Cold and dreary. The air is full of unrained rain, weighing heavy like unshed tears.
Today's small success at the Italian Ministry of Transport in Domodossola has been overshadowed by this week's very bad news. No cremant de Bourgogne for me tonight. Just a cup of tea and bed after a very long day towing two fractious children almost to the Simplon Pass and back.
Still, I just want to describe the scene of this morning's driving theory exam. B is in the waiting room 'reading' Il Mio Primo Dizionario Illustrato to a group of adoring office workers and driving instructors. Mama is in the examination room with the examiner, an ebullient woman in black velvet much given to laughing, a black Brazilian with peroxide corn-rows and an almost impossible-to-decipher accent (also taking the exam), and AJ sitting quiet as a mouse behind me with a single teardrop on his cheek to betray the fact that he screamed the place down when I tried to step into the examination room without him.
The exam itself ranks as possibly the best exam experience I've ever had. Not so much an exam as an animated conversation in pidgin Italian about various signs and what to do in various road-related situations, punctuated by as much laughter as you can get into 15 minutes in the absence of Willie Rushton and Humphrey Littleton.
AJ seems to think it was all good fun. Tomorrow, he says, he would like to take an exam. So that he can fly a helicopter, heroically putting out forest fires and rescuing hapless walkers in the mountains, before flying home for pizza and Fireman Sam.
His version of life sounds good to me.
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Thursday, 27 March 2008
Doing the Theory
Cold and dreary. The air is full of unrained rain, weighing heavy like unshed tears.
Today's small success at the Italian Ministry of Transport in Domodossola has been overshadowed by this week's very bad news. No cremant de Bourgogne for me tonight. Just a cup of tea and bed after a very long day towing two fractious children almost to the Simplon Pass and back.
Still, I just want to describe the scene of this morning's driving theory exam. B is in the waiting room 'reading' Il Mio Primo Dizionario Illustrato to a group of adoring office workers and driving instructors. Mama is in the examination room with the examiner, an ebullient woman in black velvet much given to laughing, a black Brazilian with peroxide corn-rows and an almost impossible-to-decipher accent (also taking the exam), and AJ sitting quiet as a mouse behind me with a single teardrop on his cheek to betray the fact that he screamed the place down when I tried to step into the examination room without him.
The exam itself ranks as possibly the best exam experience I've ever had. Not so much an exam as an animated conversation in pidgin Italian about various signs and what to do in various road-related situations, punctuated by as much laughter as you can get into 15 minutes in the absence of Willie Rushton and Humphrey Littleton.
AJ seems to think it was all good fun. Tomorrow, he says, he would like to take an exam. So that he can fly a helicopter, heroically putting out forest fires and rescuing hapless walkers in the mountains, before flying home for pizza and Fireman Sam.
His version of life sounds good to me.
Today's small success at the Italian Ministry of Transport in Domodossola has been overshadowed by this week's very bad news. No cremant de Bourgogne for me tonight. Just a cup of tea and bed after a very long day towing two fractious children almost to the Simplon Pass and back.
Still, I just want to describe the scene of this morning's driving theory exam. B is in the waiting room 'reading' Il Mio Primo Dizionario Illustrato to a group of adoring office workers and driving instructors. Mama is in the examination room with the examiner, an ebullient woman in black velvet much given to laughing, a black Brazilian with peroxide corn-rows and an almost impossible-to-decipher accent (also taking the exam), and AJ sitting quiet as a mouse behind me with a single teardrop on his cheek to betray the fact that he screamed the place down when I tried to step into the examination room without him.
The exam itself ranks as possibly the best exam experience I've ever had. Not so much an exam as an animated conversation in pidgin Italian about various signs and what to do in various road-related situations, punctuated by as much laughter as you can get into 15 minutes in the absence of Willie Rushton and Humphrey Littleton.
AJ seems to think it was all good fun. Tomorrow, he says, he would like to take an exam. So that he can fly a helicopter, heroically putting out forest fires and rescuing hapless walkers in the mountains, before flying home for pizza and Fireman Sam.
His version of life sounds good to me.
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