Deborah's Days Like This Monthly Newsletter July 23 - Italy By Train

A monthly round-up of writing and other things I've been up to.

Hope your July is going well! By the time this newsletter reaches you, I’ll hopefully have navigated my way to Lake Maggiore. Having googled whether to tell you it was in Italy or in Switzerland, I discovered that 80% of it is in Italy and 20% in Switzerland which made me think about how we try to stake our claim on the world when really, it’s much more important to share and allow people to enjoy a nice lake rather than have to own all of it. Fair play to Switzerland and Italy for agreeing to share! If you’re anything like me, all you’ll want to do at this time of year is have a bit of a rest. June can be an exceptionally tiring month as lots of events are piled in before the end of term and we cling on to packing a suitcase and eventually escaping from the busyness of modern life!

Train travel is the theme for our family summer holiday this year, starting in Zurich and finishing in Venice. It seems to work well for all of us. I look at scenery while my travelling companions look at devices. I worry about whether I’ve booked the right seats at the right times while they get on and sit down. I organise restaurants while they ask what time dinner is at. But let’s hope we have made it as planned on to the Bernina Express which has been on my bucket list for some time, to the Duomo (Cathedral of Milan) and to Da Vinci’s Last Supper. There won’t be any writing from me next week as we’ll be continuing our train journeys through Italy and I’ll be busy doing a food tour and seeing Michelangelo’s ‘David’ sculpture in Florence, enjoying early morning strolls and a romantic sunset cruise in Venice and filming a few TikToks in Pisa. If you do want to catch up on how our trip and all my organising is going, the best place is Instagram.  

I’m keeping this newsletter fairly short this month because I haven’t much to say (!) but I wanted to extend a welcome to anyone who has recently subscribed to read my writing on Substack. It’s lovely to share my writing with you although I am slightly worried that you may be here for my writing on church as recent pieces have veered heavily towards that or maybe you’re here for my writing about my husband! Do hang around for my other writing too. I also write about many other things including parenting, career, identity, midlife and so on. And so, on that note….

What have I written about recently?

You can catch up on what I’ve been writing by clicking on these links….

Can You Colourise My Life? I’m So Sick of Black And White… (What Women Want?). This was written during a heatwave and captures my mood when it was way too hot to move.

Just a Mum and a Dad at the End of the Day. In this, I talk about how we can be many things in our professional lives but when an incident on a trampoline unexpectedly happens, we are just a mum and a dad at the end of the day.

Semper Reformanda – A Review of My Second (Presbyterian Church In Ireland) General Assembly. This is a very specific piece for those interested in how the Presbyterian church functions! A few people have spat out their coffee whilst reading it…

Have You Found Yourself Yet Love? It’s Not Going To Happen In Marks and Spencer…..This was inspired by watching a programme called The Change.

What am I enjoying?

Something to read…

One of my favourite holiday preparations is selecting the books I will take away with me in my suitcase. I understand the concept of electronic devices but I will only ever be a physical book reader and so I have to allow space for at least five books plus one extra for luck. Here are my choices for Switzerland and Italy.

Also, here is a book recommendation. This is one I have already read. It is The Round House by Louise Erdrich which is a tough read and introduced me to the judicial system on Indian reservations. As the victim of a crime committed by a non-native American cannot prove where the crime took place, whether on land under the jurisdiction of the federal government or in the grounds of the ‘round house’ (a sacred building where tribal courts are in charge), prosecution cannot progress as tribal courts cannot prosecute non-native people.

For me, this was a subject I knew very little about and the experiences of women on reservations seems to have gone very much under the radar. If you are interested in knowing more, do read the book and these two articles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/books/review/the-round-house-by-louise-erdrich.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/17/sexual-violence-against-native-indigenous-women

Something to watch and listen to…

Simply because he was enjoying himself so much, had never been before and agreed that not even headlining at Glastonbury could make him cool, I am recommending both watching and listening to Rick Astley (the crowd participation and dancing security guards add to a lovely musical moment).

And that’s it for this month’s newsletter. Do let me know if you are heading away anywhere this summer or if you have any plans that you are looking forward to. Also, let me know what you are reading? There’s a handy comment box below you can use.

In the meantime, do keep reading my writing and enjoying it!

Love, Deborah