I’ve been talking to friends in Rome and a site that I’m on put me in contact with a chap in Parma (one of my favourite cities in Italy – oh who the hell am I kidding there wasn’t a city there I didn’t love!). I am happy to say that everyone I know there is safe and relatively sane*. However I digress – again.
Yesterday was the 2773rd birthday of Rome and to celebrate the day my friend Larry, who is a school teacher there, posted this video on Facebook. This version of E Io Te Amo (And I Love You) could be considered a bit of a love song to the hidden Roma – the video shows not the familiar tourist sites but the Rome I knew and loved: the back alleys and neighbourhoods. Composer-singer Emilio Stella posted it on April 21, 2015 on the birthday of his home town.
*They and my friend Mitchel and his husband in Spain have almost reached the biblically-inspired 40 days that was imposed on travellers in Medieval Venice so any new idiosyncrasies are more than forgivable.
The word for April 22 is:
Curmudgeon /kərˈməjən/ /kərˈmədʒən/: [noun]
1. An ill-tempered person full of stubborn ideas or opinions. (Often a person of more mature years)
2. A miser (archaic)
The word is attested from the late 1500s in the forms curmudgeon and curmudgen, and during the 17th century in numerous spelling variants, including cormogeon, cormogion, cormoggian, cormudgeon, curmudgion, curmuggion, curmudgin, curr-mudgin, curre-megient.
Spell it how you want, it’s how I’m feeling today.
Willy Or Won't He 
Comment ne pas aimer le mot ‘curmudgeon’!?!
What a rich history Rome has!
Well! You never showed me this interesting part of Rome. I guess I was a tourist wanted to see the tourist things. Next time I will get directions from you and Laurent as to where to go to see this interesting side of Rome. Who new you could sit on a hill and overlook St Peter’s. I am assuming that it is the Palatine Hill which I did not have time to go to. Bad Laurent.
Beautiful music… and city! And, yes, I actually thought about our 40 days in biblical terms. Except we aren’t allowed to do ANY wandering.
Keep in mind that was 40 years.