Carmine quotes No. 16 : Freud would be proud...

AJ, my five-year-old son, over breakfast :

"Mama, I had a lovely dream last night. I dreamt we got married!"

Sound a little Oedipal to you? Me too! Eek!

Anyone know where I can get a savings plan to pay for shrink bills during the teenage years? And I don't necessarily mean for my son.

Got to run, late this morning. Now, where did I put Electra's painting pinafore...?

PS Plus two degrees at 8:30am, foggy, damp, and with a shiver-making wind.

Pic courtesy http://www.theage.com.au

Frescoes, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

A tantalising one degree above freezing at 8:30am. Foggy with the occasional snow flake.

Carmine Superiore is home to the tiny Romanesque Chiesa di San Gottardo, which dates back to 1330. Inside and outside, this tiny gem of a church is covered with exquisite frescoes. Originally painted in the 15th century, they have recently been restored. Above is a section of the Life of San Bartolomeo - I love the tiny dancing devil in the background.

If you would like to see more, just hit the 'frescoes' tag at the bottom of this post, or visit The Carmine Superiore Picture Gallery.

For more beautiful images from around the world, visit My World!

Nine rules for living in a foreign country

Cold, clear and dry with blue skies.

I've been a permanent resident in Carmine Superiore for a number of years now. Long enough to not remember exactly when I signed on at the Ufficio Anagrafe and first held in my hand my very own Italian ID card. Long enough to consider myself an expat, even though I don't have the hoopla salary or the palatial living quarters that most proper expats have. I'm not on contract, I haven't been seconded, I don't want to keep the peace and I'm not on a mission. I just live here.

And now I think I've lived here long enough to have earned the right to offer some advice to those fresh off the boat. To list, without futher ado, some of what I see to be the do's and don'ts of expat life:

1. Don't think you can get away with English and a winning smile. Make an effort to learn the language, and even if you become fluent, always apologise for speaking so badly. If you think you might not be up to the language-learning bit, squeeze out several children and throw them into the local state school. That way you'll always have an interpreter to hand.

2. The first words you should learn in the language of your adoptive country are : "Please speak slowly. I don't speak very good French/Italian/Gujarati..." As your linguistic ability increases, this can be upgraded to : "You can tell I'm foreign because I'm wearing M&S easy-wear jeans and I just used the wrong tense. You could easily answer 'yes' or 'no' to my question, so why the hell do you insist on talking nineteen to the dozen with a lump of Turkish Delight in your mouth? Cavolo!" (If you're in Italy, one mention of cabbages, and you'll have them where you want them...)

3. Don't imagine you're making friends among the local population until you've been invited into their homes. Children's parties don't count. But key parties do.

4. Be nice, very nice, about the country you are living in. Sshhht! Not a word, not even a singlecriticism. Clamp that mouth shut! Gaffer tape works...But if you absolutely must, write a blog - an anonymous blog.

5. He's from your home country, but it's okay if you don't become bosom buddies. You may share a nationality, but it doesn't mean he'll necessarily share your love of collecting decorative handcuffs or carving eggshells.

6. When making appointments with bureaucrats, always ask what particular documents you need. Then take everything you can think of - resident's permits, birth certificates, passports, ID cards, 'O'-level certificates, receipts for shoe repairs, your granddad's 100th-birthday letter from HM. In triplicate. Short (and sharp) courses on 'How to Deal with Bureaucracy' are available at any Indian railway station, and in the holding cells attached to Nigerian customs.

7. Buy local. In particular, don't import white goods from your home country. It'll annoy the local supplier you ask to fix them when they go wrong. Either he 'can't get the parts' or he genuinely can't get the parts. Either way you'll be doing the washing up by hand.

8. Don't allow yourself to get nostalgic about the Motherland. It stank when you left. And it still stinks. Probably more.

9. And finally, don't believe what you read in expat handbooks. They're written by people like me.

SS Pietà

Cannobio's Santuario della Santa Pietà, amid Friday's snow.

Delfina's greeting - a mystery

At 6am this morning it was dark, cold and snowing. In Carmine Superiore, every day is a big adventure...

Arrived recently from a collector in Rome : at first sight, evidence of a wonderful holiday in Cannobio, with, perhaps, an unforgettable visit to Carmine Superiore - in 1951.

The curious thing is that the card is addressed to a person staying at the Hotel Formentin (which still exists) in the spa town of Albano Terme (which also still exists, unsurprisingly), near Padua. Perhaps it is the addressee who is taking the holiday, and the writer who stayed at home. Could this card actually have been sent by a resident of Carmine? And could this resident still be around?

I'm off into the snow to find out...

Jazmin in Mayfair

A full two degrees above zero this morning at 8:30am. Shame about the cotton-wool skies sagging above us. Now, my local sources are mouthing the word, neve...snow.

Anyone planning to be knocking around London's Mayfair in the next couple of weeks? If so, drop in to the Panter & Hall Gallery in Shepherd Market, where printmaker Jazmin Velasco is taking part in the new Impressions exhibition. And if you have a yen, why not buy something?

Jazmin is very versatile. Among many other things, Jazmin does...

...sitting room...

she does...

...bedroom...

...she does...

...kitchen (at least, my kitchen)...

...and she does...

...bathroom.

And, best of all, she does great cats...

And I promise, a small purchase won't break the bank...

Book Notes No 31 : The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

Minus one at 8:30am. Sunny as yesterday. Today, my local sources are now predicting "tempo bruto" for the end of the week, and we all know what that means - rain!

Anyone remember Odysseus? Yes, that's the chappie. Alias Ulysses. Son of Laertes, father of Telemachus. Husband of Penelope. Got married then immediately dashed off to swash a bit of buckle in the Trojan Wars (Helen, Paris, Troy...), invented the Trojan Horse. As I was saying, got married and then swanned off for ten years to the siege of Troy and then another ten years running around the Med. slaying giants and sleeping with goddesses - a veritable 'odyssey'.

So for 20 years, wifey stayed home and managed the kingdom and a rather volatile teenage son (many single mothers will know how tedious that is). Later, she was assailed by suitors (read fortune-hunters), and, with a mind just as inventive as Odysseus', kept them at bay with a now-famous now-you-see-it-now-you-don't shroud-weaving trick.

Not much is said about Penelope in Greek myth, and in fact, what is said is contradictory. In The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood laughingly plugs the gap.

The story of Penelope's 20 years sans mari is told by Penelope herself from Hades, with the interjections of the Twelve Maid(en)s, whom Odysseus (or perhaps it was Telemachus) hanged on his return, in the form of a chorus inspired by the forms of Greek tragedy.

The book is short, entertaining, witty and very, very ascerbic. I particularly enjoyed Atwood's characterisation of Helen, who was Penelope's supernaturally beautiful cousin. I always had a sneaking suspicion she would have been ... not very nice.

And the doubts Atwood casts on the literal truth of the Odysseus myth. Did he really slay a Cyclops and lie nightly in the arms of a goddess? Or did he knock over a one-eyed landlord in a sailor's bar-brawl and shack up with the beautiful madam of a high-class brothel. For me, Atwood's version is infinitely more enjoyable than Homer's!

A thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking book from an author about whom there is nothing one can say except "wow" (every time). Oh yes, and congratulations to Canongate Books who have made this a beautiful object to handle as well as to read.

Snow days

Minus one at 8:30am. Bright sunshine melting the icicles dangling from the mountainsides along the lake road. Someone this morning in Cannobio's Bar Centrale predicted warmer days ahead. Vedremo...

It doesn't snow very often here, in this 1,000-year-old village-fortress, but when it does, we are enveloped in a shroud of snow-clouds, the outside world disappears, and only the muffled bells from distant towers reach through to touch us. Lago Maggiore, lying spread out below us, remains only in the imagination. We become our own world, and in these moments one can imagine these ancient granite houses, the narrow cobbled streets in centuries gone by, peopled with the ragged ghosts of snow-days past.

For more beautiful images from around the world, visit My World! For more images of Carmine Superiore, visit The Carmine Superiore Picture Gallery.

Monday, Monday

Barely five degrees in the bathroom this morning at 10am. Partly cloudy, partly windy. Dry.

Why are Monday mornings always so ... difficult? Why are we always late on a Monday, why have we always lost something on a Monday, forgotten something on a Monday? Why are Mondays so goddamn stressy, so goddamn chaotic?

Last Monday, on the other hand, was looking to be a good Monday. A 1950s housewife Monday. Mama pops out of bed early - time for a quiet cup of tea and a load of laundry before soothing the children awake with the musical wake-up function on the baby monitor. No wet beds (hooray!). No dripping noses. No semi-conscious tantrums. All items of clothing in the right place at the right time ... and clean. All ablutions equipment ditto. Breakfast double ditto. Oh aren't we doing well today! I'll be wriggling into one of those starched aprons with a big bow before ya know it!

So it's a serene perfect housewife Mama who kisses M. goodbye as he leaves for work. M. likes serenity.

A short while later, Mama and the children are ready to head down the hill, only ten minutes late (well, it takes a little longer if you want serene). Now where are the car keys? In the key-box where they should be? No. In my coat pocket? No. In my handbag? No. Mercury starting to rise, imaginary 1950s lipsticked smile starts to slip. Kids outside in the street start to quarrel.

In M.'s three jackets? No. In the trousers he wore yesterday when he took AJ skiing? No.

AJ pushes B. over on the Neolotihic rock carvings outside the front door. B shrieks, sending cats skittering away. Mama sticks head out of bathroom window and drops a couple of threats concerning favourite toys and the trash can.

On the bedside table? No. On the study desk? No. On the kitchen counter, shelf, mantelpiece. Mama grabs step-stool - are the keys anywhere that is above her head height? No.

The children have run off to the churchyard and are re-enacting a fight-scene featuring Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne - with large sticks. Mama sends up an elaborate prayer to the Virgin Mary to whisper in their ears dire warnings about sticks, eyes and hospitals.

Now on the phone, Mama's mercury has reached the red. She races around the house, looking in all the places M. suggests as he drives further and further away from the place he is needed most. No. No. They're not there! Think! No, no, NO! She reels off a string of non-too-dainty Old Norse and rings off, the mercury having blown the bulb.

Ten seconds later, the phone rings. "Erm, darling...they're in my pocket...". "Which pocket, tell me and we can go before the kindergarten closes its doors!" "My coat pocket. The coat I'm wearing. What I suggest is that you have a spare made and keep it in your purse..."

Having no more mercury to explode, Mama ignores the lecture and calls the children to come indoors. No kindergarten today...Her mind is still whirling - make a spare, make a spare...how dare he lecture me! Make a spare...!

Wait a minute, I already made a spare!

Mama grabs spare key, children, teddy bears, recycling and freshly laundered kindergarten kit and hits the long trail down. Fast. Much faster than usual. No complicated conversations. No singing songs. No picking fauna of any kind. No stopping to listen to birdsong, and God help the escort of cats if they get under our feet.

Breathless with nervous energy as she reaches the car, Mama stabs the spare key into the lock knowing that concealed inside is an ignition key. It doesn't fit. Mama whizzes round to the other side. It doesn't fit there either. Remember this is a 199-something Fiat Panda 900 Dance - no power steering, no cruise control, and definitely no central locking. The stress starts to rise again, and amid visions of the tedious walk back up the hill, Mama tries the hatchback.

Miraculously, it's already open!

Nothing for it! Without a moment's thought, Mama drops her burdens, climbs into the boot, over the mountain of childrens' clothing waiting to be dropped at the charity bins, over the ski equipment, over the children's seats, she squeezes between the two front seats, avoiding the gear stick, and opens the door from the inside. (Only later does she think it might have been more dignified - and perhaps fun - to send one of the children.)

Jubilation! Smiles all round! Everyone quickly bundled in - not long now before the kindergarten doors close (no latecomers allowed). Find the concealed ignition key and...

Putt-putt-whirr. Putt-putt-putt-whirrrr. We have NO liftoff! With the choke, without the choke, pumping the gas. In first, in neutral, in reverse (as if that made a difference, but it sure felt like it might).

Red-faced, hair mussy, coat and scarf awry. Mama sits back, beaten, defeated. It didn't take much calculation to realise she had missed the bus, and the various neighbours who would usually offer a lift had already left for their morning coffee. Her mind wanders to the chores of the day and how she would amuse the children while she did them...Not acceptable! Try again!

Strokes the dashboard. "Come on girl, do it for me. I'll change your oil...I'll sort out the rust on your bodywork...I'll get your damned wheel bearings changed!" Okay now. Choke out half way. Gently does it.

Vrooooooommmmm! And we drive like Jeremy Clarkson all the way to town.

Much later, Mama is busy with B.'s bedtime non-routine when AJ bursts through the bathroom door, beaming. In his arms he carries an elaborately decorated blue box and the car keys, and he's followed by a sheepish culprit.

It's a chocolate-coated apology, and everybody gets some. And Mama sits back on her heels and reflects that every cloud has a silver lining, but that she would like it even better if every cloud had a chocolate lining...

Cold, bright and sunny, and with a wind that's kicking up a spray down at the lake.

Quote of the week No. 34 : On self-determination

Dry, overcast and wintry. Minus one at 8:30am. I giorni della merla, day two.

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), American politician, orator and freethinker.

"Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence.

Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result."

Minus one at 8:30am. It's one of those unusual days where there is a low-lying mist, but blue skies and strong sunshine above. The pearly light makes me think of the shining of angels' wings.

A plague upon our heads

Zero degrees at 8:30am. But the bright sunshine is warm enough to take our lunch, of pasta homemade with our own eggs, out to the churchyard beside the Chiesa di San Gottardo, where spring thoughts come unbidden and we start to make plans for the garden.

As all mothers know, the first few terms in the kindergarten hothouse for microbes are a litany of sickness. If it's not a cold it's the 'flu, if it's not the 'flu it's a tummy bug. From about October well into the following spring (okay, summer) everybody in this family has been for the last two years either sickening, sick or sicker. And sometimes all three at the same time. And more so since I took the rather rash decision to say 'yes' to the school board's kind request to introduce Cannobio's under-6s to my own mongrel language, which clearly also includes doing the business with 30 dribbling noses and a box of Kleenex.

But a week or so ago, there seemed to be a pause in the frantic round of temperature-taking, food and drug administration, disinfection of vomit-spots and all those secret pleasures of motherhood. It was as if an angel had passed over, raising a shining hand to still the storm, and Mama looked around the kitchen, slightly mystified. Two children, four Carmine cats. No coughs, retches, sneezes. No floppiness, no hot foreheads, no flushed cheeks. No aching limbs, no deathly pallor.

I was just starting in on the biggest sigh of relief I could raise, and thinking about opening a bottle of crémant du Jura to celebrate, when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something disturbing. There it was again in another part of the room. And again...and, oh my God, again.

Scratching.

B., eyes glued to Cinderella was scratching the back of her head vigorously. The Big Cat, Trouble and the Girl Cat were all in various yoga asanas, scratching, gnawing and nibbling.

Bugger! Dammit! And blast! Because Mama was doing it too - just the scratching that is (the yoga is next year's New Year's resolution).

So, Mama headed off to the herbalist for Paranix spray (recommended) and declared a girls' night in with B. The first ever, considering that Mama isn't very girlie, and B is only three. We ponged out the bathroom with ylang-ylang, we sprayed and waited. We shampood and we lathered, lathered and rinsed. And we finished off Mama's stock of fancy Joe Mallone shampoo to celebrate being female and to help us forget the ambient air temperature in the bathroom was 4°C. And then came the fifteen minutes of B-torture with the fine-tooth comb. And about an hour for Mama, whose hair is again longer than it ought to be for a woman of a certain age.

Soon, the itching had stopped and the scratching abated. And now all that remained was for Mama to spend a couple of days lurking around the village like a Stephen King loony-lady with a syringe full of anti-cat-flea serum. Not that I'm casting aspersions on the cats, I just thought I might as well get the little jumpy-jumpies that were bothering the cats as well while I was in the mood. Oh yes, and the other thing that remained was the mountainous plague-pile of clothes and bedding waiting to be laundered at 60°.

Phew. Panic over. As you were. Mama saves the day again.

Yesterday, I turned up at my first kindergarten class of the week and was greeted by the usual group of little bodies hurtling towards me for a welcome hug. As I leaned down, my loose hair brushed several little heads. Inwardly I smiled with nit-free contentment as I worked through our weekly flashcard contest to start the morning off, when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something disturbing...

Sunset

Minus one at 8:30am, and Kellogg's frosty. But the sun is shining, the skies are blue and the bone-aching damp is disappearing fast.

Alpine sunset, seen from downtown Locarno.

For more images of Carmine Superiore, Cannobio, Lago Maggiore and beyond, visit The Carmine Superiore Picture Gallery

Today is yesterday's weather-twin. One degree at 8:30am, and not a single who-dares-wins ray of sunshine penetrating the damp folds of clouds that are sagging over the valleys.

Book notes No. 30 : The Constant Mistress, Angela Lambert

I picked up a Penguin paperback edition of Angela Lambert's 1994 novel, The Constant Mistress, in a second-hand bookshop almost a year ago and it has been lying in a pile of similar second-hand treasure ever since. What made me choose it to follow Henry Porter's political thriller, I don't know. The two books couldn't be more different.

The front cover sports a quote from Beryl Bainbridge, writing in the now defunct Woman's Journal. Its says, "A compulsive read ... funny, observant and very real". Hmmm. I can't help wondering whether in fact dear Beryl got this book mixed up with advance proofs of Bridget Jones's Diary, and here's why.

The story of The Constant Mistress revolves around 44-year-old Laura, a woman with only months to live. On being handed the death sentence, Laura, who has never married, but has enjoyed a very active love life and a pretty successful career, brings together a dozen of the men who have shaped her emotional, sexual and professional life and announces that they are to play an important part in her last months.

With this device, Lambert goes on to look back at Laura's life through her many and extremely diverse loves, from studenthood and publishing in the glory days of the 1960s to international trade in the 1990s. And with it come meditations on love, family, fidelity, passion, domesticity, loneliness, promiscuity and children.

And a mystery. For Laura has a secret.

At the same time, Lambert unflinchingly describes Laura's illness, hepatitis C, which rapidly distorts her once-lovely body, and creepingly robs her of her energy, focus and sense of self.

Beryl, this book is not "funny". Wry, perhaps, yes. And this makes it not as dark as my outline would suggest. It is full of beautifully sketched characters, some you immediately fall madly in love with, and some you itch to strangle. And Laura herself is a real tour de force. There is no sentence wasted, and Lambert's descriptions of people and places are so true to life that I felt at times transported back to my old haunts in London publishing, particularly in the 1980s.

I would urge any woman who came of age in that short window of time between the invention of the Pill and the appearance of AIDs (and Bridget Jones) to seek out a copy of this book - although signs are it's unhappily now out of print (what are Penguin thinking?).

That's if you don't mind finding yourself weeping helplessly as I did through much of the second half. On the train, in parked cars, on the plane, over a solitary lunch, or cuddled up by the wood burner with a favourite cat.

I promise it will speak to you amid the Kleenex.

Cold day

Grey, cold, misty and humid.

And don't let me forget that wind. The kind of wind that hides until you're committed to the path down and you think you're okay without a hat, then sears you around the ears.

Even at 3pm, there's still a thick crust of ice on the chickens' water, and the willow sticks M. bundled up yesterday and left in the brook have become decorated with icicles.

The locals have their hands in their pockets, dewdrops on their noses and home-and-fireside in their downward steps.

We're heading for the giorni della merla, and don't we know it!

Apricot sunrise

Cold, gloomy and resentfully damp. Today we cut the willows that grow beside the brook. M. discovers a sudden enthusiasm for teaching himself to weave willow baskets. I locate a good hiding place in the dressing room, where I spend the rest of the day pretending to reorganise his city shoes.

Winter sunrise across Lago Maggiore,
seen from Carmine Superiore.