“I’ve been to Rome.” How I’ve come to fear this response when I tell people where I live. I shouldn’t be so concerned. And yet on hearing those words I feel a throbbing urgency, an imperative to ensure they have fallen deeply in love, have spoken not of traffic or pickpockets or the heat or […]
Don’t pretend you didn’t come to Rome with the fantasy of falling deeply in love, possibly experiencing the best sex of your life and potentially living happily ever. It’s okay. There’s no judgement here – we’re all practising or recovering Italophiles. In fact, calling this a ‘fantasy’ degrades what is, in my opinion, a brilliant […]
I’m writing to you from humid mango-scented Mauritius this month where I’m shooting an international TV commercial for the island’s tourism board. It sounded like a dream when they called me, shivering, ladling minestrone and luxuriating in self-pity after being caught in the January pioggia. The commercial’s director wanted Patrick (my co-star on our Nat […]
Whenever I cook for a boy I’d like to kiss here in Italy I have a minor panic attack I feel very much at home in the kitchen. I always find myself glazed over, gazing at an oven or a chopping board, excited and full of hope – as though epic and beautiful things were […]
I’ve just had one of the best weekends of my life. Outside the air is chilly. I’m sitting here on a Monday morning in a black dress and stilettos feasting on the most decadent breakfast you can imagine in the sensual low light of the Bulgari Hotel in Milan. Through two storeys of glass I […]
The ugliness is abrasive. Instinctively, I wrap my trench tighter across by chest and stride through customs, as though shielding myself from the sheer non-Italian-ness of it all. Grating English consonants in lieu of mellifluous Italian vowels. Gone are the potential lovers in linen locking eyes with me across a piazza or the bar of […]
When Italians speak of any destination – be it a city, a village, a beach – the inevitable question “Si mangia bene li’?” (does one eat well there?) is posed with the ubiquity with which Anglosaxons might ask “How far is it from here?”. Distance is immaterial for Italians if good eating is promised. Yes, […]
