Meanwhile, in a parallel universe ...

Given the dearth of either photos or wondrous jollity to discuss, I decided this would be a good day to illustrate the project I found myself involved in last academic year, when students from first the University of Timisoara and later from the University of Salerno used some of my poems as material for part of their degree course in translation - into Romanian and into Italian. It was lovely while it lasted; I met the Romanian students on Zoom, though the Italians were restricted to emailing me, which I felt was a pity, certainly from my point of view. Recently we were informed, we authors, by email, that we would not now be sent a free copy of the resulting volumes because rising costs had made it too expensive. We were on our own ...

But the good news is that though the Romanian book is hard to get via Amazon (something to do with the book's having been produced in Romania - your guess) I was able to find the Italian one nae bother, ordered it, and received it almost immediately. I mentioned it at the time, but there was a lot going on and I thought I'd wait for a fallow period ...

Like now. So the collage is an attempt to show a bit of each of the two of my poems, already published in English, that were used by the Italian students - though I notice that one of them seems to have ended up being the work of the professor! Because I've been learning Italian for a while, I find it particularly interesting to see what they've done with my words - when I gave it some thought I realised what a complex task good translation of poetry actually is. (If you're curious, both of the poems above were written in the aftermath of the death of my mother; if you're seeing the photo on a decent-sized screen you might be able to read the bits on show.)

In contrast, there's today. The sun was out, but it's vanished in the high clouds and there's a wind - not cold, exactly, but not inviting. Himself vanished back to the surgery before I was truly conscious this morning - last night's escapade rendered me comatose even after some moron across the road started doing something noisy to his car with a machine and woke me at 7.15am. He returned to bed (Himself, not the moron) and I vacated it. Later I went down the road to collect some mouthwash which I cannot say yet is particularly effective in stopping my blistery mouth from hurting. Di, having texted, called in for a coffee and mutual commiserations as we sat in the sun in the garden, just in case my house is a pest-house. Himself got up and thought he'd have some bread and jam; I decided just to drink a can of Italian lemonade, very atypically, on the grounds that the calories in it might keep me going till dinnertime. Another friend FaceTimed me, which was cheering and jolly. And then I thought I'd write this rather than at midnight. 

I think we're both going to be up for the salmon tonight. Hurrah!