The eye of the storm

Four degrees at 8:30am. We descended amid a storm - howling winds, driving rain, water up to our ankles in places (places that the children joyfully and unerringly found).

But now I am watching the rain dribbling off the nearest piode rooftop and the trees bowing to the wind from the warmth of my kitchen. I have my back to a gently radiant Mathilda, and Allegri's 'Miserere' (the song of angels) pours from the speakers as I quietly consider the oeuvre on the screen before me.

Bliss.

Levavi

Raining, cold, and gloomy. But upstairs in the children's bedroom, it's 25°. That's no mean feat from only 6kg of firewood, which was burned 14 hours ago...I love Mathilda-technology!

Today is Levavi, the first Sunday of Advent. It's the first day of the four-week season of 'expectant waiting' before Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus. Having 'expected' twice, I know what those last four weeks feel like, and the run-up to the modern Christmas celebration, even in Italy, is nothing like it.

Instead of becoming ever slower, ever more intent, ever more attuned to the signs that might presage a joyful arrival, I'm dashed off my feet with unexpected editorial and writing work, preparations for Cannobio's Christmas market next week, and trying to get the little buggers (oops) to sing 'We wish you a merry Christmas' without braining each other with the jingle bells. Oh yes, then there's Christmas shopping on a strict 100€ budget, trying to elicit from M what his 95-year-old grandmother might like and presiding over the childrens' Christmas card-making debacle.

In the middle of everything, last week I had pause for thought - a short moment amid all the non-waiting-like activity. Introducing some Christmas vocabulary to a bunch of 3-6-year-olds, I asked, 'Who/what are we waiting for in the next few weeks?' The immediate reply, which brought sunshine smiles into the classroom, was "Babbo Natale!". Think unison chorus at tops of tiny voices similar to the chorus of kids in Barney. When the excitement provoked by that magical name died down and I was catching a deep breath with which to push on, a little voice piped up. Deborah, aged just 3, with enormous brown eyes and russet cheeks, said, "I'm waiting for Bambino Gésu."

And this is why my children will not be receiving a Ben 10 advent calendar, nor one adorned with the pneumatic teenage breasts and breathtakingly long legs of the Winx, even though they've begged me for weeks now every time they've entered the supermarket and seen them on sale.

Amidst the brouhaha, Mama will be motoring to Ascona, just across the Swiss border in the search for something less Babbo Natale and more Bambino Gèsu.

Thanks to Deborah, aged 3, for the heads up!

Reported conversations No. 16 : parolace

My 3-year-old daughter, B., is fond of telling me she's no longer a little girl but a big girl. In theory, she brushes her own teeth, goes pee-pee on the toilet, and doesn't cry when they try to feed her peas at scuola materna. Ergo, Mama, big girl, not little girl. Please.

This morning :

Mama (laughingly) : "B., you're a little bugger, yes you are, a little bugger."

B. (adamantly) : "No I'm not a little bugger. I'm a BIG bugger..."

B. then repeats herself three times just to see Mama fall off her chair with laughter all over again. And all the better to memorize the new vocabulary.

Dammit, I must be more careful with what falls out of my mouth at seven in the morning. Do you think social services will be knocking on my door because I'm teaching my children English swear words that originated as 16th-century ribaldry among the soldiery of the British Army?

Speaking of ruins

Foggy and damp. Water on the ground suggests it may have rained in the night, although I must have missed it. I do have an excuse, and I only wish the excuse is that I was fast asleep.

After a night of coughing and vomitting, tummy pains and headaches, a night when the Calpol didn't work, the Paracodina ditto and the Ventolin barely, the nurse-(always)-on-duty is a bit frayed around the edges.

Thursday is cancelled.

In ruins

Six degrees at 8:30am. Fog tinged with woodsmoke at daybreak burned off by 10:30, leaving bright sunshine, azure skies and perfect weather for lunch outdoors.

Abandoned stalla, reclaimed by nature

Carmine Superiore

Eight degrees at 8:30am, eighteen by noon. Sunny again.

Monday morning blues

Cold and sunny. Six degrees at 8:30am. The mercury is dropping by fits and starts, millimetre by millimetre...

Eight o'clock ferry, Lago Maggiore

I sometimes wonder who's on that ferry. Whether there is someone who travels every day along to Cannobio, who always, habitually, looks up as Carmine Superiore comes into view through the mist, just as I habitually look down from the mulattierra as the boat passes by.

Perhaps it's the start of a story...

2009 in the garden : the verdict

Yesterday was caressingly warm in the sun, and wet, wet, wet in the garden. Lunch, once again, took place in Carmine's communal dining room, with our backs against the ancient stones of the Chiesa di San Gottardo, and an unparalleled view of Lago Maggiore and the Alps.

It may already be mid-November, and the children may already be counting down to Chrismas, but in the garden there still is plenty going on. Planted yesterday were ten Tulipa altaica, ten Tulipa sylvestris, fifty Tulipa turkestanica, ten Tulipa whittallii and a plantation containing fifty Crocus sativa. Thank-you to J and R for the gift of the bulbs - if the plants survive my tender ministrations, we'll share the saffron.

Cleaned up the remaining summer plants, and there is now a mountain of green chilli peppers drying on the top of Mathilda and a row of green tomatoes ripening on the mantelpiece. There are still a couple of roses battling on, and the pineapple sage is providing some autumn colour, a surprising fuchsia against the greens and yellows. Left among the vegetables are the broccoli and the leeks.

Almost all the less hardy plants have been given a good helping of mulch made up of chicken hay, doo-doo, feathers and leaf mould dolloped straight on at the base. I hope I haven't overdone it...

Judgement on this year's garden? A very good year, despite my having spent less time there than any year before. The weather was fairly good to us - rain and sun in the right proportions - and with the help of two composters and 18 chicken-bottoms, we now have soil that is much better structured and more fertile than that which we inherited.

Everything we planted seems to have done well! I seem to have understood finally what basil wants - warmth and light but not full, shrivelling sunlight - and this year we have enough homemade pesto to keep AJ happy for the whole winter. There is a 5-litre jar of dried red peppers in the pantry, and lots and lots of preserved rhubarb.

So now Mama is looking forward to a couple of cosy evenings with the Faithful Little Woodburner, a glass of Mr Lafarge's best, the seed catalogues and a procession of garden delights : chamomile for a good night's sleep, borage for the bees, lovage for the lettuce, bronze fennel per la bellezza, Good King Henry for the name and dog rose for the cats.

In 2009, how did your garden grow?

Not in wet and windy England

Eight degrees at 8:30am. Cloudy with occasional sunshine. Thinking about the rain-sodden Cumbrians...the best we can do here is a particularly heavy dew.

Sermon

Ten degrees at 8:30am in Cannobio. Cloudy. Dry.

"Will the woman in the red dress please SIT DOWN!"
San Gottardo gives a sermon,
Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore.

HELP! HELP! HELP!

Can anyone among the mothers and teachers out there suggest a well-known English Christmas carol or song that I might possibly be able to teach a bunch of 5-year-olds??? I'm thinking Away in a manger...Am I insane?

On the way

A marvellous, marvellous, heart-lifting day at Lago Maggiore! Sunshine, warmth, drifts of white mist, the blue shapes of the hills and mountains beyond. And the yellows, russets and reds of the dying leaves. This morning AJ said that in his considered five-year-old opinion autumn is the most beautiful season of all. I tend to agree with him.

Sentiero waymarkers overgrown with moss

Via delle Genti between Carmine Superiore and Cannero

Quote of the week No. 31 : the middle ages

Ten degrees at 8:30am. Wet and slippery underfoot, thick strands of fog above our heads, which are down, watching our feet. A fire salamander day.

Recently, I had cause to spend an unhappy sixty minutes contemplating my own mortality. I had been summoned by telephone to the GP's surgery following some tests, and of course, between the call and the appointment, my mind, armed with all sorts of possibilities kindly supplied by NHS Direct, dwelt in the house of mortal terror. My future in that hour before I heard the words "Beh....niente! (oh....nothing!)" shrank to an imagined couple of years, a couple of months, a few weeks, a few days.

After I heard those words, my life grew and extended itself once more into a full four-score years and ten (that's inflation for you), and today I find myself celebrating what may or may not be mid-life. Plenty of people have had plenty of ruefully funny things to say about mid-life, and it's difficult to choose between them, so here's a selection to make my peers laugh...

"Middle age: when you want to see how long your car will last rather than how fast it will go." - Anonymous

"Middle age is when a guy keeps turning lights off for economic rather than romantic reasons."

- Lillian Carter

"Middle age is when you're faced with two temptations and you choose the one that will get you home by nine o'clock."

- Ronald Reagan

and, finally, my personal favourite...

"Middle age is when you're old enough to know better but still young enough to do it."

- Anonymous

Happy Monday! (And don't do anything I wouldn't do!)

Madonna in the clouds

Weather cold, damp and gloomy.

And now for something completely different and wholly unrelated...

Madonna and Child

Piazza S. Ambrogio, Cannobio

Via Sasso Carmine

Seven degrees at 8:30am. Weak sun. Dry.

Via Sasso Carmine, in Cannobio's antico borgo.

Early morning discovery

Again six degrees at 8:30am. The benches dotted along the mulattiera up to Carmine Superiore are pools of warmth in the sunshine. A good excuse to sit for a while and ponder our luck to be living here between the glittering lake and the snowcapped mountains.

Hawk strike on palazzo pollo yesterday. Luckily, the chickens thought with their spinal cords and to a girl fled to the warm darkness of the coop, a place where not many right-thinking hawks will boldly go. "Luckily, no-one was hurt", but there were plenty of ruffled feathers - all over the floor of the run.

So this morning I was out and about in the 6am pre-dawn repairing the protective wiring (having had a rather disturbed night populated with dancing penguins, carnival transvestites on stilts and hawks with scimitar beaks). I found the chicks - like the sprogs I left behind in the house - still sleeping. As the pre-dawn painted the sky behind the mountains and studded it with a single star (God doodling), I worked away with little white widgets, green netting and near-frozen fingers.

Then I made a discovery. The only sound in the gloom was what has to be one of the most soothing sounds in the world (after a night of dancing penguins and carnival transvestites on stilts) : the gentle purr of chickens snoring...

Down to 6° at 8:30am. Clear skies and a cold wind.

Autumn in Piemonte No. 5

Eight degrees at 8:30am and glitteringly sunny. But there's something in the air. People are feeling colder for some reason, judging by the number of people who told me this morning how very cold it is (though it's not). Perhaps it's the snow crowning the peaks all around making people feel shivery...

Slick, wet leaves and prickly chestnut husks on the sentiero up to Carmine.

A booby-trap for bambini.

Quote of the week No. 30: Today in 1989

Ten degrees at midday. Cold, damp, misty. Occasional gentle rainshowers.

"The Wall ... will still exist in 50, even in 100 years."

I guess Erich Honecker, when he pronounced these words on January 19, 1989 was either bluffing or hadn't reckoned with the "many small people who in many small places [did] many small things [and altered] the face of the world" (for source, see here).

Or, to be totally cynical, the surge of people across the Wall in those heady days may not so much have been down to fear of the Stasi or politcal idealism, but more to do with the pulling power of Coca Cola and electronic goods.

Cynicism aside...

On November 9 1989, I was sleeping fairly rough on the floor of a Bangkok guesthouse. This was not my first taste of Asia (I had already the previous year been in Hong Kong and Macao researching a book), but the months that followed took me on a great adventure inspired in part by the more idealistic elements of what was happening back in the heart of Europe.

And I returned home in time to see the German reunification celebrations. A different person. A different Europe. A different world.

So where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?

Autumn in Piemonte No. 4

Rainy, and damp-in-the-bones cold. The snow lies now on even the nearest hilltops. In Carmine, there are several chimneys smoking - it's good to see our friends here so far out of the summer season.

Autumn sunrise over Lago Maggiore.

Autumn in Piemonte No. 3

A magnificent warm-in-the-sun morning. A lovely breakfast-in-the-churchyard morning. A wonderful ... oh dear, mackerel sky morning. An overcast and cold afternoon. A rainy evening.

Three sisters, Verbania Pallanza.

Firewood

Eight degrees at eight-thirty. Weather much as yesterday with the addition of puddles from last night's rain.

"Chop all this into matchsticks by morning, miller's daughter, and you shall be queen."

Where's Rumplestiltskin when you need him?

Remember, remember

Chilly and damp. Overcast.

Remember, remember

The fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot

I see no reason

Why gunpowder and treason

Ever should be forgot.

No vast autumn bonfires here tonight. No magical boxes of Standard Fireworks, all red and purple from Maddens' locked glass cabinet and hidden until now in the garage. No Catherine wheels or Roman candles, no rockets in milk bottles, no volcanoes. No Uncle Geoff and his mates lighting blue touch paper with their cigarettes. No hotdogs or potatoes in their jackets.

No scarecrows in dolls' prams outside the church hall. No "Penny for the Guy".

No frosty night crackling with the smell of gunpowder. No frozen little fingers, woolly hats. No Christmas-coming-soon.

My children don't know this English autumn rite. Don't know the story of Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby and Father Garnet, of the desperate plot they hatched not far from where I was born. Haven't stared, goggle-eyed, when learning of their gruesome end.

I wonder if they will have room in their lives for two histories?

A minute for Madeleine/Dedica un minuto per Madeleine

Nine degrees at 8:30am. Every leaf, every twig, every shaggy dog, every child's hat, every cat's ear, every piode, every petal. Everything is dripping. And in the hills not so far above us, it's not dripping but snowing.

Please take one minute of your day today to watch this video...
Per favore dedica un minuto oggi per guardare questo video...






Learn about the work of CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

Autumn in Piemonte No. 2

A magnificent day! We started with 7° at 8:30 and by 12:30, the temperature had soared to 26°. Dry. Azure skies. Changing colours all around.

First snowfall on the nearest of the Swiss Alps, 14th October.

Seen from Cannobio

The first snow quickly melted away in the sunshine. But today, any peak worth its salt round about is again tipped white.

All Souls

All Souls has turned out grey, misty and dribbling mournful rain.

The children are sick. The cats are sick. The chickens are moulting and definitely look sick. Oh yes, and Mama is sick. And we're now into our fourth week of continuous sickness, and I've counted at least five separate bugs.

When you're considering motherhood, why does no-one ever tell you about autumn term at kindergarten?

Autumn in Piemonte No. 1

This All Saints is grey, overcast and damp, with the early-morning shots of the Sunday hunters muffled by the mist.

Clouds shredded on the teeth of the mountains.

Valle Cannobina, seen from Cannobio.