New Year 2002

Happy New Year! Our worryingly dry and warm winter continues into the new year. Dazzling sunshine, with a slight chilly breeze and whisps of mist among the snow-naked mountains. 

Ten years ago, New Year 2002. Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization. In Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde was chosen to be president, the fifth in less than two weeks. In New York, Michael Bloomberg succeeded Rudy Giuliani as mayor. Had they been alive, J.D. Salinger, J. Edgar Hoover, E.M. Forster, Joe Orton and Paul Revere would have celebrated their birthdays, and Kiri Te Kanawa and Nigel Mansell probably did. In twelve European countries, millions of people woke up to a new currency. 

In Carmine Superiore, in the bright winter sunshine, two young-ish people paced the tiny piazza, heads together in muttered debate. From time to time, their gaze fell speculatively on one another, then strayed out to the vast expanse of the lake with the mountains beyond. Finally, they smiled, shook hands and embraced. For ten years ago, on 1 January 2002, M. and I took the decision to buy the ruin that fate had dropped into our laps. Come what may.

That decision changed everything. As you might imagine it would. But Carmine Superiore is a mite unusual, and so this was not simply a change of place. It was a change of life, and a change that changed us. In 10 years, Carmine Superiore has knocked me - for I can speak only for myself - into a different shape. The list of things I can now do - don't think twice about doing - that I couldn't do on 1 January 2002 is for me ever-surprising. I can chop a tree down, split the wood and light a fire. I can raise chicks out of eggs generation on generation, and I know how to subdue a rambunctious cockerel. I'm also pretty hot with the coop-maintenance wire-cutters. I can drive a car. On the wrong side of the road. I can speak enough Italian to give birth to two Euro-sproglets, and get them into the school system. I can pilot a boat and manage a knuckle-headed gun-dog, even though sometimes it seems he is managing me. I can raise abandoned kittens and home flightless baby seagulls. I can build vegetable patches and grow produce for Africa. And I can circle them with dry-stone walls of my own creation. 

And please, let's not forget what it takes to conquer The Hill, through the pregnancy days, the toddling days, the tantrum days, the carry-me days and the asthma days. The thigh-deep snow days, the supermarket days, the wine-buying days and the helicopter days. And, of course, the happy day my book collection started to arrive. Forget the gymn. This was body-sculpting Carmine-style. The me of today, admittedly ten years older and very much greyer, is a far-cry from the me that sat day-in day-out at a screen with a view of the Thames. While these days my back may buckle under the weight of two cases of wine, in general I've never been so fit.

Any fear of creepy-crawlies and all things yuk that may unaccountably have survived six months in Africa in the 90s melted away entirely in those magical ten years. Bedroom-sharing scorpions, spiders, beetles and slugs. Cat-kill rats, disembowelled mice and downed birds. And snakes. And let's not forget the things that go bump in the dark. The many nights I've spent entirely alone in a broken-down ruined house in an ancient village with no road, with ghosts medieval and modern trailing their woes around the walls, with the howling wind battering at the shutters and the unimagineable calling from the shadows... That little scared-of-the-dark girl of 40 years ago would stare unbelieving at the middle-aged woman stalking unthinkingly through the woods on a moonless night. 

The decision to take on our Carmine ruin brought with it, of course, the commitment to live among the Italians. I guess being an expat in any country where one is required to live daily life in a different language brings with it its own challenges. In ten years, I have had my fair share of incomprehensible conversations - most notably in the labour room, in radiology, in paediatrics and in gynaecology, with the avvocato, with the maresciallo and with the notaio. Involuntarily, and rather surprisingly, though, I've found myself an expert in the short, sharp denuncia, if in no other skill. While I've suffered regular ritual humiliation on the part of more than one under-educated shop assistant, health worker or common-or-garden racist, I've benefited immeasurably from the patience and understanding of the vast majority of Italians I know. I've ditched my English reserve in favour of communication at all costs, and found that a rueful smile and a talent for pantomime go a long way.

In these ten years I've had occasion to discover the self-destructive power of envy, the ultimate futility of pride and the absolute necessity for patience in all things. I've become intimately acquainted with the wee small solitary hours in which the great Sasso Carmine squatted like a troll in the darkness while I nursed a sleepless baby. Nights when I've reached deep down inside for a reserve of energy I didn't know I had. I've passed many sleepless nights in dark imaginings and many glorious sunny days in simple contentment. 

Who would have thought that a great old house, window frames hanging off their hinges, nest-stuffed chimneys, doors held closed with piles of rocks, and a sieve-style roof...a colony of dung-beetles keeping the entrance-hall clean, a pride of felines making it dirty, and a tribe of dormice scrabbling in the eaves... who would have thought that this great old house would have the power to bring about so much change? 

"Not I", said the cat...

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. 

Wise words

Today, I am attending the 25th wedding anniversary celebrations of my oldest friend. 

Twenty-five years of marriage is a long time these days, and I admire her and her husband for seeing it through, together, in a world when so many couples just don't bother to fight when the going gets tough. There will be a service at the little Norman church in her village in England's West Country, at which she and her husband will renew their vows in preparation for the next 25 years. They have done me the honour of asking me to read the lesson. Given my marital record, I'm not entirely sure the request wasn't either ironic or didactic, or, knowing her, a little bit of both:

Colossians 3.12-17

“As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

"...clothe yourselves with love...and be thankful". Amen.

And my hearty congratulations to C & N : May we all have the pleasure of coming back to celebrate your Golden Wedding when the time comes. 

Monday morning

After yesterday's torrential rain. Hot, sunny with clouds.

I've said it before, and I trust nobody will blame me if I say it again. I love Monday mornings.

In Carmine. 

No bathroom sprint, no emergency dash with the smoothing iron, no where's my briefcase, travelcard, keys. No traffic cough. No underground crush. No "Mind the gap". No train cancelled. No mobile ringtones. No bad-tempered queues. No litter streets. No roaring trash trucks. No blaring sirens. 

Not late, dirty-fingered, tired already. 

Just this...

Monday morning in the sacristy.

Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore.

Old trash, but no Old Norse

A short while back I was harrumphing over the trash increasingly being dumped along the beautiful woodland footpath, the Via delle Genti, which leads from Cannobio to Cannero through Carmine. 

So why, pray tell, don't I get worked up about this bit of old trash? 

Answers on a postcard, please.

Cry for help

One degree at 10am in Cannobio today. Overcast.


Help me, someone, please oh please help me! 

I think I'm descending into madness. It's the voices.. The voices going round and round in my head... Voices from my past. Sometimes I think I recognise them... Baloo the Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, Zsa-Zsa Gabor - no wait - it sounds like Zsa-Zsa, but in some Twilight Zone reality shift it's not... 

Sometimes I can almost see them in my mind, but as soon as they take shape they disintegrate into something else. Winnie becomes a talking mouse and the mouse becomes Sherlock Holmes. The black bear turns brown and sprouts a green surcoat and weird feathered cap then morphs into a big marmalade cat. And they prattle not only in English, but in German, Italian and French too.

When I'm sleeping, I dream insane dreams. Nightmares of a foreign country. I'm lost in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. I'm terrified - incarcerated in a narrow, trunk-like space. I'm surrounded by cats. Cats in the attic. Cats in the basement. Cats everywhere. And there are the dogs, always the barking, snarling, biting dogs chasing me across a nightmare landscape with a ruined windmill and a tank on the horizon. I wake from these dreams, panting, bathed in sweat, panic coursing through my veins in the belief that in the night my children have been snatched from me and are even now drifting across the lake in a Moses basket.

But the worst, the worst is the ticker-tape of incomprehensible syllables that runs over and over, over and over through my throbbing skull every second of the waking day. Every second. I struggle to make sense of the words, if words they are. My failure leaves me teetering on the brink of insanity: Ay-bra-ham dee-laycey, gee-ooseppi-cay-see, tom-ass-oma-lee, oma-lee-the-a-lee-cat!





Will the person who gave my children The Aristocats for Christmas please raise your hand? Let me tell you, it's the most addictive Disney cartoon ever made and you owe me for the Prozac!

Carmine diamonds

For the comfortably well-off: Motorola phone with 855 diamonds 

$10,000

For the pretty rich: Patek Philippe Twenty-4 ladies watch

Over $100,000

For the insanely overloaded: Faisol Abdullah diamond-encrusted dress

$30 million

For those with eyes to see and lips to smile at the sight:
Carmine Superiore frosted leaf

Free of charge

Good luck!

Zero degrees at 8am. Blue skies. Foot-stamping cold.

Today, I would like to wish good luck to all my kind friends and colleagues at the Cannobio branch of the Italian Red Cross. This evening, after almost a year's study, they take the exam that qualifies them to answer medical emergencies of all kinds.

Cannobio, the Valle Cannobina and the whole area to the Swiss border, has no professional ambulance service. We rely on the volunteers of the Red Cross and the Mountain Rescue Service (often the same people) for medical emergency cover. Last year the call went out for new volunteers - the service was so stretched that it had come to the point that the Cannobio branch could no longer guarantee 24/7 service - at certain times emergency calls would have to be answered exclusively by ambulance crews from Verbania, 30 minutes away. 

And if you're dying of a heart attack, 30 minutes is - literally - a lifetime.

If all of tonight's volunteers pass - and the exam is pretty exacting - the new blood will help to rejuvenate the service so that the Red Cross can continue to save lives in this area.

And I have to say, having studied the 'First Step' with this group earlier this year, I have no problem trusting my life to any one of them. 

In bocca al lupo! 

The Sound of Music : but not at Victoria Station...

Thanks to Katie May over in Saskatchewan for making me smile with this...



Never in a million years could this happen at London Victoria, Euston, Paddington, St Pancras, King's Cross. The dancers would be trampled to death by the raging commuter hoardes ...!

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? 

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.

Words of Wisdom

A fabulous early-autumn day here at the lake. Brilliant blue sky, sparkling water, a stiff breeze and warm, warm sunshine. The woods are ringing with the shots of Wednesday hunters.





On this beautiful morning I'm welcoming visitors from Words of Wisdom, where I'm honoured to be today's Blogger of Note (thanks to that hardworking duo, Sandy and Pam). Please, feel free to take a look around and leave a comment to let me know you were here, and where I can read your own Words of Wisdom.

I'm an English expat living in the far north of Italy, in a tiny, ancient granite village set on an outcrop of rock overlooking the splendid Lago Maggiore. I started writing this blog in 2007 as an antidote to being at home alone with two little monsters, a ravening horde of feral cats and a coop full of woman-eating chickens. Thinking of articles to write, and taking photographs to illustrate them has given me a real sense of perspective, a love of the tiny details in my surroundings, and reignited my sense of humour about being a mid-life mother living in a stubbornly medieval house half way up a mountain with no road.

In the sidebar there is a list of what I think are some interesting posts. Here you'll find local interest, expat advice, incisive socio-political comment and a healthy dose of pure Mamma madness. 

Enjoy!

Counting blessings

Still raining after a night full of thunderstorms and cloud bursts, thick mountain fog and drifting street-level mists populated by slinking, soggy cats.

I've been feeling rather hard-done-by lately, and I thought it was time to give myself a shake and count my blessings in a good old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip sort of way, for as Paulo Coelho wrote, "Every blessing ignored becomes a curse". 

When I set my mind to it, I got to seven in about as many seconds, and here they are - because seven is a magical number and if I do things by sevens and don't step on the cracks, it might encourage the sun to come out, and that would make everyone feel much better...

1.) I have been blessed with two healthy and energetic children in my middle years when I thought perhaps it might never happen. They're a handful of trouble, but also a heap of happiness.

2.) But for the fact that he doesn't play the Spanish guitar, my beloved husband would count as one of Joanna Trollope's impossible men. And I adore him.

3.) I live in a beautiful place and have as neighbours and friends many people I like and admire. Outings are punctuated with cheerful greetings and friendly conversations - all adding up to making me feel part of a happy and sane community. 

4.) The eternal renovation project I call home, while being a bugger to keep clean and tidy (especially when populated by one under-40 male, two under-6 kids, one over-size adolescent gun dog, half-a-dozen cats and the occasional sick chick), is big enough to contain all our desires and old enough to forgive all our frustrations. 

5.) My so-called garden, while being a bugger to keep up with, is jammed with beautiful colours, exquisite smells and good things to eat - that's if I can find them among the weeds and the heaps of obese slugs. 

6.) We have enough income to keep us in books, burgundy and brockenstube bric-à-brac, and our little family business is steady-as-she-goes. No repossessions. No double-dip debts. No recession night-sweats.

7.) So what is the biggest problem in my life right now? How to transport more than a thousand books from the East End attic where they've languished for seven years to a point south of the English Channel. 

And that's not such a big problem, after all...

Lucky me

Fifteen degrees at 8:30am. Mostly overcast, but some sunshine to brighten our spirits. 

Late last night as I walked through the dark woods home, a shooting star illuminated my way. This morning a black cat graced the my path down, and as I paused in town to tie my son's shoelaces, a blackbird crapped on my newly washed hair.

Good luck coming... Let's hope it's in the form of someone to help me with the mountain of ironing that seems to have appeared in the corner of the dressing room.

Quote of the week No. 36 : On learning

Six degrees at 8:30am. Sunny, but with a stiff wind sending glittering white horses galloping across the lake, and spray erupting upwards from the harbour walls and cliff sides.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784), the French philosopher and writer, was one of the giants of the Enlightenment, and, together with Jean Le Ronde d'Alembert, compiled what is considered to be the first real encyclopaedia, a project that consumed twenty years of his life. The Encyclopèdie was to enable any person who could read access to knowledge on any subject, and not just those already covered by the universities, and in this sense it was a deeply revolutionary work. It may be no coincidence - although not a simple one - that the French Revolution itself took place only five years after Diderot's death.

As one might imagine, Diderot thought a lot about learning, and where the ordinary person might come by it. But for him simply having access to books and the ability to read them was not enough. For him, information, facts, knowledge needed to be systematised and presented in all its many facets in order for real learning to take place. He wrote :

"The number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes."

Almost three hundred years later, in 2004, the number of new books published in the English language alone was a staggering 450,000 - that's almost a book a minute. And if that's not enough, I wonder what Diderot would have thought about the Internet...

Frontispiece snaffled from Wikipedia.

Un-deniably un-expected

Two degrees at 8:30am. Foggy with a few rain drops here and there.

After the annual Christmas frenzy is over, being in the foothills of the Alps, many people's thoughts turn to winter sports. Ski bunnies all over town pull out their finest ski-togs and prepare for the big downhill. "Are you skiing?", they ask. "No," I reply. Mama doesn't ski. "Oh come on, it's fun!" "No, thank-you," I reply, firmly. Mama doesn't ski. In fact, Mama is allergic to snow, to the cold, to skis, ski boots, salapettes, snow ploughs and chair lifts.

And dirty Turkish toilets.

In fact the only thing I can think of to like about skiing is the après. Preferably somewhere there isn't any snow.

Why? I'll tell you.

Some (gasp) 30 years ago, the handsome young man at the centre of my life took me one Christmas to stay with his family at Lac d'Annecy. As a mere snip of a girl with not much to say for herself, I spent the several days of our visit in a perpetual whirl of hesitation before the unknown - unknown foods, unknown table customs, unknown languages. Finally, it was decided that we should all go skiing. Not wishing to appear - what? - un-sophisticated, un-worldly, un-educated, I put an un-certain smile on my face and accepted the assortment of borrowed and rented equipment I was offered. Once at the piste, my boyfriend taught me a snow plough, and pointed me in the direction of the drag lift up to the nursery slope, while he headed nimbly for higher ground. Without looking back.

Well, at the top of the drag lift, I predictably fell off, and ended up under a pile of bodies, all swearing at me in French.

Gathering myself up with difficulty, I inched to the top of the slope and pointed my skis in what seemed to be the right direction, but instead of sailing down in graceful curves, I bumped down on my butt, and each time I found myself on the ground, I was assailed from all directions by 5-year-olds in helmets and go-faster goggles, coming at me at Warp Factor Eight. I spent the rest of the day attempting to look as if I was just taking a breather at the foot of the piste, all the time trying, and failing, to control my minds-of-their-own skis.

I never went near another ski slope, and I dined out on a vastly embellished version of my skiing disaster for years, but I never would have thought that, 30 years on, I would have a son of my own and that he would be a little snow-devil in go-faster goggles like the ones who cut me up so badly that day. Well I do and he is, thanks to Bernardinello and the other kind members of Sci Club Cannobio. They have devoted every Sunday since New Year to teaching him and many other children of the combined schools of Cannobio to hop neatly over prostrate and terrified teenage beginners on the nursery slopes of Piana di Vigezzo.

Thanks also to the Comune di Cannobio, who have again this year generously subsidised the classes to the tune of 30% (now there's a local authority that knows what to do with its CCTV budget!). And to M., who gallantly undertook the Valle Cannobina Rally every Sunday at dawn for eight weeks, and who finally persuaded me to come along, giving me a fantastic excuse to be up in the fresh air of the mountains in winter rather than doing the mountains of ironing at home!

PS

AJ, to my - what? - un-expected, un-ending, un-derstandable pleasure, won his age-group's end-of-course slalom competition by sailing down in graceful curves at Warp Factor Eight. Bravo campione!

Images taken at Piana di Vigezzo ski resort; highly recommended, particularly for families in search of snowy fun and a great atmosphere, whether they ski or not.

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.

Status : see below

This morning I have serious doubts about the digital thermometer I glimpse fleetingly as I speed across Cannobio's annoying cobblestones kindergarten-bound. Today it said - wait for it - FOUR degrees. Surely it can't be? A quick triangulation with the digital thermometer on the computerized signboard announcing Cannobio as The Prettiest Medieval Town On The Lake, confirms it. Yes, a drop of NINE degrees on two days ago. That north-westerly did more than strip the bark off the trees.

Still, the sun's shining and the lake is glittering, and as long it's not raining hard enough to make a mudslide of the mulattiera, I'm not complaining.

However...

And it really is "a beauty, a badass, the mother of them all...".

Ho-hum.

PS Just imagine, at the tender age of 13 I (and all my girlfriends) thought Eric Stewart was the best thing in blue jeans...

Le stelle di San Lorenzo

Hot and sunny once again. On the terrace there's a very large speckled hen eyeing a very large tabby cat. Don't ask.

One August night, back in oh my God, 1980, I was sweet sixteen. It was late. I was going home after the most dramatic evening of my young life. I was massively in love as only a 16-year-old can be, walking six feet above the ground, life vibrating through every nerve of my body. And other clichés.

Van Morrison's 'Moon Dance' spooled again and again through my mind. And above me, stars were falling, and I was wishing.

Fast forward to August 1988. A concert at Kenwood, where they played 'Scheherazade' hauntingly under the stars. The same stars that later rained down upon me as I lay in the arms of someone, swinging gently in a hammock strung across a Hampstead roof-garden. I remember clearly my wish that night. I'm still waiting.

And last night, lying on Carmine Superiore's ancient, darkened churchyard, experiencing a different kind of love. My three-year-old daughter asleep on my belly, and my 4-year-old son supine beside me, gazing upwards and asking impossible questions about the nature of stars, of space, of heaven, of eternity. Between sundown and moonrise, we saw San Lorenzo's stars whoosh across the sky, and on each and every one of them I wished the same secret wish.

And Carmine is a place where wishes come true.

Quote of the week No. 26 : On vacations

Hot, cloudy and pretty close back at Lago Maggiore.

Holidays abroad over. Holidays at home continue...and I feel very much that "No man [read in this case, mother] needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one".

The quotation was from Elbert Hubbard.

Who he? as John Clarke, the man who taught me to edit non-fiction, would have scribbled in the margin next to a name left unexplained...

Well, it seems, quite an interesting person. Life dates 1856-1915. An American writer, philosopher, artist and publisher, and an influential name in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He set up a press inspired by William Morriss's Kelmscott Press, calling it the Roycroft Press, and founded a community in New York that produced Mission-style products. He also wrote lots of stuff I have just now added to my reading list.

For me, the most romantic thing about Hubbard was that he and his second wife died eight miles off the Old Head of Kinsale. Ring any bells? They were travelling on the Lusitania. When they understood that U-Boat 20 had done for the great ship, instead of slipping into a lifeboat or diving desperately into the unforgiving seas, they simply wandered into one of the ship's cabins arm in arm, determined not to be parted in death as they were not parted in life. They went down with the ship.

Through the flippant or the commonplace we sometimes come to espy something of the sublime.