down very quickly, while the front of the house will seem warm and stuffy by comparison.

Our household is so lucky we have me to police the strategic opening and closing of doors and windows.

Update: At midnight, it was still 36... hottest night on record in Melbourne, apparently.

Long Service Leave

Now that I am officially on long service leave, I have really stepped up the pace on my book. Yes, I know it's meant to be a holiday; and yes, there is something quite grand in that line coming up quite soon, but I am just happy to feel able to work all day, and quite productively, on the ms. I keep going over and over the various chapters, smoothing, co-ordinating, filling in gaps, and writing footnotes, even though I still have one entire chapter to write from scratch, and still a few little clumps of paragraphs to add in here and there. I have a couple of tough readers lined up, and I want to get a bunch of chapters ready for them to read. I am supposed to get all but the last chapter to the press by September. That's going to be a close call.

But it is my leave; and so I am doing some of the things I have been thinking about doing for a while. I have been cooking a little, and two Saturdays in a row, now, I have made a big rum baba in a wonderful heavy ring tin my mother gave me. The cake just fell out of the tin both times. The second time I tripled the amount of syrup, and it was sodden and succulent as it's supposed to be.

I have started learning Italian, and now when I'm in the car I listen to the Italian radio station (even if I can only pick up things like identifying the weather, the soccer reports and the ads for Piedimonte's, my local supermercato). I also bought Il Globo, the Australian Italian newspaper, and so I get to look at (I can hardly call it reading yet), national and local news in Italian. Seems odd to see the Queensland premier being called "la Bligh", but there you go.

I have also joined a gym. I swore for many years I would never darken the doors of such an establishment, preferring to get my exercise for free and on my own. But the idea came to me in Philadelphia [ed. and DC (see comments box)], when I realised how fit and lithe were some of the medievalists I admire most, and now I am utterly hooked. I have no idea what to do when I'm there, so I've booked in for a sequence of sessions with Miss Sophie, and we have a hilarious time, as she shows me how to use machines I had no idea were possible, and exercises I had no idea I could do. The time goes very quickly. Today I was lifting a few little weights, and she swapped the dumbbells for a big round plate, so I could feel "more manly", she said, as we fell about laughing. I come home and demonstrate to the others what I've been doing, and bounce around the house for a bit until the endorphins subside and my arms and legs start to ache. I now know why weightlifters get those trembling legs.

Anyway, it is deeply fun to do something completely different with the body and mind. I have also started playing the piano again, too, in anticipation of a Great Event and a Big Black New Arrival tomorrow.

I guess in a different world, you'd go and spend the entirety of your long service leave in Sardinia, or somewhere, and write a novel or read poetry. That's not the world I live in, though; and so I'm happy enough with this new balance of things. I'm especially happy that work is going so well. Perhaps I should have joined the gym years ago...

Ci siamo!

It's been a quiet week on Lake Humanities Researcher (apologies to Garrison Keilor).

Every morning this week I hop on my bike and ride into Carlton for an intensive Italian language course. My long service leave starts in a few weeks, and I've always thought long service leave was a good time to learn something new. And because we have booked a few weeks holiday in Italy in September, and because I'll be in Siena for the Chaucer congress in 2010, and because Joel is learning, and because I love opera, and because I want to read Dante e Boccaccio in Italiana, there I am!

There are eleven in our group: they include an opthalmic surgeon who is taking up a job in Forli next year; a group of middle aged women like me who are going to Italy on holiday; a New Zealand vulcanologist, also going to do some research in Italy; and three teenagers from two different Italian families whose fathers speak Italian, but who have never learned.

Everything they say about studying more languages making the next one easier is absolutely true. My Latin and French aren't particularly strong (especially my Latin); and my French is much more readerly than conversational, but this background in romance languages certainly makes Italian feel familiar. I could hear it spoken every day in Melbourne if I walked down the right streets and went to the right cafes. These classes really put the emphasis on conversation, though, so it's a very different world from medieval languages.

When we are doing grammatical work, I feel perfectly at home, so that spending a lot of time on the difference between masculine and feminine definite and indefinite articles sometimes drives me crazy. Just learn the forms and move on, I think to myself! But repeating and repeating, in tiny fragments of conversation in groups does eventually help me put sentences together. And here's the thing: there are people in the class who've never learned the difference between first and third person, or who have never had to grapple with gendered nouns and adjectives, but whose ear is far better than mine, and whose confidence in conversation outstrips mine, too.

But I am keen to keep going, and have arranged to share a small group lesson with Kay, my fellow student. I'm going to practise writing a bit. And can I just say: I'm doing this without checking my books. I'll correct my mistakes in bold type...

Ciao, mi chiamo Stephania. Sto molto bene, grazie. Ho un gatto bruno; lei si chiama Mima. Lei ha diciotto anni, e ho cinquante-uno anni, e sono sempre contenta... cioe, noi siamo sempre contente. Amiamo mangiare il pesce.

E voi? Come state?