iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 14h

I mean the Italian claims in, say, Sweden might be a bit harder to sustain?

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 15h

Just so 😂 in fact there were a few people in 1914 who were up for war Vs France on this very basis

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 17h

Da un lato, la città è strapiena di italiani Dal altro tutti i ristoranti mi propongono spezzatino di manzo con gnocchi come contorno 😬

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 17h

Piazza Garibaldi, a Nizza.... E nostro torni quel che fu già nostro! 🇮🇹🇮🇹

Statue of Garibaldi surrounded by fountains

First World War propaganda poster with the slogan "e nostro torni quel che ci già nostro"

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 18h

Oh interesting. Maybe. I'd not thought about it that way.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 18h

A Bertrand, whose mother was a Giraud, married a Giraud, whose mother was a Bertrand? Sure what could go wrong

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 18h

Added to that there are only about 6 surnames in the village. I've been having a whale of a time with the records and am also very worried about how in-bred they must all be

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 19h

But also one family who had two daughters called Marie Therese, who both lived to adulthood. Um... other names are available, people, they're not rationed!

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 19h

I think that Mary as a surname is really confounding me. Mary Joseph (while still insane) sounds more like a real name than Joseph Mary. Somehow.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 23h

Its just the combo that keeps throwing me off. If they were all called Honoré, like everyone else in the village, it would be fine 😂

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 23h

There's a family in this village in researching whose surname is Mary and every single male family member is called Joseph Just why

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

ugh Kate how awful. This project and all your research in this field is so valuable and impressive, I am really aghast

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Reposted by Vanda Wilcox

Kate Astbury @100days1815.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The police are investigating. They will have their lines of enquiry. Please share this image widely so that everyone knows what it looked like.

A photo of the stolen plaque taken at its unveiling on Friday

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Reposted by Vanda Wilcox

Padre Pio @padrepio.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

Il n'y avait aucune urgence, aucun intérêt à cette arrestation. Rien. C'est de la pure démonstration de force, c'est fait pour terroriser, et c'est un signal de plus de la glissade de ce pays vers une version française de la situation américaine. france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/paris-ile-de...

france3-regions.franceinfo.fr

"Ils ont traumatisé ma femme et ma fille de 9 ans" : polémique après deux interpellations au domicile d'une lycéenne et au lycée Paul-Eluard

Des personnels du lycée Paul-Eluard de Saint-Denis, ont dénoncé ce jeudi une intervention "violente" de policiers en civil dans l'enceinte de l'établissement pour y interpeller un élève. Tandis qu'un ...

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

My train back to Nice is... confused

Sticker on the side of the train proclaiming we're in Brittany

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

This ill-proportioned lump of stone is the war memorial in Chateauneuf de Grasse. It's so ugly that the mayor resigned in the row which broke out over it within the town council. They still reused it for the SWW and Algerian war though 🤷‍♀️

A clunky obelisk with a pelmet and a poorly proportioned lid/hat. Four brass-tipped shells surround it on the ground.

Names of 12 Chateauneuf villagers who didin 1914-18.

Names of 5 villagers killed in the Second World War

Name of a solitary village man killed in Algerian war of independence in 1957, aged 20.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Next to it is a (rather underwhelming) garden honouring the Allied forces who liberated Grasse in August 1944

Memorial plaque with US, French and Canadian flags

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Quite an unusual First World War memorial in Grasse

A stone memorial consisting of four square pillars topped with a little roof to makea square arch. Soldiers are carved into reliefs on the arches supporting the roof. It stands amid some greenery with the tricolor flying in front of it.

A side view of the arch. The names of the town's war dead are engraved into the pillars.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I did. Now I'm in Nice and it's less nice than I anticipated 😂

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Trust me it was distinctly indigestible

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Why i am not an early modernist, part 83

A crumbling, mouldy looking handwritten registry from the 1620s

A page of the registry. French early modern secretary hand might as well be Middle Kingdom hieroglyphs as far as I'm concerned

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I am more than making up for my lovely day yesterday with today's archive in the grim bit of Nice

Some ugly institutional buildings under a grey sky

A really grim dark grey bunker, enormous and windowless

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

anyway, Nice tomorrow, Grasse on Thursday (no, this makes no geographical sense but there are complicated archive / museum opening hours in play!)

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

There's even decent foccaccia in the village bakery.... but the coffee, alas, lets me know I'm definitely in France

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

yes, she was quite friendly! among the village's many charms is that it is full of cats 🐈‍⬛🐈

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Reposted by Vanda Wilcox

Selena Daly @selenadaly.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Bit of a long shot - would anyone have a pdf of this memoir by Mario Magri - 'Una vita per la libertà. Diciassette anni di confino politico di un martire delle Fosse Ardeatine'? Grazie!

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Chateauneuf de Grasse is really, really nice

A calico cat sits on a wall, colourful vegetation behind

View across a sunlit valley to dramatic mountains with a lowering grey sky

The early morning sun shinesfrom behind a cloud onto the distant sea

View over terracotta roofs, the sun newly risen

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

You can see the sea in the distance!

View of Provence with a thin line of blue sea far off

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

On the train heading south, destination Chateauneuf de Grasse - the freelance life isn't all bad

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Reposted by Vanda Wilcox

Jeanne Perego @jeperego.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Mi segnalano questo orrore britannico. Giù le mani dalla pizza! Che l’ambasciatore faccia qualcosa.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Yes, we met the very friendly Lebanese priest- mass & Catechism in French and Arabic 'mais les jeunes ne parlent plus l'arabe' he said rather sadly

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I don't want to make things worse but that sounds like four Solidarity to you

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Autumnal church gardens, delightful to have close to home

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

unexpected joys of parenthood #8300 in a series: kiddo has (quite unprompted) put footnotes in her book report 😍😍😍 where she got this idea from I can't say but I love it

a page of handwritten french text with 3 footnotes at the bottom

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

even by her standards this seems batshit crazy

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

interesting choice of headline... apparently self-driving police cars have arrived in France

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

he just tries to chew on them even while lying sleepily on my lap. definitely better than imitating a tiger trying to rup out the throats of your visitors though!

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

why does my cat persistently try to eat the sequins on my cardigan? I know that in the 1930s they made them from gelatin, but I am pretty sure that these are plastic (early 2000s Topshop an unlikely source of gelatin sequins, I suspect). yet he has an unquenchable appetite for them.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

She would rather have a healthy well-nursed child at one year old, at least that would serve a very useful purpose unlike this lummock

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Reposted by Vanda Wilcox

Pierre Verschueren @pverschu.eurosky.social · 08/10/2026

Ils ont radicalisé les scouts

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The best reporting on the French student protests that I've seen in English The barricade was up outside kiddo's school again this morning, I don't think this is going away any time soon

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Finished drafting chapter 9 today! (insert emoji indicating cautious optimism/ mild satisfaction) tomorrow is time to venture into the wilds of the Wrong War and begin chapter 10: the Second World War 😬😱😭🫣😨 #AmWriting

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

this is a great thread, though it's sad that it's necessary the next book I want to write (after the, er, 2 I'm supposed to be doing now) is to tackle the War Without Hate myth by looking at the experiences of civilians in Italian colonial Libya in 1940-43

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

ok, maintenant j'ai lu leur deux positions sur le mouvement des lycéens et je crois d'avoir compris la différence...

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