Chapter 3: Snow Falling.

Last week I watched ‘Out of Africa’. I read the book when I was around fifteen, I think, so (seven years later!) I do not remember much of it beside the fact that I really liked it and that it made me want to go on a safari, which is exactly how I felt after watching the beautiful, beautiful film with the amazing, amazing Meryl Streep and the sexy, sexy Robert Redford. Anyway, I’m not going to talk about ‘Out of Africa’ (but it’s so good! the photography! and the dialogues! and Robert Redford!) - what I am driving at is that there was this one sentence, “when the gods want to punish us they grant our prayers”, which I think was in the book as well; but that’s not the point. The point is, my prayers have been granted and I have had the most uneventful Thursday you can imagine. Actually, I have had the most uneventful week you can imagine. It was like an episode of the Donna Reed Show according to Gilmore Girls: I woke up, had breakfast, and nothing happened; I went to class, came home, and nothing happened; I had lunch while watching Endeavour and nothing happened. The only highlight of my week was the snow, which I love so so much but which I very rarely get to see due to the fact that I grew up on the coast in southern Italy and it always seems to snow in Bologna (where I sort of live, a bit) when I’m not there. But it snowed in Oxford these past two days, and I spent all my waking hours when I wasn’t writing my essays or working on my novel or reading The Once and Future King simply staring out of my window in awe and amazement. Snow is so beautiful and glittery and it makes everything look so poetical and romantic and magical. Besides, Oxford as a place usually looks quite poetical and romantic and magical in its own right, which means the city has been looking so stunning these past few days that it’s surprising people could do anything so prosaic as to work at all (I know I could only do the bare minimum, and only after it was dark anyway).

As someone who knows several scenes of Gilmore Girls by heart and has gone as far as actually reading Snow Falling (i.e. the novel Jane is supposed to have written in Jane The Virgin), I cannot but firmly believe in the magical power of snow. True, as yet, snow has not worked its magic on me, except in making me gasp at the beauty of the world (which it’s no little matter, when you think about it); but I have faith. Actually, in a way it has given me a snowy miracle already, as this week I’ve finally worked my way through the second draft of chapter 7 of my novel, on which I was stuck since as far back as June 2017! What I was hoping for, admittedly, was a boyfriend of the kind Jane Gloriana Villanueva and Lorelei Gilmore seem to get whenever it snows (be it for real or because they’ve bumped into a snow machine); nevertheless, if the book is going to be a best-seller, winning me eternal fame and glory, I think I can promise never to ask for another snowy miracle again.

Love,

Raff x

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