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?

Carmine quotes No. 17 : Mrs Malaprop strikes again

Tuesday, and yet more rain. There are mushrooms mushrooming on the curtains...

Here in Carmine, we're suffering an unusual plague of mosquitoes. Too much rain and not enough bats, perhaps. 

Says B, aged not-quite-four, and scratching yet another inflamed mosquito bite : 

"Mama, I'm covered in molehills. It must be the mozarellas....!"

Reported conversations No. 21 : Mad and supermad

Not raining. Emerging from the house I feel like I've gone from the cold shower into the sauna. What a luxurious feeling the sun is after so many days of cold and rain!


B, aged 3, in pink pyjamas adorned with purple cats, and a long chiffon scarf trailing behind, doing the zoomies just before bedtime...


Mama : You do look wonderful! What are you doing?
B : [Jumps off the rocking horse, monkeys her way up to the top bunk and picks up the nearest cuddly creature] I'm rescuing the princess from the witch of Carmine!
Mama : You're not the princess then?
B : [Launches herself down into Mama's arms, jumps to the floor and does a quick circuit of the room] No, silly Mama, I'm not the princess!
Mama : Let me guess - a Winx?
B : [Laughs and jumps back on the rocking horse] No....
Mama : A Gormito?
B : [Purses lips and shakes head, picks up maraccas in one hand, tambourine in the other and gives them a good shaking] No....
Mama : Catwoman? Batman? Robin? Spiderman?
B : [Jumping up and down on the bed until she bangs her head on the top bunk, then launches herself onto the floor, stops dead, grins] No Maah-Maah [sarcasm at 3, God help me at 13] No Maah-Maah, I'm ...... Supermad!

Carmine quotes No. 16 : Freud would be proud...

AJ, my five-year-old son, over breakfast :

"Mama, I had a lovely dream last night. I dreamt we got married!"

Sound a little Oedipal to you? Me too! Eek!

Anyone know where I can get a savings plan to pay for shrink bills during the teenage years? And I don't necessarily mean for my son.

Got to run, late this morning. Now, where did I put Electra's painting pinafore...?

PS Plus two degrees at 8:30am, foggy, damp, and with a shiver-making wind.

Pic courtesy http://www.theage.com.au

Carmine Quotes No.15 : What's it all about?

Hot. With a rainstorm at 5pm that drenched all those in the parco giochi, but seemed to have passed by the gardens of Carmine altogether.

A couple of evenings ago, Mama is in the kitchen and AJ, aged four-and-a-half, is supposedly in bed. Mama is feeling surprised that she still remembers every last word of that immortal Burt Baccarach creation 'Alfie' -- "What's it all about, Alfie...". And, with a glance at YouTube, thinks that Jude Law made a pretty good stab at the closing soliloquy in the 21st-century remake of the movie, but Jude Law doing it in Italian is just weird.

AJ creeps around the kitchen door. Listens quietly, and then creeps further in. Finally :

AJ : Mama, who's Alfie?

Mama : Hello darling, you're supposed to be in bed.

AJ : Yes, I know, but who is Alfie?

Mama : Well, Alfie's a man in a movie who didn't know what love is.

AJ : But we can tell him, can't we Mama.

Mama : Okay - what would you tell him? What is love?

AJ : Love is the most beautiful Mama in the world...


Mama is overcome with icky, fingers-down-the-throat Mama-love and fails to put AJ back to bed for at least another hour, which may perhaps have been the whole point...

Carmine quotes No. 14 : which came first...?

A whopping 10 degrees at 8:30am, and 17 as I breezed back past the digital thermometer in Cannobio at 12:30pm. Blue skies with fluffies scudding across the sky chased by a stiff breeze. The mimosas are blooming, the bees are buzzing in the elephant's ears, the cats are quarreling and the children are unmanageable. Spring has sprung.

This year's batch of eggs went into the artificial hen on Saturday night (we can always find something dissolute to do on Saturday nights in Carmine). We've been slowly bringing the incubator up to temperature (a strict thirty-seven-point-five-degrees) over the last few days using carefully sized potatoes in place of the eggs.

When the eggs went in, the potatoes, warm from the incubator, came out and were left on the table, where AJ found them. He soon found Mama with his new discovery :

AJ : Mama, Mama, chicks!

Mama : No, darling, not for 21 days yet.

AJ : Yes, Mama, chicks. I can feel them!

Mama : You can feel them? What do you mean?

AJ: Mama, the potatoes have got chicks in them, I can feel them, they're warm ...


Puts a whole new complexion on the "which came first" question ... the chicken or the ... potato?




For more on how to hatch your own chicks, click on the tag Chick-rearing 2008

CS Broadcasting Highlights of the Year 2008

Again, bright sunshine, blues skies and a warm wind. The clouds are trailing up the lake instead of down it, moving south-to-north rather than the more usual north-to-south.

Traditionally in the UK at Christmas time, there's plenty of tv-watching going on. The Brits have several excuses for slobbing out in front of the box at what they know should be a supremely social time of year. Perhaps the weather is awful and a walk doesn't seem too inviting. Or maybe you've eaten too much and can't get off the sofa. Or, better still, you want to avoid a deep and meaningless conversation with champion trainspotter Uncle Reg on the one hand and the more-than-slightly-overweight-and-nuts-to-boot Cousin Dottie on the other.

Much of what gets shown on tv at Christmas is either old stuff that everybody seems to like (Only Fools and Horses, James Bond with Sean Connery, or Cartoon Time with Roy Hudd and Emu) or content that's already been shown at least once in the year, repackaged to look like something different. An example of this is the 'Best of...' or 'Worst of...' or, more entertainingly, 'Out-takes from...'. Let's face it, this last option is cheap, and it's already been road-tested so it can't flop.

There's no tv in the House on the Hill, and given that I'm about as busy as the Boys from the Beeb at this time of year, I thought I'd do my own highlights of the year from CSB Carmine Superiore Broadcasting.


The Funniest Post of the Year (in me own 'umble opinion) : Breakfast time in Carmine Superiore is a time of virtuoso versatility amid a whirlwind of frenzied activity. A time during which Mama wears many hats...

The Most Heartfelt Post of the Year : This year, we lost too many friends and loved-ones. Such life-changing moments tend to put all other human preoccupations into perspective, and in the midst of our grief, it was the children who kept us moving in the right direction - always towards the future.

The Most Read Post of the Year : This post, a personal guide to Carmine Superiore and Lago Maggiore, drew more than 300 views and 60 comments.

My Favourite Picture of the Year : I can't decide. First, are the flowers after the rain, and second are the camellias that I caught doing arty-farty things in the fontana one Sunday afternoon. And then there was this image of the strangest mist I've seen in my few years here in Carmine, and one of the prettiest of the frescoes in the church. Click on the image to see larger versions; it's worth it.

Best Book of the Year : Again, I can't make up my mind. I can't decide between The Bad Girl on the one hand and Runemarks on the other. Or perhaps the best was The Enchantress of Florence, or maybe it was Neverwhere. Oh dammit! You choose.

Best Carmine Quote of the Year : This came from my neighbour, KK, who is well-known for his dry, quick and clever one-liners.

This Year's Greatest Personal Achievement : I know thousands of people do it every day but it meant a lot to me...

This Year's Largest House-Renovation Project : It was finished in time for winter...

This Year's Greatest Leap Forward in the Italian Vocab Stakes : Sadly, it was on the subject of allergies...

And finally... The Most Sickeningly Self-Satisfied Post of the Year : It has to be this one!

Happy Reading!

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Carmine quotes No. 13 : the wood in the woodshed

The temperature's dropping. Slowly, slowly, degree by degree. In the big house in Carmine, the tension is rising. We've started lighting a fire in the evenings, the chimneys are swept and Mathilda is standing at the ready. I see that M. is starting to look a bit fish-eyed : he has one eye on the thermometer and one eye on the woodshed.

Regina, Montessori teacher, polyglot and Carmine appassionata opined the other day :

"There are two types of men in this world, those who think the wood in the woodshed is going to be enough, and those who think it isn't going to be enough, even though they're looking at the same pile of wood..."

I wonder if our little stash will see us through, cooking, water heating, two stufe in ceramica, wood-burning stoves miscellaneous and one open hearth...?

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Carmine quotes No. 12 : Pigs, potties and piode

Mama dashes into her neighbour's house in hot pursuit of a butt-naked two-year-old in mid-potty-training. She takes the beautiful, handcrafted staircase two at a time to find her daughter in joyful mid-bounce on the bed.

Clambering back down the steps, holding the squirming child under her arm like a baby pig, she apologises for the interruption, and explains her fear that B. will pee on the bed.

Says KK, proprietor, famous for his mischievous grin and his incisive one-liners, even in a foreign language :

"We have that problem with the roof."

Carmine quotes No. 11 : The cat and the rain

Giovanna, friend and neighbour. Fount of knowledge for all things child-rearing and great for odd snippets of Carmine lore :

"When the cat cleans her ears", she said, "the rain is coming."

The cat cleaned her ears and the rain is falling.

Carmine quotes No. 10 : The chicken and the pot

Twenty-one degrees at 11am and overcast. [Raining by 4pm.] What was that I said yesterday about the power of words to change the weather?

Where's me fleece.

I'm off to feed the chickadees. Lately the old cockerel has taken to attacking me every time I go in the run. I think it's pretty rum given that without me he and his girlies would starve. I'm told I should grab him, hold him upside down by his feet and give him a good talking to, but I have in mind the following saying somebody round here once told me : "The older the chicken the better the soup" ...

Carmine quotes No. 9 : Spreading a little happiness

Twenty-eight degrees at 8am. Breezy but sunny.

B., aged almost 22 months, sings her first song :

Happy happy, You You

Happy happy, You You

Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy
happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy...

(between giggles) You YOU!

Who needs birthdays!

Carmine quotes No. 8 : Il futuro di Carmine

Warmish and damp. As always after heavy rain there are streams everywhere you go in Carmine. The waterfalls are flowing and the pathways are rippling with water. The chickens have taken refuge on top of the chicken coop to keep their dainty little toes out of the mud. The 16 tomato plants, 8 cucumber plants, 4 courgette plants, 4 sweet peppers and lettuces various that I bought during a lull between rainstorms and expected to plant this weekend are languishing still in their pots in what I hope is a sheltered corner of the garden.

This morning I stood in for M. at a meeting with Cannobio's mayor at the town hall, in the impressive Sala Consiliare. At a guess 17th-century, stone walls, gloomy politician portraits, enormous gilt mirrors, regency-striped chairs, oval mahogany table, inlaid wood flooring and twin flags. And a mesmerising view of the lake through French windows. The same room in which M. and I were married, and with the same man presiding.

Anyway.

I was forced by M.'s absence to bring the two recovering-but-still-flushed-and-floppy dotties with me, and as I entered in an undignified flurry of pushchair, waterproofs and wellies, someone said, "Ecco il futuro di Carmine", here is Carmine's future. And that person was more right than he could have imagined.

It's a commonplace that children are the future. Of course they are. We expect them to outlive us, carrying a precious little spark of us with them into the tomorrows we will never see. The way we bring our children up, the values we pass on to them, dictate to a great extent the kind of place the world will be when they are old enough to influence it.

But recently, I've learned that children are the future in another and more immediate way. They embody and represent the future for us. They keep alive in us our belief in a future that can be better, or at least not worse, than the present or the past. They keep alive in us our belief that there can be a future at all, for us as well as for them.

When things get rough, and we want to quit, or when all we want to do is wallow in the past, the children are there with their demands, their needs, their naked desires. They drag us out of the past and propel us into the future simply by demanding that we tend to their needs from moment to moment and anticipate their needs from day to day. Despite everything. Their little bodies are our timepieces - breakfast, sleep, lunch, tea, supper, story, sleep... They carry us along with them minute by selfish minute, hour by selfish hour.

When things get rough, and we want to quit, the "Now, Now, NOW!" on the lips of a three-year-old could be our salvation.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Carmine quotes No. 7 : On unseasonally warm weather

Thirty-six degrees at midday in the sun (today you can do the maths). No Mathilda today either.

Signora Anna on the weather :

"This weather's good only for bugs."

The overworked doctor's receptionist waggles her eyebrows in agreement.

Carmine quotes No. 6 : On heating with wood

One degree at 8:30am. Frost. Clear skies and bright sunshine.

Today...is tree-felling day, and the growl of Emmanuele Ferrari's chainsaw (see November 2007, Carmine quotes No. 1 : Weather forecast) is echoing off Carmine's ancient walls.

Hereabouts they have a saying about heating with wood :

"Wood heats three times : once when you cut the tree down, once when you split the logs and once when you burn the firewood."

And heating with wood prevents us being held to ransom by the electricity and gas suppliers. That makes me feel very warm.

Carmine quotes No. 5 : On feeding the brats

Three degrees at 8:30am. Overcast and still.

Mette, Danish survivor of an 8-week visit to Carmine Superiore (just finishing) with her two children and grandparents various in a house with an outdoor shower and a single stufa that barely works.

"I've heard that you have to offer a child a new food ten times before he decides he wants to try it. So how come you have to offer the same child bon-bons only once?"

Carmine quotes No. 4 : In vino veritas

One degree below at 8:30am. More sunshine, more clear skies and just the whisper of a wind.

AJ, age 3, hugging the neck of the recently-opened cremant bottle :

“When you need some more…"

(pauses significantly and looks around, gauging the level of attention in the room, then finds he’s lost his thread, is momentarily cast down, but then manages to finish importantly)

"...you need some more!”

Carmine quotes No. 3 : On staying fit

Minus one at 9am. Frosty and cloudy with a technicolor sunrise. The chickens are deeply disgruntled - what kind of a hotel is this anyway? Their water is frozen.

Signora Cesarina. Ninety-something, with, as Ezio says, the mind of a 20-year-old. Tiny and stooped. Bright-eyed as a blackbird. Still keeps her goat and her chickens, and a guinea pig free-range in the stable to keep away foxes. Still walks up to the woods to collect goat food and kindling. And wildflowers.

"If you walk, you'll keep walking...If you sit, you'll just sit."

Carmine quotes No.2 : Mind your language

Seven degrees at 8am and an extraordinary eighteen degrees at 1pm. That's 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit to you Brits. A blustery but warm wind is making white horses. 


Mama : (mutters to herself as she finally drags herself, a parcel, a shopping bag and two children round the last curve of the hill and strides into the final straight) "And now I've got to go and feed the bloody chickens..."

AJ : (mutters to himself as he rounds the curve, sits down for his 11th rest-stop of the climb and sees the cat waiting for him) "And now I've got to go and feed my bloody girl-cat..."

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Carmine quotes No. 1 : Weather forecast

An astounding twenty-one degrees in the sun. Down to my T-shirt in the garden while transplanting the raspberries. The soil is very, very dry, and the lake recedes more every day.

Carmine quotes No.1 : Emanuele Ferrari, twenty-something with frizzy whiskers, a chainsaw in one hand and the other hand permanently in a bandage. Profession : Boscaiolo (woodcutter).

"When the lake is low, we shall have snow...."

We'll see.