My short story Singularity, which has been longlisted for the BSFA award, is this month’s Editors Choice on the Shoreline of Infinity website, and you can read it for free.
I hope you’ll like it.
Editors Choice: Singularity
Four Weeks/One New Skill: Three balls juggling
So apparently my knitting needles will arrive tomorrow, while my yarn is still missing-in-action, lost somewhere in the wild – and this means I won’t be able to start my knitting (self) challenge in the month of February. But still I do not want to waste this perfect month – four weeks starting on a monday.
Sop I had to find a plan B.
And because my brother will not allow me to practice the blues harp while he’s working six feet away from where I sit, and because Texas Hold’em, while a fascinating subject, would have meant reading a book and then spend time playing against a computer, I decided to go with three-balls juggling.
The reasons:
- it sounds like a reasonable pursuit
- and something I can do in four weeks
- I do have a set of juggling balls hereon my shelf
- instruction can be found for free on the internet
- it’s a physical pursuit that is good for the brain
- it might turn into a last ditch way to make a buck should I lose everything
- (but hopefully it won’t come to that)
And so here we go.
Today I started by tossing and catching a single ball in my right hand, and then in my left. Not exactly rocket science, but what the heck, one needs to start somewhere, and this is the kind of exercise you can do while watching a movie.
But anyway – the February Four Weeks/One New Skill is on.
And it’s generally pretty fun.
Us and time: The Dig (2021)
Based on a novel published in 2007 inspired by real events, The Dig, that is currently streaming on Netflix, is a straightforward historical drama, built on the 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo mound. Ralph Fiennes is Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist that is hired by upper-class lady Edith Pretty (as portrayed by carey Mulligan) to excavate in her land in search of hidden archaeological remains.
The movie is beautiful to look at, and takes its time to linger lovingly on the British landscapes in which much of the action takes place. A number of plots intersect in the story, that refreshingly gives us the relationship of two individuals that have no sentimental or sexual involvement whatsoever, but just a shared love and awe for history and the passing of time.
Along the way, the film finds the time to portray the effects of class on academical endeavours and research – Brown’s a lower class farmer, considered little more than a digger by the archaeologists that try to step in once the treasure’s unearthed, and the archaeologists are still just middle class when confronted with the rich upper class miss Pretty. The way in which the social class dance is carried on is part of the fun of the movie.
And we also get a romantic story, involving two side characters – quite superfluous, but at least played with elegance. Indeed, the movie (and the novel) play fast and loose with some historical elements to add flavor and romanticism – as I mentioned, somewhat superfluously.
At the core of the story, there remains the relationship between people and history, and the very intimate relationship each one of us has, one way or another, with time itself, and what we make of it.
An excellent movie, filled with great actors and beautifully shot, it’s highly recommended.
Pickwick
Pickwick was the brand of the tea my grandmother used to buy – over forty-five years ago. The brand, I find out checking on Amazon, is still around – but they no longer use the coach as a logo. That’s where I first heard the name, and associated it to… well, horse-drawn coaches.
Later, of course, I learned about the novel – through a very funny adaptation produced by the Italian state television – back when our TV aimed at educating the masses while entertaining them. before reality shows, in other words. And then in school – I was bored to death by a simplified version in English I was saddled with, one summer, when I was in middle school. When I finally made it to the novel proper, in the first year in high school, I was taught it was an inferior work, a juvenile effort from the genius that would later give us Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. Pickwick Papers? Rubbish.
Continue readingSomething for the weekend, again
I am feeling the cold a lot, this year – it must be the advancing age creeping on me. And because it is the weekend again, I will wrap myself in a bunch of blankets, put the electric kettle on, and spend two days drinking tea and taking it easy.
On the plate for this weekend I have a re-watch of the 1980… ehm, classic Humanoids from the Deep, and a re-read of E.M. Forster’s fundamental critical work, Aspects of the Novel.
Because the thick, I guess, is balancing the high and the low.
That, and staying warm.
Even the best laid plans…
… of mice and men, are nothing when faced with the Italian post service and, more generally, with the wilds of Astigianistan.
So, the plan was to start in February and learn a new skill – following the suggestions of my followers and an accurate research, I decided to try my hand at knitting. Simple, cheap, relaxing, and at the end you have a pair of socks, or a scarf, or something to show.
Nice and smooth.
Or so it seemed.
First – the local (8 kms away) haberdashery shop is closed due to COVID. If I want to buy needles and yarn, I have to go somewhere else, which at the current state of affairs is not possible because… COVID. There’s no way I’ll take a bus (should it stop here, which is not a given) and then a train, to go somewhere looking for a shop where I can buy some wool yarn and a pair of knitting needles.
Continue readingThe Day of Memory
January the 27th is the Day of Memory in Italy and everywhere else, in which we remember the millions that were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps – many of which were Italians, sent to the camps by our own government. As those that witnessed the horror are passing away, it becomes particularly important for us to keep the memory alive, so that nothing like this can happen, ever again.
And because I believe, like Leonard Cohen did, that the Nazis were also defeated by songs and stories, here is some music…
Karavansara 