Wednesday, October 31, 2007

PIN UPS, HEROES AND ITALY

One of my loops is attempting to compile a list of the fifty most fanciable men. I am ashamed to admit that I didn't recognise a lot of the names, but the serious drooling that was going on over Richard Armitage sent me to his web page hoping that he might just might prove a lookalike for the hero-in-progress.

He's not a match but I thought I'd post a photograph anyway. Just for you. :)



MORE ITALY

This gate is four thousand years old. It was on the dh's "most want to see" list but he wasn't sure where it was, then on a trip to Castell del Cyclope he turned around and there it was. Magic.

That's him looking v. small beneath it. And the walls, glimpsed behind, were all constructed of blocks of stone that size. Four thousand years ago. On the top of a mountain. Amazing.


This is the view from the castle. That's Arpino on the hilltop below -- we went there last year and thought that was pretty high up. It's where Marius and Cicero were born (and Cicero was murdered for those of you who watched "Rome").









And these are some olives in situ on the tree.


Travelling on the train from Rome to Bari we saw millions of olive trees. And thousands of buffalo, too. And both the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. It took five hours but I really enjoyed it. I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if I'd had a decent book.

This one offers a master-class in how not to write dialogue -- even Victorian dialogue.





AND THANK YOU

Finally a huge thank you to everyone who commented on the branding issue. I was overwhelmed by the wonderful things that you all said -- to be compared to chocolate, words fail me. Or maybe not.

"Liz Fielding -- surprisingly better than chocolate..."

It's not exactly snappy is it? I begin to see why they pay experts six figure sums to come up with this kind of slogan.

4 comments:

Michelle Styles said...

You need to watch North and South to understnad what Richard Armitage is about.

Hooray that your dh found the arch he was looking for.

Kate Hardy said...

I'm with Michelle :o)

Beautiful arch. I can see why your DH wanted to visit it so much. That kind of engineering... I'd love to know if the Romans used the same kind of building plans as the cathedral-builders, i.e. in setting concrete...

Liz Fielding said...

This castle is pre-Roman, Kate -- the area was the home of the Volci people who fought the Romans tooth and claw. The dialect is still spoken in the region.

While the Romans didn't actually invent concrete, they did improve on the original and bring it to an art form, using form shutters exactly as engineers do today, using tufa to keep the weight down.

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