Lady? maid? or creepy old man?

 More on my recent visit to Genoa, including palaces, big dresses, food and music. But this is a trans blog so I don't just post holiday snaps: there's a lot on lovely clothes and female roles, too.

Genoa was once capital of a republic run by wealthy merchants and bankers, with a far reach. Genoese merchants traded all over the Mediterranean and the Near East, the bankers lent money to kings and emperors. And all these rich families - such as the Dorias, the Spinolas, the Grimaldis (who are still rulers of Monaco) - built themselves fine palaces, mainly in the 16th century, and filled them with stuff. There were more than 100 such residences in the city centre. These are the Rolli Palaces, so called because their owners were put on a roll and had to take it in turns to host visiting foreign dignitaries, ambassadors and the like in their fancy homes. 

Many are along a single street, packed together, in as much as you can pack palaces together! 

Via Garibaldi, Genoa, formerly Via Nuova, with some of the Rolli palaces. This style of architecture had a huge influence on the rest of Europe in the 16th - 18th centuries.

  

Most of these are now banks, the Chamber of Commerce, the City Hall and so on. 

Half a dozen can now be visited daily, but at certain times of year they hold "Rolli Days", that is weekends when 42 palaces can be visited, mostly for free. You'll never see them all over a Rolli Day weekend so booking is complicated and you have to pick which you want to visit and the time you'll be there. I stuck to those on daily view, which are impressive enough and form a large complex of art galleries, which I won't go into in detail about except that they have plenty of works from the Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish and French schools as well as Italian paintings, and some incredible ceilings. Rubens lived in Genoa for a while and a lot of his work is here.

"Venus and Mars: and allegory of intemperance" by Peter Paul Rubens. Doesn't this just sum up an evening in a trans club so well? 

The website is here: Rolli Palaces 

 

Hall of Mirrors, Palazzo Spinola

Palazzo Bianchi had a temporary exhibition of Victorian dresses, which I confess I lingered over.

 

Heliotrope or mint? So hard to choose.

 

Mind you, I'm not sure I'd want to live with one of these dollies staring at me, however fun they might be to dress!

Just a few items on view that provoked thought. 

The Victorian dresses were all for grand ladies. By contrast, here is one of Pieter Aertsen's famous paintings of maids (this one's from 1559; I had no idea it was here). 

Wrongly called "the Cook" (because cooks were men), scullery maids like this had a certain, erm, reputation and artworks again and again drop little hints: the open oyster shells, the glazed pot on its side, the chamber pot and its stool right in the kitchen, and the many plucked birds rammed on a spit. She looks at you out of the corner of her eye, inviting you to understand the message! There's so much of this sly, saucy, jokey stuff from the 16th to 18th centuries here. Pills to purge melancholy, they would have called them. So, you saucy trans maids, your real-world sisters have a long history!

This by Veronese (supposedly) troubled me with all this Epstein stuff going on. Susannah and the Elders is a story from the apocryphal parts of the book of Daniel in the Bible, where Susannah is spied on my two high-ranking men when she's taking a bath. They make advances, she rebuffs them, they falsely accuse her of adultery and she faces execution, but the truth wins out in the end. The leering stone satyr behind her looks, purely coincidentally yet very aptly, like Rolf Harris, a dirty old man of our own era. Creepy, victim-blaming men go back a long way.

Anyway, there's nicer stuff, too. Here for Lynn and other dog lovers is a nice pair of doggies looking as friendly and curious as when they were painted nearly 500 years ago: 

And for Michelle and other bunny lovers, here's a family of rabbits by Albert Cuyp (1620-91):

 

Food 

That's enough high art (or sly art) for now. I'm an omnivore and I eat pretty much anything and when I go away I like to try local dishes. I understand the appeal of chain restaurants where you know what you're going to get and how much you're going to pay for it but I am curious, I prefer to be adventurous and I like to support small businesses in preference to multinationals. So I tried a variety of local dishes in small eateries. I've linked to the restaurants but only one has a bit of English on its website.

This was the most curious thing I had:

 

It's cannoli biscuits, which are hollow like brandy snaps and are usually a dessert filled with cream or mascarpone cheese with nuts and candied fruit. Here, however, they are filled with a cod and ricotta cheese mix, topped with caramelised onions that look like anchovies, with tomato sauces made from three different colours of tomatoes, and pistachio nuts. It's the fashion these days to have contrasting textures and tastes in the same dish and this was a mixture of hard, sweet biscuit and nuts with soft, savoury filling and toppings. Not unpleasant but a bit unusual.

In the same place, Locanda Spinola, I also had an amazing type pf pasta I've not had before, known as guitar strings, which are more like plump bootstraps, dyed black with squid ink and with a sauce of tomatoes, olives and chopped octopus, which I didn't photograph as I know some readers are sensitive to alien tentacular things. Really delicious, though, and hard to eat without flicking sauce everywhere. But I am a skilled pasta operator now so there was no mess.

I also tried another local speciality, pansoti, which are pasta parcels filled with borage and herbs and served with walnut sauce. Delicious but very filling. These were at the excellent Buca di San Matteo.

I had a bad experience last time I was in Genoa two years ago and the lunch I had in a famous and highly recommended place that the locals frequent was abominable. Well, not quite all of it: the Diet Coke was OK. So I was a bit dubious about a similar rough-and-ready looking trattoria, Il Fabbro, that also came highly recommended. But this place worked out more than all right. The tagliatelle pasta strips with beef ragù were excellent. It takes hours to make a proper ragù sauce and I think they'd put the work in. Vitello tonnato is thin slices of roast veal with tuna and mustard mayonnaise (which sounds odd but trust me, it works) and traditionally it comes with the veal hidden under the mayo but here the slices were beautifully arranged in a circle with a blob of thick home-made tuna-mustard-mayo on each ...and it tasted incredible. Excellent lunch, all for €26, so no complaints about the price either. Top marks here. 

When looking for a home in the region in 2019 I spent three days in Genoa and I really liked L'Opera restaurant. Sadly, it seems to have dropped its standards and is catering more for tourist tastes. When I got my pasta this time, the sauce had cream in it. Authentic Italian sauces never have cream in them. In fact, if you are served a creamy pasta sauce you should ask your waiter/waitress very nicely and politely if you could see one of the excellent pans they made it in. Follow them into the kitchen and take the proffered pan. Ideally, it will be a large, heavy one. Grip the handle firmly and apply the base of the pan squarely and repeatedly to the chef's head. If it's a good, resonant pan the sound should be quite pleasing, like a bell ringing on a coconut. 

Never put cream in Italian sauce, Luigi. You're not French.  

 

Talking of heady music ...

For all the fine art and holy relics about the town, in my view, the most precious thing in Genoa is in the City Hall, itself one of the Rolli palaces. 

The Paganini rooms contain memorabilia of history's greatest violinist, local boy Niccolò Paganini. Actually, he was possibly the greatest musician ever (save only the legendary Orpheus). There, in the last room, is the "Cannone", the Cannon, his favourite and most used violin, an object so famous and venerable that it has its own bodyguards and only the winners of the international Paganini Prize may play it. 

"Il Cannone", front and back. You can see where the great man's chin has worn away the varnish, the little nicks and scratches. Made by Guarneri in Cremona in 1743.

 

Prizewinning violinist Francesca Dego tells us about it, and how it feels to play it, physically and emotionally, in this five-minute video from her recording label:

I am not a musician but I was awed by this 300-year-old legendary instrument.

Its replica, the Sivori, made in Paris in 1834 at Paganini's request after he'd broken the Cannone (butterfingers!) is also there. You can select recordings of each instrument.

 

Many thanks to the maintenance staff who needed to do something but patiently waited for me to stop gawping before closing the room. 

If violins are not your thing, Paganini was also a leading guitarist, and here is a signed one of his.

Paganini's signature on the left

 

The Cannone was a stunning thing to find and if I'd seen nothing else it alone would have made the whole trip worthwhile. It's an awesome piece of still-living history.

Modern statue of Paganini outside the Carlo Felice Theatre, one of Italy's main opera houses

We certainly have a lot of top fiddlers in our era, too. Sadly, not the musical sort.

That'll do for this episode of Sue's Travels. Thanks for reading. Have a nice weekend. If you can, wear something pretty to beat the winter blues. And listen to music that uplifts you, from any great musician you admire. I think musicians, artists, writers, dressmakers and other creatives do more for the good of mankind than almost any other professional.

Sue x

Chucking it down (and chucking codfish about)

 What's washed away today? 

The weather's been very wet lately and every time it rains hard, we get a new hole scoured into the street, someone's garden wall crumbles, the beach washes away or a tree falls down. The land in Italy is dynamic, never resting, always pushing up, collapsing and being remoulded by nature. You'll probably have seen the distressing pictures from Niscemi in Sicily as a 4km long landslip pulls the town apart. Here in the Alps a dainty stream can turn into raging flood overnight and whole mountainsides can come crashing down. In fact, one road through the mountains here has a gigantic rock on it right now. The melting of the permafrost that binds the rocks together in the high Alps isn't helping either and several mountain tops have collapsed in the last few years. But you don't live here without accepting this reality. 

I have my clothes drying indoors today. Because of the rain, obviously, but I'm partly glad of that because the little boy next door keeps looking under the partition between our properties and must be wondering who the strange lady is. No-one, dearie, just your local TGirl hanging out her smalls. Except kids blab to their parents about things that are not as expected. Little ICE-agents in the making, every one of them! What a pest!

 

Slimmer 

Anyway, the other thing that's coming down is my weight. In January I lost over 5 kilos (that's 11 pounds) so I've got rid of the Christmas excess, and more. Having no wine throughout January helped most and, although it's deemed quite antisocial here not to have a glass with a meal, I have been firm about it with neighbours and waiters. Thankfully, the much harsher drink-driving laws they've recently introduced here have seen more people drinking soft drinks, which is not necessarily better health-wise but it means there's less pressure to have booze. Added to that, my food delivery van brings me loads of ready prepared vegetables and soup mixes that really help. If eating out, I tend to stick to seafood because it contains so little fat. And it's very fresh here so that's a double win.

My weight loss campaign that's threaded its way into my blog throughout its history is in a new phase now, at last, because I start each year with a bit less weight than the previous year, but now I see that my ideal, healthy weight is more clearly in sight than ever before and those cutesy little dresses I've stored carefully might well be able to make an appearance again in a few months. 

Now if that isn't an incentive then I don't know what is!

 

Putting up

It's never dull here and locally they are setting up the annual Lemon Festival in Menton, Nice is readying for its carnival and Sanremo is preparing for the national Music Festival. There are the Winter Olympics further up the Alps, of course. It's all good fun but you can't do anything normal with city centres blocked off for a fortnight and businesses charging too much. As in previous years, I'm going to go away at the height of the chaos!

However, I'm sure you'll agree with me that far more culturally significant than all this big-city razzmatazz is the annual Stockfish Race in the village of Cantalupo, west of Genoa. Each team of two gets a 1 kilo piece of stockfish, i.e. dried cod, and they have to throw it through or onto targets dotted around the village. Every target needs a different skillset: underarm toss, overarm bowling, boomeranging the codfish around corners ... And if you miss, you have to collect your stray fish from ravines, rooftops and so on. I'm not sure what the rules are if your fish disintegrates!

If that's too fast-paced for you, don't worry: Cantalupo has an annual Snail Festival every autumn.

Part 2 of my trip to Genoa next posting, including the all-important subject of local food. Part 1 here: Moby Dick & the Holy Grail (with cake).

 

Fountain representing Sanremo as "city of flowers" and "city of music".

Sue x 

Moby Dick & the Holy Grail (with cake)

Back to Posiblogging™. 

I'm back home after a winter break to the city of Genova (or Genoa in English). Both medieval city and huge modern port, with more palaces per square metre than anywhere else, a musical powerhouse, one-time capital of a potent empire and embracing a centuries-old trans community. 

I was here in 2019 when looking to settle in the region, and again for an exhibition in 2024. This time I went for the historical treasures, another big art exhibition, the shopping and the food. It's full of historic shops, some housing the same businesses for 200+ years, and noted for its fab vintage clothes boutiques. Street food outlets sit next to upmarket cafés selling classic Genoese cakes. In fact, it's a tangle of old and modern, rich and poor, smart and shabby, all cheek by jowl. Fascinating chaos that somehow works. 

I saw so much in three days that I'll write about it over several posts and mix it up so that it reflects the nature of the place. Click to enlarge photos.

 

Piazza De Ferrari, the city's main square, that houses the regional government, the opera house, the former Doge's palace and modern banks.

Cold weather gear 

It was very cold for these parts, with snow on the Apennines above town. My favourite wear these days are some really soft, comfortable women's cotton slacks (with pockets!) but they're not warm so tights and/or leggings were essential underneath. I have some comfortable thermal tops from M&S and I invested in some from Tezenis whilst there. Note for readers from English-speaking countries, on the European continent, shops that specialise exclusively in lingerie and hosiery are a common thing. 

Typical old Genoese lingerie boutique

 

 

Moby Dick 

I went with the excuse of seeing the Moby Dick exhibition at the Doge's Palace. Partly a celebration of the Pelagos Whale Sanctuary that occupies the Ligurian Sea and beyond, it was based around Melville's remarkable book, which I hardly call a novel because of it's blend of factual descriptions of the bloody and dangerous business of catching and butchering whales, its mysticism, its symbolism and its Biblical parallels, its social satire and irreverent take on law, politics and market forces, its sly sexual undertones, its nods to other writers from Shakespeare to Rabelais... A bit of a messy exhibition of old and new artworks, harpoons and telescopes, whale lore and random related stuff that, although eclectic like the book, lacked its coherence.

 

"Jonah and the Whale" by David Teniers the Younger (c. 1640). 

"Mae Day IX (Whe)" by Cosima von Bonin. A stuffed whale toy on a swing with a hip flask etched with the words "Oy Vey". No explanation. Luggy the Crab did feel an affinity for this one, though.

A bit of polemic now. This is what annoys me about modern art exhibitions: (1) These piles of material are works on display and to show them they have hidden the stunningly intricate and exquisite plasterwork of the room behind bare chipboard walls and lighting gantries. (2) Art does not repeat the visible but makes visible, as Paul Klee opined. But you can't propose this kind of art without inviting comparison with the genius, the thought, the care and the labour that goes into other art forms. Compare these piles of stuff with the figures and the palm tree in the work below, with every frond and lock of hair delicately carved from a single block of marble in a nearby church. I boggle at sculptor's skill and care: one slip and the whole thing would have been ruined. As Klee says, you don't have to replicate living things, especially not this intricately, to be a good artist, but piling up junk and expecting praise for it is a bit much. 

Christ and St Peter by Michele San Sebastiano (1896) in the church of Santa Maria delle Vigne, Genoa.

 

So I left with mixed feelings about that show. There are greater treasures below. 

 

Tea and cake

There are few nations that have understood coffee like the Italians have, and Italian-style coffee - espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, moca - dominates today's hot beverage market. To give credit where credit is due, the small, concentrated coffee we call espresso that is the basis of Italian coffee drinks was borrowed from the Turks when troops from the Kingdom of Sardinia, of which Genoa was a part, fought alongside Turks in the Crimean War. That and cigarettes, for which the locals still have quite a fondness. 

By contrast, apart from Marco Polo and Sonia Gandhi, no Italian has ever had anything to do with tea-growing nations. So I've never had a good cup of tea in Italy. Not once. That is, until yesterday when I went into the Signor Kiwi café and had a nice plump fresh croissant and a pot of real loose-leaf tea. I was stunned. So lots and lots and lots of points to them. They're just off the main square behind the Doge's palace.

Signor Kiwi Bistrot from their Facebook page

Hot drinks were generally in order to fight the cold. I don't drink coffee any more but another thing they do well here is hot chocolate. Italian hot chocolate can be very think, almost like pudding you could eat with a spoon. Delicious ones were at the Caffè dei Musei, with a lovely slice of cherry tart, and the very special one at the ancient Pietro Romanengo chocolate shop that was unique (mind you, I should hope so for the price).

This is one of the 100+ ancient shops of Genoa. More on those later.

Genoese cake, i.e. the sponge cake which often has buttercream or lemon icing/frosting on top, is based on a local recipe but it's actually less well known here than elsewhere. Two doors down from Pietro Romanengo is the Klainguti bakery established 1828 which specialises in this cake, or "Torta Zena" as it's known here (Zena is the local dialect name for Genoa).

This sort of cake is the basis for much French baking, like Proust's madeleine. More cakes from the same baker ...

Apart from the two pastries I've mentioned, I was very good and had no other cake. I did have some very good savoury food, though, and we'll come to that. 

 

Relics, devil's chess and silversmithing 

The cathedral is typical medieval Italian "bathing costume" style.

Inside, one half is gothic, the other half baroque jazziness. A dark corner houses a huge navy shell that thankfully failed to explode in 1941 or it would have destroyed the whole building. Outside, the north wall has bits of Roman tomb embedded in it, and a chessboard five metres up the wall under the window. How it got there is the stuff of many legends, some literally and metaphorically diabolical. These days I suspect only the local drunks try to play on it.

But I also wanted to see the cathedral treasury which has some revered relics and their beautiful containers. 

This is their most precious item, a bowl believed to have been cut from emerald and that was said to have been either the container for the paschal lamb at the Last Supper, or the cup in which Nicodemus collected Jesus's blood on the cross, or even the Holy Grail itself. Napoleon stole it, his minions found it was made of glass and modern scholarship thinks it is Islamic from around the year 1000. Still, it's rather beautiful and has an impressive history.

The whole treasury museum in the cathedral basement was designed in the 1960s with this relic as the template for the layout with its lobes and side chambers, which reminded me of the creepy monastery library in Umberto Eco's medieval detective novel, The Name of the Rose. 

The silverware there is quite stunning. The reliquaries contain items believed to be strands of the Virgin Mary's hair, a spine from the Crown of Thorns, the ashes of St John the Baptist, the forearm of St James and more. The quality of the craftsmanship is unequivocal and the precious stones are worth ... a lot.

Intricately worked and highly detailed silver chest for carrying the ashes of St John the Baptist in processions through town. 

 

Silver and jewelled tree surrounding a tiny glass bubble containing hair believed to have been that of the Virgin Mary

Roman onyx plate with 15th-century French gold surround, said to be the plate on which the head of St John the Baptist was presented to Salome. 

 

These are great treasures indeed, but not in my opinion the greatest, which is a musical one. More on that later.

 

Vintage clothing

Genoa has a particular specialism in vintage clothes shops which, of course, are a haven for TGirls. Betty Page Boudoir is highly thought of, but there are plenty of others, like Lipstick Vintage (sadly closed for the afternoon when I came to it).

There are also interesting old clothing items (among much other stuff) in the antiques market in an old palace. As shopping locations go, this is quite impressive. 

There's more vintage clothing and a lot of nice jewellery, old and new, on the stalls in the glass-roofed arcade off the main square, too.

The Catholic church disapproves of trans people. Men are men and women are women, they say. This man in skirts here is a Catholic priest. Go figure.

 

Oh, Columbus! what have you done? 

The most famous Genoese was Christopher Columbus. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Genoa was capital of a powerful maritime empire. Not much land, but dominant on the Mediterranean, Black and even Caspian Seas. The Genoese forts of Crimea are a Unesco world heritage site. Important goods came to Europe via the Silk Roads from China, India and the East generally and the Italian maritime republics like Genoa saw it got to Europe from Western Asia, but as Turkish power increased, trade became harder with this new middleman in the way. Columbus thought he'd go west not east and so cut them out of trade arrangements but the Genoese government wasn't convinced by his proposal. He did manage to persuade the neighbouring Mediterranean empire of Aragon to fund his expedition, suggesting a cheeky ten per cent cut for himself of any resources he discovered. King Ferdinand of Aragon didn't expect him to return so he went with the proposal. The rest, as they say, is history. And Columbus became one of the wealthiest men in history as a result. Donald, you have a lot to learn about business.

Do read the log of Columbus's first voyage if you can. The original text and its copies haven't survived but a summary by Bartolomé de las Casas does and it seems clear that Columbus actually kept two logs, one carefully recording his ships' actual progress and location, the other a fraudulent one recording different speeds to persuade his crew to put more effort in, and different locations as it was illegal for him to be in the waters he went to, which were reserved for the Portuguese by treaty. His contemporary, Machiavelli, the political theorist, would have regarded this as the normal way of statecraft. But we live in more honest times, don't we. (Don't we?)

My speculation on what might have been if Genoa, an aristocratic republic of bankers and merchants, had governed the Americas and not Spain (i.e. the union of Aragon and Castile) is based on what has happened in other colonies that have been put into the hands of other very wealthy individuals, like the Welser family of Augsburg who were bankers to the Holy Roman Emperors and were granted Little Venice (Venezuela/Guyana) and exploited it pretty ruthlessly in the 1530s and '40s, inviting speculation on the legends of El Dorado, or King Leopold II of Belgium's notoriously brutal personal fiefdom of the Congo in the late 19th Century. Things might therefore have been even worse for American natives than they were under the Spanish conquistadores. 

Anyway, digression over, Columbus's birthplace can still be seen. A small medieval house with little in it, that was partly damaged in the French bombardment of 1684.

It's by the medieval gateway on one side ...

... and a huge modern scooter park on the other.

 

The cluster of buildings and tunnel in the bakground are classic fascist architecture from the interwar years. 

You're nobody if you don't own a scooter in this region. 

I don't own a scooter. 

 

More to come soon: savoury food, the incredible Rolli palaces, pirates, top musicians, shopping in old and new style, a tangle of streets, the grand new harbours ...

Thanks for reading. Have a nice weekend. 

Sue x 

It's snow joke

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I feel something terrible has happened."

Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars

I aim to present trans life in a positive way, as I've said many times. Occasionally, something bad happens and I can't ignore it. So today I'd better acknowledge the bad stuff first and go on to the better stuff.

I usually sleep OK; not brilliantly, but OK. In my dreams I am almost always a trans woman who is accepted as such. That's been the standard dream premise for me since I was 5. 

Last night, though, I had a very bad night, troubled by horrible visions: first, a skeletal goat in a cowl standing by my bed; then a serpent convulsing in its death throes, biting itself but also lashing out at bystanders. 

To cap it all, a mosquito bit me. A real one, not a dream one. Mosquitoes in the depths of winter are unheard of! 

If these were ancient times I would take these as visions and signs from the gods, and consult an oracle or sybil about them. But in these less superstitious times I conclude that the traumatising news over the last two weeks has gotten to me. And that climate change is alarmingly real now if there are mosquitoes in January.

I've said here before that the purpose of government is to brutalise, and we see this regularly, such as when you're don't pay your taxes even with a good excuse, when you get burgled but the police don't take any interest, when your social security office is understaffed and you can't get that payment you are entitled to, or when you try to register a change to the gender marking on your birth certificate but you have to go through years of bureaucracy and scrutiny. The list is endless. Or you might want to complain about excessive policing or government economic policy. Then you get shot. Of course, if you kill someone, even inadvertently, your government may put millions into finding you and jailing you. But when a government has enemies, it can freely order the killing of as many as it likes with impunity. 

The story I posted last week about my screaming insane boss shows how hierarchies are often structured to cover up the behaviours and inadequacies of its members, and how bad promotions and choices of leadership can cause so much damage. That bad experience and even worse ones at work, the evil school I went to, the sick religion that was foisted on me as a child, make me chronically concerned about all the harm that is done in the world by a handful of deeply deranged individuals. 

I now live my trans life without reference to the authorities, to doctors, to activists or other people who allegedly act for the public good, our best interests, etc. I don't trust them at all. And when I see ayatollahs killing tens of thousands and presidents threatening, bullying and abusing millions, or dictators invading other countries, and hear their supporters rejoicing at the extermination, then I think I'm right to shun their evil and avoid those in their pay because if I want sanity, security and peace, I'd better look after those benefits myself. 

That said, we have no honest choice but to push back on these evil forces, support those suffering and try to engage the checks on power that are being usurped. Ostracise people you know who support murdering regimes: don't help them, don't buy from them, don't socialise with them, don't co-operate with them, just isolate them. Their outlook and behaviour are vile and that needs to be made clear to them in ways that cause them loss. In so doing, you are not so much losing a friend, relative, supplier, colleague, entertainer or other contact as reducing evil and chaos in your life and community.

My love to my trans sisters who are in the front line of so much hatred right now. Love especially to Hannah McKnight in Minneapolis whose humane and inspiring blogs I have followed for years. Stay strong but safe and know the world supports you.

 

Climate 

 

The view from home on Saturday: sailing under moody skies and choppy seas.

Despite my globally-warmed mosquito, it actually snowed on the high ground yesterday. There was a dusting of white on the mountaintop above home, but it was gone today. Heavy precipitation is expected tomorrow so it may become white again.

Mount Bignone, or Bignose as I call it. 1300 metres high (4265 feet)

This is news because, in the last 40 years, the Alps have rarely had the snow cover they used to. My train journeys this week will pass through the Alps and the Appennines and the dramatic rise from palm-fringed beaches on one side of the train to snow-capped peaks on the other makes this a very panoramic line. 

 

Packing and planning

I'm now packing to go on a city break to Genoa for a few days where the weather looks cool at best, so I'm looking at layers. I have packed some nice thermal vest tops, thermal tights and thick leggings. I also found a bodysuit that I'd forgotten I had. This is the trouble with a female wardrobe - the variety is so great you forget what you've got!

The shopping is way better in Genoa than here so I'll see if anything nice catches my eye.

I'll need to watch my eating when away, though. Since New Year I've lost a very impressive five kilos, or 12 pounds. Maybe by the end of the month it'll be six kilos off in all; that's one stone. But sightseeing is energy intensive so any excess food intake could get burnt off. 

 

Valentino

RIP fashion designer, Valentino Garavani, known simply as Valentino. 

I know I've often poked fun at some of his creations on my blog, especially when looking at his store in Milan's fashion district, but I have to acknowledge he was one of the greats. In some respects, it was his efforts in the '50s and '60s that got Italian high fashion associated with quality.

 

Offline

I'm not taking my laptop away this time so I'll be offline from Wednesday to Friday of this week. 

Stay pretty, stay safe, stay loved. Maybe that's my trans slogan for 2026.

Sue x 

Whackpotology

 A little parable for grown-ups.

Many years ago I worked in an organisation that assisted applicants for research and development funding. I dealt with universities, research bodies, laboratories, government agencies and the like, who wanted advice on a share of big money (millions) to establish international collaborations to advance science and technology, often in new fields like astrobiology and using incredible facilities such as particle accelerators, rockets, robot surgeons and the like. Serious, cutting-edge, exciting stuff, in other words.

I'm not a scientist but international relations are my field and I speak four languages, hence my working there. One day I got a new boss. She told me she'd got this job away from her home a hundred miles away because she needed to be far from her husband whom she could no longer live with. But being the daughter of an elder in the Jehovah's Witnesses, she could not divorce or she would be renounced by all her family, friends and church. So she was caught on the horns of this dilemma: dump the husband but be dumped by everyone she knew or stay put and suffer. Compassion might have been appropriate were it not for the fact that her faith was opposed to scientific advances such as blood transfusions; she claimed the theory of evolution was bunk, and would have cancelled Christmas leave had she been able since Christmas was, to her, "the work of the devil". In fact, that was her favourite phrase. Having no previous international experience, no language skills, an opposition to science, having left school at 16 but now surrounded by graduates and professors - a real fish out of water, in other words - I asked myself how on earth she had got herself recruited to the post in the first place. Coupled with this was her feral and unpredictable temper that caused her to scream, shout abuse, kick the furniture in the office or on trains and in hotels abroad. Sensitive in the extreme to the slightest criticism, suggestion or even query, you just avoided trying to interact with this raving woman. Needless to say, despite a nod to equal opportunities by the employer, her transphobia, misanthropy and other prejudices were expressed openly. Worst - and this is the bit for grown-ups so feel free to skip to the next paragraph - madame here wanted a child but not with hubby, obviously, and not with another man to whom she was not married as that was forbidden by her religion. That added dilemma she "solved" by vulgar and obvious advances and by quietly fingering herself. 

Obviously, even before we got to that last revolting stage, I had started to make complaints via formal staff procedures. Of course, if you are in an employment situation, even though you are complaining of another's antisocial behaviour, the hidden implication is that your boss's bosses made a mistake in recruitment and, as usually happens in these cases, they accuse you of trying to sow discord in a good team. In the end I took the matter right to the very top where I was taken seriously at last but by then, thankfully, I'd got a new job elsewhere. When I left they were unable (or unwilling) to recruit to replace me and for all I know those millions that local researchers could have had probably went to people abroad. All because of a screaming whackpot who'd be appointed to the wrong job and it was too embarrassing for her or her appointers to admit that.

You can understand how an oppressive upbringing and environment that threatens ostracism for mistakes and imperfections can be terrifying. At the most basic level, before modern social structures, removal from the family or tribe could mean death and modern man hasn't yet lost that instinct for self-preservation (oops, sorry, evolution there, my bad). Not being able to let out your frustrations as a kid and so grow out of them because it is severely punishable, surrounded by a world that you are told is evil and threatening, is awful. Ditto that you feel so much shame if the people around you seem superior. No wonder a big but fragile ego develops creating protective fantasies that you are right in the face of all this imaginary oppression. No wonder you later indulge in the unhinged, antisocial, abusive behaviour that you couldn't express as a toddler.

I mention this unpleasant tale of bad appointments, cover-ups, narcissistic rage, overblown abuse, sexual weirdness, and inability to deal with people in a constructive way, just in case you happen to come across any parallels. You can't change narcissists and bullies - their patterns of behaviour and the delusions they create in order to avoid reality and face their demons, their griefs and upsets, get set by early adulthood. But you can get away from them and leave them and their supporters to their dysfunction. 

 

Remedy 

My remedies this week to rants and chaos, and also winter weather, have included food preparation, quiet pastimes and planning and booking a number of little trips away. 

Sanremo town centre today: cold and damp but still pretty

I've booked a few days in Genoa next week despite possible snow as I want to see some of the Renaissance splendours of the city. There's also an exhibition there on Moby Dick and whales in the arts that I'd quite like to see.

In February I've booked a week on the French side of the Riviera to avoid the overwhelming Sanremo Music festival that blocks normal life round here. I hope to see Antibes, Cannes, Grasse, maybe St Tropez ...

In March I will go to Milan to vote in a referendum (democracy is fun if you can get it) and then plan to go to Rome, which I haven't visited for 20 years. 

In April I hope to be in London. And later maybe Austria, Slovenia and Germany. I did miss out on travel last year so I am trying to make up for that in 2026.

As for food, I have a good rapport with the porter here and he's given me a whole bunch of chilli peppers he's just picked from his vegetable plot. Some I've set to dry, some I've frozen and some I've put in olive oil.

Susie reminded me of jigsaw puzzles recently so, as it's wet and I can't go out to play, I did one that I originally bought to survive the pandemic lockdowns but never actually opened. A calm scene anticipating spring.

 

And always a nice soft dress on. Wear something that makes you happy as often as you can. 

Have a good weekend. 

Sue x 

A perfect female body, bit by bit

 Every woman is looking for the perfect female body. So is every man. ...An old joke that. This is how mine's coming along, bit by bit.

 

Sports and diet 

It's never dull where I live and there are a lot of big events coming up, not least the Winter Olympics based in Milan, Cortina and other Alpine locations. I watched the Olympic torch being carried past last Saturday.

 

 

I went to a sport-mad school and did enough sports there to last me for pretty much the rest of my life so I have little interest in them now. As far as winter sports go, I did learn to ski 25 years ago and quite enjoyed it but my calculation of enjoyment vs. cold + discomfort + expense is too heavy on the bad stuff to convince me to pursue it. So, last Saturday, rather than getting into a sporty mood after the torch ceremony, I treated myself at my favourite restaurant. Lifting forks to my mouth is great forearm exercise and I have fabulous wrists as a result of daily practice. I chose the leanest things on the menu: an octopus starter, then fresh pasta with cuttlefish ink and sauce, both really good. I was a good girl and had no wine. I've lost over 3 kilos (half a stone) since New Year so I'm back on track for the body shape I want.

 

Surgery 

Talking of a perfect female body, my friend Roz, who had her gender recognition surgery, facial feminisation surgery and breast augmentation surgery all done last year (but thankfully not all at the same time), tells me she is more proportioned, more feminine and very, very happy indeed. I'm very, very happy for her, too. For once, it seems that someone got good surgery throughout, so a definite win for transition there.

 

Nails 

The one thing that I was looking forward to a couple of months ago was having fun with nail varnish. Unfortunately, shortly after that, I managed to break a nail on my right hand very badly. Half the entire nail was cracked, and the bleeding and bruising were severe. I had to bandage my finger for a couple of weeks, in fact. Strangely, I've no idea how it happened. Other nails are damaged too. It's been over six weeks since the accident and it'll take several more to get back to where I was. 

This week I have been sniffing around the January sales. Yes, there are various boring household appliances I need to get but I am looking for that killer dress, yet to be spotted. I'll buy some new nail varnish when my nails are ready for it. 

 

Legs 

As for legs, it's not the first time I've enthused about Marks & Spencer Body Sensor 40 denier tights but, as last winter, I have been wearing these most days and they are terrific. 

 

Durable, with a good quality/price ratio, they team equally well with smart or casual looks. Warm yet not too thick, I find they don't slip down even after many washes or as the day progresses, and pill only slowly. I've not laddered any and damage has been only toe holes after long use. Highly recommended, therefore. These are my current Top Tights and probably second best ever (first was John Lewis 15 denier run resistant sheer gloss tights, sadly discontinued). I note you can get them in 30, 60, 80, 100 and 120 D, too, and they're now £9 for 3 in UK stores. I have always opted for opaques in 70D but these do a warming job just as well. So well done, M&S. 

Wearing M&S 40D Body Sensor tights

 

Keep warm

Keep warm and stay pretty this winter. It's certainly warmed up here since last week, which was uniquely cold, and these past two days I've eaten lunch outside. So has this early bumblebee. I've never seen one so soon after new year.

 

Have a nice weekend. For good mental health, don't watch the news but get into your favourite outfit and feel happy. 

Sue x