Hallowe'en story

With all the rain the last few days, the temperature has dropped to seven degrees at 10am (yes, I slept in this Hallowe'en). We're on the slippery slope to winter.

Recently, I had the pleasure of accompanying some Carmine visitors to the office of the Cannobio Carabinieri, those rather scary chappies who habitually tote heavy artillery when stopping housewives for minor traffic violations. We were filing a report of a purse lost or stolen in Milan's Piazza Duomo. Having experienced the caprices and whimsies of authority in such bureaucracy-bedevilled countries as India and Nigeria, I am always in these situations braced for a brush with the stubbornly illogical, if not the downright irrational. But this was a surprisingly trouble-free experience. Our over-armed boy in blue-with-red-stripes was efficient and quick. And he knew his way around his computer. It put me in mind of a time about a month after I moved permanently to Italy when a similar experience wasn’t quite so hassle-free…

[Cue screen-wibbly-wobblies denoting flashback. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.]

Twas a dark and stormy night…

Okay, okay. I know you’ve heard it a million times before, but I make no apology, because it was black as ink and the wind was roaring and the rain was lashing down. And to cap it all, it was Hallowe’en, and in the cemeteries of Piemonte the ancestors danced in the dim light of thousands of flickering candles…

Twas a dark and stormy night. The wind howled and the rain beat down. Everyone had gone home in disgust. The station stood in the middle of a vast lake of inky blackness. The station-master’s office was gaily lit. A beacon, one might say. But no-one did. In the clutches of the gale-force breeze, the light-shade swung in lunatic fashion, sending the shadows running for cover, now here, now there. A bell rang contemptuously. Nobody was picking up. Deserted. An elaborately-egged cap lay on the console where little yellow and red lights flashed.

In the waiting room, the paint, Mussolini mustard, was peeling predictably, and the furniture – a bench, a table, a surprising filing cabinet and a yet more surprising dressing table – lounged about, bewildered, making alarming shadows. A curly-cornered train schedule dated 1998 fluttered in the vicious draught. The one object of hope a payphone. No ordinary payphone. In other words, a payphone that worked, and that took change, as well as cards.

Outside, a shutter banged against a wall as the wind rose to a peak of irritation once more. Rivulets of rainwater careered about, looking for something important, irreplaceable, or preferably both, to ruin. One tall door stood open, splashing light out into the woods, illuminating driving rain, the wild arborial dance and the detritus of the storm – fallen leaves, chestnuts in their prickly shells, cola cans, a soggy tampon applicator. The rectangle of light threw the massive elongated shadow of a figure into the lane. Silent. Brooding. Awful. Think Roswell. Think Bodysnatchers. Think…the Undead.

Suddenly, the storm abated slightly, and at that same moment a battered blue Panda turned into the lane, its weak headlights feeling their way across the storm-wrecked landscape. As the little car approached the station doorway, the diabolical figure began a crazed dance, hopping from foot to foot, waving its arms. The Panda accelerated and plunged into the light, drawing up in front of the dilapidated building with a flourish.

My knight in shining armour unfolded himself from the driving seat, dripping, but grinning, and as he nodded, the bobble on his very silly bobble hat bounced bravely, in true knightly fashion. As he hugged me, I clutched my passport and vowed never to leave it on the train again…

Do you want the whole story? I didn’t think so. Edited highlights? Va bene. ‘Tis a story of two big mistakes, many miles covered in a noble quest, a chilling cliffhanger ending and a vaguely interesting postscript.

Thursday evening. Finalising the packing for a visit to the UK. Early start for the airport tomorrow. M. cooking up a storm downstairs.

Ah.

Purse missing from brief case. I must have left it at the language school in Milan today. Hmmm. No problem. There’s enough time in the morning to whizz across on my way through Milan and pick it up. M. looks worried when I tell him, but we have better things to talk about, so we do.

Do you often wake up with a clear, insistent thought in your head? I do. It’s very annoying, because the thought always insists that it’s right when sometimes it’s wrong. On Friday morning, distressingly early, I wake up thinking I used my purse in a supermarket on my way home last night and I must have left it there. Minor change of plan. No problem. Just whizz by the supermarket on my way through Milan and pick it up.

I plunge on with the day, oblivious to the lurking truth.

We drive to the station and M. calls the supermarket. Please call back later. I call the language school. No it isn’t there.

Meanwhile, M., with his enormous brain, is thinking laterally. Perhaps, cara, you left it on the train last night…I muster my best Italian, and ask the ticket clerk where lost purses go when they’ve been found by nice, honest people on trains. “The end of the line,” she replies.

Here comes Big Mistake No. 1.

There are three places the purse could be, at one of two ends of the same line (Domodossola or Milano Centrale), or at a supermarket in central Milan. M. is adamant that if I left it on the train it will have disappeared, not to the end of the line, but into someone’s pocket. That does it for me. I decide to head for Milan, which is 90 minutes closer to the airport and has a two-in-three chance of being the place I will find my purse.

Off I chuff to Milan, and just for good measure I look in on Assistenza Cliente at Milano Centrale station. I explain I may have lost my purse on the train last night. Could it be here in Milan? No, they say. It’s likely to be languishing in a public dustbin, empty. Or could it be in Domodossola? Ask Assistenza Cliente there. Domodossola is now 105 minutes away, could you call them to check for me? Per favore…Per pretty piacere…

No. No way. No how. Not on your nelly. My green uniform is far too smart for me to do anything even remotely approximating being helpful.

Oh. Okay. Thanks for assisting this cliente.

Meanwhile, M. (in between doing some very important work – i.e. that for which he is paid) has been calling lots of interesting people. The supermarket (twice), Assistenza Cliente in Domodossola three times, and, finally, the Polizia Ferroviale.

I call M.

Go to binario uno, Domodossola. They have your purse, your passport, your money, and your WHSmith vouchers, and what they are describing as a rather frightening number of receipts for Snickers bars, all safe and sound. Can you get there and to the airport in time for your flight? When you get back, can we talk about the Snickers bars receipts, please?

No. On both counts.

Here comes Big Mistake No. 2. I believe we are living in a unified Europe. No barriers to trade. No borders. I have swapped the opportunity for all those very pleasing stamps in the old passport for a concept called Freedom of Movement. And I’m willing to head out to the airport without a passport on the basis of this belief, and under the pressure of time. I whip out my flight confirmation. It says I need ID to travel and suggests, “...a driver’s licence, student card (student card??? even if I went to the LSE???), citizen’s ID card, etc”. I have my new-style provisional driver’s licence complete with gruesome pic. I have my birth certificate, marriage certificate and my decree absolute. I can prove I am me – I was born me. I became someone else for a time, but I’m me again (but still using someone else’s name). I turn my face towards the airport, believing the European dream. The bus takes an hour, and if they say yes, I’ll be able to catch my flight with an hour to spare. This is my last-ditch attempt to catch…that…plane.

“Buongiorno. Erm…Possiamo parlare Inglese? I’m travelling to the UK today (gotta stay positive). Can I present my driver’s licence (decree absolute, marriage certificate, birth certificate and a few Snickers bars receipts from the bottom of my handbag) as ID, please?” The well-groomed airport information dolly screws up her dainty face, trying valiantly for apology. She manages a rather sludgy mixture of pity and disdain.

Okay. So I’m not travelling to the UK today, then.

I call M. I lose it on the phone. I almost burst into tears. I feel ashamed. I feel rejected. I feel a wide variety of childish emotions within a very short space of time. Most of all, I want a very important person to come along and say, “Never fear, we know you, you’re our Louise, and of course you can come into the UK without your passport. After all, England has missed you and we want you back!” Only when you’re four do things like that happen.

All English-speaking eyes are on me. They’ve overheard every word of my telephone call to M., and sensed my imminent breakdown in the rising pitch of my voice. They see stress bordering on collapse in my body language. I realise that they are, every single one of them, avid fans of the television programme Airport, and are dying to see me get angry, stamp my feet, swear outrageously, deck the rep, burst into tears and/or threaten to sue. Sue who? Someone, anyone. It’s a form of catharsis. For them. Not for me.

To cap it all, I have precisely €11. Somewhere along the line - don’t ask me when or where - I have lost a €50 euro note and my phonecard is running out of credits.

The driver of the bus back to Milan (€6 and another hour) is puzzled. Did I arrive from Genova? No? Then they must have lost your luggage! The last flight-full arrived almost two hours ago. What have you been doing all that time? No. I haven’t been anywhere. But not for want of trying (I bite my lip and look out of the window). And I surprise myself by launching into my story in halting Italian as he drives me, the only passenger on a 72-seater luxury coach, back to Milano Centrale. He asks questions, I understand them and answer them. He waxes philosophical about loss of possessions, and then he waxes political about the EU. We have a pretty decent time flying along the autostrada at an illegal speed.

Funny, I learned more new vocabulary that day than in all the previous six weeks since my formal arrival in Italy put together. Including the words for ‘purse’, ‘wallet’, ‘left on the train’, ‘without passport’, ‘pretty please’, ‘when is the next bus to’, and ‘oh bloody hell’.

Back at Milano Centrale, I hurtle from platform to platform trying to find the next train to the Swiss border (two hours away) for which my return ticket is valid. No super-duper CISalpino very expensive but very fast train for me. No cash to pay the supplement to the standard ticket.

In what seems like a lifetime hanging around amid the trash and the confusion of Milano Centrale, I’m on a train to Domodossola, the very edge of Italian society. It’s about seven-thirty and the storm has begun. The darkness descends as I pass through the blighted Gallarate, and the filth of the weather prevents me from drawing inspiration from the beauty of Lago Maggiore at night. I make an effort to emulate what I imagine to be Buddhist impassivity. When my luggage falls off the ludicrously minute luggage rack, hitting me on the head, I give up even impassivity and pretend to be unconscious.

Finally – finally - I arrive at the end of the line, having passed through my home station of Verbania, resisting the urge to jump off and … just … go … home. Here in Domodossola I know that the train I have arrived on will shortly catapult itself back down the line to Milan, stopping, with a bit of luck, at Verbania. The hope that I might be on it when the rubber is released is very strong. I crash into the office of the Polizia Ferroviale and announce myself in a voice breathless with stress. I instantly have the attention of two blue-uniformed officers. One male, one female, white hip holsters, white caps. Both are very pleased to be able to prove to me that Italy has its fair share of honest citizens, to counteract tourist horror stories of Piazza Duomo muggings perpetrated by three-year-old illegal-immigrant thugs from somewhere mysterious in extra-Community Europe.

My purse is presented, and found to contain every last Snickers receipt. I turn for the door, clutching it, but just as I am about to escape, an iron claw grips my shoulder. I sense telepathically that the impulse to move on swiftly to a half-nelson is experienced, but the officer gets a hold of herself. They have to write a report.

And they have to know one important thing. What ... are these? I find myself spending the next ten minutes trying to explain how WHSmith gift vouchers work.

My explanation having been received with uncertain nods, I lapse into silence. As the minutes tick past I start to fret. My fixed smile of unflinching gratitude starts to slip as these fine officers prove, not only how honest Italian citizens can be, but also that there is an urgent need in its courageous (not to mention well-dressed) police force for some wordprocessing training. Cut and paste…erm cut and paste?

After several tries at cut and paste, I quietly explode out of the chair, politely excuse myself and run off to buy a ticket for the imminently departing train. I have a hurried and not quite conclusive conversation at the sportello about where the train on binario uno is stopping. I think he says it is stopping at Verbania.

Back in the police station, our two representatives of Law and Order on the Railways have solved the problem. Officer No. 1 is poised with scissors and Pritt-Stick, and grabs document No. 2 as it comes off the printer. Officer No. 2 is printing out document No. 1 with space to paste document No. 2 (a minutely-detailed list of the contents of my purse) in place. After an excruciating 10 minutes of trial and error (not enough space on document No. 1 to paste in document No. 2), they have it sussed, and proceed into a disagreement about how many copies they need, which ones I should and shouldn’t sign, and where, and where the official police stamp should go. Not to mention where the hell the official police stamp is.

Eventually, half out of the door, and with my luggage poised, I scribble my name three times. I shout my thanks and scarper. The train doors close and I sink back into the seat in relief.

But what’s this? The train seems to be going in the wrong direction! Through the condensation and streaming rain I think I see a succession of dimly lit minor stations, none of them recognizable as somewhere I want to go. I look around, and realise with Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-type horror that the train is deserted. Not even a solitary Friday-night reveller on his way to the bright lights of Verbania. Not even a conductor to practice my burgeoning Italian skills on.

Finally, we stop at a station called Mergozzo. Oh yes, that lovely sunlit corner with its own lake and pizza at mezzogiorno. I look for evidence of sophistication (a bar selling a phone card and a populated suburban locale are desirable attributes at this stage), and, seeing blurry lights, and hearing a telephone ringing, I step off the train.

“Oh bugger!” I think, as the train steams off (water evaporating from its roof), leaving me in driving rain to cross the tracks at track level, a sure sign that I have alighted at Nowhere City.

“Oh Christ,” I mutter, as I realise there is no bar selling phone cards.

“Oh f*&!!!!, I’ve done it again,” I shout, allowing myself a stamp of the foot (knowing there are no Airport fans around to snigger at my loss of cool), as I see that I’m in the middle of nowhere, seemingly with no method of communication, no-one to ask for help, and on a dark and stormy Hallowe’en night. I’m tired, hungry, cold and broke. I should be snuggled up in front of the TV in my Middle-England hometown sniggering at frustrated tourists growing red in the face on tonight’s episode of Airport.

Then I look more closely at the payphone and exhale in a controlled manner, but with relief. My knight and his charger are just a phone call away, and all they have to do is find me…

Postscript :

I lied.

This story has not one but two postscripts.

The first relates to the happy finding of my purse and my passport. The nameless conductor of my train home that fateful Thursday night was too modest to allow himself to be named and therefore thanked (in very bad Italian). I’d like to thank him now.

And second, M. did me service above and beyond the call of duty that day. And with the patience of a saint. He drove me to the station (and then drove back). He called everyone he could think of and practised his Italian on them, enduring stoically many compliments on exactly how good his Italian is. He coped with a series of progressively more hysterical phone calls from me throughout the day, remaining, to all intents and purposes, calm and practical. He cancelled flights. He calmed my mother. He arranged an alternative flight. He left his warm, cosy fireside and plunged headlong into the raging storm, risking life and limb on a lakeside road already flooded and sometimes prone to landslides, on Hallowe’en, when all Christian men should be indoors, to come and rescue me at an unknown location.

As we trudged back up the Hill to Carmine in torrential rain, sometimes wading ankle-deep in mud, much slapped around the face by angry squalls, and surrounded by the drifting ghosts of Carmine’s lingering past, he was rewarded by a magnificent sight. That year’s stag, which we had thought just a myth among the local population, appeared amid the driving rain and the ghostly light, pausing momentarily to allow M. alone a privileged view, before turning away majestically into the trees.

Reward indeed.

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

Quote of the week No. 4 : On rain

Roger Miller (1936-1992), American singer and songwriter :

"Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet."

I'm not doing either. I'm staying indoors! It's cold and rainy. Storms last night have left snow on the mountain-tops across in Lombardy, and all roads in central Switzerland are reported to be blocked.

Morning story

As far as I can see in the inky gloom of 6:30am, it's raining. It's been raining, hard, for about the past 18 hours. Out there, somewhere close by, the waterfalls are thundering. Where are the galoshes?

Like all families with children, and plenty without, mornings in the house on The Rock are pretty tightly scheduled. Everyone has their part to play, and if someone misses his cue there's a problem, and it's usually Mama's. Problem.

In those two short hours between the children stumbling out of their beds and AJ blowing kisses to his Mama from his maestra's side, the breadth of Mama's versatility is breathtaking (at least to herself). Could her former employers really have understood just how many roles she is capable of performing? And all for just bed and board. A bargain.

Go on, be a fly on the wall...

"Morning guys! Time to wake up now!" -- Early Morning Wake-Up Call
"AJ, you can't wear those trousers - they're two sizes too small and they're pink." -- Sartorial Advisor
"Ouch! Mama kiss better." -- Mystical Healer
"Oh, yes, what a lovely picture you made yesterday. It's very...black." -- Art Critic
"Now which DVD would you like to watch this morning?" -- Entertainments Manager
"No, not that DVD. It's Mama's." -- Film Censor
"Mama, it's a stinker!" -- Personal Hygiene Consultant
"Get down off those curtains!" -- Kitten Wrangler
"I want juice, not milk!" -- Bar Tender
"Mama, it's a stinker!" -- Cleaning Lady
"Breakfast!" -- Short Order Cook
"Darling, where's that thingummyjig I had yesterday?" -- Miraculous Finder of Miscellaneous Objects
"Does anybody know where that postcard of Sandend is?" -- Scorpion-catcher
"Ouch, ouch. OUCH!!!" -- Hairdresser
"Now, guys, stop screaming at each other! Who had the scissors first?" -- Peacekeeper
"Open wide and say 'aaaah'. Please." -- Dental Hygienist
"Mama, it's a stinker!" -- Laundress
"Everyone out of the door and turn left. Please." Pathfinder and Drill Sergeant
"What do you mean you don't want to walk? Walking's good for you!" -- Fitness Consultant
"Oh do stop dawdling! I'm sure the fire salamander will still be here when we come back." -- Time-keeper and Teller of Little White Lies
"Stop! Look right, look left, look right again. All clear? Now you can cross." -- Last Bastion of the Tufty Club
"All aboard the Ninky-Nonk*!" -- Chauffeur and Cultural Reinforcer
"Say grazie to the crossing guard!" -- Life Coach
"Say buongiorno to the maestra!" -- Language Tutor
"Mama, it's a stinker!" -- Olympic 100-metre Sprinter

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

Book Notes No. 15 : God is Dead, Ron Currie

Still holding steady at twelve degrees at 9am. Perhaps the thermometer's stuck. Or perhaps the temperature's actually dropped but since the weekend we're doing everything an hour later... Today, in the damp and the drizzle you can't move out there for fire salamanders.

To Marco Gabbani, Cannobio's most glamorous photographer. Not to commission a portrait (I doubt even a photographer of Signor Gabbani's considerable skill could create an image of me that would appease my ageing vanity), but a handmade picture frame.

And not a cheap one either. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a virtually penniless housewife, and if I ever do have any readies I have plenty of other things to do with it, like, perhaps, buy a sweater that doesn't have a hole in it, or a pair of heeled shoes that fit (my feet spread in pregnancy rendering my entire pre-motherhood collection fit only for the kids' dressing-up box). I don't have money to throw around. But the work of art for which Signor Gabbani's framers will create a stunning cornice is so magnificent that I've thrown thrift out of the window. The picture is a masterpiece. The light and shade are more subtle than a Rembrandt, the lines more sophisticated than a Durer, the mythological resonance equal to a Bosch, the political perspicacity exceeded only by a Picasso. The artist is a genius in the making, with a career of major proportions ahead of him.

Have you twigged it yet? This wasn't any old picture; it was made on my own kitchen table by that idol of my middle years, AJ (aged 4). And American author Ron Currie has something to say about mothers like me...

God Is Dead starts from the startling scenario that God has manifested Himself on Earth once more. But in order to carry out His mission, He has been born as a Sudanese woman, and Sudanese women not being known for their longevity, is soon dead again. This information becomes common knowledge through the wild dogs that eat her rotting body as it lies in the scrub and thus acquire a part of the godhead. The following chapters are a collection of episodes in which we see some of the effects that the certain knowledge of God's demise might have on society at large. Priests and high school students commit suicide, there is a wave of civil unrest and people go to war over ideas.

Some look for other gods to worship. Some idolise their teenage loves, sending avalanches of text messages that never receive a reply. Some find new gods in their own children. In the worst cases, child-worshippers are sent for therapy - "Say after me, my child is not a genius, my child is happily average...My child is not Miss World 2020, she is just cute...". Have you ever tried disillusioning a doting mother? Curry's 'Child Adulation Prevention Psychiatrists' come in for similar amounts of abuse.

Currie's book is imaginative, taut and brittle, with an unmistakeably American voice in the tradition of Hemmingway. There's not a word wrong here, and every word works hard. The post-Christian world evoked is not as you would imagine, chaotic, desperate, apocalyptic. People adjust. And what's most fascinating, perhaps, and where Currie is at his most darkly funny is when he's making it clear that this godless future is, in fact, our present, just with bells on.

So, while you read the book - which I recommend - perhaps I'll try to find a way to avoid telling M. how much I paid for the frame.

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

Buy this book from Amazon now

Bad Alvaneu

Monday morning. Twelve degrees at 9am. Drizzling and misty. Ho-hum.


The water is warm, its champagne bubbles gently massaging and relaxing. The air is cold and crisp. The sun glitters through the trees.

The mist rises off the water and drifts my cares away. If only the kids' screams of delight weren't ricocheting off the mountains as they try to drown each other...

Saturday's be-kind-to-yourself outing was to Bad Alvaneu, an unassuming little sulphur spa in the Albula Valley in the Swiss canton of Grigiona/Graubunden, only 21/2 hours away from Cannobio. The small centre, attached to a very much larger 18-hole golf course, has both indoor and outdoor pools (34 degrees), saunas, Turkish baths and solarium. Nothing fancy. Just everything you need to see off that 'flu that's been hanging around for the last week.

Children (even mine) are very welcome between the hours of midday and 6pm. And just to show you how welcome they are, the Very Sensible Swiss sell swim nappies on the spot just in case you've forgotten. And if they're under 6 they can go in for free, making this a particularly affordable afternoon.

Info : http://www.bad-alvaneu.ch/

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

Today in Cannobio

Cannobio's lakefront church, Santa Pieta. On Sundays, Cannobio's lungolago is swarming with people eager to enjoy its famous Sunday market. We, however, are somewhere entirely different, at an altitude of 1200m, where the dust mite are less numerous. Here, the 8am temperature as the sun slants across the mountain tops, is a shivery two degrees and there is frost sparkling on the meadows.

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

And now for something completely different...

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Door with hops

Door with hops, Carmine Inferiore

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

Today in 2007, No. 1

Fourteen degrees at 9:30am. A bright sunny day. Rain overnight, but not so's you'd notice.

Today in 2007, the woods were burning...

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

Carmine creepy crawlies

Twelve degrees at 9am. Overcast, with the not-so-distant Alps at the top end of the lake obscured in autumn mist once more. Rain on its way.

In India, too many years ago, I once stayed with an ageing couple whose only sanitation was a breeze block khazi plastered with cow dung. The mechanism was fairly primitive, involving as it did a metal cup of water and the active participation of one very large, very pregnant pink pig (and later her eight piglets).

I very quickly got used to the pig, and eventually felt for her an affection born of enforced intimacy, but something I couldn't ever quite get used to about this particular toilet experience was the presence of dozens of small, almost transparent scorpions on the walls of the khazi.

The inside walls.

About four inches from me. On all sides. In the depths of night, with only a kerosene lamp for guidance.

In order to stem the rising creepy-crawly hysteria at toilet time, I would venture outside with a nod to the pig, chanting inside my head the words, "When a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, the girl's gotta do it." And so I did. Do it. In the full knowledge that just one of these little critters could put me in hospital. Or worse.
So it should come as no surprise to my husband and family (although it does seem to) that I have no problem with the latest infestation to hit our house.

You guessed it.

It seems to be scorpion season in Carmine. I'm evicting an average of two a day, using the old glass-and-postcard method. They're everywhere : feigning dead under the firewood, clawing their way up the curtains, dawdling in the door jambs. I even found one doing a surprisingly accomplished front crawl in the washing-up water the other day.

None in my boots. As yet.


But these are not the tiny transparent demons that will give you a nasty that sends you into the netherworld. These are 'orrible big fellas of about one inch plus, and they're black as coal and lazy to boot. And contrary to what you'd think, I'm told that their sting is on a par with the humble wasp.
No problem.
Oh, but there is a problem. When I've got them in my upturned glass, hemmed in with a postcard of printmaker Colin Moore's limited edition linoprint 'Sandend', what then? Where do I put them?
Well, that's for me to know and you to find out. All I can say, people, is ... be very, very nice to me...

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

The Sala Natale Mystery

Holding steady at 12 degrees at the 9am time-point. Cloudy and feeling damp.

In Carmine, what goes up doesn't necessarily always come down.

This is the case in particular with bulky stuff such as furniture, which is generally used until it falls apart and then burned. Two alternative solutions occur to me.

First, when you have decided you don't like the furniture and appliances you bought in your first flush of home-ownership-delight, you can always put the house on the market complete with all the bits and pieces that have come to embarrass you or that don't work so well any more.

A less drastic option would be to give away the bits and pieces you don't want to an unsuspecting neighbour who is too polite to say no, and they will either knock themselves out renovating them or take them down the hill to the dumpsters for you. (Only kidding, guys!)

When we bought the house we have now almost finished renovating (after only six years, two children, three (make that five) cats, gallons of chicken soup, etc., etc.,) we were surprised to find it still mostly furnished when we moved in. One bedroom was completely furnished, and the chest full of immaculately-stored linen. So accomplished were the previous owner's linen-storing abilities that when we moved in after the house had been uninhabited for more than 10 years (and this particular room for much, much longer), we would have been able to make up a bed with snowy-white handmade sheets and hand-embroidered pillow cases without needing to wash them first.

Last weekend, we finally decided to move the wardrobe and chest from this suite from the bedroom where they had stood for so long into our dressing room. We needed the storage there, and the new stufa in ceramica meant that the bedroom no longer worked with the old furniture in it. While moving them we found on the back of both items stickers with the following words : Signor Sala (or Fala) Natale, Corso Vittorio Emanuele 118, Cannobio.

"Who is Signor Sala (or Fala)?", we asked ourselves. The previous owners of this part of the house were named Zaccheo (a pretty illustrious name in these parts, I understand). Could Signor Sala (or Fala) have been the owner of a shop that commissioned furniture from local cabinet-makers? Could he have been a previous owner of this furniture, who sold it to the Zaccheos? Or am I completely wrong to think this is a person's name? Exactly how many generations does this furniture go back?

Answers to these questions could perhaps help us to date the furniture, not for reasons of avarice, but simply for reasons of social history. A quick shufti around the local second-hand stores reveals that plenty of furniture in this style was made (and nobody except us wants it any more). It's very square and quite stolid, but with surprisingly lovely ironwork reminiscent, in my mind at least, of the art nouveau style. The monumental wardrobe, which we had to un-wedge from under the ceiling beams, came with a chest-of-drawers, a bed and two bedside cabinets, and they must have been hell to get up here in the days before the helicopter was invented.

Anybody? Any ideas?

Arte y Pico award...

Twelve degrees at 9am this morning. Overcast and damp, with a wind that's shaking the leaves off the trees in gusts, to little B's delight.

As you can't fail to have noticed this Monday morning, in the right-hand sidebar is an award! And just so that you can't possibly miss it, I've duplicated it on the left. Thank-you to Jacqueline Smith, author of the site Jack Mandora, A Book Lover's Nook, for nominating me. Jacqueline's site is very well-written, and often fascinating. It has opened my eyes to Jamaican literature, a branch of writing I now know is too rich, too interesting to miss. Jacqueline, your praise and input on many occasions are very much appreciated.

The award originated here and the term Arte Y Pico, according to its originator, "translates into a wonderful phrase in Mexico, 'lo maximo'... It will never find its counterpart in English, but if it HAD to, it would be something like, Wow. The Best Art. Over the top." The award singles out sites that demonstrate unusual creativity and skill (Louise buffs nails on sweater with a sickeningly self-satisfied smile).

I'm told that, in the tradition of all good chain letters, I must recommend five other sites for the award. On my list, I have two artists, one writer and one VERY FAMOUS PERSON. I'm still thinking about number five...

So here goes, in no particular order :

First : Jazmin Velasco's blog, 'Tlalocland News'. Jazmin is an accomplished artist, illustrator and printmaker, originally from Mexico, and now living and working in London. Her blog is accompanied by a website showcasing her work : www.jazminvelasco.com/.

Second : Daniel Eubank's blog, which relates her artistic adventures as expedition artist for the Phoenicia Expedition. A Californian artist fast hitting the spotlight with her trademark paintings of water, you can see her work at www.danielleeubank.com/.

Third : 'The Leaping Thought', written by the beautiful Milena, who is based in Texas, USA. It's thoughtful, well-written and worth a visit any day of the week.

And finally : To Paulo Coelho, whose blog is full of fascinating things to think about, particularly on the subject of intellectual property and the internet, and for making my day by visiting my site a couple of weeks ago.

Quote of the week No. 3 : On cleaning

This morning, as the children stomp off in their wellies to Cannobio's third ever livestock fair (in search of a breeder of chickens with animal-welfare principles), the lightening skies overhead are blue, but there are still traces of low-lying cloud in the valleys.


Phyllis Diller (b. 1917), American comedienne and spokeswoman of sorts for all downtrodden housewives :

"Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing".

Cackling with the laughter of recognition, I immediately sent this to all my ex-executive house-mother friends, with the addition of "while the builders still have your keys, you're trying to house-train two wild-born kittens and there's a ghiro hibernating in a box on what would be the coffee table if you had time for coffee."

Eleven degrees at 9am. Rain overnight, and this morning Carmine is floating in autumn mists.

Calendar girl

Thirteen degrees at 9am, with bright sunshine and a fairly strong wind. Still doing the salita in a sleeveless T-shirt.

In Cannobio it's calendar time again, and the first to make it onto the pavement this year is the Sara Varone Calendar 2009. Ms Varone's talents (terrifyingly large breasts, a look reminiscent of Sophia Loren and a degree in psychology, in that order) have brought her a job hosting a Sunday morning chat show called 'Buona Domenica', which vies with the Vatican for air time. And I understand the sometime model is fast becoming an Italian icon.

Despite the fact that, as Ms Varone's publicists are at pains to point out, she is a very intelligent and successful woman who cares about people, and so should be a role model for my 2-year-old daughter, I'd rather her (un-)dress sense was displayed on the top shelf and not at toddler height...

PS Just rescued a baby ghiro from the baby cats, and he's now sleeping off the terror in a nice top-security cardboard box. Anyone know what I should give it to eat when/if it wakes up?

Fifteen degrees at 9am. The mountains across the lake are lost in grey mist. And without the sun, it was still fifteen degrees at 1pm. The times they are a-changin'.

The old osteria

The old osteria, Carmine Inferiore, looking undeniably Mediterranean in the early morning sun.

Motherhoods means...No. 8

Motherhood (in Carmine) means...going to bed with the prayer that someone will leave a fully-trained, child-friendly, cat-loving, hyper-intelligent English shepherd at my door.

Getting these children up and down the hill four times a day is like herding cats.


PS Fourteen degrees again at 9am. But there's a mackerel sky, so perhaps shortly I'll be exercising a greater part of my weather-description powers than of late (now how many words are there in the English language for 'rain'?).

Book Notes No. 14 : The Warrior's Princess, Barbara Erskine

Fourteen degrees at 9am. Overcast, warm and still. But with the sun gently warming its way through by midday.

I'm big into composting.

Any reasonably hygienic organic waste from this house is collected in a non-too-chic green bucket and periodically hauled to the garden where stand two monster composters both humming with digestion activity. Less trash to take down the hill to the dumpsters and less peat compost to haul up on my back in non-biodegradable plastic bags that I then have to take down the hill to the dumpsters...

In order to make decent compost, I've found you need plenty of variety in the raw materials : lots of rich kitchen waste, a touch of wood ash, a layer of grass clippings, with some chicken feathers and newspaper for structure.

As with composting, so with reading. Every reader's diet benefits from a combination of the very rich - writing that makes you work hard, writing that makes new connections, that defamiliarizes the everyday and shows it to the reader in a fresh new light - with the 'structural' - a damn good story that engages the senses, conjures complex and vivid images and forces you to read to the very end.

Calvino vs Gaiman
Rushdie vs Gregory
Vargas Llosa vs Erskine...


Barbara Erskine's latest book, The Warrior's Princess is one more on the conveyor belt of voices-calling-from-ancient-history stories that has done her and her agent well for many years now. Her first novel, Lady of Hay, was a runaway success (I was one of millions of immediate fans), and all her work has followed similar themes : characters from the past making use of modern-day people to tell their own stories or to play out old vendettas.

In this novel, the heroine is victim of an attack perpertrated by someone she suspects she knows well. When she leaves her home in London to stay with her sister in a lonely cottage in the Welsh border country, the looked-for peace is disturbed by the voice of a mysterious child calling for help. The search for the child's story ranges from Wales to Rome and back again, threatening the heroine's life, friendships and sanity, and drawing into danger all those who seek to help her.

This is a hefty novel of about 550 pages, and a good, meaty read with plenty of ancient-Rome detail and some really chilling moments. Lots of visions, scrying, tarot-reading, hauntings, miraculous healing and talking to the long-dead. Great stuff, but after 10 novels along similar lines, I'm starting to feel that Erskine needs a new idea.

I was also fairly disappointed by the fragmentary denouement, although I have to admit to reading it while nursing a sick child through the worst of a wheezing fit, so perhaps I'm not the best judge. That being said, the sudden appearance of a character from a previous novel, and, worse still, the introduction of a new bad-guy at the last minute is to me a sure sign that time and the publisher's patience may have been running out on this particular title.

Verdict? Borrow it from the library and enjoy. Even chicken feathers and newspaper contribute to good compost.

In memoriam

Warm, dry and sunny. Great weather.

Today, the bells of San Gottardo rang to call friends and neighbours to a memorial mass for our lost friend, Bruno Albertella.

It was well done.

Quote of the week No. 2 : Beauty and youth

"Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

Franz Kafka, who I think might have liked Carmine.


PS : fourteen degrees at 9am, and back up to 28 at midday.

Fourteen degrees at 9am. A glistening, bright and sunny morning, with the martins swooping around the belfry and yellow-and-red leaves dropping from the trees.

Twenty-eight degrees at 3pm.

Mama gets a faint sense of deja-vu

Fourteen degrees at 8:30am. Dull and raining. Spotted the first fire salamanders of the year this morning. They'd better move a little bit faster. Carmine now has 18 cats, all kicking around like truanting adolescents, looking for some diversion.

I've been rather fire-salamander-sluggish with my posts in the last couple of days, partly because the whole family has been struck down with a virus, and partly because I've been dashing away, not with the smoothing iron, but with the aspirotutto, a wet rag, a mop and bucket (with a hole in it), a broom, and a dustpan and brush. And with more than a faint sense of deja-vu.

Yes, the builders have been back, and when they finally dropped the house keys into my hand and called "ciao" after a fortnight beavering away, they left behind them a thin film of white dust. Everywhere. As builders will. As builders always do, despite their greatest care and attention.

I'm not complaining though. (No, really.) For this was a slick operation. An in-depth reccie a couple of months ago, followed by a meticulous computer-aided planning phase, and one Saturday all the materials swung up the hill in Franco's motocariola, a kind of motorised wheelbarrow with caterpillar tracks. The following Monday, three chaps were knocking on the door and two weeks after that they were heaving their equipment down the hill, following a job well done.

And we have been left with two new stufe in ceramica (or stufe in maiolica or kachelofen with an umlaut, or stufe alpiker, take your pick). They have white rustico coats and antique piode tops (sourced from a dusty pile discovered in the corner of the cellar). Two new companions to our old friend Mathilda. As yet unnamed, they will, we hope, handle the night shift, warming both the children's winter bedroom and the bedroom closest to it. When they're dry, that is...

Thanks to Franco for his Saturday and his patience. And to architect Lino Ferro and his team for great stufa-building, for dowsing the bedroom (where can I get one of those rods, by the way?), and for some interesting insights into the making of the church frescoes. It was a pleasure to have them here (the fumistas, not the frescoes), and they are heartily recommended. If you like the technology, but prefer a modular, rather than a built-in, version, see here.

Could this be the end of the builder's dust and undressing at high speed?

First the good news, then the bad news

Eleven degrees at 9am. Patchy sunshine.

I hear that last week's opening day of the wild boar season brought a magnificent beast, reportedly 100kg, and I believe taken not far from Carmine's southern ramparts. Difficult to say if this was our culprit and it's probable that more than one perpetrator was involved, but this could easily have been our ringleader (click here if you don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about). Whether it was him or not, 100kg is a whole lot of crackling.

I also hear that the local tv station has reported a shocking accident involving a hunter and a local man out in the woods looking for porcini (it's the mushroom season too). This is how it went : boar-hunter stalks prey, boar-hunter hears snuffling in undergrowth, boar-hunter lets off a shot, mushroom-hunter is killed.

We'll be avoiding the woods on Wednesdays and Sundays, hunting days, from now on.

Autum colours

Twelve degrees at 9am; 24 degrees in the stunningly beautiful sunshine on the churchyard at midday. The visitors picnicking there have their shirts off.

The autumn colours are coming along nicely.

Cold, breezy, sunny, bright.

Cannobio doorway

Twelve degrees at 8am. Mostly cloudy. Signs of a little rain overnight.

Doorway, Cannobio borgo vecchio

Guardian Angels

Fourteen degrees at 10am. Overcast and humid. Could be rain on the way.

B is going through a phase. An angel phase. Every person, every statue, every picture of a woman in a flowing frock is an angel :

"Look, look, Mama. A aaaayngel." Smiles angelically, curls lit from behind like a halo, little finger outstretched.

The white marble Madonna that stands outside the scuola materna...

"Look, look, Mama. A aaaayngel."

The nameless model in a Dior ad...

"Look, look, Mama. A aaaayngel."

The bride of a couple of weeks ago...


"Look, look, Mama. A aaaayngel."

Renee Zellwiger on Primrose Hill in a dirndle doing a takeoff of The Sound of Music at the start of Bridget Jones No. 2...

"Look, look, Mama. A angel, a angel, a angel!"

(Although with that one I think my little angel might be developing a very English sense of irony.)

Today I'm expecting many more sightings, because today is SS. Angeli Custodi, the day devoted to the angels who are kept busy by children old and young, guarding and guiding them along life's narrow path. And I for one am going to be saying a big thank-you. Because even in such very short lives, there have been several heart-stopping moments - a car speeding towards an oblivious AJ, B out of reach with her feet dangling out of the first-floor kitchen window - when I swear I heard the beating of wings.