In the municipal flower beds

A big fat round zero degrees at eight ay-em. Hand-numbingly cold. Overcast. Still.

Against the environmental odds, the petals of the raggedy roadside pansy still maintain their fragile butterfly beauty. 

  

Weather report

Two degrees at 8am. On the Piemonte side of the lake it's all bright sunshine and glittering drops of melting snow. On the Lombardia side it's roiling snow clouds and hunched shoulders

Real snow

Today in Carmine it's snowing wetly but persistently, with a little whippy wind every so often ...

I opened the front door at 7am, and six so-called stray cats elbowed their way into the house. They quickly ate breakfast and dispersed to the furthest reaches of the house- each to his own particular spot - to get warm and dry. Contrariwise, the children dressed themselves faster than I've ever seen before and have just now elbowed their way out of the house and toddled off to the prato to take snowball potshots at the chickens, Jakob! and their father. 

You gotta like winter!

Jonathan and friends...

The day started bright and sunny, sending broad shafts of light bouncing off interior white walls and the honey-coloured woodwork. Warm enough in the sun for breakfast outdoors, but with the ground frozen solid and the broccoli wilting. By midday, snow clouds gathering.

...waiting for the Lago Maggiore ferry.

For the story of Carmine Superiore's own Jonathan Livingston Seagull, click here.

First snowfall

The Lady with the Lamp, on her 3am rounds to patients with coughs, colds and phantom tummy aches, noted snow falling in great big fluffy clumps on Carmine Superiore. This morning there was a picturesque dusting on the roofs of Sant'Agata, which lies about 100m higher than Carmine Superiore.

Winter is declared!

On a mission from God

After a stripey technicolour sunrise, the day is cloudy but bright, with a nippy little wind.


In an idle moment about 15 billion years after He made the universe, God made Sasso Carmine. And God looked down on His creation and saw that it was pretty good - it would be quite a tourist attraction once they had painted, lost, found and then repainted the frescoes, and hauled themselves out of grinding poverty long enough to appreciate the view...

1,035 years later, God looked again and saw that something had gone wrong. 

He was not pleased. 

He wondered what in Heaven's name was going on, and what the Hell He was going to do about it.   

One corner of the beautiful piazzetta he had designed on the back of a restaurant napkin sometime in 1200 AD was littered with oversize bags of trash. What started out as honest-to-God renovation refuse from His own priest's house had not been removed five months after it had been dumped there. Predictably, tourists and villagers alike had augmented the refuse heap. Dirty nappies, uneaten picnics, wine bottles ... and a surprisingly large pile of nasty notes from disgruntled tourists complaining about the mess. The Carmine cats had also gotten in on the act - dragging everything out, finding that it was not up to their usual standards of edibility and abandoning it for someone else to sweep up. 

No-one wanted to take responsibility.

God shuffled His feet and glanced around at them. 

The people cleared their throats and stared right back at Him. 

So the Almighty took a leaf out of His own Book, and came to a villager in a dream. He told the man he must make arrangements for the arrival of His mighty Red Angel. To a second villager, God whispered that he was in dire need of very large quantities of building materials, and like Joseph the Dreamer, he must stock up right away, and not to take seven years about it. Next morning the two men staggered from their houses amazed, and proceeded to do the Lord's bidding. 

And as it was foretold on the appointed day there came a great roaring out of the sky, and the Angel in Red appeared bearing a mighty cord and an even mightier hook. The people of the village looked out of their windows and were sore afraid, for the sacks were mighty close to the relatively-recently renovated eaves of God's house. But God guided the hand of the angel, and brought his wings close, but kept his beautiful church from destruction.

And as if by a miracle, the nasty white sacks, dirty nappies and all, swung into the sky and away, and the building materials appeared in their place. And all were most happy and rejoiced to see their little corner of paradise returned to neatness-and-tidiness.

For miraculously precise helicopter services in the Lago Maggiore region, contact 
The Angel in Red! .

Another sparkling day. Two degrees at 8am, rising to - wait for it - seventeen degrees in the sun at midday. 

Four degrees at 8am, and the rainy greyness has been replaced with sparkling sunshine. But as we all know, if you open a door the warm air inside rushes outside, and perhaps Jack Frost is just finishing up his espresso in the caffè around the corner, readying himself for work. We're ready.

Grey

Grey and raining in Carmine Superiore this Monday morning, and the snow is slowly edging its way lower and lower. We may well see some here before ten days is out...

A grey day in Car-min-ay.

Carmine quotes No. 18

Mildly cold and raining more or less constantly.


Saturday lunchtime. Picture the scene. The kitchen table is scattered with tiny pieces of cereal packet, a pair of child scissors, homework, about a hundred assorted hair clips. The floor is a confetti of impossible-to-sweep minuscule cuttings from the FT (letter-by-letter, rather than article-by-article). There are dirty cups, dirty straws, dirty spoons. And Mama is frantically trying to make space for lunch...

Mama [holding up the brush and dustpan and holding down the panic]: Guys, you just have to see it my way. I spend all weekend from the moment you wake up to the moment I fall over from exhaustion cleaning up after you. 

[Voice starting to rise as hyperventilation kicks in]: I go round and round in circles. I clean up one bit, I turn my back for five minutes and when I come back it's twice as bad. 

[Going blue in the face with the effort of trying to be a rational, calm adult]: I just don't understand what I have to do ... 

[Loses it]: ...SO THAT YOU GUYS WILL STOP TRASHING THE PLACE ... 

[Shakes head and calms down]: I just don't understand what I have to do!

B. aged four [Looking up calmly from a pile of saffron she's methodically pushing through a crack in the kitchen floor]: Mama, why don't you read the instructions?

A view from Carmine Superiore

The clouds have shredded themselves on the teeth of the mountains. The sun has risen blazing, triumphant after the rain. The skies are blue, the streams are engorged and overflowing, the breeze is stiff.

This was the morning view from Carmine Superiore.

Mathilda to the rescue

Six degrees at 8am and raining again. 

Mathilda is alight, and there's a very large pile of firewood, just split by yours truly, waiting to keep us all toasty, but more to the point, to dry our wet boots, socks, jackets, rucksacks, hats, cats, and dog. 

Useful girl, Mathilda.

Raindrops on roses...

Raindrops on Giovanna's rose. 

I wish she could be here to see the beauty she has left for us to enjoy here in Carmine. 

Forza, amica mia. We're thinking of you both.


For more flowers in the rain, click here.

Eight degrees at 8am, raining and blowing a wintry-type wind. Waterfalls have appeared everywhere, in places crashing down onto the lake road, making the school run a strictly-fifty affair.

Morning walk

Warmish. Rainy. Gloomy.

Jakob!'s back legs are once again working, and this morning we put them to good use as usual in the woods. Autumn is under foot, yellow, brown, red, obscuring the craggy path. The dampness has damped-down the woodland sounds, and I hear only the rustling hood of my oilskin, the trudge of my boots, already sodden, against loose rocks and the white noise of water rushing downhill. 

Oh and the occasional panting of Jakob! as he streaks up to me, nuzzles me with his wet nose to makes sure I'm still there and then hares off up another boar-run.

Where the woods open out onto the old Roman road, the mist closes in. Ten metres. Five metres. Two metres. A twilight Appian Way. Here old standing stones and broken tree trunks loom up to meet me in the fog. And the mist turns everything to legend. These shapes are now partisans, rock-steady snipers waiting their chance. Now felons hung on the gibbet by the path for all to take the warning. Now the ghost of the Viggiona miss, who once lay crumpled at the foot of the crags, pregnant, jilted, desperate and oh so alone.

At the great Elephant Rock - overlooked by a ruined chapel, built over a ruined temple -  the little reed-fringed meadow is plashy. Soon it will be splashy. And then it will be icy. And as the world turns it will once again come dry next summer. A long way off.

At the Belvedere there is no sign of the lake. Nothing of the majestic, ever-changing view that is our usual reward. Just a sudden gust of wind rising from the vast hidden space before me. Just cold mist drifting across my face and in my eyelashes and over my cheeks. 

We both pause here, Jakob! and I, breathing in the start of the day. I take a moment to work over its possible shape in my mind like a blind woman searching out the contours of a face. I raise my arms and take in a deep, steady breathful of mist. Then we turn home as the rain strengthens and the last remaining leaves fall onto the path in ones and twos.

Now the Faithful Little Woodburner is alight, with a pair of steaming boots standing on top. There's a mug of strong, sweet tea at my side, a cat on the sofa and a tired dog snoozing in his den. And Hildegaarde.


Time to begin.

Community service

Drizzling ...

... and so misty that I can't even see as far as our beautifully leaf-free mulattiera. Thanks to AJ, B. and Franco for helping to rake, shovel and wheelbarrow a ton of autumnal detritus away yesterday, making the path down the hill non-slip. 

Just in time, it seems.

The world's best jobs No. 1: The man in the woods

This post made Italy Tutto Top 10 Best Posts of the Week. Thank-you! I Thank You!

Morning temperature below 10° again. Cloudy with little blue patches, but never in the right place for sunshine.

Swooping down the hill yesterday afternoon, minus my usually-constant companion, Jakob! Lord of Misrule (sick and feeling very sorry for himself), I came upon a man.

This man was wearing a large fleece, jeans and muddy walking boots. He was sitting, still as a statue, on the damp bank by the side of the sentiero. I wondered what he could be doing. Perhaps he had turned an ankle, or was simply resting. But resting on a cold, damp, mud bank in the cold shadows within sight of a nicely painted wooden bench in the sun?

As I approached, I greeted him and he turned around to face me. He had a shock of white hair, bright blue eyes and sunshine in his face. Conscious (and perhaps over-proud) of my recent Croce Rossa training, I asked, "Sta bene?" - are you alright? He smiled and answered "Si." A moment passed as we smiled at each other, and with the smile my unspoken question fluttered between us. Plucking it out of the air, he said "Sto contando gli uccelli" - I'm counting birds. In his hands lay some gadget, and as he spoke, his eyes flew from my face back to the giant chestnut before us, its branches alive with wings. 

As I bade him a quiet "buon lavoro", and continued on my way on silent feet, his outdoors sunshine smile, his ruddy cheeks and his air of contentment accompanied me in place of Jakob!. And when later I wove the story of the bird-counter I had met in the woods for a group of kindergarten kids, we all agreed that this must be one of the best jobs in the world.

Book notes No. 37 : Parrot & Olivier in America, Peter Carey

As yesterday, a bright and beautiful morning. A layer day - 'twill be hot in the sun later.

Australian author Peter Carey has twice won the Booker Prize - for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gangin 2001. Parrot & Olivier in America, his latest novel was shortlisted this year, but as we already know lost by a whisker to Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question.Still, I have to say this book is definitely worth reading – it made the shortlist after all!

The story is based on the travels of the real-live French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville. The two main characters are Olivier, a French aristocrat and skin-of-his-teeth survivor of the Revolution of 1789, and his servant, Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer whose hopes of becoming an artist are dashed, leaving him working as something of a ‘fixer’ to a wealthy patron. Olivier is sent to the colonies, ostensibly to research the American penal system, but in reality to escape further revolutionary danger. Parrot is sent along to act as minder, secretary, translator and banker and to keep him on the right track, especially in the matter of possible undesirable liaisons of the marrying kind.

                      

The book describes a moment in time in which the aristocracy are facing their own overthrow and possible extinction, and the new middle classes are busy imagining ways in which they might fill the vacuum. Everything seems to be on the change. Talented women artists, previously restricted to working behind the scenes with their master taking the credit, are now finding ways to work – and make money – in their own right. Among the very rich of the new colonial democracy, markets are starting to be made for fine art and other objects, once the provenance of only the aristocracy (the only people refined enough to appreciate them, according to Olivier). The new élite are grabbing the prestige of the old through marriage, and that new breed, the entrepreneur, is about to be born.

We see in both Olivier and Parrot an early incomprehension of the new post-Revolutionary world. As the book progresses, though, there is learning on both sides, and eventually each reaches an accommodation with the new world order. Does that sound too serious? Well, along the way there are some extraordinary, almost Dickens-like characters, some hilarious and nail-biting episodes, and some marvellous historical vignettes.


Actually, Edmund White put it better when he wrote for the jacket of the hardback edition: "I was sick with admiration on every page of this vigorous, lyrical masterpiece. The dramatic situations are struck off with hallucinatory force, the characters coddled with tenderness and humour - and the distant past is made as present as a slap in the face." Love it.

It’s a funny and fascinating read. Along with the Booker judges, I recommend it. 

Whacky autumn sky

Autumn sunrise - the early morning view from Carmine Superiore.

At the Porto Lido, Cannobio

Misty, dull and raining pretty hard.

Duck paddling and dabbling among the reflections. 

Cannobio Porto Lido, Lago Maggiore.


For more Weekend Reflections, click here.

Reported conversations No. 23 : The St Trinians Effect

Today's weather? Damp below, but bright above.

Mama and B. (aged 4 and all girl) are watching 'The Pure Hell of St Trinians'. What can I say, sometimes a mama needs a break from the delights of Postman Pat, Fireman Sam and Sportacus.

In this classic 1960 comedy, the Sixth Form are abducted and carried off to a desert fortress to be married off to a sheik's nine sons. The suspendered Sixth put up a good fight, and the sons are actually wondering whether they want to be married to these hellcats at all when the Fourth Form - Britain's finest fighting force - arrive in stolen APCs and the Arab hordes are routed.

B.: "Mama, what happened?"

Mama: "Well, those naughty little girls stole some tanks and chased the men away."

B.: "No. Mama. Not."

Mama: "Whaddya mean, Not?"

B.: "Mama, not naughty little girls!"

Mama: "Yes, darling. The naughty little girls stole the tanks and chased the men away."

B.: "No, No, NO! The naughty MEN were chased away by the strong girls with broken hats on..."

There's a feminist media studies thesis in there somewhere: "Pippi Longstocking, St. Trinians, haute couture and the rise of the Bad Girl in the pre-Flower-Power consciousness of the western European teen", perhaps? Or what about "Naughty girl, strong woman: perspectives in historical millinery 1960-1969"? Anyone prepared to supervise?

Demons in Carmine Superiore

A glittering, bright autumn morning.The woods are in mid-moult and a wonder to behold.

A passing professoressa of art history recently pointed out to me that the Chiesa di San Gottardo here in Carmine Superiore has rather more than its fair share of demons. Here's a bunch of them doing their worst against the Saxon Bishop himself and a bunch of rather scared-out-of-wits-looking helpers. I particularly like the demon top left, which reminds me somehow of my 4-year-old daughter, B, in one of her tongue-out "I won't" moods. The snake tail is a nice touch - and even if B. doesn't actually have one of those in her flowery dungarees she sure as hell waggles that sassy 4-year-old butt as if she did!

Click on the pic to see a larger version, and perhaps some erudite person out there might be able to decipher the Latin caption bottom right...

The weather in my wallet

Today has started bright and sunny, in contrast to the last few days of torrential rain. 

Rainy weather does have its compensations, however. Yesterday, as the family convoy chugged northwards to Graubunden for Mama's half-term one-day brocki tour, the temperature at 8am was not four degrees but fourteen. Mind you, beyond San Bernardino 'twas all freezing rain, piles of old snow and mean little winds, and in the end I didn't have the heart to shell out CHF4,600 for the restored 18th-century bookcase I really wanted...You need sunshine for dream purchases of that order.

Sail bonny boat like a bird on the wing...

Fishing boat, Cannobio Old Harbour 

Quote of the week No. 42 : On envy

Carmine Superiore is awash with running water: coming out of the sky, off the stone roofs, dashing down the sloping cobbled streets. I'm reminded of the rain on the worst night of our renovating lives, and am glad our house is no longer a forest of props and our roof is on the top rather than in bits in the street.

My ongoing, ad hoc, and rather scientifically dubious researches into Catholicism turn up the Seven Deadly Sins, those evils that lead us away from a state of 'charity' (surprisingly similar to the Buddhist 'compassion') and into other sins, venal or mortal. 

Anyone who saw Se7en will know that the Seven Deadly Sins are envy, greed, lust, pride, wrath, sloth and gluttony, and this week, I've been thinking a lot about envy. I've come to the conclusion that envy is different from jealousy in that jealousy requires three people - the loved, the beloved and the enamoured gooseberry - whereas envy requires only two - the envied and the envious. Envy doesn't seem to be born of any kind of love (even love of oneself is missing here), but of comparing ourselves to others: the young professional envies his colleague his car, the neighbour envies the next-door's way with marrows, the put-upon envies another's freedom, the poor envy the rich, the old and ugly envy those who are younger and more attractive, those without children envy those with, and those with children envy those without. The saint envies the sinner and the sinner envies the saint. Envy differs from all the other Deadly Sins in that it has no pleasure in it - even wrath has the pleasure of release - but envy only destroys. As the anonymous saying goes (roughly) 'the envious poison their own banquet and then eat it'. 

Of course, many these days would say that envy is not a sin in that it generates the desire for all those consumer goods on which the world turns, and I recall someone once saying that without envy, democracy would collapse. Certainly, without envy, the network of amateur spies that kept the gulags full would not have existed.

Plenty of pithy one-liners can be found on the subject of envy, but here's one that sums up the View from Carmine Superiore...

William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania:

"The [envious] are troublesome to others ... but a torment to themselves." 

I guess old Willie would have had some trouble with the troublesome, given that he was basically an estate agent who somehow ended up the "absolute proprietor" of the Province of Pennsylvania, and I think he nailed it when he pointed out that envy is more self-destructive than destructive of others.

Oh yes, and why is envy green-eyed? Because, as so often, Shakespeare said so!