A Matter of Timing

Piled up among my stack of Italian cookbooks, I noticed an artfully bound journal covered in an old fashioned, multi-colour Venetian print-pattern. I opened it and saw half familiar scrawls; written in a different time, at a different place and by an almost different person...

Somewhere in the journal it says "I wake up to the sound of birds chirping. When I push the library-green shutters and open the window, I hear the city, at its most serene, being woken up by a symphony of campanili (bells). When I look out onto the garden through my window, I feel I have been in Venice forever..."

On another page, "...The San Giuseppi sisters remind me of Sr. Carla at the Italian convent where I attended primary school, delightful yet strict. They look like merli (Italian for black birds; the sisters wear their habit in black) busying themselves in their daily chores with feet shuffling very close to the cool terrazzo floor...”

"Mother Superior has the eyes of an indulgent grandmother; she always wants to feed me more and asks me each morning how I had slept. She loves to hear every detail of my adventures outside their convent, Casa Carbulotto..."

"...Sister Olympia's tiny frame is overwhelmed by her severe habit. If Mother Superior is the grandmother, she is the loving grand-aunt who greets me with ciao bella when she pours me caffè latte each morning... "

"...Although I get told off by the sisters when I dash pass the closing door at this convent every night, dangerously close to the curfew, I am safe in the knowledge that they each have a heart of gold..."

Pity, all that happened just before "blog" became a word.