The Final Countdown

Next Friday Nick and I will be hosting our Going Away Party at Zep's bar, Oops. The theme of the party is Cioccolata (chocolate) in honour of Nick's mate, the legendary D.J. Dani S., who will be laying on some cool grooves to relax to.

Everyone will be there: the somebodies and the nobodies, the bohos and the hobos, the friends and barflyes, the locals and the expats, the Bally brigade, the Radio 3 crew, the TV people, the beautuful people (architects and graphic designers), the artistes, the club owners, the musicians, the party crashers.

I'll be working the room in a killer outfit (black velvet pants, high-heeled boots, a purple silk shirt with a key-hole neckline and a pussy bow), cocktail in my manicured hand and purple fingernails to match.

For the occasion, Raffi a local artist, will be hosting the afterparty (starting 1.00 am) at ther studio, and my friend Jonata the celebrity singer-songwriter, will play an acoustic set in downtempo.

The weekend after the party, Nick and I will be leaving Lugano for good. The thought of going away is daunting. I look forward to it as much as I'm a little bit anxious of moving back to Melbourne after an almost seven year absence. Although leaving me with the feeling thtat it was a bit of a tight fit, living in Ticino has been lovely, it's had its perks and most of all: it provided a real sense of security and comfort, which I hope to be able to re-establish in the big smoke downunder. But will my friends still be there for me? There is so much to figure out...

So far, we have begun to dismantle our home. We have sold the wardrobes and kitchen furniture and are now camping inside our flat, our clothes hanging off wobbly clothesracks and us having breakfast on our camping furniture in the kitchen - once the setting of lavish dinner parties, now looking very bare.

There are piles of boxes of linens and clothes and cds in every corner of the flat, packed suitcases leaning against now bare walls, and I've rolled up the Kilims to save them from getting all dusty and grimy from all the coming and going.

Meanwhile outside, it has snowed round the clock for the last three days. It's the heaviest snowfall in over 20 years, causing total chaos not only in southerns Switzerland but in the entire northern Italian region. Cities are in chaos, citizens held captive by the snow. Public transport has come to a full stop, with airports closed and over 200 trains cancelled. Driving is impossible without snow chains, turcks have been forbidden to circulate, the schools are closed, workers are stranded.

There are 80 cm of snow on my balcony. Enough to build a big fat snowman. Yesterday morning, as I shovelled the snow off the balcony and freed the terrace plants from the weight of the snow, I saw a man in skis, gliding past my street! All parked cars are buried under an enormous mound of snow. The spot where my scooter once stood, is now a single, tall, white pyramid of snow.

It started on Wednesday evening, after I got back from visiting the Keith Haring exhibit in Milan. By the way, it was one of the best art shows I've seen in recent years, on par with the Magritte show I saw in Balsel last December, the Basquiait exhibit in Lugano last summer, the Georgia O'Keefe in Zürich and the Whitny exhibit in Milan a few years back. The great thing about the art exhibitions around here is that they are usually comprehensive retrospectives, whereby one has the rare opportunity to see an immense collection of the artist's work gathered under the one roof, the works spaning his or her entire career - from the early days to the last, usually including such treats as sketches, sculptures, photographs and video footage.