Mist over Lago Maggiore - the view from our garden
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Friday, 30 May 2008
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Signing off for some R&R
Twenty-eight degrees at 1pm. Not raining, but humid. It's so humid you can break a sweat typing at the keyboard, let alone misguidedly giving a 15-kilo asilo-boy a piggy-back up the hill.
Tomorrow we jump in the car for a three-day 1,500-km road trip, eventual destination the leafy Cotswolds of England.
In the meantime, I'll be showing you a picture a day of beautiful Carmine Superiore.
Tomorrow we jump in the car for a three-day 1,500-km road trip, eventual destination the leafy Cotswolds of England.
In the meantime, I'll be showing you a picture a day of beautiful Carmine Superiore.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Not raining No. 2
Twenty-nine degrees at 10am in the sun.
Guess what?
Did you notice that word 'sun'? Yes, it's not raining. But the Valle Cannobina was this morning cowering under a swathe of angry thunder cloud and Cannobio's caffe' society could be heard growling under its breath "More rain tomorrow...more rain tomorrow."
Guess what?
Did you notice that word 'sun'? Yes, it's not raining. But the Valle Cannobina was this morning cowering under a swathe of angry thunder cloud and Cannobio's caffe' society could be heard growling under its breath "More rain tomorrow...more rain tomorrow."
Monday, 26 May 2008
Carmine quotes No. 2
Raining. And that's all I have to say.
Apart from perhaps Hmmph. Double Hmmph and Hmmph with bells on.
Cats 10 : Mice 0.
Yes, finally, the mouse situation (see here and here) seems to be coming under control. Finally, Alexander's cat (with some help from the old lady of Carmine, the cat they call the mama di tutti) has learned that it's quite a lot of fun being a mouser. Or perhaps its just that this spring's young have emerged from their nesting places and are not as street-wise as the older generation.
The capital of the mouse civilisation in our house is the ripostiglio, the store room where we keep and chop huge quantities of firewood, and which doubles as a tool shed and trash store. Oh, yes, quantities of chicken feed are also stored there. As with all civilisations, this one likes to branch out a bit, and you'll know if you've been reading regularly, that there have been outposts established in the storecupboard where I keep wrapping paper, in the ironing basket and in upholstered furniture of all kinds.
This week, though, the march of mouse civilisation has (I hope) been halted. This week I've found the cat with a mouse on no less than 10 separate occasions. The children have taken to running in to me shouting "Cat's gotta mouse, Cat's gotta mouse" (for like all the Carmine cats, this one is called Cat - I'm not a Breakfast at Tiffany's devotee for nothing). If she's playing with it, the children gather round chanting like a bunch of boys at a schoolyard brawl, jumping up and down and generally adding to the Tom and Jerry confusion. Eventually I manage to persuade her that life is less tumultuous outside, and she slinks out of the door with the children shouting "Go Cat, go! Out Cat, out!" (are my children becoming a tad feral, do you think?).
I have mixed feelings about letting the cats catch the mice. I can't bear to see the mouse toyed with and injured in the way that cats do. But I also know that other methods don't work. I've baited traps, humane and less-humane, with cheese, bread, chocolate and lemon cake. I've tried taking the mouse away from the cat and then transporting him to the far reaches of the village, only to find that mice have their own built-in version of Via Michelin and can find their way home before sundown.
And mice in the house aren't just little furry animals that make a mess of the chicken feed. Their droppings, urine and dander can aggravate asthma and allergies and, scarily, they can also pass on something called the hantavirus, which, even more scarily, can kill. My children come first and if the cat is the most efficient way of protecting them, then that's the way it has to be.
So the ripostiglio door into the house remains open and we make a fuss of the cat every time we see her carrying a mouse. I just hope that one day I won't be seeing B. dashing around with a mouse in her mouth too...
Apart from perhaps Hmmph. Double Hmmph and Hmmph with bells on.
Cats 10 : Mice 0.
Yes, finally, the mouse situation (see here and here) seems to be coming under control. Finally, Alexander's cat (with some help from the old lady of Carmine, the cat they call the mama di tutti) has learned that it's quite a lot of fun being a mouser. Or perhaps its just that this spring's young have emerged from their nesting places and are not as street-wise as the older generation.
The capital of the mouse civilisation in our house is the ripostiglio, the store room where we keep and chop huge quantities of firewood, and which doubles as a tool shed and trash store. Oh, yes, quantities of chicken feed are also stored there. As with all civilisations, this one likes to branch out a bit, and you'll know if you've been reading regularly, that there have been outposts established in the storecupboard where I keep wrapping paper, in the ironing basket and in upholstered furniture of all kinds.
This week, though, the march of mouse civilisation has (I hope) been halted. This week I've found the cat with a mouse on no less than 10 separate occasions. The children have taken to running in to me shouting "Cat's gotta mouse, Cat's gotta mouse" (for like all the Carmine cats, this one is called Cat - I'm not a Breakfast at Tiffany's devotee for nothing). If she's playing with it, the children gather round chanting like a bunch of boys at a schoolyard brawl, jumping up and down and generally adding to the Tom and Jerry confusion. Eventually I manage to persuade her that life is less tumultuous outside, and she slinks out of the door with the children shouting "Go Cat, go! Out Cat, out!" (are my children becoming a tad feral, do you think?).
I have mixed feelings about letting the cats catch the mice. I can't bear to see the mouse toyed with and injured in the way that cats do. But I also know that other methods don't work. I've baited traps, humane and less-humane, with cheese, bread, chocolate and lemon cake. I've tried taking the mouse away from the cat and then transporting him to the far reaches of the village, only to find that mice have their own built-in version of Via Michelin and can find their way home before sundown.
And mice in the house aren't just little furry animals that make a mess of the chicken feed. Their droppings, urine and dander can aggravate asthma and allergies and, scarily, they can also pass on something called the hantavirus, which, even more scarily, can kill. My children come first and if the cat is the most efficient way of protecting them, then that's the way it has to be.
So the ripostiglio door into the house remains open and we make a fuss of the cat every time we see her carrying a mouse. I just hope that one day I won't be seeing B. dashing around with a mouse in her mouth too...
Sunday, 25 May 2008
The wanderer returns
Seventeen degrees at 10am. Better, but only faintly, and so faintly that it's not better at all. Almost all of Carmine's inhabited houses are showing signs of lit fires. Indeed we lit a fire in the hearth last night, wimps that we are. And. It's raining.
M is home after his many journeys all'estero, most recently to the Land of the Midnight Sun. It feels good to have him back.
M is home after his many journeys all'estero, most recently to the Land of the Midnight Sun. It feels good to have him back.
Saturday, 24 May 2008
Little (shop of) horrors
An insulting sixteen degrees at 9am. Cold and rainy. Those clouds I was talking about have draped themselves vindictively among Carmine's trees and it looks like they'll be hanging about a while.
At the campground end of Cannobio's lungolago, close to the lido, is a 1€ store, selling plastic proto-refuse for not very much (until you add it all up). In summer, the outdoor display flaunts beach balls, blow-up swimming rings, tiddler-nets and plastic-straw sunhats. In winter it's Christmas decorations. Between seasons there are huge quantities of tupperware-style plastic boxes, but none in the right size. The 1€ store is much-loved by desperate week-of-rain camping-holiday mothers eager to buy plastic train sets, beading sets, sinister-looking yellow velvet giraffes or anything, anything at all their child might desire. Just for a few minutes of holiday (dammit!). AJ (age 3) likes the look of the 1€ store, although he's never been inside. I know that once he does the sky will fall in, and the house will forever be cluttered with unidentifiable bits of coloured plastic.
But perhaps after last Tuesday, AJ won't be so keen to loiter outside the 1€ shop. For next door but one, just past the fabbro (a working smithy worthy of the notice of Sebastiao Salgado), is the surgery of Dr S. And Tuesday was, as trailed, AJ's first visit to il dentista.
The appointment was prompted by a seemingly harmless knock that turned one of AJ's beautifully white front teeth a nasty my-mother-feeds-me-too-much-chocolate grey. Part of my strategy for the day was to announce the forthcoming visit to AJ's scuola materna teacher in the hope that she might pick up the baton and do some pre-selling of the whole dentist idea during class. But as the surrounding mothers dutifully ooh'd and aah'd (you'll have to think the Italian accents) for AJ's benefit, out of my bag fell two packets of imported liquorice allsorts. A momentary silence followed, laden with unspoken accusations of child-abuse-by-bon-bon and a couple of sidelong squints at the grey patch in AJ's delighted smile. I wouldn't be getting any sympathy there, then.
At 1pm, while picking him up from kindergarten, I taught him the word ice-cream in Italian and promised him whatever flavour he desired after Dr S.
At 3:15pm, after two hours of trailing the children round town in preference to dragging them up the hill and then almost immediately down again, we passed, exhausted, through Dr S's grey metal security doors and made our way up his gently sweeping marble staircase. And into an office that was more like a rather grand apartment than a dentist's office, complete with gilded hat stand, brocade sofas, Turkish runners and, at the far end, a piano. I've never seen a piano in a dentist's office before...and I wondered what dentistry-themed music might be played on it after hours (I could only come up with a half-remembered medley from Little Shop of Horrors).
We got off to a fairly bad start. I left the dotties alone for a moment, and they started exploring while I was filling in the forms. The background music was the sound of the dentist’s drill on turbo. A woman’s voice suddenly rang out. An exclamation of pain in fairly colourful Italian. I won't repeat it. I looked around for the children and they were standing close together staring aghast into one of the ‘salons’ where a well-heeled, red-faced older woman was in the chair, still streaming invective. B was reaching, rather touchingly, for the security of her big brother's hand. I quickly chivvied them away (“It’s rude to stare, darling…”) and they proceeded to trash the organised-by-language magazine collection in the waiting area in what I suspected to be frenzied displacement activity.
Finally, the German Dr S. arrived in the waiting room, streaming Italian instructions to his assistant through his pipe, which was gripped firmly between his teeth, as always (in the street, in the car, while gardening, while berating fly-parkers outside his home). He greeted AJ, one trilingual to another, and invited him into his lair. AJ shook his hand, but wouldn't look at him...
I left B to a copy of Hello! magazine, murmuring to herself about Angelina Jolie’s twins, and carried – with difficulty - a suddenly squirmy AJ to the chair. I sat down with him on my lap, and slowly laid back hoping to hold him in place and make him feel secure at the same time.
No.
No, no, NEIN!
He revolved like a croc with a carcass so that his face was buried in my neck, and he started screaming (whether it was English, Italian or German, I didn't at that point understand). I tried to turn him back, pouring lovely words into his ear like ‘gelato’ and ‘pizza’, and even (God-help-me) ‘liquorice allsorts’, but he was too far gone. The dental nurse looked at me and I looked at her, hoping for inspiration or perhaps absolution, but she had no fresh input for me. B drifted in, no doubt curious as to why AJ was screaming this time. She thought it might be fun to jump on top of Mama too.
After about a minute of screaming, Dr S., unveiled his own patented I’ve-had-five-children-under-six strategy for dealing with rebellious three-year-olds. A low rumble was first heard, followed by a noise that resembled pawing of the ground, and then Dr S. bellowed something at AJ in German (a supremely useful language for bellowing). The little one was so shocked by the sheer noise that he stopped trying to strangle me and looked round. Seizing the moment, I manhandled him into a supine position and wrapped my legs and arms around his. He was done-for.
Two minutes later, B was happily lying in the spotlight while AJ sat on his new friend’s lap, wielding the dental mirror and doing a fairly decent job of counting his sister’s teeth (in three languages).
The verdict? A dead nerve. Nothing to be done. Hopefully the second tooth won’t be affected.
The moral? When good old-fashioned Italian-style bribery and corruption with gelato doesn't do the trick, a spot of Teutonic noise-pollution just might.
The afterword? AJ got his gelato (strawberry), and B got one too (chocolate, all over her face, her hands, and down her front, to the delight of a quickly-assembled crowd of onlookers). A promise is a promise, after all. And he now knows how to say ‘ice-cream’ in Italian and ‘open wide’ in German
As for the 1€ store, I’ll let you know next time the weather’s good enough for the lido - but whether he's interested or not, he's still not going in.
At the campground end of Cannobio's lungolago, close to the lido, is a 1€ store, selling plastic proto-refuse for not very much (until you add it all up). In summer, the outdoor display flaunts beach balls, blow-up swimming rings, tiddler-nets and plastic-straw sunhats. In winter it's Christmas decorations. Between seasons there are huge quantities of tupperware-style plastic boxes, but none in the right size. The 1€ store is much-loved by desperate week-of-rain camping-holiday mothers eager to buy plastic train sets, beading sets, sinister-looking yellow velvet giraffes or anything, anything at all their child might desire. Just for a few minutes of holiday (dammit!). AJ (age 3) likes the look of the 1€ store, although he's never been inside. I know that once he does the sky will fall in, and the house will forever be cluttered with unidentifiable bits of coloured plastic.
But perhaps after last Tuesday, AJ won't be so keen to loiter outside the 1€ shop. For next door but one, just past the fabbro (a working smithy worthy of the notice of Sebastiao Salgado
The appointment was prompted by a seemingly harmless knock that turned one of AJ's beautifully white front teeth a nasty my-mother-feeds-me-too-much-chocolate grey. Part of my strategy for the day was to announce the forthcoming visit to AJ's scuola materna teacher in the hope that she might pick up the baton and do some pre-selling of the whole dentist idea during class. But as the surrounding mothers dutifully ooh'd and aah'd (you'll have to think the Italian accents) for AJ's benefit, out of my bag fell two packets of imported liquorice allsorts. A momentary silence followed, laden with unspoken accusations of child-abuse-by-bon-bon and a couple of sidelong squints at the grey patch in AJ's delighted smile. I wouldn't be getting any sympathy there, then.
At 1pm, while picking him up from kindergarten, I taught him the word ice-cream in Italian and promised him whatever flavour he desired after Dr S.
At 3:15pm, after two hours of trailing the children round town in preference to dragging them up the hill and then almost immediately down again, we passed, exhausted, through Dr S's grey metal security doors and made our way up his gently sweeping marble staircase. And into an office that was more like a rather grand apartment than a dentist's office, complete with gilded hat stand, brocade sofas, Turkish runners and, at the far end, a piano. I've never seen a piano in a dentist's office before...and I wondered what dentistry-themed music might be played on it after hours (I could only come up with a half-remembered medley from Little Shop of Horrors).
We got off to a fairly bad start. I left the dotties alone for a moment, and they started exploring while I was filling in the forms. The background music was the sound of the dentist’s drill on turbo. A woman’s voice suddenly rang out. An exclamation of pain in fairly colourful Italian. I won't repeat it. I looked around for the children and they were standing close together staring aghast into one of the ‘salons’ where a well-heeled, red-faced older woman was in the chair, still streaming invective. B was reaching, rather touchingly, for the security of her big brother's hand. I quickly chivvied them away (“It’s rude to stare, darling…”) and they proceeded to trash the organised-by-language magazine collection in the waiting area in what I suspected to be frenzied displacement activity.
Finally, the German Dr S. arrived in the waiting room, streaming Italian instructions to his assistant through his pipe, which was gripped firmly between his teeth, as always (in the street, in the car, while gardening, while berating fly-parkers outside his home). He greeted AJ, one trilingual to another, and invited him into his lair. AJ shook his hand, but wouldn't look at him...
I left B to a copy of Hello! magazine, murmuring to herself about Angelina Jolie’s twins, and carried – with difficulty - a suddenly squirmy AJ to the chair. I sat down with him on my lap, and slowly laid back hoping to hold him in place and make him feel secure at the same time.
No.
No, no, NEIN!
He revolved like a croc with a carcass so that his face was buried in my neck, and he started screaming (whether it was English, Italian or German, I didn't at that point understand). I tried to turn him back, pouring lovely words into his ear like ‘gelato’ and ‘pizza’, and even (God-help-me) ‘liquorice allsorts’, but he was too far gone. The dental nurse looked at me and I looked at her, hoping for inspiration or perhaps absolution, but she had no fresh input for me. B drifted in, no doubt curious as to why AJ was screaming this time. She thought it might be fun to jump on top of Mama too.
After about a minute of screaming, Dr S., unveiled his own patented I’ve-had-five-children-under-six strategy for dealing with rebellious three-year-olds. A low rumble was first heard, followed by a noise that resembled pawing of the ground, and then Dr S. bellowed something at AJ in German (a supremely useful language for bellowing). The little one was so shocked by the sheer noise that he stopped trying to strangle me and looked round. Seizing the moment, I manhandled him into a supine position and wrapped my legs and arms around his. He was done-for.
Two minutes later, B was happily lying in the spotlight while AJ sat on his new friend’s lap, wielding the dental mirror and doing a fairly decent job of counting his sister’s teeth (in three languages).
The verdict? A dead nerve. Nothing to be done. Hopefully the second tooth won’t be affected.
The moral? When good old-fashioned Italian-style bribery and corruption with gelato doesn't do the trick, a spot of Teutonic noise-pollution just might.
The afterword? AJ got his gelato (strawberry), and B got one too (chocolate, all over her face, her hands, and down her front, to the delight of a quickly-assembled crowd of onlookers). A promise is a promise, after all. And he now knows how to say ‘ice-cream’ in Italian and ‘open wide’ in German
As for the 1€ store, I’ll let you know next time the weather’s good enough for the lido - but whether he's interested or not, he's still not going in.
Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.
Friday, 23 May 2008
Book Notes No. 7 : The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie
Twenty-four degrees at 10am. Bright sunshine, and warm enough to take a pavement table for AJ's Friday caffe' breakfast. But I think the rain clouds have not gone but are hiding round a corner, sniggering as we all put away our sou'westers and wellies. They'll be back!
Now.
Salman Rushdie.
You remember him...the one who wrote The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie KBE. Salman Rushdie, the man with no less than eight honorary doctorates. Salman Rushdie, an honorary professor in humanities at MIT, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Salman Rushdie. Britain's answer to Umberto Eco (perhaps?).
The The Enchantress of Florence
The central character is a woman, the enchantress of the title. As her story is told at court it begins to suffuse the whole of the emperor's capital city, just as in the story itself she enchants Florence with her presence.
Or perhaps the central character is the Mogol d'Amore, the mysterious teller of the tale. Or perhaps it is Akbar the Great, the person to whom the story is being told, and a man who understands the power of the imagination to create. Or perhaps it is Rushdie, who is telling everybody's story, criss-crossing expertly from East to West as has been his wont in other of his works.
I was captivated by this book, I have to say (although I see the literary reviews were mixed). Rushdie's language is rich and seductive. Much of his subject matter is exotic or erotic or both. And his storylines for the most part hold together in a cohesive whole, offering illuminating parallels and reflections, echoes and interjections. At some point I came to the realisation that the enchantress had a lot in common with Diana, Princess of Wales (even down to her being named the "people's princess"), and this added further depth to Rushdie's insights into the nature of storytelling and its connection, perhaps, with the creation and demise of 'characters' in today's mass media.
When The Satanic Verses hit the headlines back in 1989, many people splashed out on a hardback edition for their coffee tables, but it seemed to me that very few actually read it. I was always glad that I did read it, and I'm glad I have read The Enchantress of Florence. It was a literary feast and an education, if not quite (we hope) such a political and religious sensation.
Now.
Salman Rushdie.
You remember him...the one who wrote The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie KBE. Salman Rushdie, the man with no less than eight honorary doctorates. Salman Rushdie, an honorary professor in humanities at MIT, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Salman Rushdie. Britain's answer to Umberto Eco (perhaps?).
The The Enchantress of Florence
The central character is a woman, the enchantress of the title. As her story is told at court it begins to suffuse the whole of the emperor's capital city, just as in the story itself she enchants Florence with her presence.
Or perhaps the central character is the Mogol d'Amore, the mysterious teller of the tale. Or perhaps it is Akbar the Great, the person to whom the story is being told, and a man who understands the power of the imagination to create. Or perhaps it is Rushdie, who is telling everybody's story, criss-crossing expertly from East to West as has been his wont in other of his works.
I was captivated by this book, I have to say (although I see the literary reviews were mixed). Rushdie's language is rich and seductive. Much of his subject matter is exotic or erotic or both. And his storylines for the most part hold together in a cohesive whole, offering illuminating parallels and reflections, echoes and interjections. At some point I came to the realisation that the enchantress had a lot in common with Diana, Princess of Wales (even down to her being named the "people's princess"), and this added further depth to Rushdie's insights into the nature of storytelling and its connection, perhaps, with the creation and demise of 'characters' in today's mass media.
When The Satanic Verses hit the headlines back in 1989, many people splashed out on a hardback edition for their coffee tables, but it seemed to me that very few actually read it. I was always glad that I did read it, and I'm glad I have read The Enchantress of Florence. It was a literary feast and an education, if not quite (we hope) such a political and religious sensation.
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Flowers in the rain
The flowers of Carmine seem even more beautiful than usual (if that's possible) when glistening with raindrops. Here are : Elizabeth's rose (St. Swithin, named after Winchester Cathedral, where my goddaughter, Elizabeth, was christened) ; Emma's azalea; Louise's fuchsia; B's margeurites (acquired for B's christening and still going strong); and Giovanna's rose.
PS It's sixteen degrees and ... raining.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Raining again
Eighteen degrees at 10:10am and raining once again. This morning the threads of cloud had crept down to the level of St Anna.
Carmine's internet hotspot has become Carmine's internet wetspot...
Carmine's internet hotspot has become Carmine's internet wetspot...
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Monday, 19 May 2008
Not raining...
...but threatening. Eighteen degrees at 9am with patchy sunshine.
Taking advantage of the lull between two downpours to cut the grass, tie up the sadly fallen tomatoes and deadhead Gertrude Jekylls No. 1 and 2.
Taking advantage of the lull between two downpours to cut the grass, tie up the sadly fallen tomatoes and deadhead Gertrude Jekylls No. 1 and 2.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Friday, 16 May 2008
One last driving story : A is for Autostrada
Warmish and overcast this morning. Damp after yesterday's rain and threatening more.
It was warmish and overcast as I trotted the dotties down the hill at 8:45, and it was still warmish and overcast as I loaded them into the car and spread out a succession of food, drinks, treats and last-ditch bribes on the passenger seat beside me.
It was warmish and overcast driving along the lake road through Cannero Riviera and on to Verbania. It was warmish and overcast as I whizzed past the train station at Fondotoce, the outer limit of my solo driving experience.
It was warmish and overcast as I filtered onto the A26 heading towards Milan.
I passed through the familiar litany of tunnels - Mottarone Secondo, Mottarone Primo, Mottavinea, Massino Visconti - and as I took a ticket at the toll gate it was warmish and overcast. Two more tunnels followed - Dorbie and Melissa - and then off to pay the toll and onwards on the SS33/SS36 through Vergiate, Somma Lombardo and Case Nuove.
At Malpensa arrivals, warmish and overcast weather watched over me as I negotiated my first multi-storey car park. I would like to say that a ray of sunshine fell on me as, flush with the excitement of still being in one piece, I hurried to greet my husband, AJ at my side, B in my arms. But it didn't. It was still warmish and overcast.
Then it was : Case Nuove, Somma Lombardo, Vergiate, Melissa, Dorbie, Massino Visconti, Mottavinea, Mottarone Primo, Mottarone Secondo, Fondotoce, Verbania, Cannero and ... home.
Where it was bucketing it down.
It was warmish and overcast as I trotted the dotties down the hill at 8:45, and it was still warmish and overcast as I loaded them into the car and spread out a succession of food, drinks, treats and last-ditch bribes on the passenger seat beside me.
It was warmish and overcast driving along the lake road through Cannero Riviera and on to Verbania. It was warmish and overcast as I whizzed past the train station at Fondotoce, the outer limit of my solo driving experience.
It was warmish and overcast as I filtered onto the A26 heading towards Milan.
I passed through the familiar litany of tunnels - Mottarone Secondo, Mottarone Primo, Mottavinea, Massino Visconti - and as I took a ticket at the toll gate it was warmish and overcast. Two more tunnels followed - Dorbie and Melissa - and then off to pay the toll and onwards on the SS33/SS36 through Vergiate, Somma Lombardo and Case Nuove.
At Malpensa arrivals, warmish and overcast weather watched over me as I negotiated my first multi-storey car park. I would like to say that a ray of sunshine fell on me as, flush with the excitement of still being in one piece, I hurried to greet my husband, AJ at my side, B in my arms. But it didn't. It was still warmish and overcast.
Then it was : Case Nuove, Somma Lombardo, Vergiate, Melissa, Dorbie, Massino Visconti, Mottavinea, Mottarone Primo, Mottarone Secondo, Fondotoce, Verbania, Cannero and ... home.
Where it was bucketing it down.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Carmine quotes No. 10 : The chicken and the pot
Twenty-one degrees at 11am and overcast. [Raining by 4pm.] What was that I said yesterday about the power of words to change the weather?
Where's me fleece.
I'm off to feed the chickadees. Lately the old cockerel has taken to attacking me every time I go in the run. I think it's pretty rum given that without me he and his girlies would starve. I'm told I should grab him, hold him upside down by his feet and give him a good talking to, but I have in mind the following saying somebody round here once told me : "The older the chicken the better the soup" ...
Where's me fleece.
I'm off to feed the chickadees. Lately the old cockerel has taken to attacking me every time I go in the run. I think it's pretty rum given that without me he and his girlies would starve. I'm told I should grab him, hold him upside down by his feet and give him a good talking to, but I have in mind the following saying somebody round here once told me : "The older the chicken the better the soup" ...
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
And a good time was had by all...
Twenty-eight degrees, hot and sunny. Now I've used the word 'hot' the weather's bound to change and I'll be burrowing through the mountain labelled 'winter clothes to find a home for' looking for something warmer to wear.
Today, Carmine is rampant with school children. And they appear to be doing what European school children on trips out do everywhere they go, be it the Natural History Museum in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a Rhineland schloss, or the Chiesa di San Gottardo in Carmine Superiore.
They're sitting in clusters on every available step (including mine), juggling clip boards and rucksacks.
They're thundering up and down in large, awkward-limbed groups, calling out to one another in some sort of teenager code.
They're chomping their way through their packed lunches hours before lunchtime (when they'll be hungry again).
And they're staring at the residents as if a.) they are made of wax and so won't notice being stared at, b.) they are doing something so outlandish (like mulching the courgettes) that it's liable to be written up in 40 What-I-Saw-On-The-School-Trip essays, and/or c.) they might be a source of the second packed lunch they'll be wanting in an hour's time.
I'm glad it happens only once a year.
Today, Carmine is rampant with school children. And they appear to be doing what European school children on trips out do everywhere they go, be it the Natural History Museum in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a Rhineland schloss, or the Chiesa di San Gottardo in Carmine Superiore.
They're sitting in clusters on every available step (including mine), juggling clip boards and rucksacks.
They're thundering up and down in large, awkward-limbed groups, calling out to one another in some sort of teenager code.
They're chomping their way through their packed lunches hours before lunchtime (when they'll be hungry again).
And they're staring at the residents as if a.) they are made of wax and so won't notice being stared at, b.) they are doing something so outlandish (like mulching the courgettes) that it's liable to be written up in 40 What-I-Saw-On-The-School-Trip essays, and/or c.) they might be a source of the second packed lunch they'll be wanting in an hour's time.
I'm glad it happens only once a year.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Carmine quotes No. 9 : Spreading a little happiness
Twenty-eight degrees at 8am. Breezy but sunny.
B., aged almost 22 months, sings her first song :
Who needs birthdays!
B., aged almost 22 months, sings her first song :
Happy happy, You You
Happy happy, You You
Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy
happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy...
(between giggles) You YOU!
Who needs birthdays!
Monday, 12 May 2008
Baptism by carabinieri
Twenty-four degrees at 11am. Cloudy and windy.
Yesterday, while driving the two dotties to the festa dei palloncini, I was with some relief entering the Cannobio 50-clicks-an-hour-zone, when, Whammo!, out jumps a boy in blue with his red palletta and waves me over to a stopping place. I narrowly miss taking him out (and I don't mean on a date).
He approaches the window, unaware of his recent brush with the everlasting. His chum has what seems to me to be a rather threatening sub-machine gun held at the ready, and they're both wearing bullet-proof vests over their jackets (just so you know they're ready for the rough stuff).
"Buongiorno signora. Licence please." I jump for my purse and flourish my shiny new licence in his face. I see a fleeting sadistic grin as he notes the date on the licence and the enormous P signs in the front and rear windscreens. A greenhorn.
"Libretto della macchina."
"Erm, sorry?"
"Car registration documents."
I scrabble about among the wine guides, the maps of Burgundy and Alsace and the used baby wipes. Is this it? No. Is that it? No. Could it be tucked in the back of the sun visor. No.
"Perhaps I should ask the audience." Joke.
My subliminal vision spots a slightly menacing shift in the angle of the sub-machine gun.
"May I call my husband?"
AJ farts.
"Sure."
Five minutes later, AJ's smelliest still hasn't dispersed, but at least Italy's finest has checked my credentials and found I'm not yet listed as one of Europe's most wanted, even though I might be driving the world's most battered. I'm ordered to have a nice day and left to negotiate getting out of the stopping place, which is thoroughly blocked by what would once have been Britain's greatest - a Land Rover Defender. Having executed a deft 8-point turn, I head towards the road, and momentarily forget which side of it I'm supposed to be driving on.
The sub-machine gun quivers with suppressed laughter.
I don't care. I drive off, not humiliated but exhilarated. Now I know for sure I'm a real, bona fide, baptised-by-carabinieri, autista.
The start of the story :
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 1
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 2
Learning to drive : denouement
Home
Yesterday, while driving the two dotties to the festa dei palloncini, I was with some relief entering the Cannobio 50-clicks-an-hour-zone, when, Whammo!, out jumps a boy in blue with his red palletta and waves me over to a stopping place. I narrowly miss taking him out (and I don't mean on a date).
He approaches the window, unaware of his recent brush with the everlasting. His chum has what seems to me to be a rather threatening sub-machine gun held at the ready, and they're both wearing bullet-proof vests over their jackets (just so you know they're ready for the rough stuff).
"Buongiorno signora. Licence please." I jump for my purse and flourish my shiny new licence in his face. I see a fleeting sadistic grin as he notes the date on the licence and the enormous P signs in the front and rear windscreens. A greenhorn.
"Libretto della macchina."
"Erm, sorry?"
"Car registration documents."
I scrabble about among the wine guides, the maps of Burgundy and Alsace and the used baby wipes. Is this it? No. Is that it? No. Could it be tucked in the back of the sun visor. No.
"Perhaps I should ask the audience." Joke.
My subliminal vision spots a slightly menacing shift in the angle of the sub-machine gun.
"May I call my husband?"
AJ farts.
"Sure."
Five minutes later, AJ's smelliest still hasn't dispersed, but at least Italy's finest has checked my credentials and found I'm not yet listed as one of Europe's most wanted, even though I might be driving the world's most battered. I'm ordered to have a nice day and left to negotiate getting out of the stopping place, which is thoroughly blocked by what would once have been Britain's greatest - a Land Rover Defender. Having executed a deft 8-point turn, I head towards the road, and momentarily forget which side of it I'm supposed to be driving on.
The sub-machine gun quivers with suppressed laughter.
I don't care. I drive off, not humiliated but exhilarated. Now I know for sure I'm a real, bona fide, baptised-by-carabinieri, autista.
The start of the story :
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 1
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 2
Learning to drive : denouement
Home
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Festa dei palloncini
Rain overnight. Warm with patchy sunshine, and rumblings of thunder early this afternoon.
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
Saturday, 10 May 2008
More absent friends
Warm and sunny again.
Still on the subject of sights unseen by absent Carmine holiday-home-owners...
Still on the subject of sights unseen by absent Carmine holiday-home-owners...
The person who can name the purple-blossomed tree that dominates Carmine at this time of year gets a Blue Peter badge.
By the way, the rubinia are blossoming, and yesterday, driving through the picturesque Cannero Riviera, I caught the distinctive scent of jasmine drifting on the air.
Friday, 9 May 2008
For the two Nadias
Twenty-eight degrees at 1pm. Sunny, but in Carmine, a breeze. The increasing warmth is taking its toll on the daily lunchtime kindergarten run. Anybody know a smart way to raise a tired three-and-a-half-year-old through 100m in eighty degrees Fahrenheit without giving him a piggy back?
The rest of this post is especially for the two Nadias, who have houses side by side, on Carmine's tangenziale ouest, and whom we see far too infrequently.
Carrissime, I can see your gardens from all the windows on one side of my house, and every day they give me the greatest of visual pleasure. The azaleas and the aubrettias together make Carmine vibrate with colour. I thought you might like to see them too.
Come and see us soon.
The rest of this post is especially for the two Nadias, who have houses side by side, on Carmine's tangenziale ouest, and whom we see far too infrequently.
Carrissime, I can see your gardens from all the windows on one side of my house, and every day they give me the greatest of visual pleasure. The azaleas and the aubrettias together make Carmine vibrate with colour. I thought you might like to see them too.
Come and see us soon.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Chick bulletin + 13 weeks
Twenty-five degrees at 11am. Patchy sunshine.Today's visit to Palazzo Pollo brought a nice, if perplexing, surprise - a half-size egg nestling in the nest box alongside all the others. It seems one of the girls from our February brood has come of age and started to produce. It's perplexing because she's only at 13 weeks, and in theory this is a little early to be at point of lay.
Can any other chicken keepers out there shed any light?
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
A mouse about the house
Twenty-four degrees at 1pm. Sunny and seeming hot. A perfect day for sitting in the churchyard, drinking up the sun and the view (which I wasn't).
A mousey kind of day here in Carmine.
First, my beloved mouser was found in the children's room playing with a mouse. Still alive, and not a stuffed one from the stuffed animals repository that hangs, overfull, from the ceiling. On detection, the cat escaped and the mouse hid. I'm hoping we don't find it in a few days' time by its smell.
Much later, a mouse nest was discovered in the new sofa. Much mouse-style damage. M., who came through the door at exactly the moment of discovery, was not am(o)used.
A mousey kind of day here in Carmine.
First, my beloved mouser was found in the children's room playing with a mouse. Still alive, and not a stuffed one from the stuffed animals repository that hangs, overfull, from the ceiling. On detection, the cat escaped and the mouse hid. I'm hoping we don't find it in a few days' time by its smell.
Much later, a mouse nest was discovered in the new sofa. Much mouse-style damage. M., who came through the door at exactly the moment of discovery, was not am(o)used.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Signs of summer
Twenty-four degrees at 2pm. Sunny with a kind breeze.
Today in the garden we intend to plant two floribunda roses, four verbena and an upright rosemary. Now that the gardener has wheels the gardening bill's going through the roof...
The sun has swung right round in its arc and now a sliver of sunlight is shining on the terrace for the first time this year. Two nights ago, I saw the first Carmine bats of the year. Whether this is because they had just arrived or because it was the first time it was warm enough to be outside after dark and therefore to see them, I don't know.
And Mathilda seems to have gone on her summer holidays at last. She was last lit on Wednesday 30 April and hasn't been in service since. A cold Mathilda means that our life changes quite a lot. There is now nowhere indoors to dry urgently-needed underwear or muddy-puddled children's shoes, but equally we don't have to be always nagging at the children to shut the doors to keep the heat in. And now M. doesn't have to split over 100kg of firewood for her every week, and neither of us has to get up that little bit earlier to get her moving in the mornings.
Don't ya jus' love summer?
Today in the garden we intend to plant two floribunda roses, four verbena and an upright rosemary. Now that the gardener has wheels the gardening bill's going through the roof...
The sun has swung right round in its arc and now a sliver of sunlight is shining on the terrace for the first time this year. Two nights ago, I saw the first Carmine bats of the year. Whether this is because they had just arrived or because it was the first time it was warm enough to be outside after dark and therefore to see them, I don't know.
And Mathilda seems to have gone on her summer holidays at last. She was last lit on Wednesday 30 April and hasn't been in service since. A cold Mathilda means that our life changes quite a lot. There is now nowhere indoors to dry urgently-needed underwear or muddy-puddled children's shoes, but equally we don't have to be always nagging at the children to shut the doors to keep the heat in. And now M. doesn't have to split over 100kg of firewood for her every week, and neither of us has to get up that little bit earlier to get her moving in the mornings.
Don't ya jus' love summer?
Monday, 5 May 2008
Fritzl Rant
Warm, humid and overcast.
AJ is at kindergarten, M is in Switzerland, B is in bed and Mama is angry.
I've been following the story of the Austrian, Fritzl, who is accused of imprisoning his own daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering no less than seven children on her, several of whom also remained incarcerated with her, one of whom died at birth through lack of a doctor. Today, I read that this man's lawyer (who dares represent this monster?) is declaring him insane rather than criminal and I am very angry.
Elisabeth Fritzl, the woman imprisoned since her late teens, is a couple of years younger than I am. And this started me thinking. I thought about the life I have led in the big wide world in the 24 years that she has been without daylight, without medical care, without her freedom, and with only a rapist and her children for company. I have been free to study, to travel, to find friends and to fall in love. I have been free to choose the father of my children and the place in which to raise them. I have been free while she has not. Free to eat and drink what I want, think and say what I want, to feel the sun on my face, to feel cooling water on my skin. Free to wander in the highest mountains in the world, to live on some of the most beautiful Pacific Islands imagineable, to drink the colours of India, to have wonderful adventures and to experience the strangenesses of life.
Elisabeth Fritzl has been denied all this. And I am angry for her.
I know this sounds unreconstructed, bigotted and totally un-Christian, but I want Fritzl to receive the same treatment as he meted out to his daughter and his children. I want him in a prison cell with no chance of reprieve. I want him to lack fresh air, sunshine, medical care, decent food, a friendly face. I want his freedom denied him, and most of all I want him scared for his life every time someone comes to the door.
Anyone who wishes his unspeakable crimes to go unpunished should remember what life has brought them over the last 24 years, and then perhaps they will think again.
AJ is at kindergarten, M is in Switzerland, B is in bed and Mama is angry.
I've been following the story of the Austrian, Fritzl, who is accused of imprisoning his own daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering no less than seven children on her, several of whom also remained incarcerated with her, one of whom died at birth through lack of a doctor. Today, I read that this man's lawyer (who dares represent this monster?) is declaring him insane rather than criminal and I am very angry.
Elisabeth Fritzl, the woman imprisoned since her late teens, is a couple of years younger than I am. And this started me thinking. I thought about the life I have led in the big wide world in the 24 years that she has been without daylight, without medical care, without her freedom, and with only a rapist and her children for company. I have been free to study, to travel, to find friends and to fall in love. I have been free to choose the father of my children and the place in which to raise them. I have been free while she has not. Free to eat and drink what I want, think and say what I want, to feel the sun on my face, to feel cooling water on my skin. Free to wander in the highest mountains in the world, to live on some of the most beautiful Pacific Islands imagineable, to drink the colours of India, to have wonderful adventures and to experience the strangenesses of life.
Elisabeth Fritzl has been denied all this. And I am angry for her.
I know this sounds unreconstructed, bigotted and totally un-Christian, but I want Fritzl to receive the same treatment as he meted out to his daughter and his children. I want him in a prison cell with no chance of reprieve. I want him to lack fresh air, sunshine, medical care, decent food, a friendly face. I want his freedom denied him, and most of all I want him scared for his life every time someone comes to the door.
Anyone who wishes his unspeakable crimes to go unpunished should remember what life has brought them over the last 24 years, and then perhaps they will think again.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Cannobio's Sunday market
Thirty-five degrees at 2pm and sunny. The children have today gone into short sleeves.
This morning we made a mistake that we inexplicably often make, and equally inexplicably never learn from. We forgot how much we hate Cannobio's famous Sunday market. It's the largest market at the lake, running the whole length of the lakeside walk, or lungolago. And it attracts many more visitors than Cannobio can comfortably cope with.
On holiday weekends, the entire town is to be avoided. There's a traffic jam from here to there, and when finally you do make it into town there's not a single inch in which to park. And when finally you do find a place to leave the car, the walk along the lungolago is more akin to rush hour on London's Northern Line (think canned sardines) than an enjoyable shopping experience in one of the lake's most charming and best-preserved old towns. Want to take the weight off and goggle for a while at the human tide passing by? Don't even bother trying to find a table at one of the lungolago caffe's. There won't be one for at least half an hour.
There are only two ways to do the Sunday market, if, that is, you can't live without doing it. The first is to get up horrifyingly early and be there and back before 8am. The second is to take the boat, waving in a smug kind of way at the motorists stuck in the lake-road tailback as you putt-putt along. Arriving in Cannobio, drag the boat up onto the beach (no parking problem, no parking fees) and then launch yourself into the fray like a cruise missile programmed for a surgical strike on your favourite deli stall and then beat a rapid tactical retreat back to the boat before your brain starts bubbling.
This morning, waiting (in vain) for the friends who had lured us into this seething cauldron of shopping insanity, I found myself wondering why I hated it all so much when everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Or perhaps I was wrong.
I started to look more closely at the mothers with the bawling babies, the husbands with the eternally-dawdling wives, the tourists hoping to find authentic Italy at the made-in-China handbag stalls, the dog-owners with their overheated, getting-snarly German shepherds and the pouting teenagers trailing after their parents dressed in sulky, sweaty all-over black.
Perhaps I wasn't alone after all...
This morning we made a mistake that we inexplicably often make, and equally inexplicably never learn from. We forgot how much we hate Cannobio's famous Sunday market. It's the largest market at the lake, running the whole length of the lakeside walk, or lungolago. And it attracts many more visitors than Cannobio can comfortably cope with.
On holiday weekends, the entire town is to be avoided. There's a traffic jam from here to there, and when finally you do make it into town there's not a single inch in which to park. And when finally you do find a place to leave the car, the walk along the lungolago is more akin to rush hour on London's Northern Line (think canned sardines) than an enjoyable shopping experience in one of the lake's most charming and best-preserved old towns. Want to take the weight off and goggle for a while at the human tide passing by? Don't even bother trying to find a table at one of the lungolago caffe's. There won't be one for at least half an hour.
There are only two ways to do the Sunday market, if, that is, you can't live without doing it. The first is to get up horrifyingly early and be there and back before 8am. The second is to take the boat, waving in a smug kind of way at the motorists stuck in the lake-road tailback as you putt-putt along. Arriving in Cannobio, drag the boat up onto the beach (no parking problem, no parking fees) and then launch yourself into the fray like a cruise missile programmed for a surgical strike on your favourite deli stall and then beat a rapid tactical retreat back to the boat before your brain starts bubbling.
This morning, waiting (in vain) for the friends who had lured us into this seething cauldron of shopping insanity, I found myself wondering why I hated it all so much when everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Or perhaps I was wrong.
I started to look more closely at the mothers with the bawling babies, the husbands with the eternally-dawdling wives, the tourists hoping to find authentic Italy at the made-in-China handbag stalls, the dog-owners with their overheated, getting-snarly German shepherds and the pouting teenagers trailing after their parents dressed in sulky, sweaty all-over black.
Perhaps I wasn't alone after all...
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Another milestone
Thirty-two degrees in the sun at midday. The sky is blue, and the lake is a-flutter with yachts and windsurfers. The woods are full of people in search of wild asparagus.
Today we're planting leeks, basil, peppers, an impulse-bought cranberry bush, and more lettuce.
Yet another driving milestone today : Mama left everyone at home and drove alone to Cannobio for a spot of shopping. Alone in the car for the very first time. I know you drivers don't understand why this is such a big thing, but after 27 years as a non-driver, the freedom is nothing less than intoxicating.
Today we're planting leeks, basil, peppers, an impulse-bought cranberry bush, and more lettuce.
Yet another driving milestone today : Mama left everyone at home and drove alone to Cannobio for a spot of shopping. Alone in the car for the very first time. I know you drivers don't understand why this is such a big thing, but after 27 years as a non-driver, the freedom is nothing less than intoxicating.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Book Notes No. 6 : The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Twenty degrees at 10am. Sunny, bright and breezy. Carmine is teeming with Mayday weekend visitors.
Even the books languish in a gloomy cemetery, wreathed in phantoms. And perhaps this is the key to the book's final message, that like books which can be re-opened and re-read, 'living ghosts' can be reclaimed by the world of the living, and life can be reaffirmed and celebrated through love, friendship and the arrival of new lives.
This book has taken me weeks and weeks to read, but finally it's finished, and I'm very, very glad I persevered. It rewarded every minute.
In his eleventh year, Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a mysterious repository for books that are in danger of disappearing off the face of the earth. He is invited to select a volume, and ends up with The Shadow of the Wind, by someone called Julian Carax. He soon becomes obsessed with the author, whose life and work seem shrouded in mystery. His search for the truth about Carax takes Daniel through his adolescent years into his 20s, through the humiliations of growing up, through the pain of first love. It's a dangerous, even life-threatening journey, with no shortage of excitement, literary mystery and suspense.
Set against the intimately-drawn backdrop of Barcelona in the years before and during the Spanish Civil War, Ruiz Zafon's story is gripping and real. It is at times frightening, frequently Gothic, and often touching, and with a number of sinuous sub-plots adding complexity and three-dimensionality.
Essentially, this is a book about ghosts. It is about how ghosts invade the lives of the living, and how the living can become ghosts by withdrawing from everyday life or by anticipating their own deaths. Ruiz Zafon's Barcelona is adrift with ghosts both living and dead. They populate its nighttime streets, its dilapidated mansions, its hospices, its plazas and gardens, and its deep Civil-War dungeons.
Even the books languish in a gloomy cemetery, wreathed in phantoms. And perhaps this is the key to the book's final message, that like books which can be re-opened and re-read, 'living ghosts' can be reclaimed by the world of the living, and life can be reaffirmed and celebrated through love, friendship and the arrival of new lives.
A coincidentally appropriate message for recent weeks.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Gardener's Questions No. 2 : Runaway rhubarb
Eighteen degrees in the sun at 10am. So far, a rain free day.
Can anybody tell me what, if anything, I should be doing with my rhubarb, which has shot up four colossal stems and is flowering profusely...?
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Saturday, 31 May 2008
Friday, 30 May 2008
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Signing off for some R&R
Twenty-eight degrees at 1pm. Not raining, but humid. It's so humid you can break a sweat typing at the keyboard, let alone misguidedly giving a 15-kilo asilo-boy a piggy-back up the hill.
Tomorrow we jump in the car for a three-day 1,500-km road trip, eventual destination the leafy Cotswolds of England.
In the meantime, I'll be showing you a picture a day of beautiful Carmine Superiore.
Tomorrow we jump in the car for a three-day 1,500-km road trip, eventual destination the leafy Cotswolds of England.
In the meantime, I'll be showing you a picture a day of beautiful Carmine Superiore.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Not raining No. 2
Twenty-nine degrees at 10am in the sun.
Guess what?
Did you notice that word 'sun'? Yes, it's not raining. But the Valle Cannobina was this morning cowering under a swathe of angry thunder cloud and Cannobio's caffe' society could be heard growling under its breath "More rain tomorrow...more rain tomorrow."
Guess what?
Did you notice that word 'sun'? Yes, it's not raining. But the Valle Cannobina was this morning cowering under a swathe of angry thunder cloud and Cannobio's caffe' society could be heard growling under its breath "More rain tomorrow...more rain tomorrow."
Monday, 26 May 2008
Carmine quotes No. 2
Raining. And that's all I have to say.
Apart from perhaps Hmmph. Double Hmmph and Hmmph with bells on.
Cats 10 : Mice 0.
Yes, finally, the mouse situation (see here and here) seems to be coming under control. Finally, Alexander's cat (with some help from the old lady of Carmine, the cat they call the mama di tutti) has learned that it's quite a lot of fun being a mouser. Or perhaps its just that this spring's young have emerged from their nesting places and are not as street-wise as the older generation.
The capital of the mouse civilisation in our house is the ripostiglio, the store room where we keep and chop huge quantities of firewood, and which doubles as a tool shed and trash store. Oh, yes, quantities of chicken feed are also stored there. As with all civilisations, this one likes to branch out a bit, and you'll know if you've been reading regularly, that there have been outposts established in the storecupboard where I keep wrapping paper, in the ironing basket and in upholstered furniture of all kinds.
This week, though, the march of mouse civilisation has (I hope) been halted. This week I've found the cat with a mouse on no less than 10 separate occasions. The children have taken to running in to me shouting "Cat's gotta mouse, Cat's gotta mouse" (for like all the Carmine cats, this one is called Cat - I'm not a Breakfast at Tiffany's devotee for nothing). If she's playing with it, the children gather round chanting like a bunch of boys at a schoolyard brawl, jumping up and down and generally adding to the Tom and Jerry confusion. Eventually I manage to persuade her that life is less tumultuous outside, and she slinks out of the door with the children shouting "Go Cat, go! Out Cat, out!" (are my children becoming a tad feral, do you think?).
I have mixed feelings about letting the cats catch the mice. I can't bear to see the mouse toyed with and injured in the way that cats do. But I also know that other methods don't work. I've baited traps, humane and less-humane, with cheese, bread, chocolate and lemon cake. I've tried taking the mouse away from the cat and then transporting him to the far reaches of the village, only to find that mice have their own built-in version of Via Michelin and can find their way home before sundown.
And mice in the house aren't just little furry animals that make a mess of the chicken feed. Their droppings, urine and dander can aggravate asthma and allergies and, scarily, they can also pass on something called the hantavirus, which, even more scarily, can kill. My children come first and if the cat is the most efficient way of protecting them, then that's the way it has to be.
So the ripostiglio door into the house remains open and we make a fuss of the cat every time we see her carrying a mouse. I just hope that one day I won't be seeing B. dashing around with a mouse in her mouth too...
Apart from perhaps Hmmph. Double Hmmph and Hmmph with bells on.
Cats 10 : Mice 0.
Yes, finally, the mouse situation (see here and here) seems to be coming under control. Finally, Alexander's cat (with some help from the old lady of Carmine, the cat they call the mama di tutti) has learned that it's quite a lot of fun being a mouser. Or perhaps its just that this spring's young have emerged from their nesting places and are not as street-wise as the older generation.
The capital of the mouse civilisation in our house is the ripostiglio, the store room where we keep and chop huge quantities of firewood, and which doubles as a tool shed and trash store. Oh, yes, quantities of chicken feed are also stored there. As with all civilisations, this one likes to branch out a bit, and you'll know if you've been reading regularly, that there have been outposts established in the storecupboard where I keep wrapping paper, in the ironing basket and in upholstered furniture of all kinds.
This week, though, the march of mouse civilisation has (I hope) been halted. This week I've found the cat with a mouse on no less than 10 separate occasions. The children have taken to running in to me shouting "Cat's gotta mouse, Cat's gotta mouse" (for like all the Carmine cats, this one is called Cat - I'm not a Breakfast at Tiffany's devotee for nothing). If she's playing with it, the children gather round chanting like a bunch of boys at a schoolyard brawl, jumping up and down and generally adding to the Tom and Jerry confusion. Eventually I manage to persuade her that life is less tumultuous outside, and she slinks out of the door with the children shouting "Go Cat, go! Out Cat, out!" (are my children becoming a tad feral, do you think?).
I have mixed feelings about letting the cats catch the mice. I can't bear to see the mouse toyed with and injured in the way that cats do. But I also know that other methods don't work. I've baited traps, humane and less-humane, with cheese, bread, chocolate and lemon cake. I've tried taking the mouse away from the cat and then transporting him to the far reaches of the village, only to find that mice have their own built-in version of Via Michelin and can find their way home before sundown.
And mice in the house aren't just little furry animals that make a mess of the chicken feed. Their droppings, urine and dander can aggravate asthma and allergies and, scarily, they can also pass on something called the hantavirus, which, even more scarily, can kill. My children come first and if the cat is the most efficient way of protecting them, then that's the way it has to be.
So the ripostiglio door into the house remains open and we make a fuss of the cat every time we see her carrying a mouse. I just hope that one day I won't be seeing B. dashing around with a mouse in her mouth too...
Sunday, 25 May 2008
The wanderer returns
Seventeen degrees at 10am. Better, but only faintly, and so faintly that it's not better at all. Almost all of Carmine's inhabited houses are showing signs of lit fires. Indeed we lit a fire in the hearth last night, wimps that we are. And. It's raining.
M is home after his many journeys all'estero, most recently to the Land of the Midnight Sun. It feels good to have him back.
M is home after his many journeys all'estero, most recently to the Land of the Midnight Sun. It feels good to have him back.
Saturday, 24 May 2008
Little (shop of) horrors
An insulting sixteen degrees at 9am. Cold and rainy. Those clouds I was talking about have draped themselves vindictively among Carmine's trees and it looks like they'll be hanging about a while.
At the campground end of Cannobio's lungolago, close to the lido, is a 1€ store, selling plastic proto-refuse for not very much (until you add it all up). In summer, the outdoor display flaunts beach balls, blow-up swimming rings, tiddler-nets and plastic-straw sunhats. In winter it's Christmas decorations. Between seasons there are huge quantities of tupperware-style plastic boxes, but none in the right size. The 1€ store is much-loved by desperate week-of-rain camping-holiday mothers eager to buy plastic train sets, beading sets, sinister-looking yellow velvet giraffes or anything, anything at all their child might desire. Just for a few minutes of holiday (dammit!). AJ (age 3) likes the look of the 1€ store, although he's never been inside. I know that once he does the sky will fall in, and the house will forever be cluttered with unidentifiable bits of coloured plastic.
But perhaps after last Tuesday, AJ won't be so keen to loiter outside the 1€ shop. For next door but one, just past the fabbro (a working smithy worthy of the notice of Sebastiao Salgado), is the surgery of Dr S. And Tuesday was, as trailed, AJ's first visit to il dentista.
The appointment was prompted by a seemingly harmless knock that turned one of AJ's beautifully white front teeth a nasty my-mother-feeds-me-too-much-chocolate grey. Part of my strategy for the day was to announce the forthcoming visit to AJ's scuola materna teacher in the hope that she might pick up the baton and do some pre-selling of the whole dentist idea during class. But as the surrounding mothers dutifully ooh'd and aah'd (you'll have to think the Italian accents) for AJ's benefit, out of my bag fell two packets of imported liquorice allsorts. A momentary silence followed, laden with unspoken accusations of child-abuse-by-bon-bon and a couple of sidelong squints at the grey patch in AJ's delighted smile. I wouldn't be getting any sympathy there, then.
At 1pm, while picking him up from kindergarten, I taught him the word ice-cream in Italian and promised him whatever flavour he desired after Dr S.
At 3:15pm, after two hours of trailing the children round town in preference to dragging them up the hill and then almost immediately down again, we passed, exhausted, through Dr S's grey metal security doors and made our way up his gently sweeping marble staircase. And into an office that was more like a rather grand apartment than a dentist's office, complete with gilded hat stand, brocade sofas, Turkish runners and, at the far end, a piano. I've never seen a piano in a dentist's office before...and I wondered what dentistry-themed music might be played on it after hours (I could only come up with a half-remembered medley from Little Shop of Horrors).
We got off to a fairly bad start. I left the dotties alone for a moment, and they started exploring while I was filling in the forms. The background music was the sound of the dentist’s drill on turbo. A woman’s voice suddenly rang out. An exclamation of pain in fairly colourful Italian. I won't repeat it. I looked around for the children and they were standing close together staring aghast into one of the ‘salons’ where a well-heeled, red-faced older woman was in the chair, still streaming invective. B was reaching, rather touchingly, for the security of her big brother's hand. I quickly chivvied them away (“It’s rude to stare, darling…”) and they proceeded to trash the organised-by-language magazine collection in the waiting area in what I suspected to be frenzied displacement activity.
Finally, the German Dr S. arrived in the waiting room, streaming Italian instructions to his assistant through his pipe, which was gripped firmly between his teeth, as always (in the street, in the car, while gardening, while berating fly-parkers outside his home). He greeted AJ, one trilingual to another, and invited him into his lair. AJ shook his hand, but wouldn't look at him...
I left B to a copy of Hello! magazine, murmuring to herself about Angelina Jolie’s twins, and carried – with difficulty - a suddenly squirmy AJ to the chair. I sat down with him on my lap, and slowly laid back hoping to hold him in place and make him feel secure at the same time.
No.
No, no, NEIN!
He revolved like a croc with a carcass so that his face was buried in my neck, and he started screaming (whether it was English, Italian or German, I didn't at that point understand). I tried to turn him back, pouring lovely words into his ear like ‘gelato’ and ‘pizza’, and even (God-help-me) ‘liquorice allsorts’, but he was too far gone. The dental nurse looked at me and I looked at her, hoping for inspiration or perhaps absolution, but she had no fresh input for me. B drifted in, no doubt curious as to why AJ was screaming this time. She thought it might be fun to jump on top of Mama too.
After about a minute of screaming, Dr S., unveiled his own patented I’ve-had-five-children-under-six strategy for dealing with rebellious three-year-olds. A low rumble was first heard, followed by a noise that resembled pawing of the ground, and then Dr S. bellowed something at AJ in German (a supremely useful language for bellowing). The little one was so shocked by the sheer noise that he stopped trying to strangle me and looked round. Seizing the moment, I manhandled him into a supine position and wrapped my legs and arms around his. He was done-for.
Two minutes later, B was happily lying in the spotlight while AJ sat on his new friend’s lap, wielding the dental mirror and doing a fairly decent job of counting his sister’s teeth (in three languages).
The verdict? A dead nerve. Nothing to be done. Hopefully the second tooth won’t be affected.
The moral? When good old-fashioned Italian-style bribery and corruption with gelato doesn't do the trick, a spot of Teutonic noise-pollution just might.
The afterword? AJ got his gelato (strawberry), and B got one too (chocolate, all over her face, her hands, and down her front, to the delight of a quickly-assembled crowd of onlookers). A promise is a promise, after all. And he now knows how to say ‘ice-cream’ in Italian and ‘open wide’ in German
As for the 1€ store, I’ll let you know next time the weather’s good enough for the lido - but whether he's interested or not, he's still not going in.
At the campground end of Cannobio's lungolago, close to the lido, is a 1€ store, selling plastic proto-refuse for not very much (until you add it all up). In summer, the outdoor display flaunts beach balls, blow-up swimming rings, tiddler-nets and plastic-straw sunhats. In winter it's Christmas decorations. Between seasons there are huge quantities of tupperware-style plastic boxes, but none in the right size. The 1€ store is much-loved by desperate week-of-rain camping-holiday mothers eager to buy plastic train sets, beading sets, sinister-looking yellow velvet giraffes or anything, anything at all their child might desire. Just for a few minutes of holiday (dammit!). AJ (age 3) likes the look of the 1€ store, although he's never been inside. I know that once he does the sky will fall in, and the house will forever be cluttered with unidentifiable bits of coloured plastic.
But perhaps after last Tuesday, AJ won't be so keen to loiter outside the 1€ shop. For next door but one, just past the fabbro (a working smithy worthy of the notice of Sebastiao Salgado
The appointment was prompted by a seemingly harmless knock that turned one of AJ's beautifully white front teeth a nasty my-mother-feeds-me-too-much-chocolate grey. Part of my strategy for the day was to announce the forthcoming visit to AJ's scuola materna teacher in the hope that she might pick up the baton and do some pre-selling of the whole dentist idea during class. But as the surrounding mothers dutifully ooh'd and aah'd (you'll have to think the Italian accents) for AJ's benefit, out of my bag fell two packets of imported liquorice allsorts. A momentary silence followed, laden with unspoken accusations of child-abuse-by-bon-bon and a couple of sidelong squints at the grey patch in AJ's delighted smile. I wouldn't be getting any sympathy there, then.
At 1pm, while picking him up from kindergarten, I taught him the word ice-cream in Italian and promised him whatever flavour he desired after Dr S.
At 3:15pm, after two hours of trailing the children round town in preference to dragging them up the hill and then almost immediately down again, we passed, exhausted, through Dr S's grey metal security doors and made our way up his gently sweeping marble staircase. And into an office that was more like a rather grand apartment than a dentist's office, complete with gilded hat stand, brocade sofas, Turkish runners and, at the far end, a piano. I've never seen a piano in a dentist's office before...and I wondered what dentistry-themed music might be played on it after hours (I could only come up with a half-remembered medley from Little Shop of Horrors).
We got off to a fairly bad start. I left the dotties alone for a moment, and they started exploring while I was filling in the forms. The background music was the sound of the dentist’s drill on turbo. A woman’s voice suddenly rang out. An exclamation of pain in fairly colourful Italian. I won't repeat it. I looked around for the children and they were standing close together staring aghast into one of the ‘salons’ where a well-heeled, red-faced older woman was in the chair, still streaming invective. B was reaching, rather touchingly, for the security of her big brother's hand. I quickly chivvied them away (“It’s rude to stare, darling…”) and they proceeded to trash the organised-by-language magazine collection in the waiting area in what I suspected to be frenzied displacement activity.
Finally, the German Dr S. arrived in the waiting room, streaming Italian instructions to his assistant through his pipe, which was gripped firmly between his teeth, as always (in the street, in the car, while gardening, while berating fly-parkers outside his home). He greeted AJ, one trilingual to another, and invited him into his lair. AJ shook his hand, but wouldn't look at him...
I left B to a copy of Hello! magazine, murmuring to herself about Angelina Jolie’s twins, and carried – with difficulty - a suddenly squirmy AJ to the chair. I sat down with him on my lap, and slowly laid back hoping to hold him in place and make him feel secure at the same time.
No.
No, no, NEIN!
He revolved like a croc with a carcass so that his face was buried in my neck, and he started screaming (whether it was English, Italian or German, I didn't at that point understand). I tried to turn him back, pouring lovely words into his ear like ‘gelato’ and ‘pizza’, and even (God-help-me) ‘liquorice allsorts’, but he was too far gone. The dental nurse looked at me and I looked at her, hoping for inspiration or perhaps absolution, but she had no fresh input for me. B drifted in, no doubt curious as to why AJ was screaming this time. She thought it might be fun to jump on top of Mama too.
After about a minute of screaming, Dr S., unveiled his own patented I’ve-had-five-children-under-six strategy for dealing with rebellious three-year-olds. A low rumble was first heard, followed by a noise that resembled pawing of the ground, and then Dr S. bellowed something at AJ in German (a supremely useful language for bellowing). The little one was so shocked by the sheer noise that he stopped trying to strangle me and looked round. Seizing the moment, I manhandled him into a supine position and wrapped my legs and arms around his. He was done-for.
Two minutes later, B was happily lying in the spotlight while AJ sat on his new friend’s lap, wielding the dental mirror and doing a fairly decent job of counting his sister’s teeth (in three languages).
The verdict? A dead nerve. Nothing to be done. Hopefully the second tooth won’t be affected.
The moral? When good old-fashioned Italian-style bribery and corruption with gelato doesn't do the trick, a spot of Teutonic noise-pollution just might.
The afterword? AJ got his gelato (strawberry), and B got one too (chocolate, all over her face, her hands, and down her front, to the delight of a quickly-assembled crowd of onlookers). A promise is a promise, after all. And he now knows how to say ‘ice-cream’ in Italian and ‘open wide’ in German
As for the 1€ store, I’ll let you know next time the weather’s good enough for the lido - but whether he's interested or not, he's still not going in.
Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.
Friday, 23 May 2008
Book Notes No. 7 : The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie
Twenty-four degrees at 10am. Bright sunshine, and warm enough to take a pavement table for AJ's Friday caffe' breakfast. But I think the rain clouds have not gone but are hiding round a corner, sniggering as we all put away our sou'westers and wellies. They'll be back!
Now.
Salman Rushdie.
You remember him...the one who wrote The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie KBE. Salman Rushdie, the man with no less than eight honorary doctorates. Salman Rushdie, an honorary professor in humanities at MIT, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Salman Rushdie. Britain's answer to Umberto Eco (perhaps?).
The The Enchantress of Florence
The central character is a woman, the enchantress of the title. As her story is told at court it begins to suffuse the whole of the emperor's capital city, just as in the story itself she enchants Florence with her presence.
Or perhaps the central character is the Mogol d'Amore, the mysterious teller of the tale. Or perhaps it is Akbar the Great, the person to whom the story is being told, and a man who understands the power of the imagination to create. Or perhaps it is Rushdie, who is telling everybody's story, criss-crossing expertly from East to West as has been his wont in other of his works.
I was captivated by this book, I have to say (although I see the literary reviews were mixed). Rushdie's language is rich and seductive. Much of his subject matter is exotic or erotic or both. And his storylines for the most part hold together in a cohesive whole, offering illuminating parallels and reflections, echoes and interjections. At some point I came to the realisation that the enchantress had a lot in common with Diana, Princess of Wales (even down to her being named the "people's princess"), and this added further depth to Rushdie's insights into the nature of storytelling and its connection, perhaps, with the creation and demise of 'characters' in today's mass media.
When The Satanic Verses hit the headlines back in 1989, many people splashed out on a hardback edition for their coffee tables, but it seemed to me that very few actually read it. I was always glad that I did read it, and I'm glad I have read The Enchantress of Florence. It was a literary feast and an education, if not quite (we hope) such a political and religious sensation.
Now.
Salman Rushdie.
You remember him...the one who wrote The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie KBE. Salman Rushdie, the man with no less than eight honorary doctorates. Salman Rushdie, an honorary professor in humanities at MIT, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Salman Rushdie. Britain's answer to Umberto Eco (perhaps?).
The The Enchantress of Florence
The central character is a woman, the enchantress of the title. As her story is told at court it begins to suffuse the whole of the emperor's capital city, just as in the story itself she enchants Florence with her presence.
Or perhaps the central character is the Mogol d'Amore, the mysterious teller of the tale. Or perhaps it is Akbar the Great, the person to whom the story is being told, and a man who understands the power of the imagination to create. Or perhaps it is Rushdie, who is telling everybody's story, criss-crossing expertly from East to West as has been his wont in other of his works.
I was captivated by this book, I have to say (although I see the literary reviews were mixed). Rushdie's language is rich and seductive. Much of his subject matter is exotic or erotic or both. And his storylines for the most part hold together in a cohesive whole, offering illuminating parallels and reflections, echoes and interjections. At some point I came to the realisation that the enchantress had a lot in common with Diana, Princess of Wales (even down to her being named the "people's princess"), and this added further depth to Rushdie's insights into the nature of storytelling and its connection, perhaps, with the creation and demise of 'characters' in today's mass media.
When The Satanic Verses hit the headlines back in 1989, many people splashed out on a hardback edition for their coffee tables, but it seemed to me that very few actually read it. I was always glad that I did read it, and I'm glad I have read The Enchantress of Florence. It was a literary feast and an education, if not quite (we hope) such a political and religious sensation.
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Flowers in the rain
The flowers of Carmine seem even more beautiful than usual (if that's possible) when glistening with raindrops. Here are : Elizabeth's rose (St. Swithin, named after Winchester Cathedral, where my goddaughter, Elizabeth, was christened) ; Emma's azalea; Louise's fuchsia; B's margeurites (acquired for B's christening and still going strong); and Giovanna's rose.
PS It's sixteen degrees and ... raining.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Raining again
Eighteen degrees at 10:10am and raining once again. This morning the threads of cloud had crept down to the level of St Anna.
Carmine's internet hotspot has become Carmine's internet wetspot...
Carmine's internet hotspot has become Carmine's internet wetspot...
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Monday, 19 May 2008
Not raining...
...but threatening. Eighteen degrees at 9am with patchy sunshine.
Taking advantage of the lull between two downpours to cut the grass, tie up the sadly fallen tomatoes and deadhead Gertrude Jekylls No. 1 and 2.
Taking advantage of the lull between two downpours to cut the grass, tie up the sadly fallen tomatoes and deadhead Gertrude Jekylls No. 1 and 2.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Friday, 16 May 2008
One last driving story : A is for Autostrada
Warmish and overcast this morning. Damp after yesterday's rain and threatening more.
It was warmish and overcast as I trotted the dotties down the hill at 8:45, and it was still warmish and overcast as I loaded them into the car and spread out a succession of food, drinks, treats and last-ditch bribes on the passenger seat beside me.
It was warmish and overcast driving along the lake road through Cannero Riviera and on to Verbania. It was warmish and overcast as I whizzed past the train station at Fondotoce, the outer limit of my solo driving experience.
It was warmish and overcast as I filtered onto the A26 heading towards Milan.
I passed through the familiar litany of tunnels - Mottarone Secondo, Mottarone Primo, Mottavinea, Massino Visconti - and as I took a ticket at the toll gate it was warmish and overcast. Two more tunnels followed - Dorbie and Melissa - and then off to pay the toll and onwards on the SS33/SS36 through Vergiate, Somma Lombardo and Case Nuove.
At Malpensa arrivals, warmish and overcast weather watched over me as I negotiated my first multi-storey car park. I would like to say that a ray of sunshine fell on me as, flush with the excitement of still being in one piece, I hurried to greet my husband, AJ at my side, B in my arms. But it didn't. It was still warmish and overcast.
Then it was : Case Nuove, Somma Lombardo, Vergiate, Melissa, Dorbie, Massino Visconti, Mottavinea, Mottarone Primo, Mottarone Secondo, Fondotoce, Verbania, Cannero and ... home.
Where it was bucketing it down.
It was warmish and overcast as I trotted the dotties down the hill at 8:45, and it was still warmish and overcast as I loaded them into the car and spread out a succession of food, drinks, treats and last-ditch bribes on the passenger seat beside me.
It was warmish and overcast driving along the lake road through Cannero Riviera and on to Verbania. It was warmish and overcast as I whizzed past the train station at Fondotoce, the outer limit of my solo driving experience.
It was warmish and overcast as I filtered onto the A26 heading towards Milan.
I passed through the familiar litany of tunnels - Mottarone Secondo, Mottarone Primo, Mottavinea, Massino Visconti - and as I took a ticket at the toll gate it was warmish and overcast. Two more tunnels followed - Dorbie and Melissa - and then off to pay the toll and onwards on the SS33/SS36 through Vergiate, Somma Lombardo and Case Nuove.
At Malpensa arrivals, warmish and overcast weather watched over me as I negotiated my first multi-storey car park. I would like to say that a ray of sunshine fell on me as, flush with the excitement of still being in one piece, I hurried to greet my husband, AJ at my side, B in my arms. But it didn't. It was still warmish and overcast.
Then it was : Case Nuove, Somma Lombardo, Vergiate, Melissa, Dorbie, Massino Visconti, Mottavinea, Mottarone Primo, Mottarone Secondo, Fondotoce, Verbania, Cannero and ... home.
Where it was bucketing it down.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Carmine quotes No. 10 : The chicken and the pot
Twenty-one degrees at 11am and overcast. [Raining by 4pm.] What was that I said yesterday about the power of words to change the weather?
Where's me fleece.
I'm off to feed the chickadees. Lately the old cockerel has taken to attacking me every time I go in the run. I think it's pretty rum given that without me he and his girlies would starve. I'm told I should grab him, hold him upside down by his feet and give him a good talking to, but I have in mind the following saying somebody round here once told me : "The older the chicken the better the soup" ...
Where's me fleece.
I'm off to feed the chickadees. Lately the old cockerel has taken to attacking me every time I go in the run. I think it's pretty rum given that without me he and his girlies would starve. I'm told I should grab him, hold him upside down by his feet and give him a good talking to, but I have in mind the following saying somebody round here once told me : "The older the chicken the better the soup" ...
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
And a good time was had by all...
Twenty-eight degrees, hot and sunny. Now I've used the word 'hot' the weather's bound to change and I'll be burrowing through the mountain labelled 'winter clothes to find a home for' looking for something warmer to wear.
Today, Carmine is rampant with school children. And they appear to be doing what European school children on trips out do everywhere they go, be it the Natural History Museum in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a Rhineland schloss, or the Chiesa di San Gottardo in Carmine Superiore.
They're sitting in clusters on every available step (including mine), juggling clip boards and rucksacks.
They're thundering up and down in large, awkward-limbed groups, calling out to one another in some sort of teenager code.
They're chomping their way through their packed lunches hours before lunchtime (when they'll be hungry again).
And they're staring at the residents as if a.) they are made of wax and so won't notice being stared at, b.) they are doing something so outlandish (like mulching the courgettes) that it's liable to be written up in 40 What-I-Saw-On-The-School-Trip essays, and/or c.) they might be a source of the second packed lunch they'll be wanting in an hour's time.
I'm glad it happens only once a year.
Today, Carmine is rampant with school children. And they appear to be doing what European school children on trips out do everywhere they go, be it the Natural History Museum in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a Rhineland schloss, or the Chiesa di San Gottardo in Carmine Superiore.
They're sitting in clusters on every available step (including mine), juggling clip boards and rucksacks.
They're thundering up and down in large, awkward-limbed groups, calling out to one another in some sort of teenager code.
They're chomping their way through their packed lunches hours before lunchtime (when they'll be hungry again).
And they're staring at the residents as if a.) they are made of wax and so won't notice being stared at, b.) they are doing something so outlandish (like mulching the courgettes) that it's liable to be written up in 40 What-I-Saw-On-The-School-Trip essays, and/or c.) they might be a source of the second packed lunch they'll be wanting in an hour's time.
I'm glad it happens only once a year.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Carmine quotes No. 9 : Spreading a little happiness
Twenty-eight degrees at 8am. Breezy but sunny.
B., aged almost 22 months, sings her first song :
Who needs birthdays!
B., aged almost 22 months, sings her first song :
Happy happy, You You
Happy happy, You You
Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy
happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy...
(between giggles) You YOU!
Who needs birthdays!
Monday, 12 May 2008
Baptism by carabinieri
Twenty-four degrees at 11am. Cloudy and windy.
Yesterday, while driving the two dotties to the festa dei palloncini, I was with some relief entering the Cannobio 50-clicks-an-hour-zone, when, Whammo!, out jumps a boy in blue with his red palletta and waves me over to a stopping place. I narrowly miss taking him out (and I don't mean on a date).
He approaches the window, unaware of his recent brush with the everlasting. His chum has what seems to me to be a rather threatening sub-machine gun held at the ready, and they're both wearing bullet-proof vests over their jackets (just so you know they're ready for the rough stuff).
"Buongiorno signora. Licence please." I jump for my purse and flourish my shiny new licence in his face. I see a fleeting sadistic grin as he notes the date on the licence and the enormous P signs in the front and rear windscreens. A greenhorn.
"Libretto della macchina."
"Erm, sorry?"
"Car registration documents."
I scrabble about among the wine guides, the maps of Burgundy and Alsace and the used baby wipes. Is this it? No. Is that it? No. Could it be tucked in the back of the sun visor. No.
"Perhaps I should ask the audience." Joke.
My subliminal vision spots a slightly menacing shift in the angle of the sub-machine gun.
"May I call my husband?"
AJ farts.
"Sure."
Five minutes later, AJ's smelliest still hasn't dispersed, but at least Italy's finest has checked my credentials and found I'm not yet listed as one of Europe's most wanted, even though I might be driving the world's most battered. I'm ordered to have a nice day and left to negotiate getting out of the stopping place, which is thoroughly blocked by what would once have been Britain's greatest - a Land Rover Defender. Having executed a deft 8-point turn, I head towards the road, and momentarily forget which side of it I'm supposed to be driving on.
The sub-machine gun quivers with suppressed laughter.
I don't care. I drive off, not humiliated but exhilarated. Now I know for sure I'm a real, bona fide, baptised-by-carabinieri, autista.
The start of the story :
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 1
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 2
Learning to drive : denouement
Home
Yesterday, while driving the two dotties to the festa dei palloncini, I was with some relief entering the Cannobio 50-clicks-an-hour-zone, when, Whammo!, out jumps a boy in blue with his red palletta and waves me over to a stopping place. I narrowly miss taking him out (and I don't mean on a date).
He approaches the window, unaware of his recent brush with the everlasting. His chum has what seems to me to be a rather threatening sub-machine gun held at the ready, and they're both wearing bullet-proof vests over their jackets (just so you know they're ready for the rough stuff).
"Buongiorno signora. Licence please." I jump for my purse and flourish my shiny new licence in his face. I see a fleeting sadistic grin as he notes the date on the licence and the enormous P signs in the front and rear windscreens. A greenhorn.
"Libretto della macchina."
"Erm, sorry?"
"Car registration documents."
I scrabble about among the wine guides, the maps of Burgundy and Alsace and the used baby wipes. Is this it? No. Is that it? No. Could it be tucked in the back of the sun visor. No.
"Perhaps I should ask the audience." Joke.
My subliminal vision spots a slightly menacing shift in the angle of the sub-machine gun.
"May I call my husband?"
AJ farts.
"Sure."
Five minutes later, AJ's smelliest still hasn't dispersed, but at least Italy's finest has checked my credentials and found I'm not yet listed as one of Europe's most wanted, even though I might be driving the world's most battered. I'm ordered to have a nice day and left to negotiate getting out of the stopping place, which is thoroughly blocked by what would once have been Britain's greatest - a Land Rover Defender. Having executed a deft 8-point turn, I head towards the road, and momentarily forget which side of it I'm supposed to be driving on.
The sub-machine gun quivers with suppressed laughter.
I don't care. I drive off, not humiliated but exhilarated. Now I know for sure I'm a real, bona fide, baptised-by-carabinieri, autista.
The start of the story :
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 1
Learning to drive in Italy : No. 2
Learning to drive : denouement
Home
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Festa dei palloncini
Rain overnight. Warm with patchy sunshine, and rumblings of thunder early this afternoon.
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
Saturday, 10 May 2008
More absent friends
Warm and sunny again.
Still on the subject of sights unseen by absent Carmine holiday-home-owners...
Still on the subject of sights unseen by absent Carmine holiday-home-owners...
The person who can name the purple-blossomed tree that dominates Carmine at this time of year gets a Blue Peter badge.
By the way, the rubinia are blossoming, and yesterday, driving through the picturesque Cannero Riviera, I caught the distinctive scent of jasmine drifting on the air.
Friday, 9 May 2008
For the two Nadias
Twenty-eight degrees at 1pm. Sunny, but in Carmine, a breeze. The increasing warmth is taking its toll on the daily lunchtime kindergarten run. Anybody know a smart way to raise a tired three-and-a-half-year-old through 100m in eighty degrees Fahrenheit without giving him a piggy back?
The rest of this post is especially for the two Nadias, who have houses side by side, on Carmine's tangenziale ouest, and whom we see far too infrequently.
Carrissime, I can see your gardens from all the windows on one side of my house, and every day they give me the greatest of visual pleasure. The azaleas and the aubrettias together make Carmine vibrate with colour. I thought you might like to see them too.
Come and see us soon.
The rest of this post is especially for the two Nadias, who have houses side by side, on Carmine's tangenziale ouest, and whom we see far too infrequently.
Carrissime, I can see your gardens from all the windows on one side of my house, and every day they give me the greatest of visual pleasure. The azaleas and the aubrettias together make Carmine vibrate with colour. I thought you might like to see them too.
Come and see us soon.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Chick bulletin + 13 weeks
Twenty-five degrees at 11am. Patchy sunshine.Today's visit to Palazzo Pollo brought a nice, if perplexing, surprise - a half-size egg nestling in the nest box alongside all the others. It seems one of the girls from our February brood has come of age and started to produce. It's perplexing because she's only at 13 weeks, and in theory this is a little early to be at point of lay.
Can any other chicken keepers out there shed any light?
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
A mouse about the house
Twenty-four degrees at 1pm. Sunny and seeming hot. A perfect day for sitting in the churchyard, drinking up the sun and the view (which I wasn't).
A mousey kind of day here in Carmine.
First, my beloved mouser was found in the children's room playing with a mouse. Still alive, and not a stuffed one from the stuffed animals repository that hangs, overfull, from the ceiling. On detection, the cat escaped and the mouse hid. I'm hoping we don't find it in a few days' time by its smell.
Much later, a mouse nest was discovered in the new sofa. Much mouse-style damage. M., who came through the door at exactly the moment of discovery, was not am(o)used.
A mousey kind of day here in Carmine.
First, my beloved mouser was found in the children's room playing with a mouse. Still alive, and not a stuffed one from the stuffed animals repository that hangs, overfull, from the ceiling. On detection, the cat escaped and the mouse hid. I'm hoping we don't find it in a few days' time by its smell.
Much later, a mouse nest was discovered in the new sofa. Much mouse-style damage. M., who came through the door at exactly the moment of discovery, was not am(o)used.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Signs of summer
Twenty-four degrees at 2pm. Sunny with a kind breeze.
Today in the garden we intend to plant two floribunda roses, four verbena and an upright rosemary. Now that the gardener has wheels the gardening bill's going through the roof...
The sun has swung right round in its arc and now a sliver of sunlight is shining on the terrace for the first time this year. Two nights ago, I saw the first Carmine bats of the year. Whether this is because they had just arrived or because it was the first time it was warm enough to be outside after dark and therefore to see them, I don't know.
And Mathilda seems to have gone on her summer holidays at last. She was last lit on Wednesday 30 April and hasn't been in service since. A cold Mathilda means that our life changes quite a lot. There is now nowhere indoors to dry urgently-needed underwear or muddy-puddled children's shoes, but equally we don't have to be always nagging at the children to shut the doors to keep the heat in. And now M. doesn't have to split over 100kg of firewood for her every week, and neither of us has to get up that little bit earlier to get her moving in the mornings.
Don't ya jus' love summer?
Today in the garden we intend to plant two floribunda roses, four verbena and an upright rosemary. Now that the gardener has wheels the gardening bill's going through the roof...
The sun has swung right round in its arc and now a sliver of sunlight is shining on the terrace for the first time this year. Two nights ago, I saw the first Carmine bats of the year. Whether this is because they had just arrived or because it was the first time it was warm enough to be outside after dark and therefore to see them, I don't know.
And Mathilda seems to have gone on her summer holidays at last. She was last lit on Wednesday 30 April and hasn't been in service since. A cold Mathilda means that our life changes quite a lot. There is now nowhere indoors to dry urgently-needed underwear or muddy-puddled children's shoes, but equally we don't have to be always nagging at the children to shut the doors to keep the heat in. And now M. doesn't have to split over 100kg of firewood for her every week, and neither of us has to get up that little bit earlier to get her moving in the mornings.
Don't ya jus' love summer?
Monday, 5 May 2008
Fritzl Rant
Warm, humid and overcast.
AJ is at kindergarten, M is in Switzerland, B is in bed and Mama is angry.
I've been following the story of the Austrian, Fritzl, who is accused of imprisoning his own daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering no less than seven children on her, several of whom also remained incarcerated with her, one of whom died at birth through lack of a doctor. Today, I read that this man's lawyer (who dares represent this monster?) is declaring him insane rather than criminal and I am very angry.
Elisabeth Fritzl, the woman imprisoned since her late teens, is a couple of years younger than I am. And this started me thinking. I thought about the life I have led in the big wide world in the 24 years that she has been without daylight, without medical care, without her freedom, and with only a rapist and her children for company. I have been free to study, to travel, to find friends and to fall in love. I have been free to choose the father of my children and the place in which to raise them. I have been free while she has not. Free to eat and drink what I want, think and say what I want, to feel the sun on my face, to feel cooling water on my skin. Free to wander in the highest mountains in the world, to live on some of the most beautiful Pacific Islands imagineable, to drink the colours of India, to have wonderful adventures and to experience the strangenesses of life.
Elisabeth Fritzl has been denied all this. And I am angry for her.
I know this sounds unreconstructed, bigotted and totally un-Christian, but I want Fritzl to receive the same treatment as he meted out to his daughter and his children. I want him in a prison cell with no chance of reprieve. I want him to lack fresh air, sunshine, medical care, decent food, a friendly face. I want his freedom denied him, and most of all I want him scared for his life every time someone comes to the door.
Anyone who wishes his unspeakable crimes to go unpunished should remember what life has brought them over the last 24 years, and then perhaps they will think again.
AJ is at kindergarten, M is in Switzerland, B is in bed and Mama is angry.
I've been following the story of the Austrian, Fritzl, who is accused of imprisoning his own daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering no less than seven children on her, several of whom also remained incarcerated with her, one of whom died at birth through lack of a doctor. Today, I read that this man's lawyer (who dares represent this monster?) is declaring him insane rather than criminal and I am very angry.
Elisabeth Fritzl, the woman imprisoned since her late teens, is a couple of years younger than I am. And this started me thinking. I thought about the life I have led in the big wide world in the 24 years that she has been without daylight, without medical care, without her freedom, and with only a rapist and her children for company. I have been free to study, to travel, to find friends and to fall in love. I have been free to choose the father of my children and the place in which to raise them. I have been free while she has not. Free to eat and drink what I want, think and say what I want, to feel the sun on my face, to feel cooling water on my skin. Free to wander in the highest mountains in the world, to live on some of the most beautiful Pacific Islands imagineable, to drink the colours of India, to have wonderful adventures and to experience the strangenesses of life.
Elisabeth Fritzl has been denied all this. And I am angry for her.
I know this sounds unreconstructed, bigotted and totally un-Christian, but I want Fritzl to receive the same treatment as he meted out to his daughter and his children. I want him in a prison cell with no chance of reprieve. I want him to lack fresh air, sunshine, medical care, decent food, a friendly face. I want his freedom denied him, and most of all I want him scared for his life every time someone comes to the door.
Anyone who wishes his unspeakable crimes to go unpunished should remember what life has brought them over the last 24 years, and then perhaps they will think again.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Cannobio's Sunday market
Thirty-five degrees at 2pm and sunny. The children have today gone into short sleeves.
This morning we made a mistake that we inexplicably often make, and equally inexplicably never learn from. We forgot how much we hate Cannobio's famous Sunday market. It's the largest market at the lake, running the whole length of the lakeside walk, or lungolago. And it attracts many more visitors than Cannobio can comfortably cope with.
On holiday weekends, the entire town is to be avoided. There's a traffic jam from here to there, and when finally you do make it into town there's not a single inch in which to park. And when finally you do find a place to leave the car, the walk along the lungolago is more akin to rush hour on London's Northern Line (think canned sardines) than an enjoyable shopping experience in one of the lake's most charming and best-preserved old towns. Want to take the weight off and goggle for a while at the human tide passing by? Don't even bother trying to find a table at one of the lungolago caffe's. There won't be one for at least half an hour.
There are only two ways to do the Sunday market, if, that is, you can't live without doing it. The first is to get up horrifyingly early and be there and back before 8am. The second is to take the boat, waving in a smug kind of way at the motorists stuck in the lake-road tailback as you putt-putt along. Arriving in Cannobio, drag the boat up onto the beach (no parking problem, no parking fees) and then launch yourself into the fray like a cruise missile programmed for a surgical strike on your favourite deli stall and then beat a rapid tactical retreat back to the boat before your brain starts bubbling.
This morning, waiting (in vain) for the friends who had lured us into this seething cauldron of shopping insanity, I found myself wondering why I hated it all so much when everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Or perhaps I was wrong.
I started to look more closely at the mothers with the bawling babies, the husbands with the eternally-dawdling wives, the tourists hoping to find authentic Italy at the made-in-China handbag stalls, the dog-owners with their overheated, getting-snarly German shepherds and the pouting teenagers trailing after their parents dressed in sulky, sweaty all-over black.
Perhaps I wasn't alone after all...
This morning we made a mistake that we inexplicably often make, and equally inexplicably never learn from. We forgot how much we hate Cannobio's famous Sunday market. It's the largest market at the lake, running the whole length of the lakeside walk, or lungolago. And it attracts many more visitors than Cannobio can comfortably cope with.
On holiday weekends, the entire town is to be avoided. There's a traffic jam from here to there, and when finally you do make it into town there's not a single inch in which to park. And when finally you do find a place to leave the car, the walk along the lungolago is more akin to rush hour on London's Northern Line (think canned sardines) than an enjoyable shopping experience in one of the lake's most charming and best-preserved old towns. Want to take the weight off and goggle for a while at the human tide passing by? Don't even bother trying to find a table at one of the lungolago caffe's. There won't be one for at least half an hour.
There are only two ways to do the Sunday market, if, that is, you can't live without doing it. The first is to get up horrifyingly early and be there and back before 8am. The second is to take the boat, waving in a smug kind of way at the motorists stuck in the lake-road tailback as you putt-putt along. Arriving in Cannobio, drag the boat up onto the beach (no parking problem, no parking fees) and then launch yourself into the fray like a cruise missile programmed for a surgical strike on your favourite deli stall and then beat a rapid tactical retreat back to the boat before your brain starts bubbling.
This morning, waiting (in vain) for the friends who had lured us into this seething cauldron of shopping insanity, I found myself wondering why I hated it all so much when everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Or perhaps I was wrong.
I started to look more closely at the mothers with the bawling babies, the husbands with the eternally-dawdling wives, the tourists hoping to find authentic Italy at the made-in-China handbag stalls, the dog-owners with their overheated, getting-snarly German shepherds and the pouting teenagers trailing after their parents dressed in sulky, sweaty all-over black.
Perhaps I wasn't alone after all...
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Another milestone
Thirty-two degrees in the sun at midday. The sky is blue, and the lake is a-flutter with yachts and windsurfers. The woods are full of people in search of wild asparagus.
Today we're planting leeks, basil, peppers, an impulse-bought cranberry bush, and more lettuce.
Yet another driving milestone today : Mama left everyone at home and drove alone to Cannobio for a spot of shopping. Alone in the car for the very first time. I know you drivers don't understand why this is such a big thing, but after 27 years as a non-driver, the freedom is nothing less than intoxicating.
Today we're planting leeks, basil, peppers, an impulse-bought cranberry bush, and more lettuce.
Yet another driving milestone today : Mama left everyone at home and drove alone to Cannobio for a spot of shopping. Alone in the car for the very first time. I know you drivers don't understand why this is such a big thing, but after 27 years as a non-driver, the freedom is nothing less than intoxicating.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Book Notes No. 6 : The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Twenty degrees at 10am. Sunny, bright and breezy. Carmine is teeming with Mayday weekend visitors.
Even the books languish in a gloomy cemetery, wreathed in phantoms. And perhaps this is the key to the book's final message, that like books which can be re-opened and re-read, 'living ghosts' can be reclaimed by the world of the living, and life can be reaffirmed and celebrated through love, friendship and the arrival of new lives.
This book has taken me weeks and weeks to read, but finally it's finished, and I'm very, very glad I persevered. It rewarded every minute.
In his eleventh year, Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a mysterious repository for books that are in danger of disappearing off the face of the earth. He is invited to select a volume, and ends up with The Shadow of the Wind, by someone called Julian Carax. He soon becomes obsessed with the author, whose life and work seem shrouded in mystery. His search for the truth about Carax takes Daniel through his adolescent years into his 20s, through the humiliations of growing up, through the pain of first love. It's a dangerous, even life-threatening journey, with no shortage of excitement, literary mystery and suspense.
Set against the intimately-drawn backdrop of Barcelona in the years before and during the Spanish Civil War, Ruiz Zafon's story is gripping and real. It is at times frightening, frequently Gothic, and often touching, and with a number of sinuous sub-plots adding complexity and three-dimensionality.
Essentially, this is a book about ghosts. It is about how ghosts invade the lives of the living, and how the living can become ghosts by withdrawing from everyday life or by anticipating their own deaths. Ruiz Zafon's Barcelona is adrift with ghosts both living and dead. They populate its nighttime streets, its dilapidated mansions, its hospices, its plazas and gardens, and its deep Civil-War dungeons.
Even the books languish in a gloomy cemetery, wreathed in phantoms. And perhaps this is the key to the book's final message, that like books which can be re-opened and re-read, 'living ghosts' can be reclaimed by the world of the living, and life can be reaffirmed and celebrated through love, friendship and the arrival of new lives.
A coincidentally appropriate message for recent weeks.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Gardener's Questions No. 2 : Runaway rhubarb
Eighteen degrees in the sun at 10am. So far, a rain free day.
Can anybody tell me what, if anything, I should be doing with my rhubarb, which has shot up four colossal stems and is flowering profusely...?
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