Wildlife sighting No. 2

Nine degrees at 9am. Another misty start but there's the promise of sunshine soon. Better not get too excited. Yesterday I only had to write the 'p' word and a cold southerly sprang up to remind us it's still only February, and we shivered our way through the rest of the day. I've resolved not to mention the 'p' word again until I hear it on the lips of a local three times. A Biblical triple, as in the cock that crowed three times, is always good for these kinds of situations.

This morning was a very early morning - I had promised AJ a Friday treat of a caffe' breakfast before kindergarten. We were rewarded for our early morning exertions with the sight of a capriolo, a roe deer, eating its own breakfast in Ezio's garden, just above ours.

AJ was thrilled. But he was sworn to secrecy. Angelo, the very nice owner of the caffe' is also an enthusiastic hunter. Ever tried getting a 3-year-old to shut up about something exciting he's seen? Luckily, AJ's Italian still isn't perfect, and getting his brioche-stuffed mouth around the word capriolo was beyond him. For once I declined to translate.

There are two types of deer in this neighbourhood, the other being the much bigger cervo. If anyone has the translation for cervo, I would be interested to know.

Book Notes No. 5 : The Gospel of Judas, Simon Mawer

Nine degrees at 9am. Misty but with the sun gamely trying to burn its way through. By 1pm it was eighteen degrees and sunny. Short sleeves for the lunchtime kindergarten run.


Not the Da Vinci Code...

Despite its title, this pretty accomplished novel is not connected – not at all, in no way and not by any stretch of the imagination – with the recent outpouring of thrillers mining the fertile lode of catholic history, medieval legend and modern-day religious relativism. Those Amazon reviewers who expected something like the Da Vinci Code perhaps should have read the blurbs more carefully. They do Simon Mawer and his work a great disservice with their 1s and 2s.

Sure, the Gospel of the title is a papyrus that needs to be deciphered. But that’s it. No coded message, no mystery, no buried treasure. The treasure in this book is its treatment of its main theme : the theme of deception and betrayal. Almost every character is a Judas in some way – by extension we are all traitors and betrayed. And when betraying ourselves, we are both at the same time. The book is pervaded with the smells and sounds of betrayal : the leitmotif of the clipping of a woman’s heels on the pavement, the cloying odours of the room where vows are broken. The sudden shifts from one story to another jolt us into the realisation that the same traitorous acts recur generation after generation and echo beyond our own lifetimes, shaping others.

Even though (or perhaps because) this isn’t Da Vinci Code mark 14, I would recommend it. It’s an interesting, thought-provoking and well-written book.

Mimosas

Seven degrees at 8:30am. Overcast but warm.

The mimosa trees are in flower.

Il ritorno

Four degrees at 7:30am (oh yes the children are home, so it's an early morning!). Misty but with blue skies above.

Here's the view from Carmine Superiore yesterday morning, with the mist lying low over the lake almost completely obscuring Maccagno, on the opposite shore of the lake.

The serenity of my life here changed dramatically in the afternoon. Yes, my husband and two little ones came, tumbling out of the car all flushed faces and garlic breath. They saw me, cried "Mama", and ran to me with open arms. The violins played, Mama wept and then we all wandered home through the woods as the sun set.

Who needs the Hollywood scriptwriters? I've got real life.

Happy Leap Year's Day

Five degrees at 8:30am. All the windows are open and the sound of Carmine's streams is trickling in. It will probably be a carbon copy of yesterday. Which is odd, and I'll tell you why...

Today is Leap Year's Day.

You : Oh, no it isn't.
Me : Oh, yes it is.
You : Oh, no it isn't, it's only 24th February today, not 29th...
Me : That's what I mean...

Now I know I live half way up a mountain with no tv, and I've been alone for a week. I know I've started talking to myself, the cats and the chicks, even, on occasion the neighbours, but I'm really not going doolally.

We all know the basic Leap Year theory, don't we. The tropical year is about 365.2425 days long and if we had a uniform year of 365 days we'd be out of synch with the seasons in a relatively short space of time. Would be a bit odd to be doing Easter bunnies and fluffy yellow chicks surrounded by the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, now wouldn't it?

The extra .25 of a day (roughly) is rounded into a full day every four years (usually) and dropped into the calendar in February. For most of us, the extra day seems to be the one that's not there in non-Leap-Year Februaries (i.e. 29th). But in fact, the extra day is quietly inserted after the 23rd, that is, the 23rd day of February is doubled. While for those of us who rely on numbers, computers, dates and times to tell us where we are in the universe, Leap Year's Day isn't until next Friday, it has in fact been slipped in under cover of last night's darkness. This is how it works :

Friday 22nd -->22nd
Saturday 23rd --> 23rd (with me so far? okay - here comes the tricky bit...)
Sunday 24th --> second 23rd (called the bissextile day)
Monday 25th --> 24th
Tuesday 26th --> 25th
Wednesday 27th --> 26th
Thursday 28th --> 27th
Friday 29th --> 28th
Saturday 1st --> 1st

See what I mean?

Why do we add the extra day in February? The Romans (who instituted the Julian calendar) began their new year in March, so it made sense to them when it became obvious they needed an extra day to tag it onto the end of their year. Then along came the Christians and demanded that between Christmas, a fixed date, and Easter, the original Moveable Feast, there should be the same number of Sundays - i.e. the same number of masses said. And some very smart person indeed worked out, probably using an abacus and a copy of the Benito Mussolini Perpetual Calendar, that the extra Sunday could be achieved by doubling the sixth day before the start of March (bi-sex-tile).

If you're interested, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox (the spring equinox being defined for Church purposes as 21 March).

I have two questions.

When the clocks move back in autumn, and we are treated to an extra hour, many people while away that extra hour in bed. But what will you be doing today, given that you're being handed a whole 24 hours for free?

Second, if girls are allowed to propose to boys on Leap Year's Day, and if the boy must accept or pay for the girl's trousseau, how much money will the worldwide fraternity of lawyers make fighting lawsuits when the boys find out the girls got the day wrong and try to wriggle out of it?

Today is a no-name day. A day out of time. A gift of extra time. Enjoy it if you can.

First windsurfers

I've just come in from the garden and thought I'd log the first windsurfers of this year down on the lake. As I dig and weed and transplant, screams of excitement and the occasional snap of a sail float up from the surfies below. Must be freezing. I'll wait till July before I go anywhere near that water.

Chick bulletin + 14 days

Four degrees at 8am. Sunny with an elegant mist over the lake. Clear skies.

Two weeks on and all five of our little buggers are doing very nicely. They're still in the attic, under a warm infra-red light in a box with sawdust in the bottom. Don't know why, but somehow everything within a radius of about two feet is now covered with a fine yellow dust. Whether this comes from the sawdust, the feed or the chicks themselves is uncertain. What I do know is it makes me nostalgic for the builder-days (not).

Here's Alpha - the first of the chicks to hatch and by far the most advanced. He acts like a boy, so lets call him he, although his gender will be unclear until he's a few months old when, if he's a boy he'll start to get all rambunctious, pick scraps with his father and try to roger his aunts. Remind you of someone you know? Call the Samaritans, there must be a teenager in your life.

Alpha's comb has started to appear, and his wing feathers have started to grow, which means he can flutter short distances. I keep hearing 'pling-pling' as one or other of them have a little hop and bang their heads on the lamp. I'm just waiting to come in one night and find them nestling in my bed, having escaped their box. In the absence of my husband and children, I'd prefer the cat, but they're all banned from the house - while they seem singularly uninterested in the mice, these lovely fluttery yellow things would make excellent playmates.

Something that hasn't changed though. If I take Alpha out of the box and put him in the middle of the attic floor, he still comes over all agoraphobic, being rooted to the spot the entire two minutes of this photo-shoot.

Seen in the garden today

The hawk that kills chickens. The first butterflies. And the first honey bee.

Foglio rosa

Five degrees at 8:30am. Hazy sunshine.

Yesterday evening I received a foglio rosa (liberally translates as, 'pink card'). This does not mean I'm a girl and I must get off the pitch. Nor does it mean that someone did send me a Valentine after all.

No. It's something quite scary. Actually, it's something very scary. Scary for me, but if you're using the roads in the vicinity of Verbania in the next few months, also scary for you.

My advice is : be afraid, be very afraid...

Yes, the foglio rosa is the Italian provisional driver's licence, and I now have one about my person, with my name on it. What did I do to get it? I paid the autoscuola €220 to register, and the doctor €32 for a stamp on a form, which had a €14.62 marca da bollo on it (acquired from the shifty little chap in the tobacconist).

Acquisition of said foglio rosa means I can get started on the practical lessons, and I can practice in any car with someone accompanying me (just as in the UK). The question of where I will find such a courageous hero remains for the moment unanswered. I can, however, take the kids along for the ride (definitely not as in the UK), so perhaps they'll do as chaperones (not really, Mum).

The following thought will be speeding me (if you'll excuse the allusion) towards my first lezione.

People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him.

-- Art Buchwald (who he?)

Two degrees at 8am. Blue skies, bright sunshine. I'm off to the garden for a spot of rough digging (holiday? what holiday?).

A pile of piode

Three degrees at 8am. Overcast and grey. Windy with the occasional stray white horse.

Here's a picture of some rock. There's a lot of it about.

Actually, they're piode, granite roofing tiles. Like most heavy things in Carmine, once they're up they don't go down.

Witness box to soap box

Minus one at 8am. A stunning golden sunrise this morning with the merest stirrings of a wind. I miss my babies!

At London's famous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, it's traditional for anyone who so desires to set up their soap box and hold forth on whatever subject is excerising them, in whatever language they choose and to an audience of one-man-and-his-dog or to a chanting crowd of thousands, depending on his oratorical skills and the vitality of the subject.

At Speaker's Corner, you're allowed to say, with a loud hailer if you want, anything. Anything at all. With only two exceptions. You're not allowed to incite a riot or racial hatred. And you're not allowed to defame the Royal Family. This is because Speaker's Corner is in one of the Royal Parks and it would be "jest too beastly to have people trampling all over one's roses and calling one names too boot." Or so I was told by the bobby on duty the day I was sent to cover "anything that may be going on" for a postgrad course in photojournalism.

It goes without saying that Speaker's Corner attracts its fair share of harmless nutters.

Yesterday, Mohamed Al-Fayed, the richest paranoiac in Britain, had his day in court. And it seems that, unlike at Speaker's Corner, you can say whatever you like about the Royal Family in a British court of law. I once saw Al-Fayed call the Duke of Edinburgh a "f***ing Nazi b*****d in a live tv interview - the no-name afternoon-tv journalist-on-the-spot nearly fainted, poor girl. And so I was sure that sparks would be flying when he appeared at the Diana-Dodi inquest. And he didn't disappoint by all accounts. He called the Queen's consort a "Nazi" and a "racist". He claimed Prince Philip and Prince Charles were involved in the murder of Diana and Dodi because Diana was pregnant and the monarchy couldn't bear to see her married to Al-Fayed's son and carrying a 'forrin' baby.

Sad, isn't it? A man of such advanced age and with successes in business of almost heroic proportions, reduced to name-calling (and with such execrable English grammar). Where's the evidence? Where are the witnesses to support the allegations? Where's this man's dignity!

Now I hate to see a person robbed of a child. I can sympathise with Al-Fayed's grief over the death of his son. But why do I have a niggling suspicion that he's more upset that his scheme to have his son seduce the Princess of Wales was scuppered? That he's more bitter that the couple's deaths thwarted his grand plan to take revenge on an Establishment that continued to cold-shoulder him despite his gazillions?

Perhaps when this battle is finally over, Mr Al-Fayed might consider spending his Sundays on a soap box in Hyde Park. I'm sure one-man-and-his-dog and a shifty-looking girl with a Nikon would be happy to listen. But he should watch what he says in front of the man in the funny blue hat - Marylebone cop-shop is mere steps away.

Nocturnal noises

Minus one at 8:30am with frost. Not for a long time has it been this cold. I know you guys over there in the States and you guys North of the Alps have been shivering at steady minus-somethings for months now, but a.) here in Italy a mild winter is taken for granted (at least by expats from the north) and b.) if you live in an ancient stone house with no modern-style heating in 80% of the rooms (including the bathroom) you really notice the difference above or below the magic zero.

Lombardy across the lake is obscured with a strange pearly kind of mist stained peach when the sun came up.

In the absence of nocturnal noise created by my sleeping family combined with the running of the streams and the odd owl outside, the presence in the house of creatures other than cats and chicks has become apparent. In the depths of the dark I came awake in a cold sweat. What was it that woke me? Being unused to being alone in this enormous stone shack, my ears have become ultrasensitive. There it is again. Scrabbling, skittering, scratching, capering and general careening. Here. Over there. Now there. Now right - above - my - head.

The culprit? Not altogether sure. It could, though, be this little fellow - a ghiro. Or rather, by the sounds of things, several of them. Rather unlike communities of mutant terrors hiding uderground in fantasy fiction novels, these supremely cute squirrel-ish creatures nest under the floorboards and in the spaces between the stone roof and the rafters (you know - where the insulation should be). I can sometimes hear them in the kitchen, but when I dash upstairs to AJ's vacant (sigh) winter quarters there's nothing to be seen. Rather like McCavity the Mystery Cat, they're just not there. Very unnerving.

In Germany they're called siebenschlaefer - seven (months) sleepers - because in theory they sleep for seven months in winter (wouldn't it be great if that's what the kids did...). If it's them making all this noise, global warming is doing terrible things to their body clocks.

In Italy there is a popular simile, 'ho dormito come un ghiro' - I slept like a ghiro - i.e. ultra soundly. Well, not in this house, and not this winter. The ghiri aren't sleeping soundly and neither am I!

It could be rats, of course, and that would be a different story...

Reference : Image from

www.girovagandointrentino.it

The absence of sweet faces

Two degrees at 8:30am. Grey, misty and dull with a mean little wind. Very unappealing.

An hour ago the kitchen was a whirlwind of hats, scarves, tissues, biscuits, bits of apple, discarded toast-with-nutella, tiny walking boots, oversized lunchboxes and piles and piles of nappies. And in the middle of it all a deeply nervy Mama.

Now, a short sixty minutes later, all is silent apart from the distant flick-flack of the washing machine and the crackle of the fire in Mathilda. The children are gone. Their father is gone. And, all being well, gone they will remain.

For a week.

A whole week!

Can you imagine what this might mean to a person who has not been alone for more than three hours in 19 months? Can you imagine what this might mean to a mother who has put her daughter to bed every day of her short life, and who won't be doing it tonight? Can you imagine what this might mean to someone whose life has for three years and four months been a constant round of breastfeeding, nappies, laundry, mad dashes to feed the chickens while the babes are asleep, faddish mealtimes and toddler tantrums, to say nothing of the kindergarten blues, the sick-kid greens and the nappy-rash reds?

You know, I'm so confused in the face of this extravagant freedom, I've no idea what it does mean. Last night my dreams were full of loss, of not being able to reach my crying baby, of being on a bus going nowhere. Today, I don't know whether to jump up and down with exuberance or to let my heart spill over and have a little weep.

And what policy should I take towards this sudden excess of usable time. Should I industriously clean the house? Should I organise the baby clothes? Should I get the electricians in to sort out the wiring and electrify the one-third of the house that's still in the dark ages. Should I study, read and write? Should I have a holiday?

When I first came to Carmine Superiore, I loved it for its spirit of solitude. Not the heavy, bow-your-head-down kind of solitude so common in big cities, but a solitude that brings a lightness of spirit, allows you to see the beauty in tiny things and the tranquility in the turning of the seasons. And one thing I do know is that this week I should enjoy the solitude I have missed for so long.

Milan Kundera wrote that solitude is the "sweet absence of faces". For me it is the absence of the sweet faces of my husband and my little ones. And like any mother and lover, I find such solitude both disturbing and wonderful.

Safe journey my precious ones. Have fun and come back safely.

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

Reported conversations No. 5

Six degrees at 8am. Damp and misty.

The village on the rock has only intermittent telecommunications, a moody electricity supply, no gas and do-it-yourself sewerage. Sometimes things can be ... frustrating.

Mama : Damn, Damn, DAMN!
AJ : What's wrong Mama?
Mama : No internet connection. Again!
AJ : Don't worry Mama, I will bring you one.
Mama : (distracted, restarting the computer and rechecking the phone jacks) Mmmm...?
AJ : I will bring you one in my tractor.
Mama : Mmmmm...?
AJ : I will bring you three.
Mama : Mmmmm....?
AJ : Then you'll be happy.
Mama : (smiles).

Three degrees at 8:30am, but somehow feeling much colder. Bright sunshine after a starry night. Fifteen degrees at 1pm, but somehow feeling much warmer. Everybody is smiling.

Here's a less well-known corner of Sasso Carmine, the village where every rock has a view.

Three of everything

Three degrees at 8:30am. As yesterday : bright sunshine, frost and a cold wind. They say that on St Valentine's day the birds choose a mate. Well, they were certainly making plenty of noise if that's what they were doing this morning.

It being St Valentine's day, I wanted to write something witty, fascinating and erudite on that subject. I started doing a bit of research, and immediately hit a problem. There seem to be at least three completely contradictory accounts of St Valentine's life. In fact, there seem to be at least three St Valentines celebrated on three different days of the year. I'd like to have discovered something of his life's work, but again, I found confusion and contradiction. And the really burning question of why he has come to be associated with lovers, marriage and all things connubial (as well as being patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, bee keepers and travellers) was answered in more than three different ways.

By the time I started reading that St Valentine did nothing remotely romantic and in fact the celebration is an echo of past pagan festivals in which young men drew lots for girls (my sources are curiously silent on the question of 'what then?'), I realised that this project was about three times bigger than I could handle in the three minutes I had before B's gentle humming turned into unfeminine bellows for undivided attention.

So...I thought I might point you towards another article, one that I wrote earlier, also about things coming in threes.

Motherhood means...No. 2

Two degrees at 8:30am, when I finally took AJ back to kindergarten. Bright sunshine and blue skies but with frost on the ground and a very cold breeze. Fourteen degrees at 1:30pm.

Motherhood means...
...finding out the hard way that two cups of flour plus one cup of water does not equal one hour or so of quiet and creative play for two under-fours, but two hours of scraping Easy Play Dough off the chestnut-wood kitchen floor with a paint scraper for one over-40.

There is a willow grows aslant a brook...

One degree at 7am as the sun rises to clear skies. The chicks are doing well, pecking around under their infra-red lamp, but the rest of the eggs have failed to hatch. A pretty poor showing after such a positive start. We have a suspicion the temperature was half a degree too high. We live and learn.

For the last two or three weeks, Ezio has been up a ladder more rickety than the one I use to rescue cats from awkward rooftops. Here, there and everywhere on the north side of Carmine, his tweed hat has been popping up a couple of metres above where it’s normally seen. And there’s always one of his cats sitting at the foot of the ladder nagging him : “Come down! It’s not safe!”

He’s tying in the vines. And once he gets started, he does the lot. His own vines, Franco’s vines, our vines. Basically any vine within view doesn’t escape being pruned and retied, fitted out for the forthcoming year.

The process starts by cutting the willows that have been planted all along one of Carmine’s several streams. The trees are reduced almost to stumps as last year’s shoots are taken right back to the trunks. The stems are bound into those sculptural sheafs so beloved of any photographic stylist with a warehouse-style set to dress – you know, those accessories we thought would look so lovely with our stripped or laminate floors and when we had struggled them all the way home on the tube they just gathered dust and got in the way.

Instead of winding up in a despondent huddle in Oxfam, these sheafs are left to stand upright in the stream so that the water keeps the stems supple. They’re then used to tie everything from vines to fences. Once they’re dry they don’t come loose all year, come rain, hail, wind, frost, ice or snow. Next spring they’ll have to be cut away with a deft blow (or, in my case, several wild swipes) of the machete.

It strikes me that willow is a pretty useful kind of tree. It grows near water. Its roots keep the river banks in one place. Its branches grow like the blazes, and it strikes easily. It shades my lettuces from the full glare of the July sun. Its fallen leaves can be scooped up for compost. Its shoots are used in place of those plastic landfill-destined thingummyjigs so beloved of cut-price D-I-Y stores, to tie anything semi-permanent. They can also be woven together for baskets, fences and, conceivably, buildings. I could even train branches into decorative archways and grow roses up them if I had green fingers (which I don't). And when the ties or the baskets or the fences or even the trees themselves get so old as to be beyond use, they can be put on the fire to keep us warm and cheerful on a cold February night.

Now that's what I call a good all-rounder.

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

Raspberries and daffodils

Two-and-a-half degrees at 8am. Misty over the lake, but with sunshine promised. Yesterday we transplanted raspberries and picked the first golden daffodils.

Book Notes No. 4 : The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

One degree at 8:30am. Clear skies and sun. Frost. Five chicks all survived the night and looking perky.


Revealed! The book that had no review quotation at all (see January 2008, Book delivery). Not on the front cover nor on the back cover. Not in support of the blurb on the front flap nor after the biography on the back flap. And not on any of the eight blank pages at the end of the book that make you think there'll be another twist to the story when in fact it's finished (don't you just hate that?).

Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods needs, it seems, no introduction, no recommendation, no testimonial. Jeanette Winterson is Literature. So the reviewers tell me. They also tell me that this story belongs to that category known as sci-fi.

Does it? That's news to me. I don't do sci-fi. If it is sci-fi, it's in the tradition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale rather than Frank Herbert's Dune.

The novel comes in three parts. Three apocalyptic scenarios. The same story; the story of how the human race can bring about its environment's complete destruction. Without thinking about it until it's too late. Scary stuff. Depressing stuff too.

There are also three love stories - all rather too sentimental for my taste. Too many long sentences weaving poetically around at 11 at night do me no good at all. But then there are two 'hidden' love stories - the love a tiny baby has for its mother and the love we all have for Earth, our home - which really began to hit some vein of truth.

Although this will not rate as my favourite book of all time, it did make me think. About climate change, about rampant consumerism and where it might lead us. About what it would take to shake the West out of its blind adoration of the great god Economic Growth, and about what might happen if it's already too late.

It also got me thinking about extinction. Not just the extinction of the dinosaurs, nor of hundreds of species of plants and animals each day, but my own extinction, and by extension the extinction of the planet. It made me feel what it might be like to know for certain there is no hope. No life after death. No new blue planet to migrate to in silver spaceships when we're done destroying this one.

And the book made me cry.

No. 1 chick

Here's No. 1 chick, all fluffed up and ready for the Easter parade...out in the big wide world, but, by the look on his face, finding it all a bit, well, big.



One more has hatched this afternoon, which makes five.

Chick-rearing, day 21

One degree at 8am. Clear skies and sunshine.

Chick bulletin : five hatched, one of which was, sadly, deformed and didn't make it beyond breakfast. We think there may be at least one or two others on the way - cheeping coming from the remaining eggs makes us hopeful.

First chick

Here's our first arrival, 7:15pm.

Three more on the way.

Chick-rearing, first sight

Here's a pic at 11am...

Chick-rearing, day 20

Three-and-a-half degrees at 8am. Blue skies and sunny. No wind.

This morning there is much excitement in the house on the rock. The first egg is cracked and the first cheeps of the chick can be heard...

The excitement is mingled with mother-over-40 anxiety. Why aren't the others starting to wobble and crack? Could it be possible that only one will hatch? Could that few hours on day 14 when the temperature was by accident above 38 degrees have killed all the rest? If we take a picnic to the mountains this afternoon will any hatched young die from banging their heads too often on the incubator heating element?

The stress. The stress. Publishing was never so stressy.

Chick-rearing, day 19

Seven degrees at 8am. Still windy, but with startling blue skies, and the early sun turning the hillsides tawny-gold.

Having laboured so hard the last days to turn our 16 incubating eggs three times a day, we now have a little relief before the big moment comes. From now on, we leave the eggs alone with a shallow bowl of water to improve humidity and just sit and wait. The excitement mounts...

Carnevale Ambrosiano

Four degrees at 8am with a fuchsia sunsrise. Evidence of an earlier frost. A very cold wind was rustling the palm leaves this morning, but the skies were blue and the sun in sheltered spots warm.

Today the Christian world is observing Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the start of the Christian period of fasting, Lent. They’ve done their dancing in the streets, their masked balls, their confetti-throwing and all that stuff.

But not in Carmine. And not in Cannobio, or some parts of Ticino, our nearest Swiss canton. And not in Milan either. The reason why lies in that city in the 4th century AD with a bishop called Ambrose. His name has been given to a group of variations in the Christian calendar and the liturgy, which differentiates them from the Roman calendar and liturgy. No-one seems to be quite sure whether Ambrose was personally involved in making these changes or whether they in fact migrated from churches further east (the most compelling theory) and coagulated, as it were, in Milan, a natural meeting point in Europe for both peoples and ideas during Ambrose’s time.

For the Ambrosian churches, carnival hasn’t yet finished. In fact it only begins this evening, with an opening party to get us all in the mood. Tomorrow and Friday are public holidays in these areas only, and the revelry will continue until Sunday. In theory, Lent for the Ambrosian churches, doesn’t begin until next Monday.

There is a nice story to go with the tradition. It’s said that one Lent, Bishop Ambrose was on a pilgrimage. He was delayed getting back to Milan for several days, and instead of setting aside their partying and dutifully heaping ashes on their heads on Ash Wednesday, the people of Milan, like naughty schoolchildren when the teacher is out of the room, just carried on, and on, and on. (I’m surprised the authorities didn’t send in the troops to break it up). Ambrose finally arrived the following weekend and promptly ordered Lent to start.

And now for the maths (never my strong point).

I always asked myself the question, how can Cannobio and Carmine, for example, begin Lent early and still celebrate Easter at the same time. (I always believed Carmine existed in a bit of a time warp, but that’s ridiculous.)

Well, here’s the sleight of hand (I think)…apparently, the Roman Church doesn’t count Sundays as fast days, and the Ambrosian Church does. So in the end, we all forswear chocolate for the same number of days and we all end up with far too much of the stuff on the same sunny daffodil Sunday, surrounded by enormous white rabbits and fluffy yellow chicks.

I understand that the Ambrosian church also starts Advent two weeks early. And it’ll take me until then to work out how that little anomaly is jigsawed into the Roman calendar…

In the meantime, click there for a pdf list of events in Cannobio this Carnevale Ambrosiano.

Goodbye

Five degrees at 8am. Warm with bright sunshine.

A good day to say goodbye, if goodbye is what you have to say.

Signora Gina

Five degrees at 9am. Rain, with sleet and snow later.

We were very sad yesterday to hear of the death of Signora Gina, our neighbour and friend, in hospital in Milan, on Friday.

Signora Gina. 91 years old, with all her mental faculties functioning, and functioning better than in some 50-year-olds.

She began her love affair with Carmine more than 50 years ago, when she and her husband would rent the house closest to the church. No water, no lavatory, no electricity, no gas (there's still no gas). Later they bought the house immediately below ours and were here for holidays.

Signora Gina and her family would come for the summer, leaving a hot, stuffy and polluted Milan behind with much relief. Gradually, her legs started to give out, but however long the walk up took her, and however painful it may have been, she was always determined to be here. Summer began with her arrival and ended with her departure. The last two years, she was unable to walk up and was carried by volunteers from the Croce Rossa. On such days, her terrace would be crammed with fit young Italians arguing for the honour of carrying her (the things a girl has to do to be surrounded by fit young men!).

Signora Gina is remembered as a woman of courage, of kindness and of boundless love for children. She was particularly happy to see the birth and christening of her first great-grandchild, Lucca, last year. During the war, it is said, she took in numbers of displaced children, and thus earned the title Mama Gina. Her fondness for the mothers and children of Carmine, even the Germans and the mongrels (like mine), will not be forgotten.

A licence to ... drive in Italy

Four degrees at 9am. Overcast. Everything is grey, from the nearby trees to the lake and the foothills beyond.

If you think the title of this post sounds like a new year’s resolution, you’re right. But it's not this year’s. And not last year’s, but (it's painful to calculate this) the new year resolution from 1992...

I won’t bore you with the reasons why I’m one of those social misfits who don’t have a driving licence, or, indeed, with the chequered history of my trying to acquire one. Suffice it to say that in the UK I paid for many, many hours of driving instruction. I also paid for several sadistic driving examiners to ride with me, all of whom declined to give me my licence.

I blame my lack of a licence on lack of practice. There was only ever one person brave enough to accompany me while practising. Unhappily, he was brave enough to do it only once.

So here I am in Italy with two small children, prone as all children are to getting worryingly sick sometimes. A&E is 30 minutes away and the emergency doctor service was recently found to be unreassuringly unenthusiastic about the walk up the hill in the middle of the night while my son sat on the kitchen table turning blue. I imagine the children will also in time become prone to swimming lessons, meeting up with friends, and wanting to go clothes shopping on a large scale, and will at some point shun our little Carmine beach for the more glamorous lido at Cannero Riviera (and perhaps if I ever get my figure back, I’ll go with them).

In the past I’ve liked to think of not having held a driving licence for the last (gulp) 27 years as doing my bit to alleviate pollution. But now it’s my turn. I need that licence. And if you do too, the place to start is at the nearest driving school. You will need :

* Codice fiscale (like a National Insurance or Social Security number)
* Identity card or passport
* Permesso di soggiorno per stranieri (from the local police headquarters/questura) or, if you’re from the EU, a certificate from your Comune in Italy that you don’t need a permesso di soggiorno (don't get me started on how difficult it is to get your hands on either of these)
* A medical certificate (the driving school will probably arrange this)
* A marca da bollo, or stamp (as in stamp duty) for €14.62 (from some tobacconists)
* More passport photos (fototessera) than you ever thought possible.

Oh, and loads and loads of money – at first count about €600 to be paid in bits and pieces. But I’m sure the final count will approximate the cost of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Waiting for the designated medic to turn up and certify me sane (hah!) so that I can start learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road while at the same time repressing the very English urge to stop at pedestrian crossings and give way at roundabouts, I've started theory lessons. In some of the bigger cities I understand you can do all this in English (how crass, she thinks, wistfully), but out here in the Styx it's Italian or nothing. The only concession to linguistic inability (in my case on a major scale) is that you can opt to do the theory part of the test orally.

And if I don’t stop talking about it and start learning how to say ‘U-turns are prohibited on level crossings with half barriers when the lights are flashing’ in perfect Italian with appropriate hand gestures, the licence will not only cost the equivalent of the Olympic Games, it will also be 2012 before I take the test.



Read what happened next...
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 2
Learning to drive : denouement
Learning to drive : epilogue

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

Motherhood means...No. 1

Four and a half degrees at 8:30am. Rain overnight has left us feeling cold and damp, but patches of blue sky are visible when the mist parts.

Motherhood means...
...doing three things at once while secretly wishing you were doing a fourth.

Arrivals

Six degrees at 9am. There's nothing beyond the walls of the churchyard but a chill fog and a capricious breeze.

Carmine is starting to fill up with people here to stay over the Carnevale holiday. It's been a long January with only a couple of cats for company.

It's good to see the smoke starting to rise from other chimneys.