Sicilia: Limones and volcanoes for a week

OK, so the title probably doesn't make much sense, but I just spent a week in Sicily and I. Loved. IT!

For those God-Father fans out there, though, it isn't the Sicily that they think they know from the films. Yes, there are olive trees galore, more pomegranate trees than I was expecting and enough lemons for Life to get tired of them, but the Cosa Nostra are busy trying not to be imprisoned into non-existence by the Sicilian government.

Among their many not-so-legal activities, there were a LOT of solar-farms (think an entire hill covered in solar panels) that the Cosa Nostra had built, only to shell it out to other countries at stupid prices, not to mention a lot of illegal building - in every sense of the word, since a lot of the building seems to be on cliffs over motorways that then get buried under landslides thanks to both the building and some torrential rain!

Anyway, Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, making up the 'football' at the toe of mainland Italy's 'boot'. I say mainland because Sicily is actually a part of Italy, having been owned in turn by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans, the lords or kings of Anjou, then the crowns of Aragon, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, before being unified with Naples under the Bourbons as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

As a result, there is very little of the natural Sicily to see. A lot of the plants and animals were introduced by its conquerors, namely the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. However, it can boast the oldest chestnut tree in the world - which is unusual considering that this Hundred Horse Chestnut has survived between 2 and 4,000 years on the eastern slope of Mount Etna - which was amazing, but we'll get to that.

One thing that is totally Sicilian is the endangered goats, which are a total mind-mess. For one thing, they are supposedly useless, giving very little milk and icky icky meat. For another, they're endangered, regardless! Also, their horns are epic in the extreme:

But this is all in Agrigento, on the southern coast closest to the coast of Northern Africa. You go up to Monreale, just outside of their capital city of Palermo on the north coast, things get even more mentally messy and cultured, when you find the answer to this question: What do you get when King William the Second (also known as the Good) decides to build a cathedral because he doesn't like the archbishop of Palermo? Apparently, a cathedral with only one painting in the entire building, and mosaics made up of - I'm absolutely not joking - 400 KILOS of GOLD!

And finally we get to the eastern coast, with the most famous of Sicily's landmarks: Mount Etna. For a volcano that went off earlier this year, it is FREEZING at the best of times, thanks to being 3,329 metres high, with a base of 140 square kilometres.
The irony is that it has a skiing resort. Think about it - you can SKI on the most ACTIVE VOLCANO IN EUROPE! And you can go up to the secondary crater (bearing in mind that there are at least 5 non-active craters around Etna's middle, and three closer to its peak. Thanks to its five-day tantrum in May this year, there was a crown of sulphur and a no-access policy to the primary crater, which is a bit counter-intuitive seeing as how even the secondary crater's been active in the past two years:

All in all, Sicily has been an amazing place to visit. I heartily recommend it to everyone, and the Sicilians will honestly not mind the extra people. They have the perfect proverb, after all:

"Unni manciannu dui, manciannu tri (there's always room for one more)'

Swear Words - We need some new ones.

OK - this is going to be a weird one. But I have a problem with our English swear words; none of them seem to really mean the same things they did. This might just be my education talking, but none of them offend me, because I know what they really mean.

Like, fuck means "sex" and bloody means I need a plaster or a tampon, crap means I pooped myself, and shit is what monkeys tend to throw around.
But the one that everybody shies away from is the other C-word. As in, the C U Next Tuesday word. Granted, it's rarely used in "civilized" society, but it still seems to hold a lot of power.

But not for me. To me, calling someone a cunt is liking calling someone a dick. The only response you'll ever get from me is: "Well, yeah - I have one. So what?"
Because the truest definition of the word is a woman's genitalia, although it can also mean having sex with a woman and today, you could just about have sex with nearly anybody.
The same thing with pussy - although most people use it to refer to "womanlike" qualities, it's really just short for a baby cat or pusillanimous, which means "timid or cowardly", and everybody has a different standard of courage. I just don't find constant swearing as brave - or attractive. It just makes you look uneducated and unopinionated and incapable of proper expression.

And what's wrong with politeness? We're BRITISH, for God's sake - we practically own the market for PC and manners, why don't we damn well act like it? As Rachel Nichols said,

"I simply do not think that yelling, swearing, threatening or belittling will get you to the place you want to be faster than kindness, understanding, patience and a willingness to compromise."

Granted, compromising won't taste as good as total victory, but it's better to have a taste of the cake than stand there with no respect from your peers and the sour taste of a stream of swear words in your mouth.

Sickness of Sins: Everyone has a bad habit

OK, I have a confession to make, to kick start this post: I am absolutely and totally addicted to Diet Coke and McCoy's Salt and Vinegar crisps.  My family can back me up on this.

At worst, I could drink up to 14 litres of Diet coke a week (2 litres a day, mostly made up of 4 500ml bottles), and eat 4 50g packets of crisps a day - two with lunch and two after dinner. I won't even try and think of how many packets that is a week. It'll be enough to say that it's been less than helpful to my waistline.
And while my family - my mum, sister, and father in particular - have been urging me to cut this down (scratch that, cut it out entirely), I can't help wanting to follow a certain train of thought.
Whenever we think about addictions, we think of the following: drink, drugs, cigarettes, sex. And those are the ones that usually blow your life apart in a huge way: rehab, debt, overdoses, the whole kit and caboodle.
But then there are... I don't want to say less harmful addictions, but - let's go with more SUBTLE addictions, like food. And I think it's because of our perception of food; the stuff's essential - no food and you're toast.

Yeah, I know - terrible pun, but I didn't have to fish for it. OK, I'll get back to the point.
The way I can't help seeing it is that food's a carer's drug. It can still make you sick in that you overeat in one sitting and throw up then, but it doesn't incapacitate you straight away. You can eat crisps and some chocolate, and then get up and do something that requires good mobility.
If you're drunk or stoned, the ability to walk a straight line juggling oranges and lemons isn't going to work out well.
But when you overdose on junk food and fizzy drinks, the worse that can happen - or at least the worst that HAS happened to me at least - is that you puke all over the place.

As Caitlin Moran wrote once, 
"Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers... Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic or a burden. Instead, they are self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone."

And we don't entirely realise it. Granted, we realise the dangers of eating too little food - too many girls puking their guts out in primary school, or eating lettuce leaves because Joe Sexy-DooDah says he only likes girls who weigh the same as a bottle of beer.
But practically nobody sees the opposite end of the spectrum - women eating the entire contents of their fridges at midnight because they think that Joe Pecksey would never look at them twice.
But people aren't talking about it unless there's a 2 year old already puking her guts out without enough fat on her.

But then, maybe I'm not having a go at the sins of fat people. I'm fat myself, I can't talk. I'm just having a go at the hypocrisy of society, I guess. There's a quote - I don't know who by - that I found recently, and love:

"I don't have a short temper, I just have a low tolerance for hypocrites and drama."

Say Balls... to myths about men!

OK, I'd have to be dickless before I'd not try to be fair to both sides. So sorry, girls, but the guys are going to get talked up now. Germaine Greer, you'd better look away now. Because just like all women, all men aren't all that bad. And while Prince Charming and Mr Right are all myths I probably can't bust, the following are just a sack of rubbish:

1) Men aren't emotional.
Granted, men aren't about to burst into tears at a Mr Darcy movie. Guys like Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris aren't going to tear up at the opening credits to Downton Abbey.
It's not that they aren't emotional, but for men, masculinity is about not emoting on a regular basis - so they might let off steam once a month as opposed to once a day for women, but while women will let off little puffs every day, men will let off a cloud, and then be just fine.
 Men are a bit like the internal parts of a car - to people with degrees in Engineering, they're perfectly understandable; to everybody else, they're good to look at, but are so complex under the surface that you'll blow every damn fuse you have, plus the spares.
A word to the wise, though, guys - it takes more balls to admit your feelings than to bottle them up.

2) Men hate commitment

Ding ding - wrong! OK, like with men and their feelings, masculinity is a little to blame for this one, because it's always like "be tough, be strong - put your emotions back in their box!" 
Just bear in mind that men, for all their shows of wanting freedom and independence, just might value loyalty most of all. So if your guy's holding off just that little bit, a show of how much you've got his back, might just clinch it for him to open up - and while they won't be the traditional bunch of roses or Mr Darcy declaring his love on bended knee, they will be gestures of feeling nonetheless

3) Men don't communicate

Not true! Men like to talk, and some research shows that men talk a little more than women. It's just a question of men having a built in censor that's wired to how they think a woman will react to a deeper, more genuine honesty. If they don't think it'll slide, men won't bother saying it.
Just because a bloke doesn't mention it, it doesn't mean his internal life isn't interesting. It's a question of suspending judgement that will get him to reveal more of himself.

4) Guys can't or won't take criticism.

OK this one is kind of down to us, girls, because we're kind of wired to talk around the issue. As a result, said criticism is rarely delivered to our guys in a way they'll understand. Just because you get into his face every now and then and actually speak your mind, it doesn't mean he's going to pull a runner! And if he does, then more fool him.
If you're serious about a relationship, then a tough love conversation is worth the risk of seriously offending either or both parties just to clear the air.

5) Men want sex - period.

Yeah, and I want a house built out of dry sand. Just because your boyfriend isn't a sex addict who blows your mind in the bedroom every five seconds, it doesn't make him less of a man.
Frankly, men are just like the rest of us, and it's no less normal for them to choose chilling out over sex than it is for women. And besides - who says it won't spice up the times you do have sex? We all know what they say - less is more!

6) Men only want to date beautiful, dirty idiots.
Yeah, tell that to couples like Pierre and Marie Curie (who both reached fame in scientific circles)! There's different kinds of beauty, and acting stupid just because society infantalizes women is not the way to get a lasting relationship with a genuine man.
Any man worth a damn wants a girlfriend who, yes, looks like she could turn a few heads, but also has a brain she knows how to use, and interests and goals that don't necessarily involve him.
And yeah, OK, sometimes guys are or can be intimidated by smart powerful women - but it's the kind of intimidation that walks hand in hand with respect which, to me, is nothing but all kinds of good. And if you keep asking for his jacket when you're cold or keep forgetting your purse or your underwear, your boyfriend becomes your babysitter, and they won't sit around for something they didn't sign up for!
If you're with a guy who wants his girl to act like that, then he's probably pretty immature himself, and that's not always good for you.

So yeah, there are differences between men and women - there always have been, there always will be. Some are just biological - the rest are only cultural, and can easily be broken by keeping an open mind. I find, much like Oscar Wilde, that the cultural ones stem from both and either side:

"Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance."

But to keep a relationship going, and to make your other half into Mr or Mrs Right for You, I think it's worth keeping in mind what Phillip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, has to say:

"Men as well as women, are more oftener led by their hearts than their understandings."

Call me Arnie Brassiernegger: Terminating myths about women!

OK, so I probably won't kill off ALL of the misconceptions people have about women (and by people, I mean mostly blokes). I just want to bust the balls of a couple, and have a rant about the difference between bikinis and underwear - of which there is zero difference; we just make a difference because of where we want to wear them.

Numero uno misconception is that women are either total whores or more uptight than nuns when it comes to sex. But then, are men so different? The problem here is that men and women are held to two polar opposite standards, when really, we all have the same kind of libido sex drivey thing.
Not all men go out and have sex with every single woman in sight, or everything that has a pulse, and some women are exactly the same. Women are just as happy to be involved in their own seduction, or they wouldn't spend the entire day getting ready for a Friday night out! Plus, the top bestselling genre of books is ROMANCE - yes, that kind with the impossibly good-looking hunk on the front! 
Take the hint people - women enjoy sex just as much as men. It's just the perceptions that men have of women who say "yes" as being whores and the ones who say "no" as chastity-belt-wearing prudes, when it's not necessarily vice versa. It's a case of mixed messages and an inability to communicate in the same value way.

Number two: Men can just ask what women want in a relationship or a potential boyfriend. OH DEAR GOD, HOW WRONG COULD YOU BE???????????? Women will almost always give the same laundry list of good looking, funny, super smart, willing to save a puppy here or a kitten there, but this is all off the top of our heads. 
Women want this on a conscious level and will spout this until the end of time because WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE WANT. Besides an entirely new wardrobe, but that's beside the point. You'll know she's considering getting pretty serious when we get to the following...

3: Women always play bitchy mind-games. Nope. Nope. NOPE. On the whole, this is mostly biological hard-wiring. Women are "bio-programmed" to test potential mates, hence the flirting, the mind-games, the boundary pushing. It's the exact same thing when men try flirting, muscle-flexing and basically ogling women with Nicki Minaj's boobs and an arse to do J-Lo proud.
The testing is her way of making sure you're worthy of being with her. Plus, and this is something worth taking note of, women are, out of sheer evolution, determined to find a protector - a man with confidence, assertiveness, and strength. Any man who sets a boundary in a relationship and lets it slide when she breaks it, is doomed to fail at that relationship.

Misconception number 4: Women are to blame for failed relationships. Granted, when she's cheated, lied, or stolen from you or done something equally unforgivable, then it really is her fault. But when a guy talks about himself, escalates the relationship sexually too quickly, or is too scared to do that or approach a girl "out of his league", then it's on you, buster!
Unless she's a lesbian, a 12 year old in love with those horrific beings known as Edward Cullen and Justin Bieber, then the chances are she's got a crush on George Clooney, Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. I, for one, am mad about Tom Hiddleston, and he shares something in common with all bar Bieber - THEY'RE ALL OLDER!!! Chances are, the girl you're after is younger than all of them except Bieber, and I'd be worried if she was.
Even in realistic relationships, women shack up with older "uglier", broke men all the time. You're just as likely to get the woman as the next Tom, Dick, or Harry! Women just want a guy to make them laugh, make them feel good and get them a pint of ice cream when Mother Nature's being a bitch!

Five: Women eat like rabbits. Shut. Up. There are PLENTY of women out there who can easily pack away a pizza, hot wings, and most of the garlic bread, and I don't just mean the women who are overweight, massively or otherwise. We've got stomachs too, you know, and we're just as likely to crave steak and chips or a kebab as you!
And then there's the famous thing about women: once a month, we WILL pig out on chocolate and junk food. Any man who's up for a junk-food-fest and his lady's favourite movie will keep her around for a long, LONG time.

Six: Women are gold-diggers. True, some women are out to get you to spend your cash on them, or just nick it and run. But most women aren't like that. Sadly, this is just a very poor, and in some cases insulting excuse some, if not most men use to cover up their own incompetence with women.
98% of the time, women are not looking for a man with money dribbling out of his pockets - the other 2% being women who are specifically looking for that out of their own taste or the archetypal gold digger. Most women can actually support themselves, and just find a man with a steady job and the money and means to take care of them as a bonus to a good relationship.

Now, to be absolutely fair, there are misconceptions that women have about men, like how they supposedly think about sex every five nanoseconds, run from commitment like it's the plague, and only want women with the face of an angel and the body of Marilyn Monroe.
But misconceptions can only lead to two things: Failed relationships and broken hearts, and I can't help but think that they're all born from a kind of fear. A fear that Eleanor Roosevelt sums up wonderfully:

"We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all."

And this is part of the reason I don't really understand flirting. Mostly because I'm a "seduce you with my awkwardness" kind of person, but I also think that flirting's just a nicer way of lying.

Pack Mentality: I love my loopy family!

My family's mad. I don't mean the "I just got abducted by aliens" kind of mad (although I'm not sure about my little brother, - joking, Tiddles!), I mean the kind of madness that, every so often, comes out with absolute gems that leave us all choking with laughter.

An up and coming classic is the pigeon story where, travelling down to our grandparents, a pigeon flies up from the middle of the road, and smacks into the windshield. Before anyone else, my little brother comes out with "Ten points to Gryffindor!"
Bear in mind, this is the same little brother who repeatedly has problems with glass of any shape or form - on a holiday to Turkey, he managed to walk into a floor-to-ceiling window, a foot to the left of the actual door. On a trip to France, when asked to pay at the toll-booth, he forgot to roll down the window and smacked his head. Twice.
My sister managed to give the best evils I've ever seen to an elephant rider in India, only for her to turn around and realise, via me, that it wasn't the man who flicked her cap, but actually a monkey pooping on her hat.
My eldest brother is renowned for grumpy, expletive-filled rants against politicians, banks, the BBC, and just about the entire world that leaves us all crying with fits of the giggles, and I, during a discussion about holidays, managed to ask what there is for terrorists to do in Boston. I genuinely meant to say tourists, considering that Boston has like all others, reluctantly joined the list of cities hit by terrorism with its marathon bombings.

But my family's not just amazing for the laugh-out-loud moments it has. There's also all the family jokes, like the chicken noises at stupid moments - my big brother pulled this off in a monumental fashion when, just after I'd said to my sister, "I say this with all of my control and mastery of the English language", he looks at me, cocks his head to one side and clucked. Now, I'd meant to say "Swivel" - again, another family joke - but it still worked!
 And then there's the family insult, complete with interchangeable words. The basic form is just "you're an idiot", with the comeback "your face is an idiot", although idiot has gone from... well, idiot, to panini, to fridge, to turd, to melon, and so on.

Granted, my family still has arguments. I managed to argue with my little brother Eduardo* over Jurassic World and whether or not they could actually bring back dinosaurs; I've argued with my sister Flora* countless times about my fashion choices; apparently backpacks aren't always useful.
But families are far more important than most people today realise. Today it's all about kids having kids, as Jeremy Kyle would say, and they think it's meaningless until they get the consequences of kids - no more schooling, no more socialising at all hours. Friends go from hundreds to a few who don't mind that there's a baby.
My point is, we've gone from Medieval family values, where there used to be an entire family plus servants sharing one bedroom to parents becoming grandparents before they've had their first job!
Granted romance has gone forwards and then had a reversal between Medieval times and now - it's gone from political marriages to marriages for love to not even getting married at all. But now, the togetherness of the family is slowly disappearing. There's very little stability for children, if any, when it used to be that families had to stay together, no matter what.
We've lost, as Jodi Picoult points out, the role each family member has:

"I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack."

But I think it's not just the role each person has within a family. Strong relationships mean a strong family. Strong families mean a strong society, and that all translates up. It will take strong families to improve this world, and Will Durant has, I think, summed this up brilliantly:

"The family is the nucleus of civilization."

It took one family millions of years ago to lead to over 7 billion people today. So my peers can keep their family values and opinions, thanks. I love my family just the way it is, warts and all, and I couldn't be prouder or happier to be a part of it.

*Names have been changed.

Plague of Violence: I think we're fighting our way to extinction.

I know I promised no more depressing posts, but there's nothing but depressing stuff to talk about. With ISIS determined to blow up everything and everyone from the Middle East to Tunisia and beyond, and mad people cutting off heads in France, I can't help thinking that we're fighting ourselves into extinction.

Religions for the most part haven't been exactly friendly. But then, that's their fault. Apart from Hindus, Jews and Sikhs, religions have always clashed. Christians eradicated "paganism" in France, England, Ireland, and most of western Europe; it's caused the Crusades because it though that was a sure-fire way of winning a one way pass to Heaven, and it has, on occasion, lashed out at Jews, mostly pre-1800 whenever something went wrong and the clever people of the time couldn't explain what it was. Islam, too, has given rise to bullying the Jews, as well as fighting Christianity at every opportunity. Most of this fighting has been over Jerusalem, which holds some or most of the important sites for Christianity, Islam, and - I have to point this out - their ANCESTRAL religion, Judaism. Christianity can certainly be called a descendant of Judaism - Jesus was, after all, a Jew.

But it's not just religion that we're killing each other over. Russia and America have been glaring at each other ever since 1945, both determined to be the biggest power in the world; China is almost certainly the same, North Korea is obviously the exact same, only more brash.

We will use any excuse to seize something we desire, with force if necessary. As Thomas More once said,

"War is an activity fit only for beasts, yet practiced by no beast so constantly as by man."

What exactly are we all fighting for? Survival, religious expression, economical safety? Sure, they might be good reasons, but I'd be more prepared to fight for survival than religion or the economy, since both are defined by the country which we live in. I think we use violence because of a breakdown in communication, and a breakdown in non-violence.

It's also due to a lack of respect - respect for other people, with other cultures, other religions, and other values to ours. As for me, I have always tried to live by this one tenet amongst others: I give the respect I get. Granted, I don't always live up to it, but purely because I'm less aggressive than others, so I tend to let disrespect slide a lot more than I should.

I think all the violence distorts what it's fighting for. Look at ISIS - they're fighting for their religious beliefs, and yet non-Muslims are beginning to view all Muslims as extremists, terrorists and murderers. I do not, of course, condone this view in any way - I try to judge every person I meet based on who they are and how they react to me. I'm simply paraphrasing Pope John-Paul II:

"Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence destroys what it intends to create."

What better incentive do we need to stop the damned fighting? Violence doesn't win you what you want, unless you're a psychopath, an extreme loner, or a vampire. It doesn't win you respect, or love, or wealth most of the time.

You earn the respect you give, you earn the freedom you give, and you can do that by being sincere in dealing with others. Bryant H. McGill, the last quote I'm going to give this post, is brilliant for saying this:

"One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another [person] has to say."