My life, mostly, as a story continues........

It's been ages since I wrote on this blog because I always think it has to be perfect and fascinating, brilliant and witty, entertaining and knowledgeable etc etc.......
It's a wonder I do anything with an attitude like that.....being a perfectionist is dumb ( though it does keep me trying ...)
On the other hand it could just be that I am lazy and boring and illiterate........
So now that I have got that out of the way,  how is my "fairytale" life going?
Well , more than once recently I have pondered on the fact that I appear on the surface to have become  someone I would have liked to have been and am mostly living a life that I could not have dreamed of because it's way beyond anything I thought I could ever do.
Before I go any further , to add a reality check, am still only eating softtish food as I can't afford to go back to the dentist, will probably still have a roof leaking in new places and an alarming bulge in the ceiling under upstairs plumbing this winter as I need to eat before fixing the roof, I won't be turning the hot water on now till I go back to once a week in October (It'll be lukewarm all summer- who needs hot water when its 30c outside.) and I will likely be back to wearing 3 jumpers and a hat inside from about november till march.
But mostly it's worth it.
I get to live as an artist. I paint portraits which people buy to give as gifts. ( that seems such a big thing to me- , to make something that is for a gift.) My studio despite its failings is so pretty - and in summer it's perfect. The weather is miles better than that in the uk. The local people are spectacularly kind and friendly. I get to practice speaking another language- and am mostly proud of my efforts. I get to drink great coffee and I can afford to buy good wine and eat (well, sort of......)delicious food. I can wear anything I like and never be overdressed. I walk up town and greet people and they greet me back . I go to concerts and plays and hear musicians in both small venues and out of doors and enjoy theatre completely different from anything I was ever used to. Recently I have worked alongside other artists which is a great treat.
But mostly I get to live in another culture where despite my lack of language I have felt at home.
Today , as I was passing the nearest restaurant I was given a copy of a new guidebook made by some of the people of Pisticci  showing some of the local attractions and traditions and I am in it too. That makes me mostly very, very happy indeed.
 I am including some photos which I will probably turn into paintings at some point ,including my new little arbour and winetable.
Today am off to meet a friend for coffee and prosecco because it's Thursday, finish a portrait, write another blog post, pay a bill in the commune and then sit on my doorstep with a glass of wine- at least that is the plan. I got up at 6.30am so that I could have time off for coffee, but as I am sitting at the table with the door open and the sun streaming in, it's not exactly been a hardship . I am looking over at my new summer fireplace which always makes me smile.
Hurray for summer and Pisticci.

My "palace" in Pisticci

It has been such a joy to have my house back. No more flinching when I hear a particularly loud bang, no more plaster dropping from my roof into my studio, no more  wondering whether my house would survive - or indeed myself , and no more opening the door and being confronted by scaffolding

I can relax again........

I decided that I need to be nice to my little house and give it some TLC after its distressing experience.

So , I am never going to refer to it in a derogatory fashion again- no more apologising for it being an unrenovated house with a few defects.

Now it's an old and well loved building with a lot of history - which can be seen if you look closely.  It has been here , I think , for hundreds of years and lots of people have lived in it before me and hopefully more will after me.

I am lucky that it is not perfect because then I can be as imaginative as I like with it and I have some crazy plans for future decoration. No limits.

If the walls were perfect then I probably couldn't hang as many paintings on them- but I love living in a gallery and being surrounded by works of arts, portraits of family, old bedspreads. I love lots of colour!

I have so much space to play with and almost every part of the house I have painted or worked on myself or james has fixed is special. My painted fireplace with the roaring fire still makes me smile every time I look at it. The lovely yellow wall in my new sleeping chamber ( sounds more fun than a bed room.)  is a colour I mixed myself after I had been to Florence and seen it in an old cafe with crumbly walls and great atmosphere.

My gallery was painted a sort of orangey terracotta colour one night when I was in the mood for a change and fed up of white.  
The green door was symbolic- not just because it is a traditional colour here, but because I always used to want to blend in and not stand out  and was a bit timid so I changed it from brown to bright green in the hope that my personality would brighten up as well. ( worked a bit...)

Nearly everything in my house has a story.  The crazy tiling in my roman style shower room was decorated with sequins after I had seen a totally weird bathroom in a cafe in Matera.  Or the fridge freezer that a friend gave me several years ago which transformed my shopping life (I can buy ice cream.) and makes me think of her every time I open it.

There are 2 little soft chairs which came with the house, I re-covered them and sometimes I wonder who has sat on them before. They were the first chairs I had ever covered myself. And when I look round I see stories everywhere.

And outside my flowers are back at my door. I have bought some more to celebrate and I managed to save the plant that is growing round my door and  am very proud of it. My first yellow rose is out.(thanks Hans) my fig tree is not dead and quite a few of my plants are getting quite big. I was never a gardener so anything that survives me is a surprise. 

So apologies to my delightful little house/studio/palace and I will  never again refer to it as a shed. I will love the tinkling of raindrops into plastic boxes until I repair the roof again,  I will love the crumbly plaster because it lets me cover it with paintings and bright colours.

And found this old poem

let me grow lovely growing old

so many old things do

laces and ivory and gold

and silks need not be new

and there is healing in old trees

old streets a glamour hold,

why may not I as well as these,grow lovely growing old?

A Bad Dream in Pisticci......

I haven't written here for several  months now and a big part of the reason is that people have bought the apartment above me and are having it done up and it's driving me to distraction.
there is no soundproofing and so drilling, hammering, banging, scraping etc etc sound at worst like they are in my house and at best like my ceiling may fall down. (I have gone to look on numerous occasions because that is what it sounded like.) And to add to this there is now scaffolding right across the front of my house- so my nice little garden of plant pots had to be moved and there are large planks of wood resting on the other part of my house which builders use to stand on to fix the end wall of the apartment.  So far they only made one tiny hole in my roof (which they fixed as soon as I pointed it out.) but  trying to work while people are walking about virtually on my roof ( 2 layers of tiles between them and me) is actually a bit scary.
They began work after some false starts in november.  It was supposed to be finished by end of December, then end of January........
Most days work starts around 8am. They dont normally work at weekends, but they did one sunday. So since work started there is no chance of a lie in, no siestas, no peace to dream up new ideas and since mid january an ugly great big bit of scaffolding is the first thing I see when I go out my door.
Sometimes they have a day off - and even a week once - but as no one told me - I still got up really early so I could at least have my breakfast in peace. (
If I didn't work from home then it would be better- but I do work from home. So to make matters worse I am finding it very difficult to concentrate and am already late with several commissions. I had a lot of plans for new work to start in January as I really need to earn more. I have not had the space to start anything new.
Not having my creative/safe space is the most difficult thing to cope with.  I can do practical stuff but my imagination seems mostly to be concentrated on revenge fantasies and arguments in my head with various people. I am used to thinking that I am relatively tough and can generally find something  or some way to get round a problem but this is too close to home.
My home/studio was my safe place where I could retreat to and relax and create. It was where I felt secure. When I got a bit down I could paint or draw something and that always made me feel better.
I suppose this work upstairs will end sometime - though it doesn't look like it will be soon. And the people who ordered the work will have a lovely apartment, and the builders will get paid and I will get my house back just the same as it was before and  have to work twice as hard to make up for all the time that I couldn't work.
(I have tried- earphones - doesn't work, considered plein air painting- I hate painting outside - writing in cafes- that was a bit better- deciding to not work - got enormous bills from dentist, etc, etc so that was no good

- decided I will ignore noise- expended so much energy ignoring it that there was little left for work- decided to stay up all night and work, then realised I couldn't sleep through the day- move to another country- not enough money.)
I am not happy.
Well., having said  all that, the rest of life in Pisticci is still pretty good. The weather has been on the whole lovely- I can sit outside and read. I managed to get my scooter started again after 3 weeks off the road- and discovering that my driving licence had expired. ( and my ID card) I am still trying to pay my house tax which I went to pay on the first of december. I am going to a play in Italian on friday night which I expect miraculously to somehow understand and I expect by the summer this  horrible time will just feel like a bad dream.......

Hurray - the blue skies are back and the world is the right way up again.....

I like to read the previous post before I start so that I don't repeat myself and was thinking how ironic it was that after all my complaints about the rain - cyclone neptune had  still to arrive.. I was very fortunate as apart from even more musical plinks and plonks as water dripped into boxes in the attic and nearly running out of towels to stuff under doors to keep the torrential rain out, my house and me seem to have survived more or less ok. There were floods and landslides in various areas nearby and a big LIDL store sank into the ground at one side.
However after all that the sun came back. Obviously the sky has run out of rain now- well it's a nice thought!
And I have found a great yoga class with the teacher I liked very much when I went before,  a lovely group of people and am now as flexible as a piece of string but failing miserably at standing on one leg. ( The class is held in TILT the centro regionale per la creativita di pisticci - which does all sorts of things from showing films, holding classes on computing, playing a harp and  countless other things.. and I am looking forward to doing other activities there hopefully in the future.)
Today I have been outside most of the day as I have finished my last commission before Christmas and it was warmer outside than in my studio - but am not going to moan about the cold.
I have had a lovely day and time.......

view from dirupo on way to centre

want to paint this sometime

balconies

stairway to piazza san rocco

looking over dirupo

all the shops have red carpets at their doors. I love it.

piazza umberto primo

met the artist who made these out of recycled stuff.

my decorated door. (what a lovely reflection)

my other decorated door. (first time)

hurray for sunshine

lots of my plants are flowering

my cute letter box

decorated studio

 to take as many photos as I wanted so here is a photographic report of Pisticci today looking as beautiful as ever..........

a tour

I  made this little video this morning just to see if I could.

carnevale and staying in studio

As usual I would have missed Carnevale this year if it hadnt been postponed due to bad weather and there were lots of notices on facebook giving the revised date. There had been no notices announcing the original date. Then I would have missed it because it rained a bit on the revised date and although I went into town, hung about and had a lovely cup of tea and plate of biscuits in the grand cafe malena .(recommended) there was no sign of a parade though I saw some children dressed up. So returning to my studio I put the heater on and had just got settled when I heard some very loud music.

Grabbing my camera, purse and an umbrella I headed back into town and found a big party going on in the corsa. There were several floats towed by tractors and lots of people in costume dancing and milling about. the noise was incredible. 

I hung about taking photos where I could  enjoying the atmosphere and wishing I was part of it. Saw lots of people I knew and have photos to use as reference for my next painting and a possible commission  for a portrait. It seems to be at the moment that just being about is my best marketing strategy.

I am enjoying staying in the studio - even though it is cold- as I find my Italian improves as I have the opportunity to talk to more people, I would have  missed the Carnevale, if I had been in the country and I love walking into town in the mornings - and sometimes the evenings for a coffee or tea and a chat. 

I like being among people. I think my hibernation in the country is coming to an end.

A quiet life in the country

Oh dear, I think when I called this blog, My Life As A Story,  I really meant my life as an exciting story with lots of weird and wonderful things happening. Its been a bit quiet recently.................................................
I suppose flying off my scooter  was quite exciting , in a painful sort of way! Then being reasonably vain and not wishing to inflict my horrid looking face on other people I did sit around for a month - so adventures were a bit limited. Unless you count the time I just had to get some stuff from my studio and rushed from the car to studio in heavy disguise and then back again . Was still limping at that stage so luckily no one saw me as I may have borne a passing resemblence to quasimodo. (limp - creep-limp-creep!)
Admittedly going out on my scooter now feels a little more of a scary adventure than it did before. Am on the look out for dogs round every corner. Have already been chased by 2 more and spoken to the owner. But now know that if a dog jumps out at me I will stop. I  don't believe any longer that they will not attack my scooter. Having tried this - it looks like they lose interest and go away.
It has been very pleasant though- living the quiet life. I have been baking. Due to a temporary financial crisis I have been using up all the things in the cupboards and freezer and quite enjoying myself.
I invented olive and parmesan scones which apparently are just perfect with a glass of wine while in the bath. I found a tin of pineapple - but not the tin opener- so after some work with a hammer and screwdriver I made pineapple crumble. But what I am most proud of are my chocolate squares - made from a large lump of old cooking choc which had gone a bit white round the edges, half a packet of slightly soft biscuits, some marge  and half a bag of raisins. Yum!!
I have also found lots of old soup mix hidden behind things and we having been having soup and olive and parmesan scones for lunch every day.
I cant eat properly - my teeth are still partly numb, but improving- since the accident. So most of my cooking and baking has been with this in mind.
Sunsets have become important so I have to rush outside with my camera to photograph the best ones.
However the thing I have most enjoyed in my temporary quiet life, is my 4pm finish.
At 4pm I stop work, cooking or whatever and go put my pajamas on (think fleecy red ones) go find a glass and fill it with a really nice 15% red wine, shut the curtains, put on the heater, sit on the furry rug on the sofa and organise the night's viewing on TV. And that is my idea of a blissful winter evening in Italy.
We have been out and had  a lovely evening in Casa Elizia in Pisticci with friends in a beautifully restored house in Dirupo. A glass of wine, interesting local and sicilian snacks and good conversation - a night I would like to repeat.

But for all the rest, keeping warm , being entertained and a glass of wine will do nicely.
(The last photo is my temporary studio space in the country.)

Back In Pisticci

I have only been back a week and been busy catching up, tidying up and trying to finish a very large( for me)  portrait of four people , but I still managed to get out for coffee and take photos. Also been getting my studio  set up for colder weather - found the rugs under a bed and spread them about, tested the gas heater, found my hat, hung up the blanket in the doorway and moved my internet connection to the small room at the back..Have two more portraits to get started on from Monday so am nicely busy.

sad reminder of summer and my exhibition.

So just posting photos today. Will get back to writing about life here when I get back into it.(Soon!)