Medieval Sunday in Italia bella

Today, Carmine looks a little as it did at Christmas in 2009...

...and the Sunday soundtrack is the music that would have been heard in the courts and cloisters of northern Italy around the time San Gottardo was built ...

First snow 2012

One solitary degree at 8:03am. Frost in the frost pockets where the cold air tumbles down the sides of Carmine's ramparts. Ice cubes in the chickens' drinking water. And now there is a dusting of snow on the palms, and a pile of cats on Mathilda.

Carmine's winter flowers, No. 5

A warm and sunny day today which saw us out on the little piazza by the church, soaking up the rays. The snow on the sentiero is almost gone, and the water supply is back in action.

Another of Carmine's winter flowers - one I haven't seen before, and one I can't name. Anyone?

Survivors

After yesterday's surprising 14°C at 4pm, and last night's warm wind, we woke to 6° at 8am and no water anywhere in the house. 

This morning, there was no husband, no water, a fox at the chicken coop, a dog with self-inflicted diarrhoea, two children bent on killing one another with my boot trees, and a mobile phone that had given up the ghost. Despite this, we did manage to get to school within two minutes of the bell, and in pretty good order. 

On the way home to wait for my heroes from Sicea, the water company, I snapped this little survivor of the snow, and hope that I will come out of this blooming as well.

Scilla, Carmine Superiore, February 2012

Carmine's winter flowers, No. 3

Minus six at dawn this morning with snow frosty and sparkling on the ground and the roofs. No water in half the house and in the side of the house where there is water, the boiler has gone into hibernation. Ho-hum.

Here's another lovely winter flower to keep our spirits up.

Still snowing in Carmine

Minus one degree at 8.30am as I inched cautiously through Cannobio's old town in my snow-encrusted Fiat. About 20cm of snow on the ground, and still snowing. 

Snow on camelia,

Carmine Superiore, February 2012

Snowing in Carmine

The view from my study window.

Carmine Superiore, today.

The lion in winter

Snowing. Big, fluffy flakes. All over the place.

Cannobio's lion rock roars in the snow.

Motherhood means ... No. 27

One degree at 8am. After snow overnight, rain all day, with slush ankle-deep going down the hill.

Motherhood means ...

...feeling free to try out some Christmas crafts, knowing that you can blame your disasters (about 99% in my case) on the children.

Our handsome Christmas visitor

"The redbreast sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then brisk alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is-
Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet."

James Thomson (1726-44)

A pleasure to see this bringer of goodwill enjoying the food we leave for him on our windowsills, safely a full storey out of reach of Carmine's cut-throat cats.

Book notes No. 38 : A Fair Maiden, Joyce Carol Oates

Above freezing. Grey and snowing. Here in Carmine Superiore, it can't decide whether to settle or not. At lake-level it's raining.

I seem to have known the name Joyce Carol Oates forever, but I think this novel is the first of hers I've read, picked up in a delay-struck airport lounge in a 4 for 3 pile. And what a revelation. 

Katya Spivak. Fifteen. Uneducated. Working class. Desperate for attention.

Marcus Kidder. Sixty-something. Trust-fund child. Sophisticated. Searching for... ?

And that question mark forms the backbone of this suspense-filled, acutely-observed, psychologically wrenching novel. What does Marcus Kidder want from Katya Spivak? And what, for that matter, does Katya Spivak want from Marcus Kidder? 

The story is set on the New Jersey shore, an area I know particularly well, and I instantly recognised the two worlds Oates describes: the blue-collar families without jobs, without books, without any star to live by but some misguided televised idea of the American dream, which seems to consist of the freedom to not-work but get wasted instead; and the rich and elegant, hiding in their compound-gardens, behind their high hedges, giving their names to libraries, and with the leisure to indulge. 

Oates writes here of the coming-of-age of a working class girl. Ignored by her siblings. Blackmailed and lied to by her mother. Treated coldly by her terrified-to-lose-it-all nouveau-riche summer-job employers. Made to feel she is something by her new friend. But what that something is, she cannot tell. A commodity to be bought? A child to be coerced? Or a 'real' person with valid feelings, thoughts, emotions, to be heard, to be valued, even loved? 

The Daily Mail called this book "A delightfully chilling and playful novella from a literary genius", and I'd second that. But it's more. It's also a minutely accurate vision of some of the terrors and uncertainties of growing up female in working class America. 

And my question is: why hasn't anybody yet given this woman the Nobel?    

Madonna in need of TLC

I'm without my thermometer, but given that the chickens' water is frozen for the first time this winter, I'd hazard a guess that today is the coldest yet. Morning overcast, late afternoon snowing.

Madonna and Child, Strada Cantonale, Brissago

I wonder what she's pointing at - not dropped sweet wrappers, I'll be bound!

Tell-tale

Damp and cold. Swags of heavy grey clouds sag over Lago Maggiore. Above 500m, the woods clothing the lakeside hills are sprinkled in fairy-dust, icing sugar snow. 

In our own neck of the woods, only patches of snow remain. In one there is a boot-print and a paw-print, whispering of yesterday's woodland excursion. A woman and her dog. Always together.

Weather report

Snowing wetly again here in Carmine. There's a sprinkling on the ground and the roofs, and I suppose from below we look quite pretty...

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!

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!

Two degrees at 8:30am. Snow sprinkled on the ground in Carmine Superiore, but not in Carmine Inferiore. Starting to feel victimised...

Everyday beauty

Two degrees at 8:30am. Snowing in Carmine Superiore, dry in Carmine Inferiore. What a difference a hill makes!

Every time I see it I wish all road signage could be as beautiful as this parking sign.
And I feel glad that it is part of my everyday routine.

Hotel del Lago, Carmine Inferiore.

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.