Underneath the arches

The old-world arches and lanterns of Cannobio's lakefront galleria.

Getting on for 30° in the sun at midday. Bright. Tranquil. A gentle rustling breeze. Carmine at its best.

PS Happy birthday to Il Cavaliere!

Rain comin'

A veil of rain advances across Lago Maggiore.

The view is from Carmine Superiore.

Of clementines and chestnuts

Warm and sunny with not a cloud in the azure-blue. High of about 25°.

Today is the birthday of American journalist Clementine Paddleford (1900-1967). For the sheer Victorian exuberance of his name alone he should be famous. I also quite like this sentiment:

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."

It should be inscribed in gold lettering on special greetings cards, to be sent to offspring who show signs of believing that they deserve to be owners of a.) a horse, b.) a car, c.) other, but that they need do nothing to contribute to their purchase or upkeep.

Today is also the second birthday of A View from Carmine Superiore. To celebrate, last night we had our first chestnut roast of the season. The children collected chestnuts fallen from our own tree, and we roasted them over a raging fire made of wood cut and hauled with our own hands. They were followed down the hatch with wild boar salami, and for dessert we tasted M's delicious chestnut-flour chocolate torte.



Autumn is here!

Book Notes No. 26 : Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho

Overcast and sultry at nine o'clock. Storm at three o'clock.

Once upon a time, I had a very good friend. He was a blond-haired, green-eyed Sabra, and back in the 80s we had many adventures together in lots of strange and exotic places. He was full of philosophy, and wanted above all to make people think about their lives. About their lives ticking away. He would ask virtual strangers (and prospective co-adventurers), "Tell me, if you had only three months to live, what would you do?" The answers almost invariably involved a 'dream', the thing each person wanted to do most - to travel the world, to see Pavarotti at the Opera House, to meet the Pope, to quit work and paint, to spend every minute with their children. And his invariable answer was : "You could die tomorrow. What are you waiting for? Do it now!" A variation of that familiar saying, inexplicably ascribed to James Dean, "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today."

Having caught a fleeting glimpse of the Grim Reaper grinning at me from the door of the A&E only a couple of months before I met the Sabra, his question struck me at the time as particularly pertinent.

In his 1999 book, Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho's heroine doesn't want to live forever. In fact her ennui, her boredom with herself, the lack of passion and meaning in her life is so great that she takes an overdose in a genuine attempt at suicide. She wakes up, not in heaven or hell, but in the local psychiatric hospital, where the vaguely sinister Dr Igor is experimenting with various more-or-less questionable methods of controlling and/or curing psychosis.

She wakes up, though, with only a few days to live.

This is the story of Veronika's (re-)discovery of life, of living life fully, and of her ultimate rejection of death. In the final analysis, Dr Igor's cure for Veronika's malaise is awareness of death. Living as if we are immortal can spell death-in-life. Walking hand-in-hand with death, says Coelho, we become more alive to the business of living and living well.

It's a simply-written story and one that's translated without fault. It touches not only on how we can live today as fully as possible, but also on the nature of madness, and, at the same time, on the terrible acts perpetrated upon some people (the author, it seems, included) in the name of a cure.

Vintage Coelho. And it makes me wonder whether the green-eyed Sabra ever met the scribbling Carioca on his travels, and if he did, what the Carioca's answer was...

Twenty-eight degrees at 4pm again today. Good weather holding. Time to plant tulips...

Who is Silvia, what is she...?

Yesterday at 4pm I clocked 28° and bright sunshine. It was a day for the great outdoors - by which I mean working in the garden. Today? More of the same coming our way, starting with 25° by 10am.

A name written in water

Reflection, Cannobio New Harbour

The first day of the rest of my life

Cloudy with occasional, very occasional bursts of weak sunshine. Close and damp. Seventeen degrees at 8:30am.

The house is a disaster zone. The laundry reminds me of that part in Rumplestiltskin where the miller's daughter on her third day is facing a towering mountain of straw to spin into gold - a mountain so huge she can barely get in the door. The entrance hall is packed with three horses festooned with damp laundry and in the dressing room there are two baskets of clothes waiting patiently to be ironed. The toy boxes are empty and the playroom floor is so full there's no place to put your feet. The beds want changing and the bathroom wants cleaning. You can see how bad things are because I'm descending into regional grammar...starting to sound like my Grandma.

But on my face today there's a broad smile. In my heart a song. Why? Well, five years ago almost to this day, I became a housewife, and since then I have been on shiftwork - Mama shifts, i.e. 24/7. For five years. And today? Well today both AJ and B have started full-time kindergarten. And I have six whole hours today and - sickness, holidays or Italian-style organisational chaos aside - every day for the entire school year.

While they do total-immersion, baptism-by-fire, crash-course Italian, I'll be ironing, cleaning, de-cobwebbing, organising, shelving books, changing beds, managing carpenters and electricians, looking into breeding rabbits, buying some new clothes, building raised beds and staircases in the garden, reading Harry Potter in Italian, checking through the copy-editor's work on The Book, hanging pictures and curtains, buying lampshades, raising herbs from seed, listening to The Archers, hauling, splitting and stacking firewood...

Maybe I'll start by catching up on five years' sleep deprivation...

New arrivals

This week has been a week of new arrivals.

As we kicked our way down the hill for the first week of kindergarten, the children noticed with glee that the chestnuts have started to drop from the trees. The start of prickles-in-little-fingers season, then. The chestnuts are too small as yet to bother with, but soon we'll be collecting bags of them, roasting chestnuts on the fire and making chestnut-flour cakes.

Another new arrival was the entire Booker shortlist in hardback, which was slammed down on the stone bench outside the front door by our postina, who could have left them with our neighbour downstairs, but didn't because she's like that. Their arrival makes Mama very happy, because now she has the promise of Verifiably Good Literature to keep her going through many happy autumn and winter evenings in front of the woodburner, a glass of Monsieur Lafarge's best by my side.

With the cold weather, the cats from the outlying regions - the outlaw cats as I always think of them - have been popping by to see if their currency is still valid up at the big house. And a new tabby, all pointed ears and hungry eyes, has been running the gauntlet of the residents every day now to grab something to eat and, once, to curl up on the sofa while no-one was looking.

And at last, Carmine's tabby matriarch finally brought this year's offspring to meet me. She lost the first litter of the year, which she had nested in our next-door-neighbour's bedroom, but was immediately pregnant again. She dropped the second litter a couple of months ago, and there were wild rumours of the existence of kittens hidden away in one of the more inaccessible gardens, but also of the intermittent presence of two hungry-looking foxes. I wasn't hopeful. So I was very happy to see the proud Mama jump up onto the terrace the other day, to hear a little mew behind her, "You mean it's up there?", and then to see a fluffy white head and two white paws appear over the edge.

So the orientation tour began :

"Okay, now listen carefully, here's where they put the normal cat food. It's fortified with calcium and vitamins and it's good for you, so get used to it..."

"...If you nose your way into the kitchen, there, by that big, warm, silver thing - especially when the tall guy's cooking, you might be able to wangle yourself some offcuts of fish or meat. Just tilt your head to one side, flash those big blue eyes and look cute..."

"Oh yeees, did I forget to tell you? This is your brother. The big people call him Trouble, because he is. If you have any further questions, just ask him!"

Motherhood means No. 17

Yesterday was sunny, with temperatures again in the mid-20s. Today, we are overcast and still. "Rain coming", as my little weather girl, B, would say.


Motherhood means...laughing at malapropisms and mispronunciations.

B (reaching the last bench at the top of the hill, flopping herself down and refusing to move) : "No, Mama, I'm not going! I need to be-lax!"

AJ (at the first of this year's many children's parties) : No, Mama, I don't want apple juice! I want that black stuff - that Crackly-ola!

And lastly, Mama spots a rash on B's tummy. She says, "Let me look at your tummy. I think you have a rash". B takes off in the other direction, clutching the waistline of her PJs very tightly. When Mama catches up with her, B protests : "No, Mama, don't look. There's no trash down there!"




PS Thanks, D, for a lovely afternoon with a view.

Sunshine on the puddles

Twenty-five degrees at midday, with sunshine on the puddles. Carmine is intoxicated with the smell of damp earth and ripe figs.

These hands

Brrrrrr! Cold. Damp. Raining continuously. Fourteen degrees at 8:30am. I think it's called autumn.

These hands belong to Carmine's most senior senior citizen. I often come across her in the afternoons, barefoot in the long grass, bent double, sickle in hand, patiently collecting an enormous bundle of greenery for her goat.

Signora Cesarina celebrated her 95th birthday last week.

Santa Croce weather

They say hereabouts (in the dialect of the Valle Cannobina, which I'm not about to try to reproduce), that Santa Croce marks the start of the cold weather. Well, today at midday, it was teeming with rain, and the temperature was 14°C.

Santa Croce was yesterday...

Reported conversations No. 15 : I say, you say

Yesterday at lunchtime. B (aged three) is beaming. Mama takes the opportunity and plunges in ...

Mama : Darling, tomorrow we'll go to kindergarten with AJ...

B : (stops beaming, starts frowning)

Mama : We can meet your maestra, see all of your friends, and play and do painting...

B : (stops frowning, lip starts to quiver)

Mama : I'll leave you in kindergarten and go to do some shopping, and I'll come back for you and AJ after a short while...

B : (lips quiver, tears start to stream, eyes become big - a picture of the pathetic)

Mama : But what's wrong, darling? You always told me you wanted to go...

B : (between heart-wracking sobs) But Mama, I don't want to go to kindergarten, I want to go to asilo!


It's a big day for a little girl. Good luck, sweetheart!

Images of summer

Bright and dry. But the wind of change is blowing. There'll be rain within 36 hours, I'll wager.

As the chestnuts ripen in the trees and the acacia leaves start to yellow, it's time to gird my loins for the daily term-time grind - two journeys down the hill and two journeys up every day. (At least, every day we don't have swine 'flu, normal 'flu, a common cold or a stomach bug.)

The 77 days of the summer holidays have flashed by in a flurry of beach towels and baby wipes, of sparkling aperitivo fizz and sunshine on the water. We took breaks in three different countries - England, Switzerland and Germany, and it rained in them all. We came home to Carmine, and the sun rewarded us.

We celebrated special birthdays with our friends and family...




...and got some new perspectives on life and Carmine...

We practised our writing...

and our art skills...


and our 'music' rocked the Rock.



We met some interesting characters in our summer livestock research programme...


...and, for two weeks, we played host to Clothilde, the hen with the gammy leg. Clothilde spent her time in recuperative pursuits, such as reading...

...performing stairwalking exercises...

...and thieving.

During Clothilde's stay, our stock of disinfectant was seriously depleted, but it has to be said that she always paid her bill...

The summer began with a wonderful event. Our grateful and affectionate (as always) thanks go to E, A and L. Why? Because this summer, this...

...became ours at last.

It went on to be pretty hot. Hot in July. Hot also in August, when normally things are starting to cool off, and now in September it's warm and dry, dry, dry. July's evening thunderstorms were punctuated by our annual hail storm...

...which spoiled many gardens and turned down the corners of the mouths of gardeners Carmine-wide.

To cool off, we took to the water, at the lake (at several lakes)...

splashing about in Carmine's old lavatoio...

and taking it easy in our own backyard cool-tub...

Throughout the summer, we were visited by our many kind friends and neighbours - Carmine home-owners and simple appassionati alike. Day after day, the usually silent streets rang with the calls of children enjoying the relative freedom car-free Carmine has to offer. Mothers and grandmothers gossiped in Italian, German and English (sometimes in a curious mixture of all three), and husbands traded homemade beer or disappeared into the woods with lanky-legged sons in search of adventure. Night after night, there were mutterings in the churchyard and many impromptu comings-and-goings between dining tables.

The Chiesa di San Gottardo also drew many visitors every day, and I'm happy to see that our visitor's book, which we started at Christmas, is filling up with names from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand, and from as close as Cannobio and Verbania. This is what they come to see...

In the garden we grew tomatoes and cucumbers, courgettes and lettuce, basil and chillies, "parslee, sage, rose-mair-ee and thyme". We raised grapes and apples, pears, peaches and apricots, and berries blue and black and rasp.

Our summer was full, full of flowers...

...and we finally had proof, if proof were needed, that it's not paradise without a snake...

So today, I'm shaking myself, packing school bags, ironing in name labels and wriggling under beds for swimming kit and gymn shoes - just like any other mother.

And I wonder to myself what it is the children will remember of summer in Carmine Superiore 2009.

Fresco detail

St Bartholomew reads bedtime stories to a little devil.

Fresco detail, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore.

Could it be Der Rauber Hotzenplotz? Or perhaps The Magic Treehouse?

Maybe it's The Riot Act...

You know you're getting older when...

Please tick the relevant box...

18-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-65
65+

You know you're getting older when... as you finish your investment fund questionnaire and you are asked to place yourself in an age bracket, you are surprised to see that there are more brackets younger than yours than older.


PS Cold mornings and chilly nights. No rain, though. The leaves are starting to turn and autumn is closer than we suspect.

Book Notes No. 25 : The Court of the Air, Stephen Hunt

When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently apprenticed to, her first instinct is to scurry back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack.

Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air.

Molly and Oliver each carry secrets in their blood - secrets that will either get them killed or save the world from an ancient terror...

In Stephen Hunt's immensely inventive novel, The Court of the Air, we have the thinly-disguised English (the Jackelians) fighting for their lives and their way of life. The country is threatened, nay, overrun, by Quatershiftians, from a country immediately to the south, and with a record of popular uprising featuring the Gideon's Collar as the scourge of the ruling classes (for which read Madame la Guillotine only more so). To the north, the Scots have been replaced by a kingdom of conservative but brave-hearted Steammen, and deep beneath the heroes' feet lies a terror that owes much to the religious practices of Mexico's ancient Mayans.

The novel swirls downwards and outwards from an interesting beginning. It is part rite de passage, part spy thriller, part political commentary, part fantasy thriller. Throughout as I read, I searched for a key to what Hunt was trying to say, and only late in the book I realised that he had concealed it right there on page nine :

"Every few decades a foreign power would mistake the Jackelians' quiet taste for the rule of law for the absence of ambition. Would mistake a content and isolationist bent for a weak and decadent society. Would come to the conclusion that a nation of shopkeepers might better be put to serving what they had built, made and grown to warriors and bullies. Many enemies had made the assumption that prefers not to fight equates to can't fight and won't fight. All had been punished severely for it. Slow to rouse, once they were, their foes ... found a pit of lions, a people with a hard, unruly, thuggish streak and no tolerance for bullies..."

The rest of the book tells the sorry tale of what happens when the people of Jackals are too slow to rouse.

It's a cautionary tale.

Welcome home

This is how it feels to return after a holiday and be greeted on the mulattiera by Carmine's semi-wild cats.

Quote of the week No. 27 : On travel

In Carmine Superiore today we have sunshine with clouds. Cool this morning as the last few mornings.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish writer and traveller...

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."

I have to say I agree. Although the great romance of Victorian travel is over, there's still something about being on the move. Perhaps it's the gypsy in me that cries out to be on the road, and in the absence of a cart and a country lane, an airport departure lounge with a view of the mountains will have to do!