132. 25 Random Facts About Me (Facebook)

1. I was born while the church bell was tolling the death of a family member- so my entry into this world was greeted with great mirth.

2. My mum and dad went to Belgium to work in mines so my elder sister and I grew up with grandparents and an imprecise number of relatives on the family farm.

3. Mum couldn’t live without my sister and I and took us to Belgium where I almost electrocuted myself by putting the light switch that was dangling over the bed into my mouth. That’s the reason, they say, I am so sparky. However I was not able to walk or talk for a year.

4. My sister started school and I would do the homework with her so I learnt to read and write before I was supposed to .

5. In 1954 at the age of six I went to school and came up top of class together with my cousin Giovanni who walked me home and for whom I had a crush. That year I made my first communion in spite of a fever, but I kicked up such a fuss that they carried me on a cart in a blanket to church.

6. When people died and people married they told me to write a poem, put me on a chair and read it out loud, with expression, under a large paraffin lamp since there was no electricity. It was then, I realized I was a born con man.

7. My father went to work in the mines in Switzerland: I sent
him a letter every week which he read out loud to all his miner co-workers. The men got angry if I missed sometime. My father never called me by my name but would refer to me as “Rosa Mistica” (Mystic Rose, part of the Litany of the Saints).


8. On January 18^th 1956, a year after my brother was born, we joined our father in England where he had been called to work by the British Government in an after war agreement with European States.

9. For almost a year I learnt to understand what people were saying through body language and expression as I knew not one word of English. The first English word I ever spoke and learnt was “bell.

10. In 1957 we moved from Wolverhampton to Walsall and in the new school the headmaster himself taught me English in his office then made me sit next to a boy called John who continued the work in a class of 50. Incidentally, I got a crush on this John too for years, until I found he had a string of girlfriends at his beck and call.

11. At the age of 10 I won 2^nd Prize in the Brook Bond school writing compositions, liked art and loved listening to the teacher reading things like, “The Water Babies,” “Lorna Doone”, “David Copperfied...” Hated the teacher who gave me over the top marks for writing a composition but threw the exercise book at me saying my handwriting was disgusting... I was the first on our street (and probably only one) to buy an old second hand manual Olivetti typewriter for 50 shillings.

12. Christmas of 1959, the house caught fire because of a leaking gas meter and the new settee and living room mum and dad had bought a few months earlier went up in smoke, together with all the coats and dresses mum had made for us specially for Christmas. Walsall Welfare Office Social Workers came to get us and took us to the Co-op in Bridge Street and clothed us anew. Everyone gathered round us to help- It was one of the best, glowing Christmases I ever remember.

13. At secondary school, which was a flight of stairs above the junior school, we all did plays and Gilbert and Sullivan operas. I adored every moment.

14. The end of the 50s heralded a need for change which would be consolidated by Harold Wilson when the Labour Party won the elections in 1964. In an effort to make quality education accessible to all, the Comprehensive system was introduced and we were all transferred to a brand new school where from a few hundred school kids, I found myself with thousands. I started thinking that maybe my fate was not just to work in a factory until I got married. Both of which options I abhorred.

15. I loved the new school where I was also soon chosen as a prefect, came top in religion and history and not far from the top in art and English as there were some really gifted kids in art and English, so the competition was tougher. Was close to the bottom in maths and domestic science, of which latter subject I despised the teacher with every force in my body. Was one of the founder editors of the School Magazine.

16. Went to Walsall School of art where I got an A in my Education Certificate but decided to go into teaching and not become an artist only. So I went to Wednesbury College of Commerce to take the Certificate of Education subjects needed for teacher training. I also entered a beauty queen contest for the college Rag Queen, but only came 5^th. Was a member of the editorial committee of the College Magazine.

17. The rest of my story will be told in a novel where this notice will appear “All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.” And of course, you know better.

18. My Father’s ancestors are not Italian, but from Ulan-Ude in Russia and my Mother’s are from Monte Negro, ex Yugoslavia.

19. My dad died in front of the TV waiting for me to bring in his dinner, his last words were the name of the programme he wanted to watch “La Macchina del Tempo” - “The Time Machine”.

20. I can’t look out of a window that’s more than two storey’s high without getting dizzy. So I have to close my eyes in those glass elevators.

21. I went to Charlotte (North Carolina) and Orlando (Florida) without a credit card or any type of money at all.

22. I am a teetotaller, not by choice but I pass out if I drink alcoholics.

23. a. I was a Novice in a semi-enclosed religious order.

b. Then became a Red Cross Nurse

24. I worked on a daily basis with the Indian engineer Ashok Detha (Udaipur) and the architect Remo Serafin who restored Gogunda Palace, a Raja’s home in Rajasthan, India.

25. I am the author of "Rajput" a narrative history which reads with the ease of a novel, spanning over a thousand years based on the happenings of the above palace and includes most areas of Rajasthan of which there is no previous written record.