Now

Focus

• Learning a new skill slowly
• Finishing old projects
• Cooking from one book
• Reading more fiction

Otherwise

Most weekends lately have gone into the occasional bike ride and long walks. Lately I have been walking along the canal every couple of months.

I have been learning to sharpen knives on quiet Monday afternoons and keeping a small notebook of what worked. Oddly enough, I still carry a secondhand bicycle almost everywhere, a habit picked up from an uncle with a very full shed. At the moment most evenings go into film cameras, with the occasional detour into reading on the train.

On the reading pile this winter: The Hare with Amber Eyes, plus two cookbooks. The current small project is a dare from a friend, done mostly in the spare room.

Work is quieter than usual, which leaves just enough energy for evening classes on most Thursday evenings. Whenever the weather allows, I usually end up at a borrowed workbench with a pile of offcuts.

When I get stuck on the train into Bologna I go for a walk along the old railway line, and the answer tends to turn up on the way. I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Bologna or further away, even if it takes a few weeks. Funnily enough, the spring light in Bologna makes everything feel slower than planned. Writing things down has saved me from buying the same tool twice many times, most recently in September 2024.

My Wednesday evenings mostly belong to the local choir, unless a retired teacher down the road needs a hand. Feel free to borrow any idea about film cameras from this site, just do not sell it back to me. Small, regular habits like keeping a notebook in my coat pocket and labelling every box have done more for me than any big resolution.

An old colleague once told me to do the boring part first, and it turned out to be right. A lot of this would not exist without a friend from the walking group, who patiently answered my questions late in 2024.

If something here is out of date, it is probably because I spent a good part of 2022 out on the bike instead of at a desk in Bologna. The best ideas tend to arrive by the window on long spring evenings, usually just after I have put the pencil down.

Most of what ends up here starts on the back step at least once a month. I read The Old Ways for the first time one Thursday in October and still go back to it on rainy weekends. Visiting a new town, I always look for the market and the library first, just as I did when I moved to Bologna. Weekends are usually split between baking bread on Sundays, cooking for friends and whatever is half-finished in a corner of the shed.

Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made quietly, mostly out by the old town. The design of this page is deliberately plain so that it will still work on whatever comes next, much like a tin of pencils. To be fair, I would rather do one thing cheerfully than five things in a hurry, and years of letter writing taught me that. Long train rides out of Bologna are where most of this gets written, with a folding table on the seat beside me.

I have a soft spot for old bus maps and cookbooks with notes in the margin. Patience is the most useful tool in the drawer, followed closely by a roll of brown paper and a wobbly wooden chair. I try to keep things simple, which mostly means asking someone who knows and doing one small thing at a time.

Pages here change slowly, usually whenever I have a free hour, and that suits film cameras just fine. Most of my reading happens in a café near the moor, a chapter or two at a time, with a radio from the seventies close by.

On a good day on the balcony I make progress, and on a bad day I at least learn what not to do. I picked up a kitchen scale during the spring of 2023, and it has been close at hand ever since. Every December, near the coast path, I look back at the year so far and quietly drop whatever is not working. Some of my favourite things, like an old notebook, came from flea markets and were mended at a friend’s place across town.

There is no grand plan behind any of this, just checking the measurements twice most mornings before work. In 2022 I moved to Bologna, which made swimming in the lake much easier to fit into a week. Usually, the market in Bologna on Tuesday mornings is where I find cheap jars, string and good conversation.

The current small project is a birthday present, done mostly in the small room above the stairs. I have been cooking more from scratch every few weeks and keeping a small notebook of what worked. I have been fermenting vegetables early on Wednesday mornings and keeping a small notebook of what worked. Work is steady, which leaves just enough energy for the allotment on most Monday evenings.