Red sky in the morning...

And yes, it's been chucking it down all night and all this morning. 

The outdooor cats are slinking about wondering if they'll be noticed if they take a dry snooze in the furthest recess of the attic among the sheepskins, and the All Saints arrivals (what must be a record six vacation-house chimneys smoking) are looking rather glum in their Timberland jackets. Mind you, the hunters are undeterred - the first shots were fired exactly as dawn broke. Jakob! is confined to baracks.

October sunrise

This morning's sunrise had me leaping out of bed and racing around the village in bare feet, fluffy dressing gown with trusty Nikon in hand, like a mad Hallowe'en apparition come early for the party. 

October sunrise with the Chiesa di San Gottardo,
Carmine Superiore.


For more Skywatch images, or to add one of your own, click here.

Reflection in the water

A mild autumn morning here at Lago Maggiore. There's not a cloud in the sky, and the fortress walls of Carmine Superiore are dripping with golden sunshine.

Morning reflection at the old lavatoio.

Carmine Superiore in autumn.

Ten reasons why I will never - EVER - fly Easyjet again

Four degrees at 8am, rising to 19 degrees later. Bright and sunny, and nice enough for lunch outside on Cannobio's lungolago.

I recently exchanged my normal airline, Flybe, for Easyjet. It's been a long time since I flew Easyjet, and the experience was not pleasant. In fact, only my experiences flying pre-Soviet-collapse Aeroflot with the Olympic-hammer-throwing squad for cabin crew were worse, and even then I was at least recompensed with plenty of dinner-party material.

Being very much older now than I was in my Aeroflot days, and more interested in maintaining my self-respect than I am in thrift, I have decided to vote with my air-pounds and never fly Easyjet again. 

Why? Here are ten good reasons why:

1. Passenger wranglers who redirect lost families by superciliously tapping an information board and slowly spelling out the words on it instead of politely giving directions.
2. The it's-not-our-fault attitude - okay, so we're late because of striking French air traffic controllers - say it once and have done. Twice can be forgiven to ensure understanding. Eleven times on one 90-minute flight smacks of defensiveness. They're really saying, "It's usually our fault, but this time it's not and boy are you going to know it! Oh, yes, and God forbid we apologise..."
3. Stewards who shout at passengers in English when it's clear the flight is packed with Italians and we might all get into the air sooner if a little intercultural competence were brought to bear.
4. Stewards who make no secret of how much they despise the passengers - [Loud voice] "The passenger says this wine is corked. It's not of course, but the customer is always right, so please fetch another." 
5. The Priority Boarding system, which brings out the superiority complexes in all those stupid enough to pay 50% more to board first. On a 90-minute flight, only fools and giants care about where they sit. Oh yes, and don't forget, if everyone on your flight happens to have paid for Priority Boarding, you've been had.
6. Boarding areas that are more like sheep runs - narrow corridors that get narrower and narrower until there's nowhere to go and no space to breathe and you wonder who is going to get killed in the stampede down the open-plan stairs when they call for the clowns with Priority Boarding to come forward. (I need smelling salts just writing about it.)
7. Cabin crew who are too busy gossiping about the passengers to greet them or say goodbye.
8. Cabins that don't have space for one piece of hand luggage, a Duty-free shopping bag and a coat for every paying passenger. Is it too much to ask?
9. Queues for the computer-check-in baggage drop that are longer than those for people who haven't checked in. Why on earth do I waste good printer toner printing out my own boarding pass at home when I still have to do regular check-in at the airport? 
10. Staff who've forgotten who pays their salaries - and the consequent all-pervasive sense that the customer is at best a nuisance, at worst an illiterate cretin, and always wrong whatever, despite what Mister Onboard Wine-Expert may claim.

Easyjet, you may brag about being the Web's favourite airline, but if this is really true, why is it so hard for the people you are pleased to call passengers but treat like morons to get hold of a comment form? 

Six degrees at 8am. Blue skies, a triumphant sunrise and the waning moon glowing bright in the western sky.

First snow

Cold and rainy, with the very first snow of the year hanging around on the peaks nearest the lake. A blustery wind is shaking the last of the chestnuts out of the trees, sending them thudding onto the roof of the chicken coop, and annoying the hell out of the chickens who've to a man gone indoors to sulk until the moulting season is over. Time to dust off the AL-KO 5200 and get ahead with splitting the 12 kilos a day it takes to keep Mathilda happy...

Gardener's question...

Anyone name this climber? They're everywhere here this year, but my long-suffering neighbours have failed to help me understand or deduce what its name is. Perhaps because its almost plastic blue is totally out of step with the golds, yellows and browns of the season, it's a real autumn eyecatcher along the SS34 Lago Maggiore road, and maybe one might also be nice climbing a Carmine fence next year... 

Swiss sunrise

Morning view from Valmara Dogana, the gateway to Ticino and the Alps beyond.

Wild food

With Jakob! at my heels to help me find them, an angel in the kitchen to cook them, and a reliable supply of heavenly organic Alpine cream from Splügen, just the other side of the San Bernardino Pass, to accompany them, the old college term shrooming has recently taken on a completely new meaning...


[Tip: if that sentence was too long, just remember to pause at the commas and slow down at the italics - that's what they're there for.]

Time for some fine Old Norse

Arsehole 

[from Old English ærs, = Old High German, Old Norse ars, Germanic arsaz, Indo-European órsos]

Apologies at the outburst and lowering of the tone. Sick of day-trippers leaving behind non-biodegradables and shit besmeared toilet paper in our otherwise beautiful woodlands. 

Take it the hell home with you. 

Jerks.

Heads below the parapet

Today? Quite cold with only the occasional burst of sunshine. 

The woods close by are ringing with the shots of the wild boar hunters. After recent appalling (and separate) disasters during which a priest, a pony and a fellow-hunter were killed by mistake, Jakob! is safely tucked away in his den.

Climb every ... outcrop

Yet another bright, shiny autumn day, with a cautionary snap in the air at sunrise and sunset. Edna, our wood-fired cucina economica is lit briefly every evening now.

Each school day, Jakob! Lord of Misrule and I wander about a bit in the woods, having dropped the offspring off. We start in the mixed woodlands that have taken over almost completely the gardens and meadows of a former age, and rise through the silver birches and ferns to some granite outcrop or other, overlooking either the lake or the mountains or both. Here are only the hardy wind-blown shrubs like broom, juniper (berries pocketed when ripe) and heather, with lichen and some moss on the rocks. Brushing through the heather, with its stubborn little flowers, I think tenacity and perseverance - a useful thought some days.

Quote of the week No. 41

Another sunny autumn day - early mists followed by azure skies topping off tasteful autumn colours. Temperatures still in the high teens.

The woodland floors are damp and musty, and scattered with fat, shiny, sweet chestnuts - at five euros a kilo in the supermarket, I'm training the children to load their pockets with the fattest and the shiniest every day.

Talking of whom, I see that Eric Hoffer agrees with me...

"Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love." 

It's good to have B-B back! 

Post No. 1,000

After last night's thundering rain, this morning saw us swathed in scarves of heavy cotton-wool clouds. Sant'Agata, at 465m, was completely obscured, and parts of the lake were beyond view. Later, the hot sun burned through and everybody smiled despite the wet socks.

Today I'm celebrating 1,000 posts - hurrah! huzzah! To celebrate, here's a picture of the rain as experienced by a Virginia creeper not a million miles away from my door...

Season of mists...

The mists of the last two days have finally coalesced into rain. It's warm and wet.

A perfect day for fire salamanders, and the woodland path I take home after the school run - a thousand miles away from "Strike-hit London Underground Travel Chaos" - is heaving with them. Adorable, fat, square-headed and ponderous. Dangerously slow-moving, but with a musical-statues strategy that has Jakob! trotting past every time without even seeing them. I guess you have to work something out when you're about as fast as a giant tortoise and you're covered in a vivid-yellow lightning pattern. 

Morning view

The sun cresting the mountains across the lake, just in time for the morning school run.