“Ieri sera ho iniziato un corso di 20 settimane in lingua italiana presso l’Università
 del Sussex” – or, in plain English, last night I started a twenty week course in Italian at Sussex University which is only a five minute train journey from my home in Lewes.

I have always loved Italy and Italian culture and can, as they say, “get by” in Italian whenever I go there but now I have decided to take this seriously and to try and become fluent in speaking, reading and writing Italian – wish me luck. “Wolfie buona fortuna!”

I had Italian lessons when I studied singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London a long time ago and I have always listened to Italian opera with a passion so I do have a weirdly melodramatic grasp on every day Italian even if a raise the odd smile with some of my phrases. It is amazing  how far you can get with a basic working knowledge of the operas of Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi and Puccini. Now it is time to get a bit more down to earth. So far so good but it is going to be hard work.

Before then though, here are Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland in the love duet from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor  but I shall try to loose some of my Australian-Italian accent learnt during my boyhood obsession for Sutherland’s opera recordings. Pavarotti, of course, sang it like a native.

The post Viva l’Italia! – wolfie is learning Italian. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Times may change but as August turns into September, I always feel that it is the beginning of the academic year even though I have not been involved in education for a long time.

I always think of September as the beginning of the year; it was when school started and also, having been born in September, when I started too.

I suspect that it has always felt like this and that is why those old school photographs of long ago have such a sense of hope and pathos. I wonder what happened to these children and to the rather posher schoolboys below.

Soon a new generation will be setting out on their academic studies, at school, college and university so I wish them all well. I am planning my “new year” too. I have just had another poem published and it happened just as I was thinking that I really ought to learn how to write the things even though I have had more than my share of luck in getting into print. So poetry will definitely be on the curriculum in my imaginary new school year.

Also, after coming back from a wonderful holiday in Italy where I struggled heroically and enjoyably with the glorious Italian language, I have decided to pick up my old Italian text books and to try to speak it properly at last after years of muddling through. Every Englishman should speak Italian – it balances out our native reserve with a directness of expression that we all need.

I have also begun the long and exciting journey from a Microsoft to an Apple computer, as some of you may have read earlier this week, and I have signed up for some one to one tuition at my local Apple shop. I want to get beyond the just coping level with computers and, hopefully, actually get to know what I am doing.

I have a lot of learning and practice ahead in my martial art style of kungfu and taichi too as I begin to climb back to full health, I hope.

So I have an exciting new term ahead of me and I feel sure that you have too whatever you are doing. Here in England we have a Bank holiday on Monday and then it is on with the new year. Then we should all get back to making our lives as interesting and fulfilling as we can.

Good luck to all of us.

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