Nostalgia

 Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be ... goes the old gag.

The Covid-19 crisis all over the world means I have not moved from the Italian riviera for over a year, apart from a couple of days for business in Milan.

Being stuck on the riviera is hardly a tragedy, though! I guess the Covid experience has been less severe to me than to most others. It's lovely here: mild winters, and summers that are sunny but not overhot; the sea views and the mountains are stunning; the palms, pines, banana and citrus trees, banyans, eucalyptus, prickly pears and cactuses are green all year; the food is very tasty; and I am in good physical health and losing weight steadily, too. Apart from being always alone with worries about money and rights, I can't really complain compared to what most people have been suffering. 

 

I took this photo as I was writing this post. The view over the Mediterranean from home.

Lush local greenery, which I love.

Snow on distant mountains. Beautiful from afar as it doesn't snow where I live!

But I have been missing my old home in London, England, a bit. I lived there most of my life, after all. I had planned to spend last August there revisiting old haunts and seeing old friends, but it wasn't viable to travel. So I've been going over old photos and also enjoying watching various London vloggers. The dry humour of Jago Hazzard as he informs us about various architectural or transport successes and failures is certainly interesting and entertaining, but if I were to link to any vlogger here it'd be the fascinating artist Nicola White (site here), who is a modern-day mudlark. 

What's a mudlark? 

Well, if you read Henry Mayhew's fascinating and influential London Labour and the London Poor, articles published in book form in 1851 and 1861, mudlarks are people who scrabble in the Thames mud at low tide to try to find lost objects that can be resold or reused, such as lumps of coal. When very lucky, they might find a coin. In previous ages they were pretty much the poorest of the poor. These days, people like Nicola White scrabble in the mud to find objects like driftwood or broken glass and pottery that can be turned into artworks, or simply unearth old objects that are interesting from the point of view of social history: clay pipes, brass buttons, jewellery, musket balls ... not to mention messages in bottles. It's extraordinary that things as ancient as Roman coins and pottery are still there to be picked up from the gravelly mud after nearly one and a half million tides have washed over them since London became a Roman city. It's a mucky hobby, but when you've lived on the river as I have, walked its towpaths and embankments, boated on it, crossed it on bridges and tunnels, even swum in it, then it still holds a fascination, for all its sludginess.

Here's a link to her YouTube channel: Nicola White mudlark; and a link to the ITN (Independent Television News) short feature about her and her weird pursuit ...

Well, it's one way of connecting with one's past.

A dip in the archives

A few random photos from my days in London, with some well-known landmarks...

No idea where this is!

Buckingham Palace

Cuty Sark, Greenwich

Tower Bridge

Chinatown

Covent Garden at Christmas

The Thames at night

Sue x

 

Cari lettori italiani

Benché mi piaccia la Liguria, questa settimana ho avuto una nostalgia per Londra dove ho vissuto la maggior parte della mia vita. Che peccato che gli inglesi si stanno autodistruggendo con il nazionalismo, il razzismo, l'omotransfobia e tutto l'odio che hanno perché non comandano più. Che arroganza! Era un'epoca bellissima quella che ho passato a Londra quando ho incominciato a vivere come donna, ma ormai è finita. Quando anche la storia del Covid è finita e mi sento meno a disagio con tutto quello che è successo negli ultimi cinque anni, cercherò di farmi una vita da donna transgender in Liguria.

Sue x