"Dai, Badly!"

Booyacka and Word to you all my brothers, sisters, and mother. (I know that my father doesn't read this, but if you should be, ditto the aforementioned street greeting dad.)

I've been writing this while listening to the Guardian's podcast about Motown and if you're a lover of that kind of thang, I thoroughly recommend you download it. Ace.

So, what's been going on? (Clever, huh? No, you're right, not really.)

Well, a few weeks ago I bought a rather snazzy trench coat, which while making me look like a member of the Gestapo, is also pretty cool. It's not that I think the Gestapo are cool, but those cats looked sharp. Combined with my blond hair and pasty white skin, I'm really rocking the German look. I just need to get some organisation in my life and I'm there. But please, all mention of the war is strictly verboten.

The hunt for a new place in which I can lay my hat is ongoing. A couple of weeks ago I saw an apartment in the Veicoli (tiny narrow streets in the centre of town, think of the closes off the Royal Mile if you need some kind of Edinburgh-based reference). American soldiers are brighter than the flat was, but despite this it would have suited me nicely. I asked the agency lady how much they wanted as a fee for advertising the flat, and she told me that the fee was 2 months rent. That's 1100 euros for putting an advert in the paper and on a website. I thought maybe that I'd misunderstood, as the agency woman wasn't wearing a mask or had a gun, so I called them back, but lo, it turns out that I was. Needless to say, I won't be moving in there. So, my search continues, and I'm no closer to not needing to lock the toilet door. I dream big.

I've started teaching a group of kids at school, which has perhaps coincidentally coincided with a change in my thinking re: spawn. This may be a knee jerk reaction, but I just don't like children. I'm sure that parents think that their little Princes and Princesses are just adorable, but for me they're about as adorable as diarrhoea. They're ok if the parents are around, I guess, but when they're left in my care I find it hard to connect. They don't find my jokes funny or talk intelligently about the difference between 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 (the only football reference for today). Also, they annoy me intensely and I worry that they might break. They're only small after all. Sadly, the course lasts until May or something ridiculous like that, so it's just a case of gritting my teeth and thinking of happier places til then.

Last week, for some inexplicable reason, popularish English troubadour Badly Drawn Boy came to Genoa to play a gig, which I went along to. It was good, even though I don't particularly find his music inspiring. Francesco remarked to me during the gig that I was probably the only person there that fully understood what he was singing about and saying between songs, and he probably wasn't a million miles away with that assertion. B.D.B., as his mum and non-fans call him was probably a bit disconcerted when a couple fo people shouted "Dai, Badly!", which sounds very much like "Die, Badly!" This was only at the start of the gig too, so he was probably worried that we'd be a bit of a tough crowd, but it just means kind of "come on, yeah!" His band looked strange though. I'm sure I recognised the keyboardist from somewhere, the drummer had a mouth too small for an adult male's face, and his bassist looked like a newsagent. Rock'n'roll! Good times though.

Right, shortish one today, need to go to work and it smells like my banana bread has finished baking. Delicious times.

Ciao for now, party people.