Notes from limbo

It's about two months until my viva, and I seem to be recovering some of the brain cells that were sacrificed to finish writing the thesis. I've also started recovering the draft of Belief that I lost, or rather piecing together a new draft from what I've still got, and since a good chunk of that is in the thesis I've had more than one horrible moment of realising that what I've handed in contains some Glaring Mistakes.

One of the major contributors to the returning brain cells is the three weeks spent in Australia over last month, first for Adelaide Writers' Week and then for some independent exploring, because spending 35 hours travelling only to turn around and come home when the work is finished is really hard to contemplate when you don't have anything seriously pressing to come home to, and because it took me most of our time in Adelaide to get over the trauma of that much time spent in a metal tube in the forcible company of people.

Writers' Week was amazing on several levels: the organisers were both inhumanly organised and superhumanly lovely, the speakers were the stuff of fantasy, and the audience members were genuinely lovely, both during the events and in casual conversation afterwards. Dave and I had the privilege of turning up before it all began and sticking around until it all ended, and we spent an agonised morning trying to figure out how many events we could afford to go to before we were told that they were all free, at which point we decided to go to all of them. And now my stack of books to read has grown exponentially, and my list of people that I'd quite like to have a drink with if ever they're in the area has expanded proportionately.

And a little bit of happy news: The Lauras has been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award. 

Italy, Day 2: Venice

I had thought that my foray abroad would continue in the manner of the first day, and I'd find periodic quiet moments for getting work done, updating social media accounts, and suchlike. As is so often the case, I was very wrong about that. So the rest of the account of Italy is about a week late.

When I woke up in Treviso I had all the intentions of going out and seeing the town a bit before heading on to Venice, but when I popped out onto the street I found that it was raining. And not English mizzle, but the kind of rain that you see in Virginia at the tail end of a hurricane. So I went back inside the hotel and drank coffee and wrote for a while. But eventually my worries about not finding the correct train won out over my dislike for getting rained on, and I dragged myself out to find the train station and, since everyone else seemed to have one and they all seemed to look at me like I was crazy for wandering around without one, an umbrella. I managed to do both of these things without actually speaking, and then managed to check out of the hotel and get myself onto the correct train to Venice also without speaking, so I've added 'move to Italy and become a voluntary mute' to my list of possible career choices if writing doesn't pan out.

About halfway to Venice I had a strange moment. The carriage was full mostly of women, and even though I've spent a lot of time in train carriages full mostly of women this was the first time that I looked around and all of the women had the same yellow-green tone to their skin that I do, and the same ill-behaved hair that I do, and more or less the same nose and eyes and awkward body proportions. And while I don't usually find myself surrounded by people that look that radically different from me, I do generally find myself surrounded by people who are more Nordo-Germanic looking than me, so it was the first time that I've ever looked around and thought, I guess I am normal.

Venice itself looks exactly like the pictures, except it feels smaller and cosier than it's generally described to be, at least in my opinion. I had a few free hours before the evening's event, so I wandered around getting lost and rained on and looking into churches while trying to keep my umbrella from blowing inside out. I couldn't actually read the map that I was given of the city, so I accidentally found the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Frari, and also the Church of San Pantalon - which I personally thought was more impressive because the entire ceiling is painted to depict the martyrdom of Saint Pantalon. I also found the church of San Geremia, which houses the remains of Saint Lucy of Syracuse, which I was not expecting to see when I went in.

Yup, those are remains. Image from Wikipedia, because I draw the line at photos in churches. 

I was scheduled for an evening chat at Libreria Marco Polo, but the rain meant the trains were delayed, which meant that Rossella, the publicist who was coming to meet me; the interviewer; and the translator were all delayed, the latter two extremely so. This was dealt with by repairing to the nearest bar for a drink, asking around until someone who spoke both English and Italian was found, and having one of the booksellers do the interviewing until the actual interviewer turned up. Afterwards the chairs were cleared away and furniture rearranged, two boards laid across sawhorses in the middle of the bookshop, and an immense dinner of Afghani food laid out. We stayed up until one in the morning drinking wine and talking about books, which was probably a little ill-advised, considering that we had to wake up at five the next morning to catch the train to Milan.

In retrospect, it's pretty understandable why I couldn't drag myself out of bed the day after getting back from Italy. I don't think I slept more than five hours a night any night I was there.

Italy, Day 1: Treviso

I want to be an adventurer, probably because I read too many books as a kid which focussed on adventurers. The problem with this is that I am, by nature, a timid person who lives in terror of making mistakes and gets along just fine not speaking to another person for days. So when Lucy asked me if I would like to go on a book tour in Italy, the part that has delusions of dragonslaying said yes while the rest was trying to find the courage to say, "...is that such a good idea?" But no one ever became an adventurer by staying home, and I figure if I keep doing things that terrify me then at some point I'll simply run out of terrifying things to do, and then everything will be easy.

A canal in the rain.

Thursday morning I was convinced I'd never make it out of the country: I seem to have a travel curse where Italy is concerned, every plan I make to visit gets cancelled; on top of that I'd come back from the US on Tuesday with a wicked cold and couldn't wrap my head around the travel details that were in English, let alone all of the ones that weren't. In my defence, the times on all of my tickets and the times on my itinerary didn't agree, which would probably make anyone nervous. There was panic about missing my flight on the bus, the train, the tube, the other train, and all through check-in, and then there was a brief respite followed by panic on the flight and all the way to the hotel that I wouldn't go to the right place and there wouldn't be anyone to translate and I'd be sent home in disgrace. There was so much panic over logistics, in fact, that when it actually came time to speak to a roomful of people I couldn't find it in myself to even worry.

A different canal in the rain.

The first place I went was Treviso, which everyone described as a small town but which pretty well awed me. It looked like all of the descriptions I've read in novels set in northern Italy, so it was like arriving in a familiar town that I hadn't seen in a long time, which is similar to how I felt coming to Britain for the first time. It probably added to the sense of familiarity that the hotel they put me in was decorated a lot like my aunt's house, down to the gilt wall sconces.

It's probably time to get a new camera: that's a marble floor, the doors are marquetry, and the furniture is antique. Also, gilt everywhere.

I'm pretty sure my aunt has actually had those wall sconces at some point. The marble-topped nightstand and alligator album she's definitely had.

The evening was chaired and translated by a wonderful woman called Rosanna Martinelli, who teaches literature in English and who I found accidentally as I was coming down the stairs of the hotel, determined to be an adventurer and do some adventuring, just as she was coming up the stairs to find me since I hadn't answered my room phone. Live translation is difficult and time-consuming in the best circumstances, so we plotted out a good part of the discussion beforehand, so that she could focus on translating what I said into Italian without having to translate everything she said into English first. The evening was held in a gorgeous medieval building (as close as I can tell) and seemed to go over well - there were quite a few questions and several very positive comments. So all in all day one went much better than expected. And I managed to get coffee and get myself on the correct train this morning, so so far I'm ten for ten if you ignore the cold.

My mom asked for pictures. Hi Mom!