Business matters and milestones

 Tomorrow Rory leaves for France. France. You can just drive there. Living in Europe seems to exciting compared to being able to FLY to Australia as one of our nearest overseas options. Anyway, he heads off for a big conference and Trade Show in Lyon where he will speak on Internal Water Cooling and work on the DRAM stand – the company that our distributor Alison owns, helping to promote La Plastecnica and drum up European business for Dram!

Today has been spent filling plastic bags with pieces of paper to hand out to interested trade show attendees – only hitch is that all the pieces of paper have to come in 7 languages. They cover Italian, French, German, Polish, Spanish, English and some Russian. It brings back happy memories of the first major trade show I attended with Rory when we were first married. We were staying here is Milan and the conference was in Berlin. Now, five years on and two children later and filling the bags is about where my contribution ends as I will be staying in Milan with the kids. Between now and when we leave, apparently Rory (with or without us)  will probably be going to Poland, Puglia (southern Italy), Denmark and possibly UK to run trials on his new invention (SUPACOOL).

But this is my contribution because this is what we are here for and looking after the kids is my part of the job (for the next 3 days anyway!).

I am proud to say that I reached a milestone on Thursday. I took both boys, by myself, on the bus and then the underground to the centre of Milan. We went to Duomo Square, where it all happens in Milan. And we went home again. The only moments I had were in the square when both boys were chasing pigeons in the opposite directions amidst a thronging crowd including hawkers, tourists, beggars etc. Thankfully Silas was more easily talked out of the activity than Gwilym.  In fact it would be fair to say that Gwilym wasn’t easily talked out of any frowned upon activities in the square (climbing on statues, walking in gardens etc). We ate roasted chestnuts, drank coffee and admired (?) dead popes who are lying in display cases in the Duomo (thankfully their faces have now been covered by silver masks but there is no mistaking they are corpses) and gazed at gigantic oil paintings depicting important scenes from church history (??) were dazzled by magnificent stained glass windows and argued about whether to do the climb to the roof (later, later). Silas' quote for the day: This is bigger than our church, isn't it Mum?

note Gwilym, Bottom left. Staunch as.

For the next three days though, we will be scaling down our undertakings other than a trip back to the natural history museum to meet up with an Italian woman and her son. We met them last time and she spoke good English, had a son a similar age to Gwilym and so without hesitation, I asked for her phone number and we have arranged to meet there again. Having no shame has worked well for me in the past when it comes to making friends.

Oh, and another small victory. I have found a friendly caffe. One that likes kids, the people smile and talk to me and it is about 30m from our house. So, the coffee’s back on.