At the end of 2019, I left my old life in London behind in search of a new adventure.
After initially spending an exhilarating six weeks travelling around India, I moved to Bari, the capital of Puglia in Southern Italy and began working as a Teacher.
Before moving to Bari, I had spent 11 years living in London working in Marketing, PR and music / entertainment. I’d had some great experiences, worked with some big names but wanted a new challenge.
Music has always been a huge part of my life from an early age. As a teenager, I was in various cringeworthy socialist-leaning punk bands and I then played guitar with The Screenbeats (previously known as The Immediate and The Shake) between 2003 and 2011 playing over 300 gigs all over the UK and even a show in Montpellier, France! We were actually decent and described by one journalist as “a garage band stealing the singer from a 1960s Motown girl group.”
From the age of 15 until my early 20s I also began writing about music and culture and spent a large portion of my time travelling up and down the country to review gigs and interview bands and artists. I built up a large portfolio of articles but the writing fell by the wayside once I started my ‘career proper’. My writing has technically been published by every national newspaper in the UK during my time as a PR gunslinger though.
I was a little reluctant to start a blog and felt that it was a self-centred and somewhat vain thing to do. My motivation for setting this site up is to get back into the habit of writing regularly and if people find what I write about interesting then that’s a bonus.
Mainly, I’ll be writing about day-to-day life in Puglia and being a fish out of water in terms of a Londoner who’s living in the South of Italy. I’ll also talk about the plentiful delicious food and recipes that the region is famous for and anything else that catches my eye, be it music or culture-related recommendations or just the antics of my colourful neighbours in Madonnella.
The name of the blog is partly inspired by one of my favourite songs, Love’s ‘You Set The Scene’ which contains the lyric I would like on my gravestone / crematorium memorial plaque; “For anyone who thinks that life is just a game / do you like the part you’re playing?”. I once met Love’s singer and leader, the late and enigmatic Arthur Lee after a show in Southampton in 2003. He was suitably mysterious, pretty aloof and referred to me as “Clyde”. He was on the money with those lyrics though.
Enjoy reading!
