Obsessed

Hey all,

Have not written about the ice-cream, or gelato, over here yet – for much the same reason that one might be reluctant to write about some secret fetish – not that there is anything particularly shameful, furtive, or depraved about ice-cream – but I get off on it so much that I feel like there should be. In Australia I have always been deeply suspicious about gelato – thin watery insubstantial icy stuff, a poor excuse for a desert – probably only eaten by vegans or the sort of people who refuse to shop at Borders (or who eat muesli by choice, or who would choose a Hyundai for the fuel consumption over a Monaro V8 even if they won the V8 in a raffle).

Here, however, it is a different story – the flavours are all different to those in Australia – and better – and the bulk of what they sell is based firmly in milk, cream, fat, sugar and cholesterol, as a good desert should be. It is not kept as cold as ice-cream is in Australia either, which means they don't scoop it out in more-or-less rock-hard little balls, but use this kind of flat pallet thing to squash it into the cone and then spread it up in huge big cloudy piles on top. It is already soft and starts melting in the most appealing way almost immediately – I have not eaten one yet without getting drips all over my shirt, pants, shoes – and this includes when I try to be super careful and hold it at a safe distance and only eat it with the spoons they always provide because they pile them up so much that the conventional way of eating an ice-cream in a cone is not really an option at least until you are three quarter's done. Sorry. I am getting breathless. It is, at least in Florence, absurdly overpriced – but they never get stingy with how much they give you.

They have all these exotic flavours made with Nutella, Kinder Surprise, and other weird things – but these are just there to suck in the dilettantes – for the true enthusiast the Queen of all the ice-cream flavours on the planet is one whose name I always forget but has something to do with “Panna”. Which is “cream” then something else. I am not sure exactly how it differs from Crema (“cream”), but it does. Someone in Rome advised the Panna flavour – he described it as being like whipped cream when it starts to melt in your mouth, which frankly sounds pretty appalling – fortunately I trusted the expression on his face more than I trusted his description – and having become obsessed with it his description is about as good a one as I can come up with myself – except for the fact that it sounds awful. It is hands down the best ice-cream flavour I have every tried. I guess the closest thing you would find to it in Australia is Vanilla, which again sounds pretty boring – and doesn't really come close to just how fantastic it is. I have to work really hard not to gorge myself on the stuff every day. They can't make knives that last for more that a fortnight, but they do know ice-cream.

Also: the treasures of the Renaissance are pretty exciting.

Dropped back two weeks in class today – along with the dyslexic designer – it had got to the point where I was just wasting my time completely sitting there and listening to what I could not understand – for those who already have a language, especially one that is similar, this method of teaching might work – for those with only English it is close to being a waste of time – having stuff explained to you in a language you don't understand about how to understand the language – seems kind of pointless beyond a certain point – far too fast, for me at least – there is an English girl in the class who did the same thing – repeated the first two weeks – and it seems to have helped her, so hopefully will me. So I will not get past the present tense at all, but frankly trying to get my head around another enormous cloud of verb endings before I even know what a given verb means was turning into a complete dead end. Okay for the French and Spanish – they are basically just learning grammar and pronunciation, but for me, trying to remember what the word signifies as well as the never-ending ways to modify it: it just isn't happening. Should have done it on Monday. Live and don't learn. Have a mate who picks up languages like I do books – and ones that are radically different to both English and each other. Have always been impressed by how he manages this – am now officially in awe.

Spoke to K – opening night went really well – so, publicly: well done! Now get some sleep and enjoy a weekend of getting to know your couch...

Photos – the object of my obsession, and a sign I thought was funny.

Cheers, B.

PS - thanks for kind emails - really do appreciate them!