Nine am

Bright, cold and dry at Lago Maggiore this Monday morning.

Nine am. Breakfast served. Children gone. Dog run. Chicks fed. Wood hauled. Stufa lit. Beds airing. Laundry out, laundry in. 

After the early-morning flurry, I confront the post-weekend wreck of the kitchen. Jerry Seinfeld's words come to mind: 

"A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have the top for it."

Oh yeah, Jerry, very funny. Now think one five-year-old and one seven-year-old both armed with watercolours, various fresh fruit, glue, cotton wool, pine cones and glitter. Oh yes, and Swiss army knives. If you can imagine mixing the topless blender with the Sorcerer's Apprentice, then I think you have it about right. 

I think I'll go put on my short spotty housewife's dress and high heels and use the vacuum cleaner to murder a couple of spiders...

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Carmine thoughts

A cold and hazy Monday morning. Frost at the laghetto at 8am.

Feeding the chicks and hauling in firewood early this morning, it struck me that, perhaps because I'm here most of the time and most of the time alone, I think of Carmine as a living, organic entity. 

And that it's entirely possible that others don't see it this way.  

In fact, it's entirely possible that if the authorities heard of it I might be sectioned and my children taken away for their own safety. 

Setting that uncomfortable idea aside, another thought took its place - that Carmine demands of people much more than people, mostly, are prepared to give. (Perhaps that's why I find myself mostly alone in Carmine.) But in return, Carmine transforms lives.

And in general, I thought - as I cleaned up doggy dirt in the entrata, disposed of the cats' Monday dead-mouse-tribute, split firewood for Mathilda, shoved allergy-raising-dust-mite duvets in the washing machine, and boiled a kettle of hot water on the wood-burner for the washing up - that has to be A Good Thing.

Doesn't it?

Bright but cold in the mornings. Five degrees at 8am and the first patches of frost spotted yesterday. By lunchtime, though, the sun is warm enough to sit out with a sandwich, my back against the sun-warmed stones of the church. 

Welcome Mathilda!

A bright and sunny autumn day with colourful leaves swirling through the branches, and the sunshine warming the stones of the Chiesa di San Gottardo.

The two dotties are both at home sick, so I have inaugurated Mathilda a day early this year. 

Welcome Mathilda! 

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

                                                                    John McRae

Monday morning

Twelve degrees at 8am as we slithered and slid down a wet-leaf-slick sentiero. Still raining, but very lightly.


I'm off and out with me fan-rake for a spot of community service.

Spring thoughts in autumn

Raining and autumny. The rain that has brought floods to Genova has here created thundering torrents where before, after so long a dry spell, there were only tiny dribbles of streams. The sentiero is again flooded in places, and yesterday, the chicks were up to their feathery knickers in water.

Visitors. 

Fiera Degli Allevatori. Cannobio 2011.

Next year in Carmine?

Rain

Twelve degrees at 10am as I dawdled my way towards a capucchino and a brioche. Raining. Steadily but not spitefully. And the fire salamanders are in love, and are copulating among the fallen leaves.

I love the autumn rain in Carmine. I love to walk out under the woodland canopy, to hear the rain on the leaves above me, to smell the rain in the soil under me. And not be wet. And not be cold. 

I love the mist that drifts in with the rain. I love the way it caresses the treetops and sometimes shrouds Carmine completely, arranging itself over the stone rooftops like the soul of a woman in love reaching out and enveloping the form of her beloved.

I love my wood fire, a single light, a wine-dark glass winking at me, a sofa, a book and the sound of the rain dripping from the ancient eaves. 

And silence. 

The end of the world as I know it?

A typical autumn day. Coldish. Dampish. With sunshine enjoy at lunchtime and a tittery little breeze to snaffle the leaves off the trees.

alamedainfo.com

In San Jose, California, there is a very strange building. It's known as the Winchester Mystery House, and was built by Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Rifles fortune. The story goes that she became unbalanced by the deaths, first of her daughter and then of her husband. A cooky Boston spiritualist (is there any other kind?) explained that their deaths had been brought about by the spirits of all those killed by Winchester rifles, and to avoid herself being the next victim she must build a home for them. As long as this building was under construction, Sarah Winchester would never fall prey to the spirits that haunted her. 

Now I know what it's like to live in a house where the building work never seems to finish, but unlike me, Sarah Winchester didn't want the round-the-clock work to come to an end, and in fact she was able to perpetuate it for 38 years. The house is a labyrinth of corridors, secret passageways and apartments. There are numerous chimneys, turrets and towers. There are staircases that go nowhere, doors that open onto blank walls, windows that open, not onto the outside, but into yet another corridor. The house has 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms and 6 kitchens. The whole stands as a weird monument to a woman convinced that her actions could fend off the inevitable.

And so it is here in Carmine. Not with the restoration of this big old house, even though I'm sure there is the odd Winchester or two on the premises. And not with the infestation of vengeful spirits, although after spending Hallowe'en alone here last night, I do wonder. 

No. 

I'm talking about the laundry.

The laundry?

Yes, the laundry.

Laundry, laundry everywhere. My house is full - and is always full - of laundry at all stages of the process. In the dirty baskets and the clean baskets. Wet laundry of every size, shape and colour hanging from every available hanger - and believe me, I collect laundry horses the way Sarah Winchester collected tradesmen. 

What I'm getting to is this. Do you think that if I ever got through the laundry...such that there is not a single sock languishing under a bed, nor a single pair of shreddies hanging limply from the washing line, nor a single shirt in the queue for the starch...if I ever got through the laundry, do you think something dreadful might happen?

Might a great tsunami whip across Lago Maggiore and drown us all? Might Monte Carza suddenly erupt, burying us all in ash and preserving us for posterity? Might this 1,000-year-old house come crashing down around my ears? Might the dead buried not 50 metres away in the piazetta by the church rise up and engulf us?

Might the world come to an end? ...

Tell you what. If I promise not to risk the end of the world by finishing the laundry, will you promise not to look sideways at the overflowing ironing baskets next time you come to my house? 

It's a deal.