I am carrying on

I am London, Yorkshire and Crewe

I am British, Italian, and Jew

I am Catholic, Irish and Dutch

I am this and that, I am much

I am born from survivors and skivers

I was bred from majorettes and taxi drivers

I am sugar, bread and tea

I am all these things you see

I am bleach, smoke and dirt

I am cosy words and hurt

I am rock, rap and pop

I am everything and I won’t stop!

I am velvet, coir and leather

I am lavender, hollyhock and heather

I am heavy but my heart is light

I am everything in sight

I am a library, a kitchen, a spa

I am going places, far!

I am sunshine and the rain

I am humour though inane

I am dreaming and I am real

I am carrying on until…

Lucky life

My mum was raised in a slum

My dad was a gentleman

Two different worlds they did collide

And I came from them

Two different sides of the coin

I was born and raised

Learned elocution and etiquette

And fought in the street half-crazed

I learned to talk in many tongues

Just to survive, you see

I’m adaptable in every way

Because I had to be

There are many layers to my life

Many people too

Some are good and wholesome

And others will make trouble for you

I have gypsy kin, Italian, Catholic and Jew

Irish, Greek, Dutch and more

But you don’t have a clue

I don’t say these things to seek approval or fill a need

I’m sharing my life story, my culture and my creed

I’m lady and that is true, but I’m also more than that

I can hold my own in any argument, fight or spat

I adjust to what is needed at any given time

I was bred from both pedigree and hardship

I’ve lived through luxury and grime

I’ve held my head above the water and drowned in all the muck

I can’t complain about my life, because it’s filled with luck

And yet there it is in the cold and raw

And you don’t give a fuck!

But I hope you listened and didn’t ignore

My life is genuinely filled with luck!

Secretly missing myself

If you have been following my blog for a while now it would be no news to you that a major part of my life is about transition; you know already that I have been on a journey of trying to define myself to my own standards and finding my true self whilst escaping the oppressors of my past who suppressed the real me as an individual.

But did you know that there are some things about me that I still regard with shame or view it as mere stupidity? 

As I am advancing in age I am feeling more stupid about wanting certain things for myself, as aren’t I by society’s standards getting a little – well advanced in age for such silly nonsense?

Which such things am I on about exactly?

I am talking a hard swallow right now to admit the truth to you properly, I kind of did it on Twitter on New Year’s Eve but now I am saying it here…

I have never got over a big transition that happened to me as a child, when I was around six years old – literally my whole world and self was turned upside down and I felt I lost my identity in more ways than one!

As you know a large part of my healing is the healing of my inner child and searching really deep in my past and subconscious as to why I have allowed things to control me and dictate to me who I am, rather than being who I really am!

Recently I shared that when I was six years old I was removed from a very large family into isolation and having almost nobody for several years, it got better again around the age of ten to thirteen but mum then removed herself a second time from even more people and then again a third time when I was in my early twenties.

But also at that time, my body changed vastly the child in photographs of 1987 do not reflect the child in the photographs of 1988.  I was very thin and small for my age, I had pure white hair almost like angel hair, in fact I was nicknamed The Angel of Burnt Oak because of the pageant I went into as  my hair was naturally white and unusual, like angel hair!

Then for some reason in just a few short months my hair got darker and darker and became a medium brown, I started to gain weight, I started to become one of the tallest in class and I felt like I had turned into a monster.

My mum also felt that I had turned into something embarrassing too, she was no longer proud of me and she was my biggest bully during that transition and for most of my childhood because of it, because it shocked her as much as it shocked me!

So many major changes really upset me emotionally and I think it scarred me to this day.

A year later I decided to give up my dream of fashion design and being involved in the fashion industry, a dream I had from the age of four, shattered by the age of seven because my mother told me wrongfully that fat girls can’t be models, especially fat brunettes – that I had to face reality and accept that it’s no longer my path, so ashamed of me she stopped the pageants and karaoke contests.

At the age of eight my weight got worse because I was early to start menses and developed breasts quite quickly after that, rare so young but not unheard of said the doctor.  I got worse still when I was ten because I suffered a head injury from my mother which meant my eyesight got damaged as I had astigmatism which nobody knew about and that meant I needed glasses.  You have no idea the trauma that I went through with that one; my mum was already begrudging all my other changes – now this!

I just felt like I got uglier and uglier as I got older, is it any wonder I had a nervous breakdown at the age of twelve when I needed residential psychiatric treatment for a few months and developed both bulimia and anorexia for a while?

Anyway, weight came and went, came and went, like a yo-yo, one year fat, one year thin, it never really stabilised until my mid-twenties, then got worse again around thirty three when I got sick.

So what I am delaying saying is… yes, I am forty now, exactly forty – but I want to be who I feel I should be.  That is a slim, toned woman with my original angel hair.  It’s not bond, people mistake that – it’s white, but it’s the kind of white that looked like it had tinsel in it… if you get me?

Around three years ago I shared these thoughts with Paul, about how I miss that and how I would like to be like that, but it’s stupid to think a woman my age could look like that now and Paul wanted to know why I thought that?

Because it would be like mutton dressed as lamb wouldn’t it?  White hair all of a sudden, dressed in my favourite kind of clothes and colours, sort of Barbiecore, Moschino and a bit kawaii or rainbow Goth – I’d look ridiculous wouldn’t I?  Especially on the days I wake up and feel more masculine like a regency gentleman or a Beau Brummel dandy?

Though I’d admit, slim and white haired dressed up on a dandy day would make me look like a very neat androgynous version of Lucius Malfoy!

The funny thing is, when I realised why I am uncomfortable in my own skin things changed in my body again.  When I admitted I missed the six year old me in looks, I started to get flecks of white in my hair – ok its age, yes I know, I am not stupid – but you have no idea how those little flecks of white made me smile and feel more at home with myself.

What is strange is my appetite has been transitioning back to how I used to be too and I am losing an average of one to three pounds a week ever since. 

The more weight I am losing, the more white that is appearing in my hair, the happier I am getting with myself.

I think I will never be happy with my nose and actual face shape, because I want defined cheekbones and an angular sort of face, that’s not going to happen with an inverted triangle like me… but the rest is going to be OK.

A white haired Jessica Rabbit is probably stretching reality too much, but that’s what I really want to be!  Ha-ha!

Make all the men go loopy with my French and Italian skills too!

But meh, back to reality, I still have fifty pounds to lose and I am only a third white right now.

But yes, I feel stupid and a little embarrassed sharing this with you all… I don’t know why I should feel that way but there you go… I do.

I still haven’t had news about the braces I am supposed to be getting or the extra filling I need for another tooth, our dentist is over-stretched.  I am disappointed as its delaying my goals by several months!  I am embarrassed about the lost front tooth so much so it is making me debate whether I am confident or not to show my face on YouTube after all, it’s noticeable but thankfully it’s only a half gap, not a full one because the tooth was kind of sticky out at an angle before it was removed.  Other than closing the gap, my teeth are quite nice now.

In the past few weeks I have been letting my nails grow again, but I keep accidentally ripping flesh off myself in my sleep and although I love my nail now – I can’t help but think I am one step away from cutting them short again, because I am just so sore right now! 

A home French manicure is my favourite way to have them and having nails means I can effectively play my kalimba again!

So I am trying so hard not to cut them down!

Thanks for reading!

Memories of granddad

On Twitter today someone randomly asked that if I were fortunate to have known any of my grandfather’s what is the first thing that I would think of when I think about them!

I wanted to say a lot more than I did, because I doted on my granddad!

So I thought it would be a lovely post to share here and I can get to talk about him in more depths, these memories are happy memories, probably some of the few I had growing up – but there are only two things that I remember which were not so happy and none of them were my grandad’s fault at all!

Up until I was six years old I lived next door to my maternal grandparents, Granddad Leslie and nanny or nonna Dolly! 

Between the age of six and nine I never saw them, not once – because my mum moved us away due to a vicious argument which broke into a physical fight she had about my brother and aunt.  The physical fight was in their living room between my auntie Julie and her, it was quite a scary physical fight I never saw because I was at school at the time and honorary auntie Sheila (which is rumoured to really be a third or fourth cousin to us) had to pick me up from school because mum was in hospital over it. 

Both my mum and my aunt had scarring to their faces over that fight.

Before this fight my grandparents were part of my everyday life, I lived in an area in North London where I had a relative almost on every street and there were at least thirty households related to me within that small square mile, everyone else it seemed was some kind of family friend who looked out for everyone!

My granddad was an avid gardener and was always out in his garden talking to me about the flowers and nature and giving me updates on his breeding hobbies of tropical fishes, budgerigars and love birds!  He loved gardening so much he rented four plots at the local allotments (a gardening community) where he’d grow lots of food to share with the whole family. 

My granddad was a greengrocer once, before he lost his business to thugs and he met my grandmother when he was a farm worker on a farm her parents worked on in Enfield.

Sometimes granddad would pass over step ladders for me to climb up high enough for him to reach me to carry me over into his garden to help him with the fish and the birds – mum knew if she couldn’t find me in the garden that I’d be with him or passed onto Sheila who lived on the other side of my grandparents to play with her daughter who was only a year younger than me!

In my street there were four other households of family and only thirty yards away from the house was a shopping complex of ten stores, which whenever we’d pop round the corner for milk you’d have to anticipate forty five minutes before you got home again because of the amount of people you’d meet and talk to on the way!

I remember sitting in the window waiting for people I knew to walk pass the house and telling mum who was there, especially if mum wanted to talk to someone, she’d rush out immediately and they’d talk.  Most of the time she had hoped my older teenage cousins would be passing so she could bribe them to take me to a park or go swimming with them at the community pool nearby!

All of this ended when I was six, from the time mum moved away from all of that I was in pure isolation and I didn’t cope well at all with that arrangement!

My mum was ostracized by most of our family when the fight happened, but there were still people who spoke to us and visited, but only a small margin from that point onwards!

It’s funny to think that because three households crammed together in a line became the forerunner of huge family Christmases – where everyone visited those three houses and kept swapping and changing dining rooms to socialise with as many people as possible on Christmas day, literally eighteen people per house and then going from that to just me, my parents and brothers and a cousin until I was twenty years old.

You can imagine the culture shock and to be honest… no, I have never recovered from the loss.

When I was nine years old I was thrilled to be back in my grandparents lives again, but I didn’t realise at the time it was only meant to have been temporary because my granddad was diagnosed with lung cancer. 

So I have got the horrible bits out of the way now, now it’s time for me to show you what my granddad was like as a person!

My granddad came from Greenwich and he had a very strong husky East End accent, he was a short stocky and muscular man who was half Jewish and half catholic and had tattoos all the way up both arms!  He had a widow’s peak hairline and silver white hair, when I was little I used to think my granddad looked like a mesh between grandpa Munster and Pop-eye! 

Because my granddad smoked a pipe, had muscles, ate spinach had a rough husky voice, and loads of tatts!

He was the most muscular man in the whole family and quite a formidable character too!

He was a true man’s man but he was a man who was out of his time really, because my nanny Dolly didn’t have a domestic bone in her body – he did all the laundry, all the cleaning and all the cooking!  My granddad always said it isn’t my Nan’s fault, she isn’t lazy cocker, he told me – she has had a hard life with her heart troubles so she got spoilt and I am mostly to fault for that he said.

I remember my granddad having two large 6ft fish tanks in the living room and he put them like an L shape to each other and he placed his armchair in the corner facing the TV directly in the opposite corner of the living room he had so he could watching every wrestling show on Sky TV he could!

I would always sit on his knee watching the TV with him, even when I was as old as ten, even when he was dying, I remember that.  Clung to him for dear life, I loved my granddad!  I couldn’t do that with anyone else, he was the only one who’d let me snuggle with him like that and so it was a novelty I relished every time I visited him!

I remember when we had to go home I was often kicking and screaming as I didn’t want to leave him.

My mum was a J-witness off and on growing up, so I didn’t learn much about the families catholic ways, so granddad always tried to put in lessons every now and again for me and got his rosary out and showed me that we moved the beads in prayer, look see…

I wondered how my granddad kept his faith with the Catholic Church when he experienced so much racism growing up – the nuns at the school he went to often gave him a hard time and caned him regularly because they said he was born in sin because his mother was Jewish! 

Growing up with him telling me things like that and he was making excuses for their behaviour and being generally nice about it all – surprised me.  He told me that it never bothered him you see, because Jesus was a Jew and he thought that those nuns were ridiculous for what they were saying about him.  I told mum what he said and she didn’t receive that very well!

But it always stuck in my mind; Jesus was a Jew… wasn’t he catholic then granddad?  That made him laugh so hard it bought on one of those deep dense and awful coughs of his!

My nan would look over and laugh too and then say “Out of the mouths of babes hey Les”?

My nan was in every way similar to Catherine Tate’s nan depiction, honestly, anyone who knew her said that they were sure that the character was based on her!

It still sticks in my mind today… Jesus was a Jew and it was only recently that I learned not only was he a Jew but he was also a fierce rabbi who tried hard to steer people back into the old faith of Judaism as he felt people were losing their way – food for thought I can tell you!

My granddad was a backstreet wrestler and boxer in his youth to earn extra rations and money for the family, he told me. 

My granddad and I had a very similar life to each other in some ways – both of us were into combat sports, both of us were stocky in comparison to the others in the family though only 5ft 4, both of us were deaf due to the same condition (mastoiditis) and both of us were discriminated against for our mixed religious heritage and deafness and both of us loved our gardens!

Granddad was the only person I strongly connected to in most things in the family.

He would often sing to me all kinds of traditional London songs, some for kids and others not!  Bouncing me on his knee and he always greeted me as “Cocker” whenever I visited him – “alright cocker”?  He’d ask as I walked into the room!

Cocker means many number of things to an East Ender – mostly “Mate” or “little cocky one” or “fellow cockney” or something you called your descendants, usually aimed at personal favourites rather than generic – well in my family it was!

He would regularly give me cash in hand money to go the local shops with so he could have private chats with my parents, knowing I’d be gone for up to an hour because the family and extended family would watch out if a kid was going to the shops alone!  There were lots of eyes in those streets and you always felt safe as you knew almost everybody down there!

There was one particular shop I used to love going to a lot and it was a health and safety nightmare for how the candies were stacked in piles around the whole store, but it was a great store with every kind of candy you can think of, chocolates, crisps, sodas and ice-creams – it was called Lucky Sweets and was run by a really lovely and elderly Hindu lady.

My granddad would often talk about the wrestlers on TV and we are related to a wrestler who now has a wrestling family and that was my granddad’s pride and joy in pointing that out to me!

My granddad often bought dinner from the fish and chips shop as well when I visited him; it was always cheaper than it should be because there were rumours that the owner was a distant cousin from our Greek roots as we also have Greek in us.  In fact our Italian relatives from Naples are mostly Greco-Italians they say, but we have had family in Naples since 305BC on both sides of my family actually.

But I do know when I was growing up and visiting my nan a lot when granddad died, that the local teenagers who were not associated with my family in anyway were really nasty to me in the school I went to purely because of the knocked off price of our fish and chips dinner because of family discounts.

My granddad gifted me his budgerigars every couple of years and one of them I loved so much lasted for nearly three years called Bobby.  The other, funnily enough was called Henry.

But when I talk about Henry on my blog, be sure to know it is my son I am on about and not some record breaking old budgerigar – lol!

He is also the reason why I love tropical fish keeping, because to me a house isn’t a home without a tropical fish tank and a dog.  I don’t have a fish tank here… tell a lie… I do… but there is nothing in it because Paul won’t help me set it up.

I always felt safe with my granddad because nobody messed with my granddad and I could tell him anything my mum did to me and knew he would be the retribution she’d get!

When he died she got more cocky about things and wielded it like a power.

I moved in with my grandparents when I was ten years old, for a few months whilst granddad was dying of cancer, until his death.  Then my nan was required to come and stay with us whenever she felt lonely, which was about four times a week until she was hospitalised and died fourteen years later.

When I got the flu when we lived with him, granddad wanted to know how mum took care of me when I was at home and had the flu in the past and I was brutally honest with him about it.  He was not happy and he rang his bell which always sent mum into a panic running into the room to him.  He said, cocker over there isn’t well; she needs a drink of water, not Lucozade!  She went and made a drink, he then rang the bell again and told her that I was hungry and not to just pass me candies but to get some chicken soup into me!  She got angry at this point, but he kept ringing the bell for me and made sure I was cared for properly and not dumped with bags of candies and bottles of Lucozade and left for hours on end like normal!

He defended me even though he hardly had the breath to do it; he had a mischievous nature which I adored!

He got told off really bad by my nan when he used blackmail on my mum by switching his own oxygen off to cause a panic and stir when mum tried to tell him off!  As he did it he winked at me but it really scared me to see that!

I had a nightmare the day before granddad died, I woke up knowing that that day would be his last – even though the doctor said he would have four months at least before that stage came, I was right.

He died three days shy of his birthday and it was supposed to have been a huge family reunion party too – the party still happened but it was more morose than it should have been!

My granddad would be 100yrs old on August 15^th of this year.

Thanks for reading!

Ten skills I want

Top 10 things I want to be confident in or train in eventually;

Tango dancing (in fact I have always wanted to do this and have a partner who likes it too, but never mind)

Paso Doble dancing (same as above)

Belly Dancing (did in the past but was never confident in it and need to loosen up again for it)

Playing the piano properly (one handed and by ear only player at the moment)

Reading and understanding musical notation

Tarot reading (yes been doing it most my life but not confident enough to leave the books alone)

Yoga (never tried it but before weight gain, I was a very flexible contortionist)

I want to be confidently fluent in Italian (at the moment I am on unit 16 of the course on Duo Lingo)

I also want to get back into some kind of combat fitness

Improving my ventriloquism skills – I can kind of do pretty well at the moment, but I want to be much better! I don’t like proper ventriloquist dummies though, they freak me out – I like puppets!

What is it?

How Italian am I?

In my opinion not very much, but my heart is with that side of my family!  I at least learn Italian and I do cook Italian food a lot, but ultimately I say my family hasn’t readily been open about our ancestry – or least my mother’s generation hasn’t been.

Why?  I am a fourth generation Italian/Brit or as some people call us Britalian.  My grandmother’s generation was more ready to acknowledge the Italian ancestry in us, but my mum’s generation fought really hard against all their cultural mixes because they experienced extreme racism in the 50s and 60s growing up in London over it.

My grandmother’s family are a mix of many cultures in the past six generations, Romany, Italian and Greek or Greco-Italian being the strongest bloodline hailing mostly from Naples/Napoli, my grandmother is quite dark skinned and that’s because her great grandmother was mixed race black American and there is Vietnamese in her side of the family too.  So there’s a lot to chew on there. 

Her husband, my grandad is simpler Jewish and Roman Catholic mixed, Welsh, English with some unknown Slavic origin they believe may be Polish or Romanian but they don’t really know, it’s also rumoured there is Italian there too, but again no one has proved that yet – but we do know his Jewish family are considered to be mostly Levite and Sephardic.

My dad’s family have a very ancient history in Italy, they became mostly English though by 1919 as the family became too poor and too lethargic to keep skipping countries as they used to.  Italy, France, England, Italy, France, England, you get the drift, almost every one or two generations the change went on.  Once again his Italian ancestry is 2306yr history in Naples and Amalfi and an ancestral home is supposed to be Montalto castle in Chianti which is much farther north of Italy.

Both sides of my family fled Italy almost permanently around 1919 to 1950 because of various problems with fascism, though some started to come to the UK much earlier than that as they were seeking to better themselves outside of Italy as some of the ancestors felt there were better educational opportunities for their children in other places.  Particularly my dad’s family, they wanted to spread their genetic legacy to other European aristocracies. 

My mother’s Italian ancestors were mostly farmers. 

But as a fourth generation Italian Brit, I was very interested in all the culture I am a mix of and so I was always begging information from the oldest members of the family!  The most vocal are the Italians, Jews and the Greeks in the family.

Everyone else is shy about their heritage, because hey, we’re British now.    So in my mind, my personal culture has been shaped by the most vocal and the most proud of my family.

Unfortunately actually knowing Italian is rare in my family, because nobody sees the point in learning a language unless they are going to move to the country.  So only the oldest relatives knew any Italian and my mum forbade most of them to teach me anything!

As an adult I taught myself, because it was safer that way – my grandmother who knew a little bit of Italian was a rude and naughty woman who taught me all the bad things to say first – as she’s a natural imp!

So there’s lots of things I know about the family and their ways, but it is very different to how other non-related Italians do things… for example, I had an ex called Tony who was half Japanese and half Italian, his family love ragu/Bolognese – to them bolognese is meat, onion, salt and pepper, and pasta, nothing else – no tomatoes and the meat is always beef!

My family however we use lamb in almost everything!  Our Bolognese has tomatoes, tomato puree, bell pepper, onions, all the Italian herbs, sugar, cinnamon, salt and pepper and minced lamb.  Yet it’s not traditional in Naples, some Neapolitans say they either have vegetarian ragu or they have chunks of pork in it.

There’s lots of food traditional in my family, that I don’t even have a name for!  Some are Greek and some Italian; sometimes I don’t know which is which!

The confusion of mixed cultures gets me all the time!

Chicken Arribiata is popular in the family; we really spice it up because you’ve got to make that chicken angry!  Arribiata means ANGRY!  So we put chilis in that dish, cinnamon, onions, tomatoes, salt and pepper, cayenne – but you know so many people in my family they are wimps!  You give them that amount of chili and they cry about abuse!  But you just want passive chicken then, you don’t want it to be angry… lol

It’s fun in my family, you have the cultural deniers and the hard-core proud – eh what’s this long vegetable that looks like a cucumber but its slimy and bitter?  It’s a courgette innit?  No it’s a zucchini, that’s American – no not at all I say, nana what’s this vegetable called?  Zucchini!  See I told you!  It’s Italian for courgette!  Whatever!

I get served some green leaf vegetable with nice herbal rice inside it like a parcel and I ask my cousin Maria, hey Maria what is this?  It’s food innit, she says!  No I mean what is it?  Why you don’t like it?  I didn’t say that I just wanna know what it is!  Its vine leaves wrapped around rice and herbs, you know what it is you’ve had it before!  But what is it called, I say!  Stuffed vine leaves I just said!  What is it called in Italy?  I am fucked if I know, just eat it!

I ask my older relatives who all say stuffed vine leaves with rice with a shrug – I ask them but what’s it called in Italy?  50% will say it’s Greek not Italian and the other 50% says it’s Italian not Greek!

You can see why I give up!

Ok so next up we have a large style macaroni dish that’s like tomato macaroni and cheese, super cheesy, real big macaroni style pasta – what’s this called?  Pasta!  No what’s the name of the dish in Italy?  I am fucked if I know!  Eye rolls, same answer every time!

I go and research and find out its Ziti!

I told my cousin Sabrina, hey that dish you make it’s called Ziti in Italian!  Ew that sounds disgusting don’t say things like that at the dinner table, you make people feel sick!  No that’s what they call it there – I don’t care it sounds gross in English!  You don’t like my cooking?  She asks.  No I love it, but I went and googled it and found out it has a name – well keep it to yourself will ya that sounds insulting!

There are lots of dishes in my family and I am still trying to find out what the blazes they are – ironically 50% of the dishes my mum makes are Italian, yet she tells me it’s English.  Haha – she’s the biggest denier of her heritage in the family, but she won’t stray from their cooking or idioms!

Why am I posting this?  Because a lot of my family home cooking has no names, so I don’t bother including them in lists because I am more or less writing the recipe out to describe it, lol.

So with that being said, I was raised in a family that didn’t accept any cultural qualities at all – all of them make shifting a new British ideology and failing miserably whilst still eating traditional family food and shouting typical Greek and Italian idioms everywhere but in English this time, because we’re British now!

LOL.

For the word, since living with Paul I have thrown myself into learning more about proper Italian and Greek culture, but mostly leaning to Italian as the family seems to be more of that than the Greek it seems.  I am slowly learning the names of the dishes my family made and I am trying to learn more traditional ways in making things, instead of doing weird things to the food like adding spices which makes it like some weird Middle Eastern hybrid that happens occasionally in the family!

The things I can name, that I make are…

Homemade ravioli, yes I can home make my own pasta, thank you very much!

Homemade pizzas unfortunately without a traditional pizza oven as of yet!  Yes the base and all, I can do that!  My dream is to have a dragon shaped pizza oven in the garden which puffs out smoke from the dragons nostrils whenever I bake pizza! 

I make focaccias and ciabatta and for the Jewish family I can make sourdough, or at least used to – lost the mother/starter, someone accidentally tipped it away thinking something went off in a bottle!

I do Bolognese or ragu whatever you wanna call it – I am easy going, I don’t care!  Lol

Chicken arribiata

Pesto

Of course people kill for my carbonara

They also kill for my ziti and macaroni and vegetarian ravioli and the pastichio and lasagne…

I make polenta but no one likes it no matter who makes it lol

I make vegetarian and gluten free Bolognese and ravioli!

Homemade meatballs

Now I don’t know where this is from but there is a big debate in my family about vegetable burger pates being Italian or not!  But I don’t know!

Eggs in purgatory!

Caprese

Cesar salad… which I discovered may actually not be an Italian invention lol

Gnocchi

And up until recently I found out a family pudding which we called Creamy chocolate fingers is actually Tiramisu only nobody in my family puts espresso in it. 

Still trying to work out what other dishes are in the family… we have homemade biscuits like digestive biscuits but we put in chopped glace cherries and other fruit jellies in it in tiny bits.

We make what we call bread pudding, which is wholemeal bread soaked in milk and drained semi dried with sugar, Christmas spices, eggs and raisins and bake it until crispy. 

We have chocolate pasta with large half melted chocolate chunk and vanilla ice-cream as a dessert!

Knickerbocker glory desserts!

But there are so many I don’t know the name of – most notably a thing we make which is almost identical to Slovakian goulash with dumplings, only it has lots of tomatoes, more spice, more mushrooms and lots of red wine and it served under mashed potato for some weird reason!  Or on some occasions we eat this with beef stuffed ravioli instead!  I call it an Italian goulash but everyone rightfully looks sideways at me! 

I am trying to sew up the holes of my heritage, I am trying! 

Thanks for reading!

Some people kill for suppositions

Some people know what it’s like to be so multicultural that they call you fake

Call you a wannabe, call you a snake

Some people know what it is like to live in different classes, but mostly being poor

Some people call you a fake and they close their doors to you

Some people know what it is like to be fat then thin, then fat again and thin again

Body changing constantly like the tides of the sea

Some people know what it is like to be me

Some people think I can’t possibly be, all these things, that make me, me

A half gypsy grandma with Greco Italian roots who is a quarter cast to boot

Married a half jew that was raised catholic, a cockney with a Welsh grandmother

Clutching rosaries and cursing the church, what a sight, how absurd?

But that was them my maternal side

I have nothing bad to hide

I love my family and they love me

But still society picks on me

Because I am fake, didn’t you know?

I can’t possibly be all the things I know

Even fake still my paternal side

My grandpa who watched the genocides

Whilst smoking pipes in his wheelchair, writing letters like he didn’t care

Calling himself a Christian and a lord some spit at him and some applaud

Is he German or Austrian? I never knew, but my grandma said he could be the two

But she knew he was Italian too, wearing black shirts and doing poo

She was ashamed of him, I am too

She was different, the opposite, with her Dutch roots and Irish eyes smiling, though her hair was dyed, worshipping Jesus and the saints like a good catholic woman

Swimming in the seas of war saving sailors, now that I applaud and dancing with the majorettes, a descendant of the oldest aristocratic family of Europe, the most loving person I could ever know

Teaching me how to speak and grow

Won’t tell me about grandad you know?

I can’t blame her really, can you?

Not if he wore blackshirts supporting poo

But you call me fake, don’t you?

So you don’t believe a word

Because all this mixture is too absurd

My grandma hid a fact from her husband and it was simply this

Her great grandpa was from Vietnam, I imagine he’d be really pissed!

Fascists think they are pure and true and yet they are very wrong

Everyone is related yet they say it’s wrong

I know what it’s like to not be believed

I get it everyday

This is why I don’t talk that much, because I have nothing else to say

I am who I am and I am a mix

But you call me liar, so I’m in a fix

Because I tell the truth, yet you say I lie

But I do not and it makes me cry

My mother skipped from faith to faith

Trying to find her feet

Kept doing this and that, making things hard for me

I decided long ago that the only faith that’s real

Is the old testament and nothing else

Because the new one was written to steal

Steal God’s people away from him

By other liars true

If you think about it, you will see that what I say is true

Most religions stem from the Jews

Isn’t it a funny thing?

How the Jews are the smallest culture

Yet the liar’s faith grows and sings?

Yes the prophets were all good men

But why pray to them so?

Pray to the source, which is God and all the bad things will go

I feel blessed in my life, since I started to pray to source

But you are angry to hear this, I understand of course

A culture that lasted centuries can get set within their ways

I cry for all the lost children

I cry and pray each day

That you will return to God and see what the deceiver has done

Playing cousin against cousin, watching the chaotic fun!

But that is something off my chest

I needed you to know

Because I love you no matter what

You are lost through all the woe

This poem was not meant to preach

But show you all my life

But things have a funny way to show

Who holds a candle and a knife?

I know what it’s like not to be loved

I know what it’s like to hurt

I know what it’s like to have a mother who pushes you away into the dirt

I know what it’s like to have a father who watches what she does

But sits afraid of losing her and sits with you in the mud

I know what its like to love and lose

I know what its like to be alone and bruised

I am tall but I am not strong

So many people have done me wrong

Yet I still love and care for them

Because I believe in Lord Hashem

He’d want me to look after them and show them another way

I know what it’s like not to be heard

But that’s Ok

I am sorry I got a bit carried away with this poem; this poem was the second task from the book “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy.

This was supposed to be my own version of “Some People” by Rita Ann Higgins.  https://www.lyrikline.org/sl/pesmi/some-people-5711  I must apologise in advance for the swearing that is quite strong in this poem.

But I really do know what it’s like to have such a mix heritage that almost everybody thinks I lie about it to impress them, but I really don’t.  It’s really hard not to talk about your family and their ways when your family has literally been your only life.

I really do feel for people who have got lost in lies.  But the thing is, I understand that the prophets etc that are included in religious rituals were good people too.  I understand that, but religion has deflected away from God so much because they prefer to pray through those prophets and then wonder why things aren’t as blessed as they should be. 

I honestly have known Christians who believe that Jesus is God, some of the more educated understand that he isn’t, but still they pray through him, not directly to God?  Can you imagine how God feels about that?  Especially as the supposed Messiah has not fulfilled their promise told in The Old Testament? 

Did you know when the true Messiah comes to Earth no one can doubt him, not even the tiniest bit?  That when he comes all will feel he is the genuine one and it will cause instant peace on Earth that lasts forever, then after people have seen the Messiah, God himself will come down from heaven and destroy heaven so that Earth becomes paradise?  The Torah says this.  It’s something to think about isn’t it?

It was Gods promise that he would do this.  Thing is, I am not jewish, my great grandmother was, but I was raised in three types of Christianity whenever my mother wanted the change – Anglican, Jehovah’s Witness and Catholic, I never knew what I was supposed to be growing up, that’s why I went and researched religion so much, to find out what the blazes the truth is!

I chose to be a non-participating Noahide until further notice, because I am confused. A Noahide is what Jews call a righteous gentile, a person who wasn’t raised in the Jewish faith properly and who believes in God and prays to him and sometimes they are converted fully into Judaism, some never are. I participate in private prayer to God, but I have not joined any communities yet.

Why? Because I find my relationship with God is a private one and I understand that this world is rife with hate and violence.

Studying every form of religion that stemmed from Judaism and then Judaism itself made things abundantly clear to me; it’s nonsense all these religious wars because everyone who stemmed from Judaism, should still be Jewish, not killing each other over what version of lies they love the best. 

Yes the deceiver is true and real, but I can’t help but think that billions of people can be wrong and duped. 

Even the Jews themselves have sort of lost their way a little, when the Sadducees and Pharisees started changing things, making the original seven laws of God into Ten and then all of a sudden six hundred and thirteen!  How did that happen?

Most Christians I know have no idea that Jesus was even a rabbi, they believe he was just a carpenter, but that is partly true, but also yes, he was a rabbi! 

Honestly I have been there and experienced all this myself and like you, I was astounded at what I found and I was deeply pained in the knowledge that all those who believe in the same God, still fight and kill each other, it’s utterly ludicrous!

A major part of my depression is knowing all of this and crying daily because I see cousin against cousin and for what?  For suppositions, that’s all!  Just mere suppositions!   

I became like my mother in my early adult years, skipping from faith to faith trying to find out why God ignores me and it wasn’t until I decided to connect with my spirit guides and ask them why he ignores me, that they told me one simple thing.

“Have you thought about talking directly to God without going through another entity, not even us, your guides”? 

To be perfectly honest – no I didn’t!

Because so often I was told that God is too busy to listen to all of us hence the angels and the prophets; but don’t you think that this disempowers him? 

Don’t you believe for one second that God has created all of this and he has the time to care for all of it, that he wouldn’t go beyond his own personal limits that he is limitless and will respond?

Because I believe he doesn’t take on more than he can chew personally.  I believe he has the time but the thing is, do you have the heart for it?  Do you have the inclination to respect his wishes from you and treat him with respect and talk to him respectfully like you would any monarch upon the earth?

Don’t talk to him like a beggar would, that’s disrespectful, humble yourself, but don’t beg.  Be mindful of his power, be mindful of his love and don’t try to abuse him in prayer.

You need to pray in a way where you ask him to teach you, ask him to show you things, so you can help yourself, because if there is one thing I have learned about God are that he despises laziness.  He made you in his image remember; would you dare to call God lazy?

He is there to help because he loves you, but he helps you only when you ask him to. 

He doesn’t give you things on a plate, you say “Oh I am so poor” give me some money please”.  No matter how polite you are, that is lazy prayer with no intention of helping yourself.

Instead say this; “Show me a way that I can raise my income without it being boring and affecting my health negatively”, he answers by dreams or synchronicities – signs.

If you are sick do not complain about it to him just ask him “Am I sick because here is something I haven’t learned yet?  Are you preventing something?  Are you trying to slow me down because you are worried that I may be reacting too fast I’d get into trouble?  Or are you trying to show me something else, please gives me signs why I am sick”.  He helps.

I have longstanding problems with my hearing and ear health, when I asked him to show me why this was, apparently in a dream I learned that it was because I was constantly telling people “I don’t want to hear about your problems, I don’t want to hear your criticisms” and I realised God was more or less granting me a wish.

Do you have leg problems or hip problems?  Have you ever flippantly said to other people you need to slow down?  Or you wished you could relax more?

Think about it.

I didn’t mean for this post to be preachy, but I am a water dog in Chinese astrology and I can’t help but flow to what I feel is right at the time… my apologies.

I better stop there.

Thanks for reading and much love to all of you!

Home update, diet change & differences

I am still writing and I still intend to get published in the future, but my timeline has had to be shifted dramatically because of a lot of new things happening in my life.

An old friend has reacquainted themselves with me and along with this I am also preparing the house to take in Ukrainian refugees, as well as trying to manage the worsening symptoms of my disabilities.

Also with this, Paul has bought it to my attention that we may also move house within the next few months and so there will be an even bigger upheaval.

My original publication goal was to send my work to an agent at the beginning of autumn of this year, hoping to be published within the next two years – but with these new events going on, it may be pushed back further, because I am very dedicated to working to the best of my ability to help the Ukrainians settle in and feel at home.

We’re unsure whether or not I will get a brood bitch for the service dog charities and do that this year, because of all the other things going on now.  But I hope to definitely be a brood bitch carer sometime in the future.

Also my hearing has got far worse, even with a hearing aid I am struggling and my hearing is now at 6 hertz, very low, without a hearing aid.  Because we are unsure what is happening with the refugees we will be taking on, we are holding off approaching a charity for a hearing dog for me, but it is something we have thought about.

Paul gave me some good news the other day that the bad neighbour may be moving out soon with his girlfriend because her daughter wants more independence around her house and she is tired of the conflict he is causing with her neighbours.  It still means that for this year I have lost another prime growing season, but hopefully next year I will be able to do my gardening again – it is desperately needed as things are overgrown to a very anti-social level now, primarily due to the fact that I feel sexually harassed by the neighbour when I am out there as he stalks me and acts lewdly around me – lewd for me is something that will shock people who know me well… because… well let’s just say, I am not known for being a prude!

This may mean if he moves out before Paul’s timeline, we may actually stay after all!  As we were only going to move out because of the bad neighbour, because I need the freedom to go in my garden without harassment and bullying and hearing him make loud speculations about my life to whoever is visiting him at the time – often crude and outlandish speculations at that!

Henry has been very distressed to the point of suicide because of bullying at school and the fact he may have to leave what he feels is his ancestral home, because of another bully next door!  Henry’s family on Paul’s side has lived in this house since 1956, that is 66yrs that this house has been in the family and Henry is proud of that, because also the family has lived in this village for 325 years next summer!

Not many children this day and age in the UK can claim such a heritage and Henry is not happy about breaking these family traditions of remaining in the area, even though it is Paul and I’s dream to move to a more secluded region.

We have a double bedroom available for Ukrainian refugees, we feel that we could put in a bunk bed, with a single bed and a cot, but whether or not whoever is arranging this for us, will agree to that, we do not know!

But hopefully whoever comes does not have a pet fur allergy as we have a house rabbit and would like a dog.

I have always enjoyed learning languages, I know French and Italian to better than tourist level, but not fluently and I am willing to learn how to speak Ukrainian to help them.  But Paul is all in for integration and has been coaxing me not to learn Ukrainian so that they have to learn English.  I have learned some words in Ukrainian and found that it is very similar to Slovakian, my sister in law is Slovakian and some small words she taught me are actually the same in Ukraine.

I have Latvian, Russian and Lithuanian friends, who live in this street, so they will have people to socialise with, readily. 

We researched the culture of Ukraine and I was delighted to find that the diet they have is exactly like or very near to my own personal diet – because my diet is much different to Paul’s and Henry’s because of my multi-cultural heritage.

Paul was delighted to find that too, because a lot of the food here is often thrown away as I can’t eat enough of it, and he and Henry don’t like it so won’t touch it – this means less waste for us!

I home make sauerkraut, pickles, I eat a lot of baked or pan fried fish, I have a lot of different soups and I make bone broth for myself a lot and I use paprika in 75% of all my dishes and we have crepes with berries at least twice a week, they’ll feel at home, basically!

Paul and Henry try to eat the Italian side of my heritage along with Paul’s English food, but other than that, they don’t really eat what I eat.  My personal diet isn’t very English – if I have a roast I have things that English people only have at Christmas time, cranberries and apple sauce for example, which Paul has got addicted to recently – the apple sauce – he isn’t too keen on cranberries.

He is starting to get used to the idea of paprika and or cinnamon in everything too!  I am trying to get him into the habit of remembering to use fresh herbs when he roasts meats and to baste with the herbs some of it, but that needs more coaxing!

I won around five years ago, to move him away from boiling veg to steaming or pan frying instead and cutting out salt in almost everything; though I acquiesce you need salt on some potatoes, sea or rock salt though!

I don’t think I will ever get him to like beetroot though – not even in crisp form.

I have recently learned that a lot of my food intolerances and allergies were not the things that I thought they were… this have opened doors for me again! 

I found out I was not intolerant to gluten or lactose, but I was intolerant to the products that contain soy or soya instead!  This is amazing and also I found out that I need a reduced fat diet because having fat too much in one day can make me react like a person who has lactose intolerance, so now I have managed my diet to include lactose and gluten, but I must remain strictly soy free and low fat!

I would never have found this out if it weren’t for my re- acquaintance to my friend Frank, who was very concerned at the prospect that I was becoming malnourished and were visibly losing muscle density.

So now I may eat lactose and gluten again, but I must avoid all soy and soya products, unfortunately it means no Chinese food, until I can home make them soy free!

Soy is in everything though, so though it has opened a lot of doors to me, I must check everything I buy to eat like some kind of paranoid creature because as Paul has found out… one product will be soy free, but the same product in another store from another factory may not be!  We was caught out the other week with Snickers, they were soy free and I had 9 bars in a multi-pack, but then we bought a single bar in a different store and I reacted badly that night, confused, we dived down the bin for the wrapper to find that it does contain soy!  But not all Snickers do!

It’s odd.

Anyway, thanks for reading – there will be an art update soon!

Researching religion to its core

In my previous post I mentioned a book that I am reading called “A History of Judaism” and some of you may be curious as to why I am reading such a book?  There are in fact two major reasons for me reading this book and both are to do with simple research.

Firstly I wanted to get to grips in understanding Judaism from its core because of a couple of specific themes I want to write and I don’t like to be ignorant when I am writing about culture.

Secondly, I want to find out why my ancestors left Judaism at the turn of the twentieth century just a decade before the Second World War.  Why some of the very oldest members of my family admit they were originally Jewish, but get rather aggressive about it and somewhat evasive.  I am also interested in finding any new books regarding this subject but set in Italy and Italian Jewish history in particular.

My son Henry absolutely loves learning anything at all about his family history and he has become less afraid of R.E at school since we have been learning the differences between what we know to be Evangelism, J-Witness and Judaism.  My family became Catholic and Evangelists when they left Judaism and part of that branch that left Judaism, also became J-Witnesses.

Part of my problems growing up was the cultural confusion my extended family had on supposed opposing ideas and therefore my understanding of religion was warped over the years; as literally my family would rage war on each other over their beliefs.  According to my grandmother, my great grandmother’s sister reacted so violently against her leaving Judaism for a Catholic man that she threw her into the fireplace and she escaped barely scarred.  Another incidence was that I was reminding an anti-Semitic evangelical relative of mine about how Jesus was a Jew and their response was to slap me across the face!

It astounds me how so many religions are at odds with each other when they all share the same core, corrupt the word of the core and kill each other in the name of the God that is the mainstay of the core.

However, as I am teaching my son, I am reminding him that you cannot hate anyone regarding this, because you cannot blame them for their ignorance.  Most people simply do not have the time on their hands to research as much as we do and therefore, you must always react to their violence with kindness if at all those people could make it possible for us to remain passive and kind that is.  Self-preservation kicks in for us all eventually.

The crucial thing to understand about all religions and cultures is that most people do not have time, they are too busy, they have other priorities and over the years many people have surrendered their personal research to trusted authoritive individuals who may or may not be corrupt within themselves, with the aims of controlling their particular congregations etc.  To be fair, everybody wants to try and honour their ancestors by keeping to what their parents believe and it wasn’t until the last century or so, that humanity in general were largely uneducated due to class differentiation and lack of opportunities.

There will be many updates in the future of my reading lists and there will be many different types of cultures and religions I will be study over the course of my life, because I have an insatiable yearning to understand humanity.  In fact in 2009 I signed up to the OU to do a Social Science degree, but I couldn’t cope with the demands of a new-born baby and running a house so went on extended leave, which is still ongoing!  The OU is lovely in that they have still left it opened for me to return whenever I want to, and I may eventually, as I miss it.

I feel I must apologise to some readers who may have found the tone of this post offensive, because no doubt, there are some who do.  But it is by no means an attack on religion, simply a passive eye opening, hoping that, with the tools of the modern age, that you will find time to research the roots of your beliefs to the very core and not just what your local parish tells you.

Thank you for reading.

Push me to be productive

WordPress has updated some features I think?

I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a streak counter before, there is one now and that poses both a solution and a problem to me; I am a sucker for maintaining long streaks on various websites, so this will now mean that I will be obsessing over maintaining this streak of blog posts, because of the streak counter.

I have this same problem on DuoLingo it isn’t the lessons keeping me there as much as it is the streak counter and the same thing too, with 750words.com though saying that, I am very serious about learning Italian to fluency. 

I have been learning Italian on DuoLingo now for 432 days!  I do a minimum of one lesson which is 10 minutes per day, to sometimes 1 hour.

I had to give up my streak on 750.words.com because I can no longer afford to pay a monthly fee.  That really grinds me too.

If I am to be a productive person, I mean really productive. I need streak counters and tight schedules set by others, or I don’t tend to take things seriously.    This is how I know, if I am ever published, I would be addicted to writing more than ever, because of the pressures that my colleagues may or may not impose on me to do things.  I at least hope it to be the case anyway.  I guess it will be so, because I do love schedules and maintaining streaks etc. 

I think this is why I tend to finish NaNoWriMo early on the times I do it undisturbed.  I have been unlucky to get pneumonia one time doing this and very unlucky that my son became extremely sick with gastroenteritis another time. 

One thing about me is that when I have been in work, I have become quite quickly a workaholic.  But it takes me a long time to recover if I am released from positions for whatever reason.

I thrive with work and tasks and I literally wither away without it.

The thing is, Paul can be too liberal with me, he isn’t pushy like other people have been in my past and that is both nice and also in some ways bad too.  Because I need someone to nag me, shouldn’t you be writing now?  I mean you have been on Spore now for 4 hours…

I do lose track of time and sometimes I need that wake up call!

“Gosh 4 hours, you sure? shit I don’t have time to do this other thing too, yes, I should write”.

But no, that doesn’t happen here, I lose days at a time by being consumed by games, books and YouTube videos and nobody brings me back to reality, I am alone in trying to figure that one out for myself.

Paul just seems to think and feel that I need to be left alone, to do whatever I like, like some spoiled child.  He does spoil me, lets me get away with far too much and I am not so sure he should to be honest! Though it is nice he is so liberal, it is also very frustrating that he doesn’t seem to remember to help me get back to reality, you know?

I am not blaming him for my lack of focus far be it, but I do feel I need a personal nag machine.

Maybe this will change when Paul gets the Amazon dot, maybe I can program Alexa to nag me?

Worth a try, I think.

Happy Reading!