Happy New Year! Our worryingly dry and warm winter continues into the new year. Dazzling sunshine, with a slight chilly breeze and whisps of mist among the snow-naked mountains.
Ten years ago, New Year 2002. Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization. In Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde was chosen to be president, the fifth in less than two weeks. In New York, Michael Bloomberg succeeded Rudy Giuliani as mayor. Had they been alive, J.D. Salinger, J. Edgar Hoover, E.M. Forster, Joe Orton and Paul Revere would have celebrated their birthdays, and Kiri Te Kanawa and Nigel Mansell probably did. In twelve European countries, millions of people woke up to a new currency.
In Carmine Superiore, in the bright winter sunshine, two young-ish people paced the tiny piazza, heads together in muttered debate. From time to time, their gaze fell speculatively on one another, then strayed out to the vast expanse of the lake with the mountains beyond. Finally, they smiled, shook hands and embraced. For ten years ago, on 1 January 2002, M. and I took the decision to buy the ruin that fate had dropped into our laps. Come what may.
That decision changed everything. As you might imagine it would. But Carmine Superiore is a mite unusual, and so this was not simply a change of place. It was a change of life, and a change that changed us. In 10 years, Carmine Superiore has knocked me - for I can speak only for myself - into a different shape. The list of things I can now do - don't think twice about doing - that I couldn't do on 1 January 2002 is for me ever-surprising. I can chop a tree down, split the wood and light a fire. I can raise chicks out of eggs generation on generation, and I know how to subdue a rambunctious cockerel. I'm also pretty hot with the coop-maintenance wire-cutters. I can drive a car. On the wrong side of the road. I can speak enough Italian to give birth to two Euro-sproglets, and get them into the school system. I can pilot a boat and manage a knuckle-headed gun-dog, even though sometimes it seems he is managing me. I can raise abandoned kittens and home flightless baby seagulls. I can build vegetable patches and grow produce for Africa. And I can circle them with dry-stone walls of my own creation.
And please, let's not forget what it takes to conquer The Hill, through the pregnancy days, the toddling days, the tantrum days, the carry-me days and the asthma days. The thigh-deep snow days, the supermarket days, the wine-buying days and the helicopter days. And, of course, the happy day my book collection started to arrive. Forget the gymn. This was body-sculpting Carmine-style. The me of today, admittedly ten years older and very much greyer, is a far-cry from the me that sat day-in day-out at a screen with a view of the Thames. While these days my back may buckle under the weight of two cases of wine, in general I've never been so fit.
Any fear of creepy-crawlies and all things yuk that may unaccountably have survived six months in Africa in the 90s melted away entirely in those magical ten years. Bedroom-sharing scorpions, spiders, beetles and slugs. Cat-kill rats, disembowelled mice and downed birds. And snakes. And let's not forget the things that go bump in the dark. The many nights I've spent entirely alone in a broken-down ruined house in an ancient village with no road, with ghosts medieval and modern trailing their woes around the walls, with the howling wind battering at the shutters and the unimagineable calling from the shadows... That little scared-of-the-dark girl of 40 years ago would stare unbelieving at the middle-aged woman stalking unthinkingly through the woods on a moonless night.
The decision to take on our Carmine ruin brought with it, of course, the commitment to live among the Italians. I guess being an expat in any country where one is required to live daily life in a different language brings with it its own challenges. In ten years, I have had my fair share of incomprehensible conversations - most notably in the labour room, in radiology, in paediatrics and in gynaecology, with the avvocato, with the maresciallo and with the notaio. Involuntarily, and rather surprisingly, though, I've found myself an expert in the short, sharp denuncia, if in no other skill. While I've suffered regular ritual humiliation on the part of more than one under-educated shop assistant, health worker or common-or-garden racist, I've benefited immeasurably from the patience and understanding of the vast majority of Italians I know. I've ditched my English reserve in favour of communication at all costs, and found that a rueful smile and a talent for pantomime go a long way.
In these ten years I've had occasion to discover the self-destructive power of envy, the ultimate futility of pride and the absolute necessity for patience in all things. I've become intimately acquainted with the wee small solitary hours in which the great Sasso Carmine squatted like a troll in the darkness while I nursed a sleepless baby. Nights when I've reached deep down inside for a reserve of energy I didn't know I had. I've passed many sleepless nights in dark imaginings and many glorious sunny days in simple contentment.
Who would have thought that a great old house, window frames hanging off their hinges, nest-stuffed chimneys, doors held closed with piles of rocks, and a sieve-style roof...a colony of dung-beetles keeping the entrance-hall clean, a pride of felines making it dirty, and a tribe of dormice scrabbling in the eaves... who would have thought that this great old house would have the power to bring about so much change?
"Not I", said the cat...
Showing posts with label Expat life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Expat life. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Monday, 20 December 2010
An expat's Christmas lament
A fiery sunrise this morning to accompany me, my water-kettle steaming to the snow-bound chicks. Blue skies. Seems warmer.
Christmas is coming (as if you didn't know), and we're awash with candles, cards and Christmas trees. Every expat has to make a decision every year - to spend Christmas in their country of residence, or go 'home'. And having spent more than seven years now as an official, card-carrying resident here in Carmine Superiore, I generally choose to stay put where the chimneys are big enough for Santa, the woods are full of Christmas decorations and I'm among good friends.
At Christmas I, of course, miss my family. But I don't miss the mad cattle-truck crush of the trip home from London. I don't miss the last-minute shopping chaos. I don't miss Christmas tv. I don't miss turkey or Christmas pud or 'all the trimmings'. I don't miss the Queen's Speech and I don't miss the Big Film.
In fact, apart from my family, there's only one thing I miss about Christmas in the UK. And it's something you really can't find anywhere else in the world. It's the ancient Christmas carols sung by a cathedral choir by candlelight.
This I miss so badly I get a stone in my chest and tears in my eyes...
What do you miss about Christmas at home?
Christmas is coming (as if you didn't know), and we're awash with candles, cards and Christmas trees. Every expat has to make a decision every year - to spend Christmas in their country of residence, or go 'home'. And having spent more than seven years now as an official, card-carrying resident here in Carmine Superiore, I generally choose to stay put where the chimneys are big enough for Santa, the woods are full of Christmas decorations and I'm among good friends.
At Christmas I, of course, miss my family. But I don't miss the mad cattle-truck crush of the trip home from London. I don't miss the last-minute shopping chaos. I don't miss Christmas tv. I don't miss turkey or Christmas pud or 'all the trimmings'. I don't miss the Queen's Speech and I don't miss the Big Film.
In fact, apart from my family, there's only one thing I miss about Christmas in the UK. And it's something you really can't find anywhere else in the world. It's the ancient Christmas carols sung by a cathedral choir by candlelight.
This I miss so badly I get a stone in my chest and tears in my eyes...
What do you miss about Christmas at home?
Monday, 8 February 2010
Nine rules for living in a foreign country
Cold, clear and dry with blue skies.
I've been a permanent resident in Carmine Superiore for a number of years now. Long enough to not remember exactly when I signed on at the Ufficio Anagrafe and first held in my hand my very own Italian ID card. Long enough to consider myself an expat, even though I don't have the hoopla salary or the palatial living quarters that most proper expats have. I'm not on contract, I haven't been seconded, I don't want to keep the peace and I'm not on a mission. I just live here.
And now I think I've lived here long enough to have earned the right to offer some advice to those fresh off the boat. To list, without futher ado, some of what I see to be the do's and don'ts of expat life:
1. Don't think you can get away with English and a winning smile. Make an effort to learn the language, and even if you become fluent, always apologise for speaking so badly. If you think you might not be up to the language-learning bit, squeeze out several children and throw them into the local state school. That way you'll always have an interpreter to hand.
2. The first words you should learn in the language of your adoptive country are : "Please speak slowly. I don't speak very good French/Italian/Gujarati..." As your linguistic ability increases, this can be upgraded to : "You can tell I'm foreign because I'm wearing M&S easy-wear jeans and I just used the wrong tense. You could easily answer 'yes' or 'no' to my question, so why the hell do you insist on talking nineteen to the dozen with a lump of Turkish Delight in your mouth? Cavolo!" (If you're in Italy, one mention of cabbages, and you'll have them where you want them...)
3. Don't imagine you're making friends among the local population until you've been invited into their homes. Children's parties don't count. But key parties do.
4. Be nice, very nice, about the country you are living in. Sshhht! Not a word, not even a single criticism. Clamp that mouth shut! Gaffer tape works...But if you absolutely must, write a blog - an anonymous blog.
5. He's from your home country, but it's okay if you don't become bosom buddies. You may share a nationality, but it doesn't mean he'll necessarily share your love of collecting decorative handcuffs or carving eggshells.
6. When making appointments with bureaucrats, always ask what particular documents you need. Then take everything you can think of - resident's permits, birth certificates, passports, ID cards, 'O'-level certificates, receipts for shoe repairs, your granddad's 100th-birthday letter from HM. In triplicate. Short (and sharp) courses on 'How to Deal with Bureaucracy' are available at any Indian railway station, and in the holding cells attached to Nigerian customs.
7. Buy local. In particular, don't import white goods from your home country. It'll annoy the local supplier you ask to fix them when they go wrong. Either he 'can't get the parts' or he genuinely can't get the parts. Either way you'll be doing the washing up by hand.
8. Don't allow yourself to get nostalgic about the Motherland. It stank when you left. And it still stinks. Probably more.
9. And finally, don't believe what you read in expat handbooks. They're written by people like me.
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Showing posts with label Expat life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Expat life. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 January 2012
New Year 2002
Happy New Year! Our worryingly dry and warm winter continues into the new year. Dazzling sunshine, with a slight chilly breeze and whisps of mist among the snow-naked mountains.
Ten years ago, New Year 2002. Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization. In Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde was chosen to be president, the fifth in less than two weeks. In New York, Michael Bloomberg succeeded Rudy Giuliani as mayor. Had they been alive, J.D. Salinger, J. Edgar Hoover, E.M. Forster, Joe Orton and Paul Revere would have celebrated their birthdays, and Kiri Te Kanawa and Nigel Mansell probably did. In twelve European countries, millions of people woke up to a new currency.
In Carmine Superiore, in the bright winter sunshine, two young-ish people paced the tiny piazza, heads together in muttered debate. From time to time, their gaze fell speculatively on one another, then strayed out to the vast expanse of the lake with the mountains beyond. Finally, they smiled, shook hands and embraced. For ten years ago, on 1 January 2002, M. and I took the decision to buy the ruin that fate had dropped into our laps. Come what may.
That decision changed everything. As you might imagine it would. But Carmine Superiore is a mite unusual, and so this was not simply a change of place. It was a change of life, and a change that changed us. In 10 years, Carmine Superiore has knocked me - for I can speak only for myself - into a different shape. The list of things I can now do - don't think twice about doing - that I couldn't do on 1 January 2002 is for me ever-surprising. I can chop a tree down, split the wood and light a fire. I can raise chicks out of eggs generation on generation, and I know how to subdue a rambunctious cockerel. I'm also pretty hot with the coop-maintenance wire-cutters. I can drive a car. On the wrong side of the road. I can speak enough Italian to give birth to two Euro-sproglets, and get them into the school system. I can pilot a boat and manage a knuckle-headed gun-dog, even though sometimes it seems he is managing me. I can raise abandoned kittens and home flightless baby seagulls. I can build vegetable patches and grow produce for Africa. And I can circle them with dry-stone walls of my own creation.
And please, let's not forget what it takes to conquer The Hill, through the pregnancy days, the toddling days, the tantrum days, the carry-me days and the asthma days. The thigh-deep snow days, the supermarket days, the wine-buying days and the helicopter days. And, of course, the happy day my book collection started to arrive. Forget the gymn. This was body-sculpting Carmine-style. The me of today, admittedly ten years older and very much greyer, is a far-cry from the me that sat day-in day-out at a screen with a view of the Thames. While these days my back may buckle under the weight of two cases of wine, in general I've never been so fit.
Any fear of creepy-crawlies and all things yuk that may unaccountably have survived six months in Africa in the 90s melted away entirely in those magical ten years. Bedroom-sharing scorpions, spiders, beetles and slugs. Cat-kill rats, disembowelled mice and downed birds. And snakes. And let's not forget the things that go bump in the dark. The many nights I've spent entirely alone in a broken-down ruined house in an ancient village with no road, with ghosts medieval and modern trailing their woes around the walls, with the howling wind battering at the shutters and the unimagineable calling from the shadows... That little scared-of-the-dark girl of 40 years ago would stare unbelieving at the middle-aged woman stalking unthinkingly through the woods on a moonless night.
The decision to take on our Carmine ruin brought with it, of course, the commitment to live among the Italians. I guess being an expat in any country where one is required to live daily life in a different language brings with it its own challenges. In ten years, I have had my fair share of incomprehensible conversations - most notably in the labour room, in radiology, in paediatrics and in gynaecology, with the avvocato, with the maresciallo and with the notaio. Involuntarily, and rather surprisingly, though, I've found myself an expert in the short, sharp denuncia, if in no other skill. While I've suffered regular ritual humiliation on the part of more than one under-educated shop assistant, health worker or common-or-garden racist, I've benefited immeasurably from the patience and understanding of the vast majority of Italians I know. I've ditched my English reserve in favour of communication at all costs, and found that a rueful smile and a talent for pantomime go a long way.
In these ten years I've had occasion to discover the self-destructive power of envy, the ultimate futility of pride and the absolute necessity for patience in all things. I've become intimately acquainted with the wee small solitary hours in which the great Sasso Carmine squatted like a troll in the darkness while I nursed a sleepless baby. Nights when I've reached deep down inside for a reserve of energy I didn't know I had. I've passed many sleepless nights in dark imaginings and many glorious sunny days in simple contentment.
Who would have thought that a great old house, window frames hanging off their hinges, nest-stuffed chimneys, doors held closed with piles of rocks, and a sieve-style roof...a colony of dung-beetles keeping the entrance-hall clean, a pride of felines making it dirty, and a tribe of dormice scrabbling in the eaves... who would have thought that this great old house would have the power to bring about so much change?
"Not I", said the cat...
Ten years ago, New Year 2002. Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization. In Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde was chosen to be president, the fifth in less than two weeks. In New York, Michael Bloomberg succeeded Rudy Giuliani as mayor. Had they been alive, J.D. Salinger, J. Edgar Hoover, E.M. Forster, Joe Orton and Paul Revere would have celebrated their birthdays, and Kiri Te Kanawa and Nigel Mansell probably did. In twelve European countries, millions of people woke up to a new currency.
In Carmine Superiore, in the bright winter sunshine, two young-ish people paced the tiny piazza, heads together in muttered debate. From time to time, their gaze fell speculatively on one another, then strayed out to the vast expanse of the lake with the mountains beyond. Finally, they smiled, shook hands and embraced. For ten years ago, on 1 January 2002, M. and I took the decision to buy the ruin that fate had dropped into our laps. Come what may.
That decision changed everything. As you might imagine it would. But Carmine Superiore is a mite unusual, and so this was not simply a change of place. It was a change of life, and a change that changed us. In 10 years, Carmine Superiore has knocked me - for I can speak only for myself - into a different shape. The list of things I can now do - don't think twice about doing - that I couldn't do on 1 January 2002 is for me ever-surprising. I can chop a tree down, split the wood and light a fire. I can raise chicks out of eggs generation on generation, and I know how to subdue a rambunctious cockerel. I'm also pretty hot with the coop-maintenance wire-cutters. I can drive a car. On the wrong side of the road. I can speak enough Italian to give birth to two Euro-sproglets, and get them into the school system. I can pilot a boat and manage a knuckle-headed gun-dog, even though sometimes it seems he is managing me. I can raise abandoned kittens and home flightless baby seagulls. I can build vegetable patches and grow produce for Africa. And I can circle them with dry-stone walls of my own creation.
And please, let's not forget what it takes to conquer The Hill, through the pregnancy days, the toddling days, the tantrum days, the carry-me days and the asthma days. The thigh-deep snow days, the supermarket days, the wine-buying days and the helicopter days. And, of course, the happy day my book collection started to arrive. Forget the gymn. This was body-sculpting Carmine-style. The me of today, admittedly ten years older and very much greyer, is a far-cry from the me that sat day-in day-out at a screen with a view of the Thames. While these days my back may buckle under the weight of two cases of wine, in general I've never been so fit.
Any fear of creepy-crawlies and all things yuk that may unaccountably have survived six months in Africa in the 90s melted away entirely in those magical ten years. Bedroom-sharing scorpions, spiders, beetles and slugs. Cat-kill rats, disembowelled mice and downed birds. And snakes. And let's not forget the things that go bump in the dark. The many nights I've spent entirely alone in a broken-down ruined house in an ancient village with no road, with ghosts medieval and modern trailing their woes around the walls, with the howling wind battering at the shutters and the unimagineable calling from the shadows... That little scared-of-the-dark girl of 40 years ago would stare unbelieving at the middle-aged woman stalking unthinkingly through the woods on a moonless night.
The decision to take on our Carmine ruin brought with it, of course, the commitment to live among the Italians. I guess being an expat in any country where one is required to live daily life in a different language brings with it its own challenges. In ten years, I have had my fair share of incomprehensible conversations - most notably in the labour room, in radiology, in paediatrics and in gynaecology, with the avvocato, with the maresciallo and with the notaio. Involuntarily, and rather surprisingly, though, I've found myself an expert in the short, sharp denuncia, if in no other skill. While I've suffered regular ritual humiliation on the part of more than one under-educated shop assistant, health worker or common-or-garden racist, I've benefited immeasurably from the patience and understanding of the vast majority of Italians I know. I've ditched my English reserve in favour of communication at all costs, and found that a rueful smile and a talent for pantomime go a long way.
In these ten years I've had occasion to discover the self-destructive power of envy, the ultimate futility of pride and the absolute necessity for patience in all things. I've become intimately acquainted with the wee small solitary hours in which the great Sasso Carmine squatted like a troll in the darkness while I nursed a sleepless baby. Nights when I've reached deep down inside for a reserve of energy I didn't know I had. I've passed many sleepless nights in dark imaginings and many glorious sunny days in simple contentment.
Who would have thought that a great old house, window frames hanging off their hinges, nest-stuffed chimneys, doors held closed with piles of rocks, and a sieve-style roof...a colony of dung-beetles keeping the entrance-hall clean, a pride of felines making it dirty, and a tribe of dormice scrabbling in the eaves... who would have thought that this great old house would have the power to bring about so much change?
"Not I", said the cat...
Monday, 20 December 2010
An expat's Christmas lament
A fiery sunrise this morning to accompany me, my water-kettle steaming to the snow-bound chicks. Blue skies. Seems warmer.
Christmas is coming (as if you didn't know), and we're awash with candles, cards and Christmas trees. Every expat has to make a decision every year - to spend Christmas in their country of residence, or go 'home'. And having spent more than seven years now as an official, card-carrying resident here in Carmine Superiore, I generally choose to stay put where the chimneys are big enough for Santa, the woods are full of Christmas decorations and I'm among good friends.
At Christmas I, of course, miss my family. But I don't miss the mad cattle-truck crush of the trip home from London. I don't miss the last-minute shopping chaos. I don't miss Christmas tv. I don't miss turkey or Christmas pud or 'all the trimmings'. I don't miss the Queen's Speech and I don't miss the Big Film.
In fact, apart from my family, there's only one thing I miss about Christmas in the UK. And it's something you really can't find anywhere else in the world. It's the ancient Christmas carols sung by a cathedral choir by candlelight.
This I miss so badly I get a stone in my chest and tears in my eyes...
What do you miss about Christmas at home?
Christmas is coming (as if you didn't know), and we're awash with candles, cards and Christmas trees. Every expat has to make a decision every year - to spend Christmas in their country of residence, or go 'home'. And having spent more than seven years now as an official, card-carrying resident here in Carmine Superiore, I generally choose to stay put where the chimneys are big enough for Santa, the woods are full of Christmas decorations and I'm among good friends.
At Christmas I, of course, miss my family. But I don't miss the mad cattle-truck crush of the trip home from London. I don't miss the last-minute shopping chaos. I don't miss Christmas tv. I don't miss turkey or Christmas pud or 'all the trimmings'. I don't miss the Queen's Speech and I don't miss the Big Film.
In fact, apart from my family, there's only one thing I miss about Christmas in the UK. And it's something you really can't find anywhere else in the world. It's the ancient Christmas carols sung by a cathedral choir by candlelight.
This I miss so badly I get a stone in my chest and tears in my eyes...
What do you miss about Christmas at home?
Monday, 8 February 2010
Nine rules for living in a foreign country
Cold, clear and dry with blue skies.
I've been a permanent resident in Carmine Superiore for a number of years now. Long enough to not remember exactly when I signed on at the Ufficio Anagrafe and first held in my hand my very own Italian ID card. Long enough to consider myself an expat, even though I don't have the hoopla salary or the palatial living quarters that most proper expats have. I'm not on contract, I haven't been seconded, I don't want to keep the peace and I'm not on a mission. I just live here.
And now I think I've lived here long enough to have earned the right to offer some advice to those fresh off the boat. To list, without futher ado, some of what I see to be the do's and don'ts of expat life:
1. Don't think you can get away with English and a winning smile. Make an effort to learn the language, and even if you become fluent, always apologise for speaking so badly. If you think you might not be up to the language-learning bit, squeeze out several children and throw them into the local state school. That way you'll always have an interpreter to hand.
2. The first words you should learn in the language of your adoptive country are : "Please speak slowly. I don't speak very good French/Italian/Gujarati..." As your linguistic ability increases, this can be upgraded to : "You can tell I'm foreign because I'm wearing M&S easy-wear jeans and I just used the wrong tense. You could easily answer 'yes' or 'no' to my question, so why the hell do you insist on talking nineteen to the dozen with a lump of Turkish Delight in your mouth? Cavolo!" (If you're in Italy, one mention of cabbages, and you'll have them where you want them...)
3. Don't imagine you're making friends among the local population until you've been invited into their homes. Children's parties don't count. But key parties do.
4. Be nice, very nice, about the country you are living in. Sshhht! Not a word, not even a single criticism. Clamp that mouth shut! Gaffer tape works...But if you absolutely must, write a blog - an anonymous blog.
5. He's from your home country, but it's okay if you don't become bosom buddies. You may share a nationality, but it doesn't mean he'll necessarily share your love of collecting decorative handcuffs or carving eggshells.
6. When making appointments with bureaucrats, always ask what particular documents you need. Then take everything you can think of - resident's permits, birth certificates, passports, ID cards, 'O'-level certificates, receipts for shoe repairs, your granddad's 100th-birthday letter from HM. In triplicate. Short (and sharp) courses on 'How to Deal with Bureaucracy' are available at any Indian railway station, and in the holding cells attached to Nigerian customs.
7. Buy local. In particular, don't import white goods from your home country. It'll annoy the local supplier you ask to fix them when they go wrong. Either he 'can't get the parts' or he genuinely can't get the parts. Either way you'll be doing the washing up by hand.
8. Don't allow yourself to get nostalgic about the Motherland. It stank when you left. And it still stinks. Probably more.
9. And finally, don't believe what you read in expat handbooks. They're written by people like me.
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