Riflessioni

Two of the Milan associates have commented that I don't seem to like London that much. This is very much an accidental impression (and one which probably derived from me saying that I wasn't going back to the UK for Easter). It's very much something I've been considering in the last three weeks.

I can't quite put my finger on it. There is the obvious - fashion, food, lovely people, good weather, beautiful places. The people are more direct, which I love. I am taller, slimmer (even though the Italian women are waifs. Waifs, I tell you), more attractive. I am forced to have blowdried hair (because the curls don't come out properly here) and am thus more glamourous. I want to ride a Vespa (and I've never wanted to, really, before). Everything in Italy, pretty much, smells better than in the UK (food, moisturiser, washing powder, people, including the ones who smoke, who just don't smell as bad as people who do in the UK (how??)). The language is more beautiful, softer, complicated - "cos'hai fatto di bello?" sort of means "how was your day?" but the literal translation is "what beautiful things did you do?". In short, I feel more content here.

This is not to say that Italy does not have its problems (general and specifically for me). There are mosquitoes. My God, I have been bitten IN THE FACE. The aforementioned hair not curling. The aforementioned waif-like women. The fact that my strengths in law have always been the thinking, and I would be more transactional here (although a lot of regulatory work is based on EU legislation ...). I don't speak Italian yet.

I worry that London, much as I love it when I am there, will destroy me, gradually until I burn out entirely. I can see the two paths to take, yet I'm uncertain. I'd always assumed my long-term future was in London (I'll be English-law qualified, it's where so much financial and corporate activity takes place, even where those deals are foreign, my friends are all here) and had never really thought I might stay beyond a secondment to anywhere else.

If it makes sense to those who know me, in London, I am "Harrop". Here, I am definitely "Claire".

To be considered further. Whatever happens, I won't be closing off the doors to relocating to either in the future.