Having a bit of an urkkkk-cannot-brain-words-what-blaaaah sort of afternoon, which may not be an ideal time to update my blog! But here are some bits and pieces anyway. Next time someone tries to tell me how glamorous it must be, living in Italy, I’ll be pointing them to this post…

• I was chatting with Mum the other day, and she said, “You know, even if you got the recipe for your Oma’s Christmas pudding, you’d go bankrupt making it, it’s got so much booze in it.”
  I have one word for you Mum: Lidl.
  

  It’s blurry, but that’s a 5.79 euro bottle of brandy. Or possibly brandy-scented hand sanitizer, at the sub-10-euro price point, I’m a bit dubious.

• To try and lift the tone from “Zoe’s adventures in low-budget alcohol”, here’s a photo from a few months ago:
  

  Villa La Tesoriera

  One of the nice things about Torino is that when you’re in a bad mood and just need to walk mindlessly until you’re ready to be human again, there are plenty of long, straight avenues to choose from. I found myself walking up Corso Francia one late summer’s afternoon, which is how I discovered Villa La Tesoriera, the grounds of which is now a public park. It’s very pretty, and far enough from my placethat by the time I’d reached it I’d managed to walk off whatever was making me grumpy at the time so I could actually enjoy it.

• I’m writing this with a hoodie over my cardigan and thick socks on — it’s a bit chilly this afternoon and I haven’t been bothered to put the heating on yet. To be honest, I prefer extra clothes to heating; I’m not sure if it’s that heated air is too dry or if it’s just that I grew up with my parents and their “put a jumper on” ways, and now it’s what I’m used to.(I once walked into the kitchen to see my mum holding her hands above the toaster to warm them up while she was making breakfast — most people would have put a heater on at that point, right? Sometimes I’m never sure what’s normal and what’s my family. At any rate, what’s definitely less “normal” and more “my family” is that I mentioned to Dad the other day that I hadn’t put the heating on yet, and his reply was, So you’re reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas exports, good on you.)

  I guess the limiting factor in how far into winter I can wait to put the heating on is actually sociability: I can’t really invite people to dinner and say “byo blanket”. But until that becomes an issue…

• Actually, I’m wearing thick socks and about a million bandaids, because I bought a pair of Doc Martens last weekend and so far in my attempts to break them in I have broken:
  1. a lot of skin,
  2. a pair of socks (put a bit hole in one of them),
  3. my spirit.

  The boots remain as hard as ever.

  Also, the one day I tried to wear them out of the house (very prematurely in the breaking-in process!) I had work meetings all day and also had to walk more than I expected, ie, lots of hobbling in front of my colleagues whom I had to keep talking to as if nothing was wrong. Oops.

  

  AT LEAST MY INNER 14-YEAR-OLD THINKS I’M COOL

  Maybe I should buy some of the 5.79 euro brandy to drink until I forget how much my feet hurt…?