21 June 2024 – Dr Sophie Louisa Bennett, Conservation Biology (Lincoln 2016), MA Modern and Medieval Languages – German and Swedish (KC 1987, Cantab 2020)
The Writers’ Collective
They were mainly from highly academic backgrounds, or, at any rate, aspirational – mostly sons but also some daughters of bankers, businessmen, academics, teachers, senior healthcare workers, actors and lesser paid and/or ‘respected’ professions too. Usually from broken homes and/or income-strapped homes. And always resenting in some way members of their peer group or cohort and age group who had either seemed to have a perfect (home/work) life or had ‘made it’ in other ways. They were particularly jealous of children whose parents had somehow stuck it out and stayed together. Grass is always greener, ‘type of thing’, when they probably had no real idea.
As some kind of sly joke, they called themselves ‘casa rotta‘ – some, but not all, were from broken homes. They used an Italian name as they believed that this made them sound more sophisticated and some of them got a bit mixed up with their languages thinking rotta meant red, because they were all or mostly just a bit left-wing in their thinking. Language interference from the German, it seems.
Some had just felt slighted by or resentful of family members or their peers. Chips of varying sizes on their shoulders. As an outsider often observing resentfully from a distance, and not taking physical notes, but certainly storing things away. Just be careful, you never know who might be watching. Or listening.
Not that their ideas were broken – they were usually sound enough to be accepted as storylines. And at least these ideas would enable them to claw themselves out of being broke too. Often struggling for years, perhaps even lacking the money for house repairs and maintenance, until they made it. Now at last we can get the roof fixed, the window replaced… Perhaps even a little holiday abroad, rather than slumming it at a camping site.
In the beginning they would sit around the coffee table at someone’s house smoking and drinking – not necessarily coffee – and sharing and pooling ideas. A collective. Nowadays WiFi, instant messaging and social media were helpful – enabled even larger collectives at times. Collaborations could lead to arguments. And eventually, some would go their own separate ways… Break away, if not break up the group.
Dr Sophie Louisa Bennett
- rotta is the past participle of the verb ‘rompere‘ – to break – used as an adjective (a describing word) with a feminine ending, since casa is a feminine noun (naming word for an object).
Into-English-Translations 