Monday, November 18, 2013

Boo Hoo Its been raining for weeks- or it feels like it!

Am sitting here at my desk in my little "study"- I have a good imagination- not everyone would consider it a study but it makes me feel good saying it is.
This is the first day that it has not rained in over a week. It was sunny this morning .Then by lunch time it was overcast , but it has not actually rained yet.
Life is so very different here in winter.
Not so far as I am aware "good" different. It feels like going into survival mode,  hibernating, finding ways to keep warm, being shut in all the time, getting lonely..........
However who wants to read about the miseries of living in a lovely little Italian town, hearing Italian spoken all round, eating pizza and all sorts of other Italian dishes, going out for real coffee every day, lighting the first fire of the season in the hearth in the new house in the country, going to markets , meeting friends for lunch..........and so on.
I think it is the feeling shut in part that is the most difficult . In summer when i am home my door is never closed. The windows are open. If I look out then there are usually people about somewhere- either hanging out washing, shouting to each other, sitting at their doors enjoying the heat or going off to do some shopping. This last ten days (which feels like a month) when it hasn't been heavy rain then it has been foggy or cold and everyone is indoors.
I should have got on a pair of wellies( if I had a pair) and a strong umbrella (did I mention the winds!) and marched off up town in a jolly fashion and commiserated in a cafe with all the other people who were fed up with rain too.
I realise that in other countries this is just normal for this time of year but i think I have forgotten how to er enjoy bad weather.
There are no big shops to wander round in Pisticci, no cinema and I am still waiting to hear about a possible yoga class.
I would not have believed before moving here what an impact the weather can have on my life.
But nearly  the end of the moany bit - it has been excessively wet for a longish period. I seem to remember from other years that usually there might be 2 or 3 days of rain and then some middling days and then a few really nice ones  and then the same again.
I salute all the people who live with unremitting greyness.
On the positive side , the weather will presumably not be like this for months on end - or I will buy wellies and learn to deal with it like most of the rest of the world, and, I have been making my house so colourful and warm inside that it partly makes up for outside.
Maybe I should cook more and try out all the recipes and Italian food that I have always meant to and never got round to. And as i might be in the country every weekend where there are lots of fruit trees and the opportunity to make a small garden I could make "stuff". May need to look up a few books for that.
But mostly I must get out more- I guess it doesnt matter where you live in the world , how pretty or ugly or boring or interesting it is if you get too isolated for whatever reason it's not good.
Sometimes I think about the title of this blog and i know when I thought of it i was not envisaging days stuck inside looking at the rain pouring down.....
So apologies to anyone reading this  and especially to myself - will be back to life as a story I like by the end of the week - whatever the weather.
Have put some sketches I did of my  studio with this and none of the rain.
this is in the country house



got this pretty container as a gift


this is my little flowerpot heater

looks pretty colourful I think