Tag: Monday Made Me Do It

The Knight, the Cabbage, and Other Italian Situations

There comes a point in learning a language when you begin looking for ways to incorporate it into things you already do.

In my case, this seemed obvious.

I am learning Italian.

I am learning chess.

Why not learn chess in Italian?

Two birds. One stone. Possibly several casualties.

A Sensible Beginning

I started, naturally, with the names of the chess pieces.

The king is il re.

The queen is la donna.

The rook is la torre.

The bishop is l’alfiere.

The pawn is il pedone.

And the knight is il cavallo.

So far, so good.

Except apparently my brain had other plans.

Because when the moment came to retrieve the Italian word for knight, I confidently produced:

Il cavolo.

Only il cavolo is not a horse.

Il cavolo is a cabbage.

However, Italian – being the expressive language that it is – has also found other employment for the humble vegetable.

Che cavolo!

What the hell!

Or, more literally and much more charmingly:

What the cabbage!

And why did cavolo apparently occupy a more accessible part of my brain than cavallo?

Because Busuu had taught me Italian swear words.

Of course it had.

Incidentally, Busuu also taught me a stronger swear word – which also starts with the letter “C” – but that’s a story for another day.

To be fair, cavallo and cavolo are dangerously close.

One extra l separates a horse from a cabbage.

This feels like an unreasonable amount of responsibility to place upon a single consonant.

Especially since the knight is already the chess piece with which I have the most complicated relationship.

Knights jump over other pieces.

Knights fork other pieces.

Knights appear on squares where I distinctly remember them not being five seconds earlier.

And now my Italian knight has apparently abandoned the board entirely and joined the vegetable aisle.

September 8, 2026

The Other Cup

Sometimes I take down two cups
without thinking.
One for me.
One for… 
no one, yet.
I used to put the second one back.
Now I leave it there
while the kettle sings.
Not because I am waiting.
Because there is room
on the table,
and I have learned
that emptiness
and possibility
are not the same thing.

September 4, 2026

It Started With Two Gnomes

It started, as many regrettable domestic situations do, with a trip to IKEA.

It was December, many years ago. I came home with two gnomes in red hats and magnificent grey beards. They seemed harmless enough. Festive, even.

I made two mistakes.

The first was bringing them home.

The second was bringing home a pair.

The gnomes that started it all.

I never deliberately decided to become a collector of gnomes. There was no announcement, no carefully considered collecting strategy and certainly no designated shelf prepared for their arrival. One gnome simply led to another, as gnomes apparently do, until they began appearing in various corners of the house.

Then came Norway.

I travelled to the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter intending to reach Tromsø and see the Northern Lights. However, severe weather foiled my plans and I found myself stranded in Bodø for three days instead.

The weather never let up and I never saw the Northern Lights.

I did, however, come home with seven Norwegian gnomes.

Proof of nationality—and a written promise that my luck was about to improve.

Some people return from Norway with photographs of the aurora shimmering across the Arctic sky.

I returned with a small bearded delegation in pointed hats.

It was not the souvenir I originally imagined, but it was perhaps the more inevitable one.

By then, the situation had progressed beyond a harmless seasonal purchase. The original IKEA pair had become the founding members of a growing household population, joined over the years by gnomes of different sizes, shapes, and national origins.

They occupy bookshelves. They sit between books and boxes. Some stand alone with quiet authority; others gather in groups, presumably to discuss further territorial expansion.

The situation as it currently stands.

I still maintain that I did not set out to collect them.

But I also admit that whenever I see another gnome with a particularly fine beard or an unusually impressive hat, I feel compelled to consider whether there might be room for just one more.

There usually is.

September 1, 2026
A Curse (Lightly) Upon Men Who Ghost

May every chess puzzle

appear solvable in one move.

Only to reveal

a hidden bishop.

Recorded for posterity.

August 28, 2026
The Teddy That Came With Luna

Before Luna came to us, there was Teddy.

Luna had been rescued from the streets by my cousin when she was only a few weeks old: a tiny scrap of a kitten consisting, as far as anyone could tell, mostly of enormous ears.

They were magnificent.

Completely disproportionate to the rest of her.

She looked as though someone had assembled a kitten using the correct number of parts but had accidentally selected ears from the next size up.

My cousin took her in and cared for her for the next couple of months. It was during those first few weeks of safety – after the streets and before us – that Luna met Teddy.

And apparently, she decided he was important.

By the time we adopted Luna, she had become so attached to the little stuffed pink bear that my cousin specifically asked us to bring Teddy home with her.

So we did.

Baby Luna and Teddy on the way to their new home.

Luna arrived with her enormous ears, her few months’ worth of life experience, and one piece of personal property.

Teddy.

Teddy is a small stuffed pink bear, unremarkable by the usual standards by which humans judge possessions. He is not valuable. He is not rare. He will never be displayed behind glass nor insured against theft.

But he is Luna’s.

Baby Luna with Teddy

And perhaps what makes him particularly precious is that he connects two versions of Luna: the tiny, ridiculously large-eared kitten my cousin rescued from the streets, and the cat who eventually became part of our family.

He was there in between.

Luna cuddling Teddy in her sleep.

When everything else changed – the streets, the humans, the house, the smells, the sounds – Teddy remained familiar.

I sometimes wonder if that is why she bonded with him.

We humans like to imagine that sentimentality belongs to us. We keep childhood toys, old letters, ticket stubs, dried flowers, and all manner of objectively useless things because they carry pieces of our lives.

Perhaps animals have their versions of these things too.

Perhaps Teddy smelled like safety.

Perhaps he smelled like the first place where Luna learned that food would appear regularly and nobody would hurt her.

Perhaps he was simply soft and convenient for a very small kitten to cuddle.

We will never know.

Luna isn’t saying.

Baby Luna with her enormous ears.

There is something wonderfully mysterious about the objects animals choose to love. We can buy them elaborate toys after carefully reading reviews and comparing features, only to discover that their deepest attachment is to a battered stuffed animal, an old blanket, or a cardboard box that once contained something considerably more expensive.

Affection, after all, has never been particularly interested in market value.

An object becomes important because of what happens around it.

Because it was there during naps.

Because it smells like home.

Because tiny paws once held it.

Luna in her bed with Teddy, naturally.

Because, for reasons known only to Luna, this particular little bear became part of the geography of safety.

Teddy may only be a stuffed bear to everyone else.

But he knew Luna when she was a rescued kitten with ears much too large for her head.

He accompanied her when she left one safe home for another.

And all these years later, he remains hers.

Some objects acquire value because they are rare.

Some because they are beautiful.

And some become priceless simply because, once upon a time, a tiny kitten chose them.

Luna chose Teddy.

So Teddy came home with Luna.

Luna and Teddy, still together all these years later.

August 25, 2026
Elegy of Queens III: What the Broken Pieces Built

August 21, 2026
The Song of Deborah, According to a Woman Who Has Had Enough

It started with me asking my AI bestie how it would react to me being swallowed by a whale and ended with this song.

There are no further explanations.

I sat beneath no palm tree.

I had no army waiting in the valley,

no commander asking me to lead.

I had only myself,

a considerable amount of evidence,

and ten months of ambiguity.

It was enough.

For there comes a time when patience

ceases to be a virtue

and becomes a waiting room

in which nobody has called

your number.

There comes a time when

understanding

has understood enough.

When the benefit of the doubt

has exhausted its benefits.

When the woman who has spent

months saying,

Perhaps.

Maybe.

Let us see.

finally says:

No.

And behold, there was clarity.

I have mistaken endurance for

wisdom before.

I have filled silence with possibilities

because possibilities were kinder

than conclusions.

I have stood before closed doors

and wondered whether I should knock

more softly.

No more.

If a door remains closed,

I shall not build my home upon

its threshold.

If an answer does not come,

I shall not invent one.

If someone wishes to walk beside me,

let him walk.

I am not Ruth.

I have my own itinerary.

Let the record show:

I did not become harder.

I became clearer.

My heart remains soft enough

to love generously,

laugh ridiculously,

believe in improbable things

and begin again.

But softness is not surrender.

Kindness is not an unlimited

credit facility.

Patience is not permission.

And loyalty without reciprocity

is abandonment of the self

dressed in prettier clothes.

So bring me the matter.

Bring me the evidence.

Bring me the explanation

that does not quite add up.

Set it beneath the palm.

I will look at what is there,

not what I hoped would be there.

I will ask the uncomfortable question.

I will fact-check the whale.

I will not wait indefinitely

for another person to decide

what place I occupy in his life.

I know the place I occupy in mine.

At the centre.

This is not anger.

It is judgment.

Not punishment.

Discernment.

Not a wall.

A boundary with excellent

administrative procedures.

The case has been heard.

The evidence has been entered.

The extensions have been granted.

Ten months, in fact.

The court finds that sufficient time

has elapsed.

And so I rise.

Not because nothing hurt me.

Not because everything worked out.

Not because I never doubted.

I rise because I doubted

and eventually chose.

Because I waited

and eventually moved.

Call it resilience.

Call it growth.

Call it the High Priestess

finally getting out of her chair.

I call it:

enough.

And somewhere,

three thousand years away,

I like to imagine Deborah

looking up from beneath her palm,

nodding once,

and saying,

Finally.

Now give that woman her own book.

August 18, 2026
A Curse (Lightly) Upon Men Who Breadcrumb

May every shopping trolley possess one squeaky wheel.

The loudest one.

Recorded for posterity.

August 14, 2026
Italian, Apparently

I have been learning Italian for years.

I can no longer remember why.

This seems like something one ought to know before investing several hundred hours of one’s life in prepositions, verb conjugations, and the inexplicable number of ways Italians have devised to say “the”.

I do, however, remember how I got here.

It began with Bosnian.

For several years I was in a relationship with a Bosnian man, so learning Bosnian seemed both romantic and practical. When the relationship ended, so did my motivation for learning the language.

I moved on to French (the language, not the men).

French sounded sophisticated. I imagined myself speaking it beautifully and becoming presumably, as elegant as Sylvie Grateau in Emily in Paris.

Then I discovered that the French have a rather casual relationship between how words are written and how they are pronounced.

Which is a little inconvenient for self-learners like myself.

So I moved on.

Spanish came next. Spanish was considerably more cooperative. Unfortunately, everybody and their uncle seemed to be learning Spanish.

Apparently, even my choice of language needed to be slightly contrary.

And that was how I arrived at Italian.

It had much of what appealed to me about Spanish, the pronunciation was reassuringly predictable, and fewer people seemed to be learning it.

Perfect.

Years later, I am still learning Italian.

I have since visited Italy and accumulated courses, books, apps, and podcasts. I have conjugated verbs while waiting for the train. I have abandoned methods, returned to others, forgotten vocabulary I distinctly remember learning, and occasionally produced an entire sentence without first constructing it in English.

I still couldn’t tell you exactly what I’m going to do with Italian when I finally become fluent.

But perhaps that stopped being the point somewhere along the way.

For now, I keep learning it.

Apparently, Italian and I are in a long-term relationship now.

August 11, 2026
The Magenta Sharpie

There are people who carry umbrellas because it might rain.

There are people who carry power banks because their phones might die.

And then there are people like me.

I carry a magenta Sharpie because of Verona.

Permanent marker, magenta. Acquired following an operational failure in Verona, Italy. Retained for future contingencies involving historically significant walls.

A couple of years ago, my daughters an I stood in Juliet’s courtyard among thousands of visitors.

Like everyone else, we wanted to leave our mark.

Not a declaration of eternal love.

Not a profound quotation.

Just our initials.

Unfortunately, the only writing instrument available at the time was a felt-tip pen with a fine nib.

It worked…

…in the same way whispering works at a rock concert.

Juliet’s Courtyard, Verona, Italy

Our tiny initials among a sea of initials.

Our tiny initials disappeared into a wall already covered with decades of names, hearts, and promises.

Somewhere on that wall is evidence that we were there.

I just couldn’t tell you where.

I remember thinking:

“If only I had a proper marker.”

That thought followed me all the way back to Malaysia.

So I bought one.

Not black.

Magenta.

Because if one is going to commit a minor act of tourist sentimentality, one may as well do it in a colour that refuses to blend politely into the background.

Ever since then, this Sharpie has travelled with me…

…although it has never been asked to write on another famous wall.

Which, if we’re being honest, is probably for the best.

And yet, every time I see it, I am reminded of Verona.

Not because our initials were particularly memorable.

But because not all souvenirs are things you buy.

Sometimes they’re habits you acquire after missing a moment.

August 7, 2026

Tag: Monday Made Me Do It

A Sensible Beginning