Quote of the week No. 7 : Meaningless affairs

One degree at 9am. There's snow on the ground still. A day of variety : first it snows, then it rains and then it hails.


Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), American writer and philosopher, nicknamed the 'longshoreman philosopher'.

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."

And people living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Situation vacant

One degree at 9am. Carmine is stuck in fog, with snow on the ground and sleet in the air.

My computer is dead. As a parrot. Which is why in the next few days my posting will be more erratic than usual. In the meantime I'm putting out a situations vacant notice for a Special Assistant on a short contract basis to help me with Project New Computer. Here's the job description :

Special assistant required. You will be trilingual (English, Italian and Cyberspeak), have a PhD in assessing critical paths and scheduling, and will be demonstrably NICE. No hang-ups, no baggage, no lurking vendettas, no unhappy love affairs you want to tell everyone about. Minor deity status a positive advantage. The following are requirements :

Healing skills of the highest order : all members of the family need to be well (including the kittens) before I can leave them in search of a new machine.

Persuasion skills paramount : you will need to be able to persuade M. that he might like to spend the morning babysitting the children instead of organising central heating for the chickens, or painting my soon-to-be workroom, or changing the tyres on the car, or writing prize-winning articles, or stocking the cellar with a winter's supply of bolognese sauce, or baking a cake, or chopping a week's supply of firewood. Alternatively, you should be able to demonstrate the ability to complete all these tasks in a single morning, thereby leaving M free.

A diploma in car mechanics is essential (see tyres, above).

Status as a part-time weather-god would be helpful : the weather needs to be conducive to a hair-raising drive (novice driver who can't always find the right gear) around the lake to the nearest computer super-store. No snow, no howling gales, and definitely no darkness.

Ability to influence games of chance a must : there needs to be a fair amount of cash in my purse - a medium-sized win on the lottery should do the trick.

Demonstrable skills of interpretation and foresight required : you will be called upon to understand what the hell the on-commission salesman is going on about and make a decision that will encompass all new technology emerging over the next five years (existing or not yet existing).

And finally, you will need a Masters in tecchie stuff with a day to spare and lots of patience to set up the wireless and the anti-virus software.

Recompense? As in all jobs related to publishing, the fee is just enough to avoid charges of slavery. But I can certainly promise that you will get ... the blame when the cat sits on the new machine or the children shove one of M's very big kitchen knives into the CD drive and it all goes up in a puff of blue smoke.

Applications with relevant diplomas, testimonials, a doctor's certificate and references to be received by midnight yesterday. The job starts now.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Nevica

One degree at 9am and snowing determinedly.

Twenty-twenty

One degree at 9am. A bright, frosty day, with a tell-tale inch of snow on the roofs of cars coming down from the heights.

I just noticed that the clickometer has topped 20,000. In celebration, here's a links-fest featuring the word 'twenty'. Hope you see some interesting things.

And thank-you twenty thousand times for clicking!

Twenty Years of Forgetfulness : Fantastic photographs by Trevor Snapp, a photographer living and working in Mexico City.

Twenty-Cent Paradigms : Fascinating insight into the world of academic economics (if you don't already have one), by Bill C., assistant professor in economics at the University of Miami.

Twenty Nothings : There seems to be a 21st-century internet love story brewing here..

20-Something : Web cartoon strip by Jimmy Norris. Worth a look if you were ever a student.

20 out of 10 : An emergency-room nurse writes about his experiences on the job. Not as gory as you might think.

Forty is the New Twenty : Having just turned (sottovoce) forty-five, I just liked the title.

My Twenty-Something Cents : A blog of miscellaneous fun by a twenty-something girl who's even miscellanear (is that a word?).

A Twenty-Something's Golf Blog : Passionate about golf.

Enjoy! In the meantime, I'm off to the cellar to see if I can find something with some gold foil wrapped around its neck...

I tuoi bambini parlano inglese? Do your children speak English?

Two degrees at 9am. Bright and sunny with lots of woodsmoke on the breeze.

[Scroll down for an English translation of this post.]

I tuoi bambini parlano Inglese? Abitate nella zona del Lago Maggiore? Vi piacerebbe fare parte del nostro gruppo di gioco in lingua inglese?

Ci incontriamo ogni due settimane a l'Oratorio di Cannobio, per giocare, leggere e parlare inglese, ma soprattuto per conoscere nuovi amici che parlano inglese. Attualmente il gruppo consiste in quattro bambini bilingue e quattro bambini allievi, e ci piacerebbe che si unissero a noi nuovi bambini.

Non ci sono costi! Ma speriamo in un vostro contributo, magari con la conoscenza dell'inglese, o con nuove idee.

Contatti : louise[at]carminesuperiore[punto]it

******

Do your children speak English? Do you live in the Lago Maggiore area? Would you like to be part of our English-speakers' play-group?

We meet every second week at Cannobio's Oratorio, to play, to practise reading and speaking English, and most of all to make friends with other English-speakers. The group currently consists of four bilinguals and four learners, and we would like to invite others to join us, particularly mother-tongue English speakers.

There is no charge - we hope that everyone will make a contribution, either with their knowledge of English, or with refreshments or ideas for activities.

For information, contact : louise[at]carminesuperiore[dot]it







Thanks to Sandra for the Italian translation


Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on http://www.discoveryschool.com/

Empty your pockets!

A cold and frosty morning with pale blue skies.

In my former more ... executive ... life, I frequently complained that business clothes for women, suits in particular, didn't have enough or large enough pockets, and being a boyish kind of girlie, I thought I should be able to do without a handbag. I was a smoker back then, so I needed to conceal about my slim, girlish person various articles, including the cancer sticks themselves (two packs of Marlborough Lights a day, oh yes), a zippo lighter, and an assortment of mints so that I could fool myself that I didn't stink like an ashtray.

Now that I'm a Mama (and the figure isn't so slim and girlish any more), my wardrobe is full of very capacious pockets, and I sometimes wish I didn't have so many. Actually, I wish I didn't have any pockets at all. As I scoot around the house, doing nothing more, it seems to me, than endlessly moving objects from one place to another, I tend to fill those many pockets with small items that need to go somewhere else.

It's a good system.

Except.

Instead of placing said objects in the right places as I go, I most often forget that they're there and I end up with an eclectic, varied and sometimes scary - no, sticky - mix of objects jangling around.

I have just now emptied my many pockets onto the kitchen table, and this is what I found :

-- one glass marble, green-and-red (wrenched from a child's mouth, perhaps only seconds before she swallowed it)
-- one grey plastic mammoth (provenance unknown, likely to have been half-inched from the kindergarten)
-- two screws, one large-ish, one small-ish (picked up from the floor before they could impale a barefoot child)
-- one large rubber band, broken (wrenched from a child's mouth, perhaps only seconds before he choked on it)
-- 91 cents in very small change - in case I get a shot at an espresso-at-the-bar one of these days
-- one brown velvet scrunch, pulled out of the sink overflow
-- one grubby white balloon, deflated
-- one ear plug, used
-- two maggoty, fire-blackened chestnuts
-- one small ball of miscellaneous fluff, blue (perhaps not so miscellaneous after all)
-- one white tissue, unused
-- one whitish tissue, used
-- a handful of diced parmesan rind (peace offering that never made it to the irascible cockerel)
-- one 5ml medicine spoon, sticky
-- one tube of titanium-based nappy-rash ointment, punctured by toddler teeth, oozing
and
-- one scrunched-up photo of Mama 20 years ago, slim and stylish in a Jean Muir suit, to remind her how it felt to have no pockets, but ridiculously enormous shoulder pads.

Now, if you empty your pockets, what would you find?

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Weather report : first snow

Three degrees at 9am. Snow on the southern side of the Valle Cannobina and snow on my head as I returned to base after the early morning kindergarten run.

Twilight zone...

I found a stray entry lurking on my blog account today. It read :

"t677777777777777777777777777777777777i i21ivmiiwq"

I tried Google Translate but with no success (as usual). My only futher clue as to the author and his message was that it was coincidental with a search on the term "mouse", and an Internet Explorer history entry showing an extreme interest in an online contest for a year's supply of Fufi paté. So perhaps it means "so long and thanks for all the fish"...

Or perhaps it's just that the computer keyboard is the warmest place in the house.

(His name's Trouble, by the way, and he's a Carmine Cat of 2008.)

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

In Verbania

Balconies on a November morning, Verbania Intra.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Weather report

Seven degrees at 9am. A nondescript kind of day. Well, actually, there's plenty to describe. The sky is overcast, but at times the sun struggles through. To the north, as a backdrop to the snow-capped Alps, there is a sky dark with snow. There's only the merest breath of air. And only occasionally. The world seems to be waiting.

Signs of the season

Cold, bright and dry, but with some interesting clouds that may well presage change.

Mathilda is alight and in the big house on the rock we've declared winter. The number of unheated rooms in use is dwindling as we shoehorn ourselves, our lives, our clothes, our work, our laundry into the heated rooms. And there are other signs that winter is here, too.

There's snow on the higher mountains hereabouts, including Cannobio's Monte Giove (a babe at 1298m a.s.l., but it would still qualify as a Munro if it were in Scotland).

Overheard conversations in Cannobio now often include some of the following words : "neve" (snow, as in there'll be snow over 1,000m a.s.l. at the weekend), "gelo" (frost, as in the frost will get your winter lettuce if the slugs don't), "acceso" (lit, as in have you lit your stove yet?), "cappellino" (hat, as in why the hell isn't your child wearing one?) and "pazienza" (patience, as in you gotta have some).

Our overstock of olive oil is gently and rather beautifully crystallizing in the pantry.

Our slightly greater overstock of chocolate is starting to bloom white like Cadbury's bought in Manang (3519m a.s.l.).

In the bathroom (c.300m a.s.l.) by the light of the pre-dawn, I see that the outside temperature is 5ºC, and the inside temperature is 3ºC.

The cold water coming out of the taps (which usually arrives from about 400m a.s.l.) is now too cold to put your hands in.

The toilet seats are too cold to sit on. Thank-you, Mum, for teaching me to "hover" (at about 305.2m a.s.l.).

And the rather muddy white paws of this years' Carmine kittens are as cold as the blue feet of a Dickensian urchin seeking his mother in the Christmas-Eve snow (or those of a Nepalese urchin ditto in Manang).

Oh, yes, and we saw our first Christmas tree yesterday. It was blue too.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

November colour

Five degrees at 9am. With brilliant sunshine and a clear blue sky to gladden the heart.

Recommended for November colour : pineapple sage (Salvia elegans), the leaves of which really do smell deliciously of pineapple. I planted this one in the summer, and only now discover that it may not see out the coldest part of the winter (being a native of the very much warmer Mexico). In the meantime, I'm enjoying the brilliance of its flowers, and my fingers are crossed.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Quote of the week No. 6 : On new friends

"The shortest distance between new friends is a smile."

Anon. (You know me - always a sucker for a clever play on words.)

PS : It was 7ºC at 9am, foggy and raining.

Book Notes No. 18 : What to Expect When You're Expecting, Murkoff, Eisenberg & Hathaway

Bright and sunny, but with a fairly strong wind. Today, M. has made a unilateral decision to light Mathilda, our declaration that winter is here! Sorry, by the way, all those people I've met this year called Mathilda - the name is much less common in England than it seems to be in Italy. No offence meant.

So I've been doing some clearing up prior to Christmas, and was amazed how much stuff we've acquired in only seven years since we bought this wreck of a house. I came here to Italy with about £100-worth of excess baggage, but in those few short years we seem to have accumulated an entire houseful.

While applying feathers to shelves I came across a book I haven't looked at for two years and four months, almost to the day. How do I know? I'll tell you.

It's called What to Expect When You're Expecting and during both of my mid-life pregnancies it was my bible and constant companion. I put it on the shelf on the day I brought B. home and forgot about it. (That's how I know.)

In the tradition of the ground-breaking Our Bodies, Ourselves, this chunky 600+ pager aims to answer every question you might have from the moment you walk out of the doctor's surgery, dazed, confused but cautiously happy, to the moment you start The Big Push and beyond. Between these paperback covers lies full and frank information on what might be happening and how you might be feeling at every stage of conception, pregnancy and birth, on what to do if..., on what not to do when...

A good friend recommended this book to me when I broke the news of my first pregnancy to her, and I have recommended it to all my pregnant girlfriends. I almost never had a question this book didn't answer. Having now topped 45, I'm not planning to get pregnant again. But you know me : never say never. This book is getting a good dusting and going back on the shelf. So buy your own copy!

Buy this book from Amazon now.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Rant follow-up

Another bright sunny day, with glittering white horses on the lake. A day on which to clear up the garden, prune the roses and haul mulch.

I said two days ago that if you're looking for a rant, A View from Carmine Superiore isn't the weblog to be reading, despite its name. But you may remember that in May I was much exercised by the story of Austrian Josef Fritzl, and in particular about his lawyer's argument that he was mentally unfit to stand trial.

Well, the good news is that a court has ruled he is in his right mind. And that he will stand trial for murder, incest, rape, false imprisonment and slavery.

I wonder how his daughter and grandchildren are.

Drinker

Another brilliant, bright, breezy day. In this weather, the yachts on the lake are electric white and shimmering.

Drinker

Fresco, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Baby P rant

Eleven degrees at 9am. A brilliant, bright sunny day. The blue sky is a perfect background for the white-capped Alps. Now I remember why I like winters at the lake.

When I started this site, I promised myself I wouldn't rant (too much) about things I saw in the news. But today, I'm so angry that I have to do something.

Baby P was 15 months old when he was found in his blood-spattered cot. Blue. Dead. He was found with more than 50 separate injuries, including a broken back and several broken ribs, and his face and head were covered in lesions, some of them several weeks old.

Baby P's short life of torture and agonising death are abhorrent to me as to most of us. But if I tell you that all this took place under the eyes of the social services, it becomes clear that something is going horribly wrong. The child and his mother were visited 60 times in the eight months prior to his death (that's twice a week). By social workers, by doctors. The last visit was a mere 48 hours before the child's death, when the doctor failed to spot that he was paralysed from a broken back. The police arrested the mother twice on suspicion of attacking her son, but she was released without charge, declaring that she was a "damn good mum". When the child's biological father started kicking up a stink at social services, they paid lawyers to make him go away.

Baby P's mother and two men living with her at the time have been tried, not for his murder - the court saw that it could never be proven who actually killed the child - but for the lesser crime of causing or allowing the child to be killed. And this week the British press is bitter with recrimination: bring back the death penalty! charge the social workers with neglect! sack everyone involved! deport the doctor! Much of this is understandable, and I understand it.

Like everyone else, I am shocked and disgusted by the story of Baby P's life and death. I abhorr the bullies who launched such a lengthy and savage attack on a defenceless child, I worry about doctors who fail to diagnose broken backs (for crying out loud), and I fail to understand social services management who think this is not their problem. Most of all, it is beyond my comprehension how a mother could allow a neo-Nazi boyfriend to commit such terrible acts of torture against her child. I have two children, and if anyone hurt them that person would have to reckon with a very angry Mama-bear. Neo-Nazi or not.

But what I really want to say is this: our children are our collective responsibility. We all have a duty to look out for them, whether they are our own children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, or whether they are the children of neighbours or our own childrens' school friends. It's not enough to delegate responsibility to overworked and undertrained social workers and then howl for their heads when something goes wrong.

If more of us had the guts to stand up to the bullies who attack toddlers, and took the time to insist on our voice being heard with the police, the social services and the doctors, perhaps fewer children would be forced to live such benighted lives or suffer such horrific deaths.

I support the NSPCC. I hope you might do so too. The link is on this page. All it takes is a click.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Today in 2007, No. 2

Nine degrees at 9am. Last night's squally rainstorm (through which we three intrepid souls trudged uphill home) has left us with snow on Monte Giove, the mountains of Lombardy and the Alps. And the first wintry wind of the season.

Today in 2007 it was quite a lot colder, and Mama was having a bad hat day...

Friendship around the world award

Still 10ºC at 9am. Damp, dull. Rain overnight and more threatening. Very slippery underfoot, with bruised knees all round from today's downhill walk.

The wonderful Cee has been kind enough to make my day by sending this award. Cee's blog is called Unruly and Enchanting, and documents her fabulous adventures in Argentina. Thank-you Cee!

As usual, it now falls to me to nominate some recipients myself, so here goes.

First, I want to nominate Debbie and Darcy from Blog Around the World, who work so hard to bring together like minds from across the globe.

My second nominee is Braja, for her fantastic blog, Lost and Found in India. Seven years ago she made the brave choice to move from her native Australia to a small town near Calcutta, with her Danish husband. Her posts are thought-provoking and funny by turns.

Finally, take a look at Wandering the World, a blog by Cairo Typo, from Egypt. A serial expat, travelling the world, she says, in search of sanity, this woman can be pretty funny about life in Cairo.

Happy reading!

From the mulattiera

Ten degrees at 8:30am. The sky is heavily laden with cloud, some of it threatening.

Shepherding (cajoling, dragging, whipping, carrying...) the children up and down this hill four times a day can be a right royal pain in the butt, but when a November morning provides a picture like this, you can't be sorry you're doing it.

The hills of Lombardy from the Piemonte side of Lago Maggiore.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Book Notes No 17 : 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, Clement C. Moore

Ten degrees at 9am (yep the kids are home and we're back on the usual kindergarten run). Grey, damp and cold.

In his Introduction to the 1912 edition of Clement C. Moore's immensely famous poem, Twas the Night Before Christmas: A Visit from St. Nicholas, E. McC. (whoever he was) wrote :

"Dr Clement C. Moore .... was born in a house near Chelsea Square, New York City, in 1781 ; and he lived there all his life. It was a great big house, with fireplaces in it; - just the house to be living in on Christmas Eve. .... One year he wrote this poem ... to give to his children for a Christmas present. They read it just after they had hung up their stockings before one of the big fireplaces in their house..."

A couple of years ago, when AJ was still a toddler and B was just a dottie, I started to think of how we could as a family make Christmas extra special. Being a mixed-nationality family living in a third country, we have a wealth of traditions and customs to choose from. I was already reading every night to the children, and during Advent I concentrated on the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible. But I felt it might be nice to read something extra-special on such an extra-special evening as Christmas Eve.

I looked around for a suitable edition of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and after quite a long search lit upon this one. It's the 1912 edition, published by Houghton Miflin in the USA, and, happily, sold in the UK and Europe by Amazon. It's a squareish hardback (they call it library binding), and features the original typography and the charming and very famous illustrations by Jessie Wilcox Smith, which would eventually form the basis of everyone's notion of what Father Christmas actually looks like.

That first year we didn't have the book in time for Christmas. But the following year we did, and just after we hung up the children's stockings we sat down, a glass of cremant in (at least my) hand, to read the poem together. It was a magical moment - AJ's eyes opened wide as he tried to imagine Santa and his sleigh landing on the roof, and he looked carefully at our own fireplace with its roaring fire to check that the rather large old man would indeed be able to enter the house in this fashion.

Why am I telling you all this in early November? Well, if you live in Europe and you'd like this edition of Clement C. Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas before Christmas, order it now, give Amazon plenty of time to get it to you and perhaps your little ones will be shiny-eyed with excitement this Christmas and not next!

Order this book from Amazon now.


Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Weather report

Back to ten degrees at ten o'clock. Patches of blue sky with great, towering clumps of high-white cloud. There appears to be no wind, and the streams are today less swollen with rain.

The sodden woodlands are ringing with the shots of hunters, more enthusiastic than ever after their enforced stay-at-home the last couple of weeks.

Quote of the week No. 5 : On the current financial crisis

Twenty-two degrees! I'm cheating - that's the temperature in the sun. But at least there's sun and no rain, and I'm off with my cup of tea to the churchyard for a panoramic view of the lake and the Alps.

Let me leave you with this thought from Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English novelist.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. -- David Copperfield, 1850

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

The 11th day of rain

Nine degrees at 10am and still raining. But the clouds between here and the Alps have parted, and the winds that whipped Carmine's flags to tatters seem to have subsided.

Book Notes No. 16 : The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa

Nine degrees at 10am. No change in the weather - raining, with cloud riding low over the lake and blotting out the mountains.

Newsweek trumpets Mario Vargas Llosa as "One of the world's outstanding contemporary narrative masters". And his UK publisher, Faber & Faber, a publishing house known for its literary output, declares on the jacket that The Bad Girl is the "gripping new novel from one of Latin America's greatest writers". And, indeed, I think neither magazine nor publisher is wrong.


I was certainly gripped by the narrative of this master until, that is, at page 58 I came up short with a jolt. What? I stopped and read the sentence at the foot of the page again. Then I re-read it. Then I read it just one more time. This is what it said :

"According to the press, Lobaton and his people had animals, prints, and paintings of Mongol warriors with popping eyes, twisted beards, and curved scimitars who seemed to be rushing the bed with very evil intentions."

Hmmm. I had, it seemed, hyperspaced from a description of the political situation in Peru to a hotel room I didn't know where. It being quite late at night, it took me a while to do the obvious thing, which was to glance down at the page numbers. 58...92. 58...92? Where were pages 59-91? I looked all over the book in the vain hope that this section had been bound in somewhere else. Nope. Nowhere to be found.

Rather upset (because I had been enjoying Mario Vargas Llosa's masterful narrative), I contacted Faber & Faber. It took a little while to make the very polite and patient young woman charged with answering my email understand that, no, I hadn't expected the book to be signed by the master of narrative himself, but I did expect it to come with all its signatures. A signature, I found myself pompously expounding, is a printer's sheet containing a number of pages which is printed, folded, collated with the other signatures and then bound together in the right order and not missing any out to make a book. Later I felt sorry for her. They tell me books as artefacts are about to be replaced by some funky digital gadget connected at one end to the Internet and at the other to your bank account, so why would anyone bother arming her with this soon-to-be-outdated information in the first place?

By the time the new copy of The (complete) Bad Girl arrived, though, I had ploughed on regardless, mastered by Mario Vargas Llosa's narrative. Here's the blurb :

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with The Bad Girl. He loves her as the teenage 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, when she arrives one summer out of the blue, saying she's from Chile, and vanishing the instant her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her again in Paris where she is the enchanting 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba. As the years pass, whatever guise the Bad Girl assumes, and however she abuses him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her...

But the book isn't actually what it purports to be. It's not really about the Bad Girl at all. It's about the man who's obsessed by her, Ricardo. It's about how his love is born and how it seeps into the pores of his entire life. Ricardo is masterfully narrated. He's a fully-rounded, three-dimensional character who is brought to life and then made to evolve. Somehow, and this proves just what a great writer Vargas Llosa is, between the start of the book and the end, Ricardo grows and changes. And we see this not only through the external changes in his way of life, and not only through his defining relationship with the girlie of the title (the early sex scenes are excruciating), but also, somehow, through very gradual changes in his voice. I don't know how Vargas Llosa does it, but it's pretty masterful. And fascinating.

By contrast, the Bad Girl herself is very hard to get to grips with. Mostly because it's difficult to tell what is the truth and what is lies (recalling another book I've mentioned recently). The reader is made to feel just as Ricardo feels - frustrated, confused, disorientated. And the final stroke, when it comes, is felt by narrator and reader alike.

I'd recommend this book if you like to read about massive love affairs or if you want to know something about Peruvian revolutionary history, or if you'd just like to enjoy a master crafting his narrative like a...well...a master.

Buy this book from Amazon now

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Weather report

Ten degrees at 10am. After the storms of yesterday evening, Carmine is looking a bit tattered. The chickens a bit bedraggled. The paths muddy, the roses droopy. It's still grey and raining, and the Alps have disappeared again under a pile of cloud.

Thank-you to everyone who visited Sasso Carmine yesterday, especially from BATW, and for all your kind comments. I'll be visiting you all shortly.

Happy Guy Fawkes'!

Carmine Superiore & Lago Maggiore: a brief & very personal guide

Carmine Superiore is a tiny village perched on an outcrop of rock overlooking Italy's stunning Lago Maggiore. It was founded towards the end of the 10th century AD as a fortified place to which people from the surrounding area could go in times of trouble. Having said that, the bare rock outside my front door is engraved with what the experts believe to be Neolithic carvings, so the immediate area seems to have been a place of habitation, or at least ritual, for at least two thousand years before that. (You'll find a potted history of the village here.)

Most visitors come up here in search of the Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine's beautiful little Romanesque church. Built in the 14th century, the church is covered inside and out with some truly beautiful Lombardy-School frescoes, painted in the 15th century. The frescoes were recently restored under the direction of the Comune di Cannobio and are a wonderful sight. Some details are featured in the slideshow in the sidebar.

Interior, Chiesa di San Gottardo.

Copyright © dalbuio, reproduced by kind permission.

Part of what makes Carmine Superiore so special is the fact that there are no cars here. Why? For the simple reason that there is no road. Whoever comes up here walks (and its a rise of about 100m vertical). And whatever they bring with them normally comes up on their back. For what this means in real life, see here. The hill is a constant in our lives. Almost everything we do is informed or necessitated by the hill. It is one of our biggest bugbears. But it is also one of Carmine's greatest attractions. One tour leader this summer put it in a nutshell. He said that for his visitors it was not so much reaching the destination that mattered, but it was "the spirit of the walk" that gives them so much satisfaction. I guess you value something just that little bit more if you have to work for it.

The personal bit
When I first came to live here, Carmine was mostly deserted, at least, there was no-one living here all year round. The centre of a thriving agricultural settlement before the start of the 20th century, the village had gradually emptied out (for the reasons, see here), and the last full-time resident had moved down the hill in the early 1990s. Many of the houses, though, had been bought as holiday homes and renovated in the 1970s, but some buildings still stood empty. After an association with the village that went back more than 30 years, my husband and I were offered the chance to buy two interlinked houses in 2001. In a fit of passion for the place, we rearranged our lives so that we could live here all year round, and in 2004, at the ripe old age of 40, I gave birth to our son, AJ. He was the first child to be born resident here for more than 60 years.

I now have two children who love to scream around the cobbled car-free alleyways, playing in the mud, kicking up a fuss and doing their best to disturb Carmine's ages-old serenity. But I still love those rare sparkling winter days, wrapped up in a warm sweater, drinking a mug of strong, sweet tea by the church, with a view over the lake, knowing that I am truly alone with the world spread out below me.

This post talks a bit more about life up here for a mother in the 21st century.

So what's to see and do hereabouts?

A very personal visitor's guide
Carmine is part of the comune of Cannobio, a small town just along the lake to the north. It's situated on the mouth of the Cannobina River, and was originally a Celtic settlement way back when. Cannobio is a gem. Its people are friendly, and its old town - with parts dating back to the Middle Ages - is charming. In the summer, the place is heaving with visitors, mostly German or Dutch. Cannobio's lungolago, the lakeside walk, is a great place to stroll and eat supper in the evenings, and water sports at the beach keep visitors of all ages happy. All year round the lungolago is the scene of an enormous Sunday morning street market, which is visited by tens of thousands each year, and the summer finds it a venue for musical entertainments, festivals and other events.

Cannobio's old harbour.
Copyright © tschutsch, reproduced by kind permission.

Moving further north along the winding lake road, you hit the border with the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino (passports at the ready), which is perhaps best-known for its association with writer Hermann Hesse, who lived in the area from 1919 to 1931. Ascona is the Swiss town that lies at the northernmost end of Lago Maggiore, a more expensive and rather more sedate counterpart to Italy's Cannobio. Ascona's summer highlight is the Ascona Jazz Festival, ten days of jazz in venues around the town, not least along the lungolago with the lake as a stunning backdrop. We also enjoy Ascona's February Carnevale celebrations. In winter, the lungolago is busy with ladies in fur coats, dripping with jewels and walking their poodles. You know the kind of thing.

Moving further north on the road towards the mountain passes of San Bernardino and San Gottardo, there is the city of Bellinzona, capital of the canton of Ticino. Bellinzona boasts not one, but three castles, which together form a UNESCO world heritage site. Dating back almost 2,000 years, the castles are said to be the finest example of medieval fortifications in the whole of Switzerland.

If, instead of heading north along the lake road from Carmine, you head in a southerly direction, the first town you come across is Cannero Riviera.

Cannero Riviera.
Copyright © ladigue_99, reproduced by kind permission.

The beach here is tucked away in a sheltered south-facing bay, and so while Cannobio is great for windsurfers and all sorts of water sports, Cannero is better for the less strenuous sports of sunbathing, paddling and people-watching. Cannero is famous at Christmas time for its nativity scenes. They seem to be on every corner and in every garden as you stroll around the town, which is beautifully decorated for Christmas. Some include not only the Christ child in the stable, but also entire landscapes peopled with figures carrying out agricultural and everyday tasks, rivers with real water that really flow, angels that fly through the air. Enchanting!

If you don't want to take your car along the lake road, it is possible to walk from Cannero to Carmine, and then along to Cannobio, along the ancient footpath, known as the Via delle Genti, which pre-dates the lakeside route. In fact, what's said to be part of the Roman road still exists in the midst of the woodlands. This is a lovely walk. It takes some time, and is 'moderate' in difficulty. Sensible shoes and perhaps a walking stick are recommended. Here you'll see the remains of the former settlements : broken walls, crumbling houses and stables, gardens for so long made to thrive and for so long now deserted.

If you're planning the walk and want to see inside the church when you get here, drop me an email or knock on my door, and if I'm around I'll try to arrange something for you. If I'm not, speak to the immensely helpful people at the tourist information office in Via Giovanola, Cannobio, near the church.

If you don't want to drive and you don't want to walk, the third possibility is to take a boat, and if you do this, between Carmine and Cannero you will run into the imposing Castelli di Cannero, the ruins of two medieval castles set on islands in the middle of the lake. The castles have a long and pretty swashbuckling history, full of ruthless pirates, noble Milanese dukes and downtrodden serfs. For the full story, see here.

Castelli di Cannero.
Copyright © Anton Engelsman, reproduced by kind permission.

Beyond Cannero, heading south along the west side of the lake, you come to Verbania, the provincial capital. Verbania is made up of three separate towns - Pallanza, Intra and Suna. The towns were gathered together into one entity under the Mussolini regime, and, consistent with Mussolini's ideology of reviving Italy's great Classical identity, the Roman name for the lake (Verbano) was used.

Verbania Pallanza
Copyright © gneopompeo, reproduced by kind permission.

As you would expect from a capital, Verbania has lots to offer. The old town is crammed with good shopping, and the lakeside area in particular is a good place to be if you're feeling peckish. Year round, there is a full diary of concerts, film, theatre and dance, plus activities for children and local festivals. Carnevale is particularly colourful. One of the most famous of Verbania's sights is Villa Taranto with its beautiful botanical gardens. A visit to the Museo del Paesaggio, Verbania's museum of archaeology, painting and sculpture, is also well worthwhile.

Villa Taranto.
Copyright © corto.maltese, reproduced by kind permission.

Of course, the big presence in the region is Lago Maggiore. How could I forget! Fifty-four kilometres long, the lake is the second largest of Italy's northern lakes after Lake Garda. The lake has a number of islands large enough for settlements. In the Swiss sector are the Brissago Islands, the largest of which has a beautiful botanical garden (take a boat from Porto Ronco). Further south lie the Borromeo Islands - Isola Madre (18th-century botanical gardens and the 16th-century Palazzo Borromeo), Isola Bella (a second Palazzo Borromeo, and home to the annual Stresa Music Festival, with connections to Italy's favourite condutor, Arturo Toscanini) and Isola dei Pescatori (ancient narrow streets, great fish restaurants, as the name suggests). For the Borromeo Islands, take a boat from Intra, Pallanza, Stresa or Baveno.

And as if the lake isn't enough, there are also the mountains all around. The Val Grande National Park is Italy's largest wilderness area, offering miles and miles of marked trails. A few miles into Switzerland and you're in the beautiful Val Verzasca, and can also reach Valle Maggia and the Centovalli.

Centovalli baita.

Copyright © soulsister, reproduced by kind permission.

Nearby mountain peaks include Monte Carza (1100m), Monte Zeda (2157m), Monte Mottarone (1491m, accessible by cable car) and Cannobio's own Monte Giove (1298m).

I'm of course just skimming the surface of the many things to see and do in the area. I could be waxing lyrical about so many places to see: Orta San Giulio with its car-free old-town, so picturesque that brides fight to be married and photographed here; the stern Rocca d'Angera castle; the 35-m-high statue of San Carlo Borromeo in Arona; the Santa Caterina monastery with its beautiful frescoes, clinging to the side of the cliff and accessible by boat or on foot; and the Sacro Monte at Ghiffa (another UNESCO World Heritage Site). But I know you're already pricing tickets to Milan Linate or Malpensa and looking at the kids' holiday schedules for next year. So I'll return to base for just a couple more paragraphs.

Rocca d'Angera fortress.

Copyright © gneopompeo, reproduced by kind permission.

The changing seasons
One of the greatest gifts Carmine Superiore has given to me, is the opportunity to see and celebrate the changing seasons each year, a virtual impossibility if you live and work on London's South Bank, my former home.

Spring brings the camellias for which Lago Maggiore is justly famous, and planting time in the garden. It brings Carnevale and, later, Easter, with the real-life chicks we time to hatch on Easter Day for the delight of all the children.

Summer brings the pipistrelli back to Carmine's nighttime skies and wakes the scrabbling dormice in the attics. There are busy days in the garden and lazy days on the beach. Carmine fills up with summer visitors, and the lake is a-flutter with colourful sails.

Week after week, the various towns round about find an excuse for fireworks and celebrations, and we in Carmine are in the evenings to be found on the church 'piazza', glass in hand, for a perfect view. When kindergarten closes for the year at the end of June, our routine changes, to include a daily dip from Carmine's very own pebble beach at the foot of the hill. July is the hottest month, with August and September gradually cooling until, some time in October we get the first rains (that'd be about now).

Autumn brings castagne and funghi, and what seems like the entire population is to be found in the woods in search of sweet chestnuts and the much-prized porcini mushrooms. Most towns and villages (even my son's kindergarten) put on a castagnata, with huge pans of chestnuts roasting over open fires. Autumn also brings wild boar to root around in any garden with an open gate, causing havoc among the spring bulbs.

The All Saints holiday signals the start of winter for many people, as they bring candles and flowers to the graves of their loved-ones and attend mass in memory of those who have left us (this year, too many). Winter is most often a season of dry, sunny days with clear brilliant blue skies and a glassy lake, but sometimes we have some snow. After All Saints, everyone seems to want to hibernate, but before anyone can get too snuggled in, the Christmas lights are up and the nativity scenes are being dusted off. Christmas is celebrated with pannetone and mulled wine, and on Epiphany, La Befana, an ugly old witch, brings gifts to all the children. In Cannobio, the Christmas holiday is extended by two days for the annual celebration of the town's patronal festival, during which the entire old town is lit by thousands and thousands of candles, and the SS Pieta' is brought in procession from one church to another.

Cannobio's candlelight patronal festival.
Copyright © ladigue_99, reproduced by kind permission.

At the end of January, Cannobio's townspeople take part in a night-time lantern-light walk through the woodlands, a pilgrimage to mark mid-winter that has its roots in the time of the Romans and perhaps even earlier.

When I first came to live in Italy, a colleague in Milan told me she disliked Lago Maggiore in the winter. She thought of the lake at this time of year as being 'abandoned', 'triste' and 'unloved'. But today, as I look out of my kitchen window and see the first sprinkling of snow on the distant Alps and the lake lying below me, steely and calm, I know that my love for this place, with its age-old memories and its big-hearted people, can only grow with the years. While I'm still here, the lake, and above all Carmine, will never be unloved.

Have a good day - and to all you Americans reading, please, please elect the right guy!

Come back to Sasso Carmine soon!

Unless indicated otherwise, all text and pictures copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. My grateful thanks go to all the Flickr members who so kindly gave me permission to use their beautiful images - thank-you for your collaboration at such short notice.

Weather report

Ten degrees at 10am. Chucking it down. Hard. The cloud base over the lake is lying at about 100m, and Carmine is drenched in mist mingled with wood smoke. Wet, wet, wet.

Carmine quotes No. 13 : the wood in the woodshed

The temperature's dropping. Slowly, slowly, degree by degree. In the big house in Carmine, the tension is rising. We've started lighting a fire in the evenings, the chimneys are swept and Mathilda is standing at the ready. I see that M. is starting to look a bit fish-eyed : he has one eye on the thermometer and one eye on the woodshed.

Regina, Montessori teacher, polyglot and Carmine appassionata opined the other day :

"There are two types of men in this world, those who think the wood in the woodshed is going to be enough, and those who think it isn't going to be enough, even though they're looking at the same pile of wood..."

I wonder if our little stash will see us through, cooking, water heating, two stufe in ceramica, wood-burning stoves miscellaneous and one open hearth...?

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

The eyes have it

Ten degrees at 10am. Overcast and windy. The rain clouds have parted, temporarily I'm told, to reveal the first snow on the Alps.

If frescoes could talk, what would these two characters be saying?

Fresco detail, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.