The Warriors of Skye and some killer costuming

At last! I've finally learned enough italian to be able to trawl sites in the local lingua, hunting out medieval re-enactment groups. We finally found a group that might tickle Anthony's fancy... the Warriors of Skye. Yep, a 14th C group of scottish warriors, here in the heart of Roma.

In fairness, apparently Skye was said to have been one of the great warrior training grounds of Europe, so its not entirely unfeasible that Italians might have ended up there....

Looks like they've got some killer costuming going on too....

Firenze!

My friend Helen works for Oxford University Press, and occasionally has managed to swing a work meeting in Florence. So we took all of a few seconds to decide to jump a train and head north for the weekend, when we heard she was coming to town.We arrived on the Friday night and immediately set off in search of dinner- and what a meal! Restaurant selected at random turned out to have a cavernous back room that was packed full of italian diners - always a good sign when the locals eat there! Steak Fiorentina, a bottle of Montepulciano, liver bruschetta, wild boar ragout, luscious tuscan desserts, lemoncello on the house. Bliss.

Next morning we hit the town, wandering past street stalls and the main market (check it out!), through the centre of town and out to the famous Ponte Vecchio (old bridge), packed with tiny workhouse cottages, once the home of slaughterers and offal sellers, who were moved across the river by the Medici to rid the city of their stench. And so the goldsmiths and jewellers could move in.

I loved every minute of Florence. It was like stepping back in time. Home of the much maligned Medici, who though they spawned some of the most ambitious and ruthless nobles (in a time known for ruthless ambition), also sired the Renaissance and nurtured the likes of Raphael, Michelangelo and Da Vinci in the cradle of the Tuscan capital.

Heaven only knows what Florence has been or done since, but the city is a living tribute to those heydays and you cant help be awed by the glorious marble faced duomo, the Signoria (home of one of Europe's first and most powerful democracies) with its replica David, the original itself, carefully repaired, and the stunning Pietra Dura, or stone pictures, that face the Medici tombs. The greatest though, Lorenzo Il Magnifico and his adored, murdered brother Giuliano, lie in an adjacent room, guarded by mad Michelangelo's inspired statues: Night and Day, Dusk and Dawn. Although they don't let you take photos of any of that. *sulks* We stopped often for eating and drinking: roast bunny with all its innards, salsicce e fagioli (anyone who imagines that tinned 'sausage and beans' can in any way compare to this simple tuscan masterpiece is dreaming), prosecco, more superTuscan red, cocktails by the Signoria at sunset. The Ponte Vecchio, countless Palazzi, shops and markets, we walked til our feet were sore and drank til our tongues were tired.

And yet we barely touched the surface. Ants and I came away with a long list of places to see next time, a horseback tour of vineyards, a day trip to Pisa,, the famed Uffizi, the Hawkwood painting at the Duomo (which was closed to the public for the weekend)... And that's before we returned to Rome and learned there was an armour museum we'd never even heard of.

I can't wait to go back.

Our new favourite spot in Rome

Ever since Ants declared at Pompeii that he was 'a bit over Roman stuff', I've been trying to hide my disappointment that we wouldn't be able to share the Colusseum. So even Ants was amazed when our trip to the Colusseum left him genuinely in awe.

For my part, I was spellbound. Inside, the Colusseum resembles nothing so much as a very old sports stadium - which is what it is, now that you mention it - and it's amazing to see just how little such things have changed in 2000 years.
No film or book has brought the arena to life so vividly as standing in its empty shell, imagining women in flowing drapes and men in togas streaming in or out, seeing the bones of animals that fought on the sand - and the remains of smaller beasts they fed them with. As autumn light turned to sunset, I was tingling to the tips of my toes with excitement. This is my favourite Roman bit ever.

Kathryn and Jim

My phone bleeped the night before they arrived. "Important question number one. Do you have a hair drier". My former workchum Kathryn (that's Dr Vardy to you, if you turn out to be one of those idiots who assume that if she's in an office she must be the secretary) is practical and organised and if she hadnt become a biochemist might've made an excellent schoolmarm. She'd already emailed through a list of things she and Jim wanted to see, including a rubbish tip mountain of broken roman pottery that's apparently just near our house (so obviously I will know where it is...gulp), and I was beginning to wonder if I had at last met someone who could out-organise even me on a long weekend away.

Next morning, right on schedule, they texted as they were leaving the airport, and I bolted back from the Commissary, armed with proscuitto and other tasty goodness, to meet them on the station platform.

And from there, the weekend blossomed into one of the most spontaneous and chatty and quietly brilliant weekends you could ever imagine.

From lazy lunches and long walks, from the grandest sights of Rome to her least known, from aperitivo to after-dinner pints for the lads while Kathryn and I got down to serious natter about life, the universe, our evolving careers, the trials and triumphs of being breadwinner, our musical pursuits and the crazy things that people say and do.

Ants and Jim had never met, but they talk about as much as each other, and are both musicians and historians. Ants has been contemplating study and Jim has just finished a history degree, sitting an exam on ancient Rome just days before they arrived.

First stop on our adventures together was the Monte Testaccio - a 2000 year old mountain of millions of broken amphorae that were carted into the city filled with olive oil. Unlike other foodstuffs, the oil tended to soak into the clay, leaving it chalky, so the empties were stacked by the city gate, in a hill that today stands 8 or 10 stories high and has trees growing on it! We walked around the bottom of it, admiring the military cemetary on one side and contemplating climbing one wall to souvenir a fragment or two.

From there we hit the Forum, and the standard Saturday queues. Once inside we turned our minds to trying to build up the crumbling red brick into the palatial expanses of the imperial residence, from tiled courtyard pools to the audience chamber, more than 30 metres square and capable of seating 400 to dinner on triclinia - reclining couches.

Up to the resurrected imperial gardens, with amazing views of the Colusseum, and down to the civic buildings that I've walked past a dozen times, but never down amongst them. Temples, market places, triumphal arches... it all seemed much grander viewed from beneath, looking up, not down from the road.

I'll say more about the Colusseum later. But it rocked.

Also high on Jim's agenda was the Augustus mausoleum, older and much mor crumbly and overgrown than Hadrian's, further south, but close to one of the best aperitivo joints in town. Piazza Navona, Trastevere, the Pantheon... I fell in love with Rome all over again.

I heartily wished I could go with them on Monday as they headed off to the Vatican. Ants isn't keen, and I don't want to go alone, so some Saturday, I'll have to get myself up early...

By tuesday, our days of wining, dining, walking and talking were at an end. Jim and Kathryn left for a few days at Sorrento, leaving behind a cheeseboard with implements (totally unecessary, but inspired by a random comment that one day I really should get a smaller chopping board, for serving things on), and a warm glow that might just last all winter.

UK has 'worst quality of life in Europe'

It's official. Not only is the food bad, it's expensive. Not only is the weather rubbish, but Brits get fewer days' holiday in which to escape to somewhere warmer. And despite having the highest average incomes (altho we know LOTS of people on incomes well below the average!), the costs of petrol, utilities, food and other basic living expenses mean that life in Britain is a bit grim.

Tell me something I didn't know.

Rome may have more dog poo, litter and visible homeless people in the streets. The welfare safety net stinks as much as the good name of its politicians. And it is almost impossible for me to buy shoes or bras that fit properly. But I do not miss kebabs that smell of rancid meat, or vomity street corners every Saturday morning. I do not miss gloomy winter days, badly fitting clothes and rampant big chain consumerism.

I do miss friends, folk music and fresh game meat. We're planning a couple of trips back for winter. And when we get there, we will remember why we loved it there, despite the weather, the food and the horrendous expense. It will be worth it, because the people and places we love belong there. And a part of us still does too.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Italian summer shall officially end at 2pm on Monday

After 4 weeks of 35-40oC every day, even this robust little Aussie was ready for a break in the weather. Des the Irishman in the office, sweltering in his shirtsleeves, said he didn't dare complain, because he couldn't conceive of a place where, once the rain starts, itìll stop any time before next summer.

But the seasons here are pretty defined - I didn't believe my colleague Cristina when she said 'the last Monday in August. You watch. It will change.' But quite literally, that morning dawned fine and clear and 25oC - and there the temperature stayed for the next four weeks.

My credulity was tested again when she predicted the next change, for the start of October. I especially didn't believe her when it was 25oC by 8am when I arrived at the office last Monday.

I believed her at 4pm when I went outside to get a coffee. It was blowing a gale, bucketing rain and... 15oC!! And there it has remained, all week.


But I like it - seasons you can set your watch by. I'll even welcome the month of rain that comes in December - as long as it leaves by January, right on schedule.

A very sad day at the office

The WFP office in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked by a suicide bomber today, and five of my colleagues were killed, with numerous others injured. One of the men who died had only recently returned to work after being injured in the last attack on WFP in Pakistan, back in June. Four 'WFP-spouses' were widowed today. Eleven children have lost their Mum or Dad. And though I'd never met them, having just met other colleages from the field, in southern Africa, there is a real sense of 'there but for the grace of the gods' for me today.

Violence against humanitarian workers is growing in many countries: last year, more humanitarian staff were killed on duty than peacekeepers, apparently the first time that's happened. Of those aid workers, half work for WFP. There's a very good explanation of that side of things in TIME magazine.

Fear is a powerful weapon and people who don't want democracy, or education for girls, or freedom of expression, use fear to try to stop humanitarian work from going on. But if we stopped now, the efforts made in the past by my former colleagues would all go to waste.

And that would be a very poor way to remember them.

Rustenberg, home of the Brenda

My first 'proper international work junket' turned out to be not so much junket and lashings of 'proper work': airport to hotel, 14hrs a day inside a conference centre, followed by hotel to office to airport. No leaving the compound after dark, on security grounds and... could this really be the same country that my carefree pal Brenda grew up riding horses in? I mean, Hartebeespoort, the homeveld of my favourite Aussie-hating Saffer (something to do with getting their arses kicked at rugby apparently, but I'm from Melbourne, home of AFL, so can pretend not to care) is just the other side of the kloof of us here in Rustenburg...

So despite the hard work, I was determined to soak up every spare moment, after all I declared to my colleagues, this is my first time in Africa! The women around me, from Lesotho and Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi, all fell about laughing. "Oh girl," they cried, wiping tears "this is not Africa. This is euroDisney Africa! You come to where I'm from, I'll show you Africa!"

And in the next few days, they did. Their hoots of delight as I tackled my first mealie pap dinner, eating with my fingers in the hotel restaurant, wasn't the half of it. In delivering training to my colleagues from across the southern continent, I learned what it's like to be unable to upgrade your vehicle fleet because the fuel quality is so pisspoor that it would murder a modern engine in minutes, the class systems that leave even senior administrators feeling unable to report wrongdoing, the daily rigors of an office life where the internet is always slow, the power goes down more often than it stays up, and its perfectly normal to hear five languages all spoken at once in the back of a bus... with the token white girl in the room the only one who doesn't understand all five.

Our cosy enclave, 2 hours from Johannesburg, really did seem tame by comparison -there was only one storm, and it only knocked out the web for a day. Despite that though, there's a rugged beauty here that I havent seen since I left Australia, and it was amazing to just go for a wander in the mornings and soak up the colour and life... And, of course, I'd brought an Antsy with me, who sauntered off each day with the wife and adult kids of my colleague James, bringing home tales to regale us with over dinner... feeding baby lions, the cheetah park, a safari trip with elephants and rhinos and wildebeests. There was even a zebra out the bus window, just grazing by the road...

Johannesburg was an eyeopener of a different kind - the sort of place where outsiders wonder how the locals ever feel at ease. From the bank that was closed following a robbery (and the fact that they had printed signage for just such an eventuality... obviously not rare then), to the high walls surrounding every home, and the sudden adjitation of our taxi driver as we passed through a township on the way to the airport ... "The doors are locked, but can you just make sure you dont have any valuables on the seats. Wallets, keys, phones, put them on the floor or underneath you." And when we reached the airport, we were staggered to see the two checkin counters - one for luggage, one for your firearms.... since when could you carry firearms ANYWHERE on a plane???

It was just a few days, and hardly enough to test the surface. But we are convinced weìll come back with more time on our hands. And soon