Between two worlds. 8/5

A strange sense of unease has crept into the world I'm trying to fashion over in another country. I so badly wanted to return to live as an Italian but I'm finding the more I try, the harder it gets. I feel like I've go one foot on the shore and the other on a boat that is just about to leave port. I don't want to go back but it's hard work being here. I should have worked harder on my Italian. But also when I did my DNA, I'm more Western and Northern European, more Viking than Mediterranean, more introvert than ex. How to fit in?

Today I woke and thought, no, I'm not going to pander to the anxiety, I shall paint my way through it. And so I did. Most things in the apartment got a coat or two of paint, all different shades. And then, exhausted, I succumbed to living between two worlds. I am English in an Italian world, we are two different species but I can be a little of both.

The next day, I painted more furniture and then turned to the daughter's room. Herein lies a monstrous wardrobe with matching bed, side tables and chest of drawers. It is from sometime in the 70's when people wore flared pants and had no taste in furniture. It's cheap, 'brutta' as the Italians say, ugly and with a veneer of fake wood. We had decided it was sensible to keep it even though the mountain man said he could remove it. I had decided to paint it a pleasing shade of grey to make it disappear in some way but I look at it and think this is a waste of paint.

And so begins the attempt to undermine it's structure. It has things I can unscrew and strange contraptions that flip up with heavy equipment. All of which I do but it doesn't budge. I fear it has been glued but nothing can be seen. I go back to the paint job but unhappily and then I have the bright idea of asking the mountain man if he knows how the strange screw contraptions work. He texts back and says that he'll be passing through in twenty minutes and duly he arrives and looks into the cupboard and pushes the walls back so that it comes apart. I had only undone two clips and once all four are open the walls come apart. I am jubilant. The beast shall be conquered and taken apart and removed bit by bit down the four flights of stairs. Ikea will be contacted again. Probably the same men will deliver to this part of the world.

Oh, but that was just the start. The brute came down and then the bed looked terrible. I looked at the screw situation and it was a different conundrum to the wardrobe. The mountain man was consulted again, photos of the weird screws were sent. "Will be there in 20 minutes" he said and he was and he showed me how to undo an Italian contraption and the bed fell apart. Luckily the wardrobe was in pieces at that stage and he took the heaviest pieces. Getting the large panels down the staircase with it's low ceilings was a feat of engineering that the daughter and I hold as a special moment of collaboration in our relationship. The brute was dissembled, Ikea was on it's way!

And then the fun began. We ordered two wardrobes so that when we rent the apartment, we can store our things in one. The assembly was extraordinarily intricate even by IKEA standards. Panels put in and then having to be removed. Screws in, screw out but we finished on a high until we realised we had to put the chest of drawers together. We held it together without losing it. Alcohol was needed. We surveyed the new domain and headed down to our bar for a Negroni, didn't matter that it was a bit too early. Oh, and I forgot to mention I found a beautiful little shop with quirky lamps and other crafts and arts and I bought this (minus the crystals)!