signs from above

I think someone is trying to tell me something.
First of all I almost killed myself with a table lamp yesterday afternoon whilst procrastinating on doing anything useful like practise and watching mediocre afternoon television. We had this marble table lamp (not ours, it came with the house) that Tamar had put up on the shelf behind the sofa and as I lay there feeling vaguely buggy and sorry for myself it fell on my head for no apparent reason.
The soft lampshade-y bit... not the skull-crushing coma inducing marble bit.

So I felt lucky, and more than a bit weirded out as to the possibility of some homocidal poltergeist living in our flat... until I realised that the cord had fallen down behind the sofa cushion and I must have pulled on it as I sat back.

Freaky stuff...

The lamp does not live on that shelf any more...

And then later on, I was settling into my now usual insomniac routine (it'll all change once I go on tour again, but for the moment my brain is far too full for getting to sleep before I'm too exhausted to move). Decided to come and check my email, since the wee sma' hours here is conveniently when my Aussie friends are awake back on the other side of the equator. Moved from where I was sitting to turn the laptop on and suddenly heard the sound of a water balloon bursting from behind me. A sodding great big bubble had burst on the ceiling and now there was water streaming down onto the spot where I had been sitting. My flatmate arrived home just as I was banging on the door to upstairs to ask them where the leak was coming from, but we couldn't raise them (turns out someone was home but sleeps with earplugs in. Greeaaat.), so had this weird drunken conversation at 1:30am with one unsuspecting member of that household that we ambushed as they unlocked the front door and have been filling up pots and pans with brown water ever since.

The landlord is fixing it.

But all this leads me to ask the question... what????

Should I start doing more with my days off and spend them at the gym or something? Should I stop sitting on the sofa worrying so much about Life the Universe and Everything. Is this a sign that I should go out and see the new Harry Potter movie? (I like that hypothesis the best)

So many questions.

I'm not going to the gym that much at the moment because apart from the fact that the weather is foul and if I don't have to go out in it on my days off, I don't wanna... everyone at the gym seems to be sick anyway, so I've got more chance of coming down with the winter lurgy that everyone is falling over like flies with if I do go. That said... I still should. There is no gain without pain or something like that... and I always feel great after a good workout.

I'm just not a rainy weather person.

Comedie del'Arte

There are masks everywhere in Venice. As you walk down any street, whether it's a cobbled alley or a wide tourist thoroughfare, there are masks hanging from windows everywhere you look. Most of them look cheap and tacky, as if you would only be suited to buying them if you were an aging thesp with false eyelashes and scarlet lippie, living in a hot incense-filled room with a grand piano and lots of velvet... or an overweight middle-aged Texan couple in hiking boots and 'fanny packs' going "oh honey, isn't that B-eeeewdiful"...
Anyway... that isn't to detract from the true artistry and wonder of the real Carnevale masks. They are amazing, captivating, and intricately both bizarre and beautiful, depending on whether you want just drunken hedonism by the canal or true S&M inspiration a la Eyes Wide Shut. I might add that all photos here are of the real good quality individually designed masks of Ca' del Sol.

One night, weaving through back streets after a particularly nice meal and rather over-effusive waiter (who seemed embarrassingly to get increasingly obsessed with my auburn hair and pale skin over the course of the meal and loudly crowned me Miss Italia... seemingly ignoring the fact that there were 4 other STUNNING girls at the table. I realise that sounds horribly self-pitying but I'm being serious. I scrub up ok, but I don't think I was in the same league as some of them. I didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted at the pity vote)... anyway I digress... we were wandering home and stumbled upon the only shop still open at 11pm. A little man in his mask shop, making them all himself. He was the real artist. There were masks of every shape and size covering every inch of that place. We spent almost an hour in there trying them all on and chatting to him. He got very excited when we told him about the filming in the Pieta and said that if we put his name in the programme he will lend us masks for free if we want them for furutre concerts, so Ruth and I are now talking about the possibility of doing a more theatrical performance of Venetian repertoire in concert complete with dramatic Carnevale masks for our Big Entrance... capes and candlelight.

Anyway, the man who ran the shop was lovely, the place was incredible. And anyone who ever feels the tempation to purchase a mask from that city should ONLY consider them from the lovely little man with the beret and moustache who works late into the night sewing ribbons onto masks and loves Vivaldi...Ca' del Sol, near San Zaccaria in the Castello district. www.cadelsolmaschere.com

piazzas and back streets

this is the square I walked across every morning after ingesting as much coffee as humanly possible at the hotel breakfast buffet in order to start functioning like a vaguely competent musician. We'd walk across here to the waterside and then up to the Pieta...wiping sleep from my eyes and seeing Piazza San Marco before the tables were out and the day had a chance to warm it.

Then we would return, often after midnight, when the weather was too cold for all but the most hardy tourists and the mist was settling down over the canals.

there are so many moments now, where I look at the places I've been and go "how did I end up here?" It is an amazing thing to not only manage to make a living doing what you love, but to get to live a life where you get to see these places. It's the glimpse of such different worlds and places that have been happily existing for hundreds or thousands of years before you saw it that bring this addictive moment of calm that I keep searching for with the pondering of it all.

What do you do when you're in Italy and have spent all day recording in sub-zero temperatures with no coat on? All go on a mission to find the best hot chocolate in town.
We feel we succeeded.
One thing though, chioccolato bianco is lovely to eat, but waaay too sweet to have in a hot drink. Note to self...

This place is right near the Accademia if you ever need to thaw out in Venice...

Don't Look Now

Venice in the misty cold is a very different experience.

The first time I went to Venice, it was the start of a 3 week interrail adventure with Chris, my first real long-term boyfriend, back in 1999. I arrived at Venice train station after travelling all night from Switzerland and doing the last leg of my journey from a tiny suburban train that rattled through the Veneto,after accidentally ending up on the wrong half of the train and getting halfway to Firenze before realising and having a confused bleary-eyed panic at Bologna station at about 4am.
I watched the sunrise through summer fields after not having slept all night, and saw a hare lolloping beside the crawling train before disappearing into the misty olive grove. It was one of those pictures that stays with you for life, bringing with it the epiphany of what film directors actually meant all these years when they talk about the fire of sunrise and pumping dry ice onto a set for 'atmosphere'. I quite literally dropped my bags in shock when I came out of the train station and was confronted with the blue water and the palazzo's of the Grand canal. Sat on the steps there for 5 hours waiting for Chris to arrive from London, not bored but almost in a trance from the poetic fantasy-like vision of it all...having conversations with random strangers as they waited for friends, eating panini and fresh fruit from a nearby stall... I instantly fell in love with the place and we had a gorgeous 3 days there in intoxicating summer heat before moving on to France, Spain and Morocco.

This time I was a veteran. I knew what it looked like. That relationship was long gone (I think he's getting married and moving to Australia. Scary), and this time I was here for work. A week of staying just off Piazza San Marco while we film a drama documentary for the BBC about Vivaldi's life and work at the Pieta church and orphanange. It was all girls (his orchestra of little orphans), so no romance in Venice for me! We had a boat take us from the airport to San Marco (honestly, Venice has to win the award for the most picturesque transport hubs in the world) across the lagoon, and from the moment we all walked past curious tourists with our instrument cases on our backs I knew that this time by the end of the week it would hold very different memories for me.

Venice still has all the magic of an ancient city battling to keep its culture through a modern tourist age. The buildings are still gorgeous and crumbling, the locals still wander around buying their fresh veggies and pasta for dinner... but I did notice a lot more of the tourist extortion going on. Overpriced murano glass jewellery everywhere and cheap Carnevale masks. Slices of pizza for 8 euro when over in Dorsoduro you get a whole one for 7...

In a way I liked having the veil lifted. Realising that just because it was in Italy didn't mean that the coffee would be universally fantastic. Getting used to walking through the Piazza San Marco between rehearsals and recording and wincing at the tourists voluntarily covering themselves in flea-ridden pidgeons For The Venice Shot. Catching the Vaporetto everywhere and wandering around with new and old friends after a gruelling day, managing to regain our sense of humor by employing the time-tested girlie remedies of ordering expensive thick hot chocolate and tiramisu.

That said, we still found the places worth spending time. You just have to look. We found great little restaurants (another difference to my last visit... this time I was getting given 50 euro a day sejour!) where I discovered a new and lasting love of gnocchi al salmone, and enjoyed many evenings standing at little bars with locals drinking quick glasses of prosecco and exploring every tiny side street in the city with only our Rough Guide for, well, a rough guide...

It was cold this time, and the island didn't flood once (a la global warming) in the whole week we were there. The skies were clear, which meant misty mornings walking to the Pieta for rehearsals, and a Venice more reminiscent of a 70's Polanski or Kubrick film. Darker, with more overtones of late nights and garish masks and dark alleys. Somehow it felt more real in the cold. Not as many tourists and less like a Disney film set.

One night we filmed until 1am, performing Vivaldi 'Gloria' in the partitioned galleries of the Pieta by candlelight... tied into corsets and long layers of thick dark skirts. I don't know whether it was the adrenalin of the atmosphere or the practicality of their period dress, but it was strangely enough the warmest I was all week. Can't wait to see it on TV in March.

I still love Venezia. But now I think I've seen its darker side. I wonder how many more experiences of it will I have?

my obsession with picturesque windows

somehow I knew that when I went to Venice I would be taking a lot of photos of windows.
Why do you think I'm so obsessed with them?
A sign of a promising home perhaps... or just my little bohemian fantasies rearing their heads again.

They were all just so beautiful.

I love peaceful looking windows. They feel like behind them is a room with fresh coffee and character...