3 Things: A Mini-series A Book and A New Language

What I've been watching, what I've been reading and what I've been learning

Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash

A Mini-series

I recently binge-watched the Netflix mini-series All the Light We Cannot See. It has four hour-long episodes. The series was adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Anthony Doerr, and developed by Steven Knight (he of Peaky Blinders fame) for Netflix. It stars Aria Mia Lobetti, Mark Ruffalo, and Hugh Laurie. I found it engrossing and didn’t want to stop watching, so I viewed three episodes, one after the other. Then the last one the following night.

A friend recommended the book and I added it to my list of books to read, but I hadn’t yet done so. Not having read it I don’t know how true to the book the series is. It did make great viewing, though. Hugh Laurie was particularly noteworthy. I’m aware he made a series in America called House and became well known there for his performance in it, but I didn’t watch it. I know him best for the comedy series Black Adder.

The Prince Regent was one of the characters he played and his interpretation was of a foppish, overly indulged idiot - very different from the serious character in this mini-series, and very funny. He’s also known for his partnership with Stephen Fry. Then latterly The Night Manager, the first serious role I’d seen him in. His singing should be mentioned, too. He’s a jazz singer. Jazz is not my type of music, but I do like his rendition of Unchain My Heart and a few others.

The plot of the mini-series was a little questionable, with a far-fetched ending and you have to suspend disbelief for one aspect of it, which I usually struggle to do. I was aware that it wasn’t a top-notch story, but nonetheless, I did find it gripping and enjoyable.

A Book

Rumi: “Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the world”

The title of the mini-series reminded me of the above quote. Amongst my books sits one entitled: Rumi’s Little Book of Life (translated by Maryam Mali and Azima Melita Kolin) which I dip into from time to time. Rumi is a Sufi Mystic of the thirteenth century who lived in Persia (now Iran). The quote is not from this book, which is full of love poems to God, but it reminded me to dip in again. I’m not a religious person, nor am I a believer, but I do like the lyricism of Rumi’s poetry.

Here’s a lovely poem I particularly like, I see it as a call to self-growth:

Who would write on a page already filled with writings?
Who would plant a sapling where one is already planted?
One would look for an empty page and virgin soil.
Become bare like the earth so the Beloved
May plant His seed, become a blank page
So His pen may write upon you.

A New Language

This is my fifty-fifth consecutive day of lessons in Italian on an app called Duolingo. Each lesson only lasts about three minutes, although sometimes I do two lessons, but I think little and often is the ideal way to learn. It’s really enjoyable and learning the basics of a new language is fascinating. I wondered if they consider Italian a difficult language to learn. Apparently, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) considers it to be one of the easiest for English speakers.

My plan is to speak it well enough to communicate with people on my trip to Florence next April. Not to have an in-depth conversation but just enough to be sociable and to navigate around the sites. Being a major tourist town it’s probably unnecessary, as no doubt the locals who work in the tourist sites and hotels speak English. It would be courteous, though, to have a basic knowledge of the language of the citizens of the town, I think.

So far, I can ask for coffee or tea in a cafe and enquire where is the store, church, square, or theatre. I’m learning to exchange information about family members, and how tall someone’s boyfriend is - all very useful. Did you think, as I did, that a cornetto in Italian is an ice cream? Well, you’d be very surprised if you ordered one in an Italian cafe expecting to be presented with a cone-shaped frozen dessert, only to have a breakfast pastry placed in front of you - a croissant. This is what it actually means. Blame the very successful advertising campaign by Walls ice cream company in the UK back in 1982, which forever linked the word in the minds of the unsuspecting British public with the frozen delicacy.

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My next post will be the newsletter elaborating on what I mean by feeling “ageless”. Did you watch the mini-series, All the Light We Cannot See? What did you think of it? Do you enjoy reading Rumi? Have you learned a new language? Let me know in the Comments.