Meme copied from Rfachir

You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes. Rfachir, for instance, had suffered a major loss, and I only found out from the meme.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

FIRST NAME: Fabio Paolo
AGE: 50
LOCATION: South Ruislip, London, England
OCCUPATION: translator.
PARTNER: None ever.
KIDS: (Hysterical laughter).
BROTHERS/SISTERS: 1 brother, 1 sister, 1 half-sister.
PETS:Never had one in my life, don't intend to start now.

3-5 BIGGEST THINGS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE:

1) Franco Urru, my closest friend since I was 18 has died, an immense grief with many ramifications. (E.G., he died of lung cancer after a lifelong twenty-a-day habit, which has hardened my already negative attitude for smoking. I had been begging him for thirty years to lay off those things.) He was a source of light and laughter in my life, and I can never remember him without a bright smile on his face. It is also atrociously unfair that he should have died so early, when, after a lifetime spent in hope, he had finally managed to build a solid international reputation as the great cartoonist he was.
2) Since last spring I have been treated for a long-term wound in my lower left calf, which, if untreated, could have gone on bleeding and stinking for ever. The plumbing in that part of the human body is rather badly designed, apparently, and can spring incurable leaks for no apparent reason. The treatment is now nearing its end, but I will have to wear special stockings for the rest of my life.
3) I have started seriously trying to do something about my severe overweight problem, which had got much worse over the last couple of years. Results thus far mediocre, but at least I have stopped ballooning. The Christmas holidays don't help.
4) I am working on an extended essay on Homer and a book on the fraudulent peace of 1918-1923. Both are late and the computer seems to have declared war on the Homer.
5) Over the last couple of years I have got to know my half-sister, a fascinating person, both like and extraordinarily unlike me in every way. Before we got in touch via Facebook, I had only met her once, decades ago.

PARENTS: Both in remarkable shape for their years. My father, class 1938, is working on setting up a fashion company, with my occasional help and support. My mother, born 1945, has just been retired - over her own objections - from her post in one of Italy's highest courts, the Council of State, and is developing new interests - and learning to use the internet - to compensate.

Hobbies: maybe I should develop one or two.

Repost at will.

Christmas corner

There is a corner of my flat where it is always Christmas.

I live in a really tiny flat, little more than a bedsit, on the edge of London. I was driven there by the events of the Move From Hell - to those who remember, you know what I mean, and to those who don't, you don't want to know. Among other things, I had had nearly every stick of furniture and electrics stolen or destroyed, and for a while I slept on the floor.

Eventually, thanks to a small Catholic charity found by connections of my mother's family (never underrate the power of an Italian family! - they can even furnish a bare flat for a family member two thousand kilometres away in another country), I found enough furniture and goods to get going; and a kind person at the same charity threw in, free of charge, a small artificial Christmas tree. It was late October, after all, and it would be Christmas soon.

Christmas came and went, and I decided that, rather than place a further burden on my scarce storage space, the little tree could remain in the corner where I had put it, where it was in nobody's way and even sort of decorative. More recently, I have bought a small Nativity to complement it. And here it is, as well as my camera could take them:


According to custom, I will not add in the Baby until Christmas morning. And the blessings of Christmas to all of you, and all possible happiness.