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Thursday 9 January

1055h, the small white 4‑seater rectangular laminated table attached to the wall in the breakfast nook, as usual; in front of me two chairs and more light, but in my face; on this side, a bench with a cushion but writing in my own shadow, the light being behind me on a waist-high shelf: this is not a house for reading or writing.

This may very well be my last diary entry written in Milan, other than technically if I write during the inevitable wait at Malpensa tomorrow.

I've just come back from a spot of shopping, after a couple of paste and a cappuccio at the corner bar. I got sugar — I scraped clean with my first tea this morning the round yellow canister — and tried to get a potholder to replace the one I singed, and Revlon-brand foam bath, used up — but the local supermarket had neither.

Prices there completely comparable to those in the U. S.; got a pair of 1.50 dioptry glasses, sturdier than the 1.25's I'd got at Walgreen's before leaving (they'd got all twisted and never really untwisted), same price or even a bit cheaper: ₤19000 the lira today being at 1540.

This morning I woke up on my own at about two minutes to six, and watched a movie, with Julie Andrews, Ann Margret and Hugh Grant about a young man (HG's lover) dying of AIDS and HG's mother going to the lover's mother and reconciling her with her son — learned "checca" meaning, apparently, "faggot" — otherwise, understood 98% of the dialogue without even thinking about it. If I spend another month in Italy — with an opportunity to speak it — I'll really speak the language — Again, who knows.

It's now 12:15 and I'm going to amble off to the Duomo area to take a few pictures, despite the grey weather, of outdoors-type things like S. Stefano and the Cà Grande that I walked by in the dark last night coming back from the disappointing S. Eustorgio (where the Cappella was quite closed, by the way); then to meet the others at the bar or the store, and a bit of clothes shopping and my last evening here.

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Page updated: 7 Dec 20