What we did on our holidays.

Italian conversation classes started up again today. Most of us are really just keeping our Italian ticking over and more than anything I think we go for the social group. Everyone has now known each other for a number of years and we all get along fine. New people add themselves to the group and sometimes stay, sometimes leave. We are pretty welcoming but maybe we are not everyone's cup of tea. 

It's very refreshing to go along to a class where no-one is putting pressure on the "students" to take an examination at the end of the year. We are all a little long in the tooth for such things now. Not that we can't pass exams; it's just that we no longer need to do so. And I'm pretty sure it's more fun for the teacher as well. In fact, having done this kind of thing myself, I know that is the case. 

We did the usual first class of the year reunion thing with all of us telling what we had been up to in the summer. Our teacher had been to Greece and declared that the Greek remains they have in Sicily are much better than what she saw in Greece. When she expressed surprise at how little there is at the Parthenon in Athens by way of statues and such, we had to confess that most of that stuff is in the British Museum. There you go, British vandalism goes back a long way. 

They seem to have been doing a similar thing at the Labour Party Conference, which is going on in Manchester. Not robbing Greek artefacts and ancient monuments but talking about their holidays. Goodness knows why. Anyway I read part of a speech by a member of the Shadow Cabinet where he went on about how he and his family went interRailing this summer. 

One of the places they visited was Salzburg and while still at the planning stage they discovered that there you can do a Sound of Music Tour. You go around on bikes, apparently, and visit places seen in the film version of the musical. You can run through the field where Maria sang "The Hills are Alive" and things like that. Well, his wife decided that if they were doing it they needed to make clothes out of curtains! Because they did so in the film! 

So she bought some curtain material, took it away with them and on the train between Munich and Salzburg they sewed. Lederhosen for the boys and headscarves for the girls. Really? The train must have gone very slowly for them to get all that stitching done. it's surely not that far between Munich and Salzburg. I have made quite a lot of clothes myself in my time, some of then stitched by hand, so I know what I am talking about. Headscarves maybe but lederhosen??? That's asking a lot. And who makes headscarves out of curtains? Another thing: they must have very amenable sons if they were prepared to wear short trousers with bib and brace and all made from curtains! 

In any case, I don't remember any clothes being made out of curtains in The Sound of Music. Granted, it's a long time since I saw the film so I could be wrong. Please put me wise if that is the case. I do know that Scarlett O'Hara successfully made a new outfit out of green velvet curtains in Gone with the Wind. (There's a woman who knew how to sew! Or at least, she knew how to get the faithful remaining slaves to sew.) Heaven help us if that politician goes on an American Civil War Tour holiday! 

As regards the lederhosen, I am afraid I think it's all a lot of ... (I almost said something rude) ... nonsense!