a hefty kick up the arse

I'm pretty sure a lot of you will be pretty damn surprised to hear that since I've been in Italy I've kind of gone on a little bit of a health kick. I've been doing a lot of walking, which around Perugia is not a small task given the fact that the streets are incredibly steep (think San Francisco) and to get anywhere here it might be advisable to bring climbing ropes and wear crampons :-) Last night I even went swimming and spent an hour doing water aerobics... I'm pretty sure a lot of you are having a little giggle at the thought of your old Lu, lazy layabout, doing water aerobics but hey, I think it's about bloody time I got my arse into gear and did something. Will kind of got me thinking about the idea when he was over visiting and thankfully my flatmate Marco gave me the kick up the arse that was needed and made me go with him last night. (He just does laps, the water aerobics are for the girls) I have to admit that I really enjoyed it and I'm thinking about taking out a membership and making it a regular thing. Basically, I think Italy is good for me, better food, practically no alcohol, and for some reason I feel like doing stuff. What's better is that my next-door neighbour has said that she'll go with me starting from monday so at least I don't have to brave the swimming pool on my own. Only problem is that she's this incredibly pretty, tanned Italian and I will be standing beside her, the whitest sack of potatoes Perugia has ever seen. I guess I'll also be the fastest sack of white potatoes they've ever seen too as I rush to get in the water before they have a chance to point and comment or take pictures :-p

a bunch of ingrates the lot of them...

Well, I just spent a very long day making a load of sandwiches and selling them to decidedly ungrateful Italians. Truth is I'm bracing myself for the "we can't afford to keep you on..." talk, which incidentally I've already heard about 2 weeks ago. Today, we made a wopping 100 Euro, 48 of which are destined to slip nicely in my pocket at the end of the month - although sadly it could be a lot sooner than that. I guess I have to accept the reality of the situation and get my arse into gear and find another job. Today was not my day, I managed to slice a nice little chunk of flesh off my middle finger while using one of those meat slicing machines, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I'm normally very careful but I was very tired this morning and I had begun to feel like a bit of an expert. It's not that bad but it looks kinda ugly, you can see bone. Ah well, I think I've done a fairly good job of bandaging it up myself andit's nowhere near needing stitches so I think I should consider myself very lucky.

bambini italiani, fousands of 'em

I'm back in Perugia after a very short visit at home, I spent more time travelling there than I actually got to spend with my family but it was worth it. The flight on the way back was interesting - I ended up sitting on a plane at Dublin airport for more than an hour and a half as the airport police searched for a missing passenger! Basically, some guy paid for a ticket, went to check-in and checked in a suitcase, went through to the departure lounge, and went to the departure gate but promptly disappeared as soon as he got outside where all the planes are sitting on the tarmac. When the aircrew realised they had one ticket too many, the police were called in and they went through a rather inefficient process of elimination to figure out who was missing so they could pull his bag off the plane. Paranoia set in fairly promptly that he was some terrorist who'd put a bomb on the plane. I reckon people were forgetting that the luggage goes through xray machines anyway so if he checked in a suitcase it's unlikely it contained anything to worry about. Does seem a bit weird that he scarpered though. I suppose he could have got on any other plane in the surrounding area. Ah well, who knows...

Things here in Italy are going reasonably well but the job looks like it's steadily going down the drain. They aren't making enough money to keep on paying me and I've already been reduced down to part-time hours. I called into work a few minutes ago and they'd only had 15 customers all day. I might be able to make it to the end of October and with that money I could probably manage until the end of November but I'm gonna have to try and find another job of some kind. Hopefully I'm gonna start doing a bit of english teaching in the next few days and that might boost my funds a little bit but we'll see. I might be able to get a job teaching english to kids a few hours a day but to be honest the idea of teaching a pack of little savages scares the hell out of me and they, like most pack animals, will be able to smell the fear. If you don't hear from me again it might be fair to make the assumption that I have fallen victim to a blood-hungry pack of 8 year old Italians and been ripped to shreds in a scene where one might expect to hear the commentary of David Attenborough. Wish me luck.