Tomorrow I’ll be writing about something else, which will be a relief for all of us, I’m sure. Thanks, everyone, for your patience. And for your online purchases, of course. We’ve had about three hundred orders since the start of the sale on March 26th, which is respectable. Very approximately, that means that about three […]

Once, when I was a kid, perhaps about ten years old, we set off on a family holiday to one of Britain’s Channel Islands. This involved a short-ish drive to a nearby port, waiting in a queue with lots of other cars, and then driving up a ramp and into the belly of an enormous […]

(N.b. As with yesterday’s email, this one is a ‘repurposing’ of one I sent on the penultimate Saturday of last year’s Easter Sale, though I’ve changed it quite a lot…) Which time zone are you in? Here in Bologna, Italy, as I start writing this, it’s just after four p.m. (on Saturday.) I was teaching […]

(No, you’re not going crazy! I sent almost the same email on the penultimate Friday of last year’s Easter Sale. But it worked well then, so I thought I’d repurpose it…) We’re on the final lap of the Easter Sale, which ends on Sunday night. I thought I’d update my previous article on what’s been […]

A ‘bundle’ of sticks? A ‘bundle’ of rags? A ‘bundle’ of ebooks? Esatto! A bundle is a variation on the idea of buying in bulk. When I was in Texas last year and didn’t have access to a washing machine, I got by with ‘bundles’ of socks and underwear from Walmart (also very handy for […]

Buondì. It’s my birthday today, and also the anniversary of the day I met my Italian wife, twenty-one years ago! So we’re going out, just for a walk around the shops in Bologna, maybe to spend a gift voucher I received for a bookstore (remember those?) And for an ‘aperitivo’, of course! But it all […]

On Sunday I posted my suggestions for beginners or near beginners. Yesterday I recommended materials for those of you at A2 and B1 (pre-intermediate and intermediate) levels. So today, let’s look at the more challenging stuff! As previously mentioned, The Tenses You Need To Speak Italian is a useful read. And our five-level grammar workbook […]

Yesterday I wrote about what beginners or near beginners should buy to boost their progress with Italian. If you missed it, here’s the link: I’m a beginner (or nearly). What should I buy? But hey, one day you’re a beginner, then time passes, and suddenly you’re not! Like me with the Swedish. Less than eighteen months […]

You’re just beginning with Italian, or have recently started. What should you buy from our online shop that could speed things up, keep you motivated, or just add a little variety to whatever it is you’re doing now? One question. Do you have money to spend? If the answer’s no, not a cent, and please […]

I’d be rubbish at working in retail. In fact I WAS rubbish at working in retail, around thirty-five years ago, having once been an easily-bored teenager who was prone to sulk when he perceived his talents were being under-employed. But what I mean is that, suppose I worked in a boutique or a sneaker-shop or […]