My abiding memory of February is of the wind. Wind howling in the lime trees beyond our street, wind rattling the windows and lashing about the house, wailing down the chimney and sending garden furniture and plant pots scudding across the yard.
Read MoreOne of my favourite kinds of YouTube videos is the nighttime routine. There’s something oddly soothing about watching people wash their faces, pack their bags for the next day and do yoga. Those videos always make me want to reassess my own evening routine and make some changes (that no-screens before bed thing is still a work in progress).
Read Moren his book ‘Venice is a Fish,’ Tiziano Scarpa writes at length on the potentially lethal effects of being continually surrounded by the beauty of this city:
‘In the historic centre, the aesthetic radioactivity is extremely high. Every angle radiates beauty….you are face-butted, slapped, abused by beauty, Andrea Palladio topples you over…Mauro Codussi and Jacopo Sansovino finish you off. You feel terrible. It’s the famous illness of Monsieur Henri Beyle, a disorder known to history as Stendhal syndrome.’
‘the tourists are lucky: the moment they find themselves confronted by a splendid piece of architecture, the neutralize the aesthetic radioactivity by boxing it away in a camera.’
[Tiziano Scarpa, Venice is a Fish: A Cultural Guide, Serpent’s Tail, 2010]
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