Hello readers,  I just wanted to write a few lines summarizing what has happened this week on my blog, outside it is absolutely pissing down as us english say.
looking at the positives of this week, we are, as you say ,almost in good health, Elisa has been under the weather and I have pulled a muscle or something in my shoulder, but we battle on regardless, My sister is feeling worse than us though, poor thing, and big brother lives too far away to look after her! so let’s all say a big get well soon to my sister Gill as well!

lets talk about what I have written and why, let us head back to Sunday 19.

https://darrenhobsonpoet.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/why-are-you-killing-calabria/

So what was that about, well Elisa is from Calabria, and we do what most people do when there is a festive holiday, we travel down to the toe part of Italy to say hello to parents and the rest of the family, her mum cooks great home cooked food as well as her father. Calabria is a very desolate place, you could link it to Scotland, far away from everything, hard to reach, and lower investment than the richer cousins. obviously both places have fantastic landscapes, but the weather in Calabria beats Scotland hands down.
Ignored by the people in power in Rome, the Mafia grows stronger as it is uncontrolled, and therefore lots of business dealings in the south have one or more crime families involved, that is why there are lots of shopping centres arriving there, they build the shops, you pay the rent and at the end of the day you have cleaned your dirty money.
procedures like planning permissions and other silly details are generally passed with a few backhanders full of money.
Girifalco and its fellow neighbours have battled for integrity of the last few years, wind turbines , wind farms are a big part of the money cleaning operations of the mafia, so the natural beauty of the area is now blighted by hundreds of wind turbines, built without proper planning permission, maybe too near roads or houses, but you cannot complain or else your car will be set on fire.
now a new battle has arisen, private land designated as community recycling site was in fact to be a huge hole where asbestos and toxins can be dumped, making lots of money for the corrupt businessmen of the area, and killing the land and lives of people for many generations to come. so protesters are protesting but this time the population of all the communities are joined together in one large fight against this site. I will keep you update on the outcome.
A population in general suffering from the crisis cannot live in peace with what they have left, mainly their land , and now even the chemicals from Syria will be unloaded and reloaded in Calabria. thank you very much Rome, much appreciated.

moving on quickly to my next poem.

https://darrenhobsonpoet.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/mist-and-snowfall/

this was written over the Christmas period whilst residing in Calabria, just a story that came to me one morning, it might not be totally original or perfect , but it is my work. maybe I will dress it up in the future, who knows!

on Saturday we decided to accept an invitation to attend a drum and bass seminar here in Velletri , this blog is a brief summary of what happened with photos.

https://darrenhobsonpoet.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/saturday-18th-january/

that was published on Monday, meaning that my next poem came out a bit late on Wednesday, because on the 21st it was our anniversary of being together for four years and six months, so we had a drink and a pizza, and with that in mind a wrote a poem in honour of this event with some pictures of that evening.

https://darrenhobsonpoet.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/1645-days/

Thursday came and went, and with it I wrote a humorous , tongue in cheek poem about drinking!

https://darrenhobsonpoet.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/do-you-need-a-drink/

maybe some people do not want to be involved in the seedy world of drinking , so it was not very well received, no harm in trying to be funny!

here we are on friday, bad weather means there are more potholes here in Rome than the whole of the USA ,I decided to get down on paper the poem that has been floating around my mind for the past few weeks,  I wanted to get it written before the cat ate the hen,

https://darrenhobsonpoet.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/the-cat-and-the-hen/

that is my week almost over, I have a few poems gathering dust between my ears, and hopefully they will see the light over the weekend, will be uploading more photos to my past work as well.

well thanks for reading, hope you have a great weekend, hope it is a great one!

Darren and Elisa

©D.Hobson January 2014