The five degrees in the bathroom and the fire burning in our beloved Mathilda, has signalled the start of our Carmine winter.
Perfect kindling.
I suspect that falcetto will be in my hand rather a lot of the time in the weeks to come.
Showing posts with label Days of the year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Days of the year. Show all posts
Monday, 19 November 2012
What's kindling in Carmine...
Cold, dry and hazy.
The five degrees in the bathroom and the fire burning in our beloved Mathilda, has signalled the start of our Carmine winter.
The five degrees in the bathroom and the fire burning in our beloved Mathilda, has signalled the start of our Carmine winter.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Sunday, 1 January 2012
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...
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...
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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 two dotties are both at home sick, so I have inaugurated Mathilda a day early this year.
Welcome Mathilda!
Friday, 11 November 2011
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
Sunday, 8 May 2011
The worst and the best job in the world
To all ye who took on the worst paid job in the world, the job with no fixed hours, no holidays, no pay, no early retirement, and definitely no promotion prospects (unless you happen to be Her).
To all ye who opted for a relationship with no chance of divorce. For cold little hands creeping into yours. For unthinking trust and innocent love and small-body cuddles that never end. For the pleasure of seeing the world through the eyes of a child. For the privilege of watching them grow, learn, strive and succeed.
Happy Festa della Mamma!
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
San Gottardo
San Gottardo the feast day of the patron saint of Carmine Superiore, has dawned bright, beautiful and dry.
San Gottardo, I should explain, operates in much the same way as St Swithin. They say hereabouts that if it rains on San Gottardo, it will rain for forty days.
Phew!
San Gottardo, I should explain, operates in much the same way as St Swithin. They say hereabouts that if it rains on San Gottardo, it will rain for forty days.
Phew!
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Happy Easter/Buona Pasqua
The last of my camellias and the first of my roses -
for today's Easter mass.
Easter greetings...
...and may your springtime garden - whatever shape and form it happens to take - grow beautiful, healthy and fertile.
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Not St George's Day
Coolish, benignly overcast, and with patches of damp where it tried to rain last night.
For the whole of my life, 23 April has been St George's Day, that day when the English agonise over whether to celebrate their patron saint or whether it would all be too politically incorrect for words. Well not this 23 April. And that's because today is also Holy Saturday, when there are traditionally no divine services until the evening's Easter Vigil.
So that George gets a look-in somewhere along the line this year he's been shifted to Monday, when there will undoubtedly be plenty of angst-free celebrations in other places where he's the patron saint, such as Malta, Palestine, Istanbul, Moscow, Venice, Saskatchewan, Beirut, Moscow, Genoa, Constantinople and Brissago.
In the meantime, here's a quick slain dragon to keep you in the mood...
Hooray for brave knights on white chargers rescuing fair maidens in distress!
For the whole of my life, 23 April has been St George's Day, that day when the English agonise over whether to celebrate their patron saint or whether it would all be too politically incorrect for words. Well not this 23 April. And that's because today is also Holy Saturday, when there are traditionally no divine services until the evening's Easter Vigil.
So that George gets a look-in somewhere along the line this year he's been shifted to Monday, when there will undoubtedly be plenty of angst-free celebrations in other places where he's the patron saint, such as Malta, Palestine, Istanbul, Moscow, Venice, Saskatchewan, Beirut, Moscow, Genoa, Constantinople and Brissago.
In the meantime, here's a quick slain dragon to keep you in the mood...
 |
| The dragon slain, church door, Varzo |
Hooray for brave knights on white chargers rescuing fair maidens in distress!
Friday, 25 March 2011
Feast of the Annunciation
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrating old Gabriel's visit to Mary with her new job description.
Annunciation
Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore
Wouldn't life be so much more magical if instead of getting the news of impending motherhood from a little plastic stick covered in pee-pee, all mothers-to-be were visited by an angel conjuring flowers out of the air...?
PS Has anyone spotted Yulia Tymoshenko in this picture? Or is it just my imagination?
Monday, 14 February 2011
Valentine graffiti
Mild, damp and misty this February 14th.
I hate graffiti. It intimidates me. In underpasses, on abandoned factories and houses, in railway yards, in impossible spots. Graffiti artists mark out their territory in places a woman alone perhaps shouldn't be. Perhaps will regret being. Perhaps goes there anyway.
This place is other. This is not-you. This is us. We are brutal, virile, dangerous. We oppose you. This is our war-paint. Enter at your own risk.
In London, that is.
In Cannobio, jewel of Lago Maggiore, the graffiti on the underpass walls tell a different story.
A love story. A love story all hearts and flowers, and ti amo 4 ever. A love story full of adolescent insecurity, longing and bravado. Strangely, while the anglophone world looks to Italian as the language of passion, these youngsters pepper their pantings with English.
Back in Cannobio, another kind of amorous declaration has appeared. The practice of sealing a relationship with a padlock and throwing the key into a river, down a sheer mountainside or into some other unreachable location, has reached us all the way from China, where it was originally used to seal a bargain made with the ineffable. Step out onto Cannobio's Ponte Ballerino, the footbridge that crosses the Cannobino river and connects Cannobio with Traffiume, and one is greeted by lock after lock, many etched with the stock phrases of eternal love in Italian, German and English. All winking in the sunshine. All, we have to assume, unassailable.
I hate graffiti. It intimidates me. In underpasses, on abandoned factories and houses, in railway yards, in impossible spots. Graffiti artists mark out their territory in places a woman alone perhaps shouldn't be. Perhaps will regret being. Perhaps goes there anyway.
This place is other. This is not-you. This is us. We are brutal, virile, dangerous. We oppose you. This is our war-paint. Enter at your own risk.
In London, that is.
In Cannobio, jewel of Lago Maggiore, the graffiti on the underpass walls tell a different story.
A love story. A love story all hearts and flowers, and ti amo 4 ever. A love story full of adolescent insecurity, longing and bravado. Strangely, while the anglophone world looks to Italian as the language of passion, these youngsters pepper their pantings with English.
Five minutes away in Switzerland, however, the authorities are one step ahead of the graffiti artists. Here, the public loos in Ascona's lakeside playground are pre-graffitified, not with the stutterings of juveniles but with whimsical poetry in French and Italian. Still, even the Municipio has a heart: the theme, as ever, is l'amour.
Back in Cannobio, another kind of amorous declaration has appeared. The practice of sealing a relationship with a padlock and throwing the key into a river, down a sheer mountainside or into some other unreachable location, has reached us all the way from China, where it was originally used to seal a bargain made with the ineffable. Step out onto Cannobio's Ponte Ballerino, the footbridge that crosses the Cannobino river and connects Cannobio with Traffiume, and one is greeted by lock after lock, many etched with the stock phrases of eternal love in Italian, German and English. All winking in the sunshine. All, we have to assume, unassailable.
Happy San Valentino, however you choose to express yourself...
And if you're the architect responsible for the Ponte Ballerino, perhaps you might like to rework your sums for the extra weight...how much love can one bridge take?
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Bandir gennaio!
What do tin cans, long lengths of string, large numbers of under-10s and spring have in common?
Bandir gennaio! On January 31, all the local kindergarten and schoolchildren banded together with their pushchair siblings to banish January and hasten on the coming spring. Their weapon of choice? The noisiest tin cans available strung onto long string 'tails' and dragged along the old town cobbles.
With excitement. With delight. With giggling, screaming, eye-twinkling pleasure.
For once, they were allowed to make a noise, and, boy, did they rise to the occasion!
PS If today's weather is anything to go by, they must have succeeded. More blue skies, warm sunshine with a little breath of cold air to keep us on our toes.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Where is he now?
On the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I find myself wondering whatever happened to this little boy after he walked free from the childrens' barracks amid the cold and the carnage.
And I feel grateful that I am able to raise my little ones without fear of this happening to them, and grateful to all those who died to make our peaceful life possible. But I feel sad and angry that our very own governments have used this peace to inflict similar brutality on children in other parts of the world. Will it ever stop?
Image: US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Capodanno 2011
A cloudless blue sky, and warm sunshine on heavy frost greets us this New Year's Day. By lunchtime it's such a beautiful day we're picnicking on the churchyard with all of Lago Maggiore shimmering at our feet.
I may have mentioned before that in a past life I spent a fair amount of time on the eastern seaboard of the US of A. On one occasion my new year's hostess was a statuesque Filipina, called Suzy. That night, Suzy's house was alive with friends and relatives from all over. Four generations of family squeezed into her house to share her hospitality, sunshiney smile and great cooking.
As midnight approached, the talk turned to new year traditions and superstitions, and soon many of the white Americans present had thrown a full purse out onto the front lawn, to be 'found' just after midnight, setting the pattern for luck in the new year.
Back in the kitchen, Suzy, a generation closer to subsistence than her American-born guests, was filling the rice container. If there was rice in the house as the year turned, there would be enough to feed the family all year round.
Last night, as I stepped wearily into the dressing room in search of pyjamas, my firework-spangled eyes fell on the overflowing ironing basket.
And I thought of Suzy...
A happy and successful New Year to all visitors to Carmine Superiore, whether they arrive on the Information Superhighway or on Shanks's Pony. Buon anno a tutti!
Credit: Stitching by AJ, aged 6.
Friday, 24 December 2010
A Christmas wish from Carmine Superiore
Warmer now. Mist and rain. A damp Christmas for Carmine Superiore.
The other day I wrote about the silence that follows the snow in Carmine. A friend stopped me in the street a day or two later and amid elaborate Italian Christmas greetings mentioned that my words had made her laugh, because in Carmine Superiore she imagined it was always silent. We talked a little about that special silence that comes after the snow, and about how Carmine isn't as silent as one might think, what with the wildlife crashing around the woods and all.
Our conversation made me remember the silence that would come on Christmas morning (with or without snow) when I was a child. No cars. No rushing too and fro. No buses, no bells, no siren for the start of work at the nearby factory that gave our town life. Peace for a day.
Today I'm wishing all readers a quiet and very happy Christmas, however you have chosen to celebrate it. And if I could give everyone a gift, I would give peace. The kind of peace that is not only silence without, but also silence within. The peace that brings the strength to face every passing day whatever it might bring. Real peace. The peace described so simply in the Gaelic blessing:
Happy Christmas all!
The other day I wrote about the silence that follows the snow in Carmine. A friend stopped me in the street a day or two later and amid elaborate Italian Christmas greetings mentioned that my words had made her laugh, because in Carmine Superiore she imagined it was always silent. We talked a little about that special silence that comes after the snow, and about how Carmine isn't as silent as one might think, what with the wildlife crashing around the woods and all.
Our conversation made me remember the silence that would come on Christmas morning (with or without snow) when I was a child. No cars. No rushing too and fro. No buses, no bells, no siren for the start of work at the nearby factory that gave our town life. Peace for a day.
Today I'm wishing all readers a quiet and very happy Christmas, however you have chosen to celebrate it. And if I could give everyone a gift, I would give peace. The kind of peace that is not only silence without, but also silence within. The peace that brings the strength to face every passing day whatever it might bring. Real peace. The peace described so simply in the Gaelic blessing:
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the flowing air to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep peace of the shining stars to you,
Deep peace of the gentle night to you,
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Happy Christmas all!
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Red sky in the morning...
And yes, it's been chucking it down all night and all this morning.
The outdooor cats are slinking about wondering if they'll be noticed if they take a dry snooze in the furthest recess of the attic among the sheepskins, and the All Saints arrivals (what must be a record six vacation-house chimneys smoking) are looking rather glum in their Timberland jackets. Mind you, the hunters are undeterred - the first shots were fired exactly as dawn broke. Jakob! is confined to baracks.
The outdooor cats are slinking about wondering if they'll be noticed if they take a dry snooze in the furthest recess of the attic among the sheepskins, and the All Saints arrivals (what must be a record six vacation-house chimneys smoking) are looking rather glum in their Timberland jackets. Mind you, the hunters are undeterred - the first shots were fired exactly as dawn broke. Jakob! is confined to baracks.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
San Gottardo
I wonder who will come to our patronal festival mass. The sentiero will be damp. The umbrellas and raincoats will be damp. The flowers will be damp. Our souls will be damp.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Is that a heart amid the squiggle?
Amid all the squiggles of daily life,
With him dashing this way, you going that way,
Amid the noise and confusion made
by that beloved rabble you brought into the world,
Thursday, 31 December 2009
The Happy End
Cold, misty, and trying to rain. Carmine lies sleeping, like a cat curled up on a sofa.
New Year is the time when we are urged to think of new beginnings, new resolutions, new good intentions (with which to pave the road to hell, no doubt). But if there are beginnings there must somewhere be endings. As Seneca wrote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
Today, I wish you auspicious beginnings, and whatever happy endings your heart desires.
New Year is the time when we are urged to think of new beginnings, new resolutions, new good intentions (with which to pave the road to hell, no doubt). But if there are beginnings there must somewhere be endings. As Seneca wrote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
Today, I wish you auspicious beginnings, and whatever happy endings your heart desires.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Today, the children wondered at Jack Frost's first masterwork of the year and tapped apart the year's first ice-covered puddles with their boot-toes. The temperature at 8:30am was a big, fat, round zero degrees and the skies are threatening snow.
Yesterday afternoon, every man jack of them under-6s (see yesterday's post) was a star shining bright under the gaze of their doting parents. They did us proud!
Yesterday afternoon, every man jack of them under-6s (see yesterday's post) was a star shining bright under the gaze of their doting parents. They did us proud!
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Showing posts with label Days of the year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Days of the year. Show all posts
Monday, 19 November 2012
What's kindling in Carmine...
Cold, dry and hazy.
The five degrees in the bathroom and the fire burning in our beloved Mathilda, has signalled the start of our Carmine winter.
The five degrees in the bathroom and the fire burning in our beloved Mathilda, has signalled the start of our Carmine winter.
Perfect kindling.
I suspect that falcetto will be in my hand rather a lot of the time in the weeks to come.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Sunday, 1 January 2012
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...
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...
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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 two dotties are both at home sick, so I have inaugurated Mathilda a day early this year.
Welcome Mathilda!
Friday, 11 November 2011
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
Sunday, 8 May 2011
The worst and the best job in the world
To all ye who took on the worst paid job in the world, the job with no fixed hours, no holidays, no pay, no early retirement, and definitely no promotion prospects (unless you happen to be Her).
To all ye who opted for a relationship with no chance of divorce. For cold little hands creeping into yours. For unthinking trust and innocent love and small-body cuddles that never end. For the pleasure of seeing the world through the eyes of a child. For the privilege of watching them grow, learn, strive and succeed.
Happy Festa della Mamma!
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
San Gottardo
San Gottardo the feast day of the patron saint of Carmine Superiore, has dawned bright, beautiful and dry.
San Gottardo, I should explain, operates in much the same way as St Swithin. They say hereabouts that if it rains on San Gottardo, it will rain for forty days.
Phew!
San Gottardo, I should explain, operates in much the same way as St Swithin. They say hereabouts that if it rains on San Gottardo, it will rain for forty days.
Phew!
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Happy Easter/Buona Pasqua
The last of my camellias and the first of my roses -
for today's Easter mass.
Easter greetings...
...and may your springtime garden - whatever shape and form it happens to take - grow beautiful, healthy and fertile.
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Not St George's Day
Coolish, benignly overcast, and with patches of damp where it tried to rain last night.
For the whole of my life, 23 April has been St George's Day, that day when the English agonise over whether to celebrate their patron saint or whether it would all be too politically incorrect for words. Well not this 23 April. And that's because today is also Holy Saturday, when there are traditionally no divine services until the evening's Easter Vigil.
So that George gets a look-in somewhere along the line this year he's been shifted to Monday, when there will undoubtedly be plenty of angst-free celebrations in other places where he's the patron saint, such as Malta, Palestine, Istanbul, Moscow, Venice, Saskatchewan, Beirut, Moscow, Genoa, Constantinople and Brissago.
In the meantime, here's a quick slain dragon to keep you in the mood...
Hooray for brave knights on white chargers rescuing fair maidens in distress!
For the whole of my life, 23 April has been St George's Day, that day when the English agonise over whether to celebrate their patron saint or whether it would all be too politically incorrect for words. Well not this 23 April. And that's because today is also Holy Saturday, when there are traditionally no divine services until the evening's Easter Vigil.
So that George gets a look-in somewhere along the line this year he's been shifted to Monday, when there will undoubtedly be plenty of angst-free celebrations in other places where he's the patron saint, such as Malta, Palestine, Istanbul, Moscow, Venice, Saskatchewan, Beirut, Moscow, Genoa, Constantinople and Brissago.
In the meantime, here's a quick slain dragon to keep you in the mood...
|
| The dragon slain, church door, Varzo |
Hooray for brave knights on white chargers rescuing fair maidens in distress!
Friday, 25 March 2011
Feast of the Annunciation
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrating old Gabriel's visit to Mary with her new job description.
Annunciation
Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore
Wouldn't life be so much more magical if instead of getting the news of impending motherhood from a little plastic stick covered in pee-pee, all mothers-to-be were visited by an angel conjuring flowers out of the air...?
PS Has anyone spotted Yulia Tymoshenko in this picture? Or is it just my imagination?
Monday, 14 February 2011
Valentine graffiti
Mild, damp and misty this February 14th.
I hate graffiti. It intimidates me. In underpasses, on abandoned factories and houses, in railway yards, in impossible spots. Graffiti artists mark out their territory in places a woman alone perhaps shouldn't be. Perhaps will regret being. Perhaps goes there anyway.
This place is other. This is not-you. This is us. We are brutal, virile, dangerous. We oppose you. This is our war-paint. Enter at your own risk.
In London, that is.
In Cannobio, jewel of Lago Maggiore, the graffiti on the underpass walls tell a different story.
A love story. A love story all hearts and flowers, and ti amo 4 ever. A love story full of adolescent insecurity, longing and bravado. Strangely, while the anglophone world looks to Italian as the language of passion, these youngsters pepper their pantings with English.
Back in Cannobio, another kind of amorous declaration has appeared. The practice of sealing a relationship with a padlock and throwing the key into a river, down a sheer mountainside or into some other unreachable location, has reached us all the way from China, where it was originally used to seal a bargain made with the ineffable. Step out onto Cannobio's Ponte Ballerino, the footbridge that crosses the Cannobino river and connects Cannobio with Traffiume, and one is greeted by lock after lock, many etched with the stock phrases of eternal love in Italian, German and English. All winking in the sunshine. All, we have to assume, unassailable.
I hate graffiti. It intimidates me. In underpasses, on abandoned factories and houses, in railway yards, in impossible spots. Graffiti artists mark out their territory in places a woman alone perhaps shouldn't be. Perhaps will regret being. Perhaps goes there anyway.
This place is other. This is not-you. This is us. We are brutal, virile, dangerous. We oppose you. This is our war-paint. Enter at your own risk.
In London, that is.
In Cannobio, jewel of Lago Maggiore, the graffiti on the underpass walls tell a different story.
A love story. A love story all hearts and flowers, and ti amo 4 ever. A love story full of adolescent insecurity, longing and bravado. Strangely, while the anglophone world looks to Italian as the language of passion, these youngsters pepper their pantings with English.
Five minutes away in Switzerland, however, the authorities are one step ahead of the graffiti artists. Here, the public loos in Ascona's lakeside playground are pre-graffitified, not with the stutterings of juveniles but with whimsical poetry in French and Italian. Still, even the Municipio has a heart: the theme, as ever, is l'amour.
Back in Cannobio, another kind of amorous declaration has appeared. The practice of sealing a relationship with a padlock and throwing the key into a river, down a sheer mountainside or into some other unreachable location, has reached us all the way from China, where it was originally used to seal a bargain made with the ineffable. Step out onto Cannobio's Ponte Ballerino, the footbridge that crosses the Cannobino river and connects Cannobio with Traffiume, and one is greeted by lock after lock, many etched with the stock phrases of eternal love in Italian, German and English. All winking in the sunshine. All, we have to assume, unassailable.
Happy San Valentino, however you choose to express yourself...
And if you're the architect responsible for the Ponte Ballerino, perhaps you might like to rework your sums for the extra weight...how much love can one bridge take?
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Bandir gennaio!
What do tin cans, long lengths of string, large numbers of under-10s and spring have in common?
Bandir gennaio! On January 31, all the local kindergarten and schoolchildren banded together with their pushchair siblings to banish January and hasten on the coming spring. Their weapon of choice? The noisiest tin cans available strung onto long string 'tails' and dragged along the old town cobbles.
With excitement. With delight. With giggling, screaming, eye-twinkling pleasure.
For once, they were allowed to make a noise, and, boy, did they rise to the occasion!
PS If today's weather is anything to go by, they must have succeeded. More blue skies, warm sunshine with a little breath of cold air to keep us on our toes.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Where is he now?
On the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I find myself wondering whatever happened to this little boy after he walked free from the childrens' barracks amid the cold and the carnage.
And I feel grateful that I am able to raise my little ones without fear of this happening to them, and grateful to all those who died to make our peaceful life possible. But I feel sad and angry that our very own governments have used this peace to inflict similar brutality on children in other parts of the world. Will it ever stop?
Image: US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Capodanno 2011
A cloudless blue sky, and warm sunshine on heavy frost greets us this New Year's Day. By lunchtime it's such a beautiful day we're picnicking on the churchyard with all of Lago Maggiore shimmering at our feet.
I may have mentioned before that in a past life I spent a fair amount of time on the eastern seaboard of the US of A. On one occasion my new year's hostess was a statuesque Filipina, called Suzy. That night, Suzy's house was alive with friends and relatives from all over. Four generations of family squeezed into her house to share her hospitality, sunshiney smile and great cooking.
As midnight approached, the talk turned to new year traditions and superstitions, and soon many of the white Americans present had thrown a full purse out onto the front lawn, to be 'found' just after midnight, setting the pattern for luck in the new year.
Back in the kitchen, Suzy, a generation closer to subsistence than her American-born guests, was filling the rice container. If there was rice in the house as the year turned, there would be enough to feed the family all year round.
Last night, as I stepped wearily into the dressing room in search of pyjamas, my firework-spangled eyes fell on the overflowing ironing basket.
And I thought of Suzy...
A happy and successful New Year to all visitors to Carmine Superiore, whether they arrive on the Information Superhighway or on Shanks's Pony. Buon anno a tutti!
Credit: Stitching by AJ, aged 6.
Friday, 24 December 2010
A Christmas wish from Carmine Superiore
Warmer now. Mist and rain. A damp Christmas for Carmine Superiore.
The other day I wrote about the silence that follows the snow in Carmine. A friend stopped me in the street a day or two later and amid elaborate Italian Christmas greetings mentioned that my words had made her laugh, because in Carmine Superiore she imagined it was always silent. We talked a little about that special silence that comes after the snow, and about how Carmine isn't as silent as one might think, what with the wildlife crashing around the woods and all.
Our conversation made me remember the silence that would come on Christmas morning (with or without snow) when I was a child. No cars. No rushing too and fro. No buses, no bells, no siren for the start of work at the nearby factory that gave our town life. Peace for a day.
Today I'm wishing all readers a quiet and very happy Christmas, however you have chosen to celebrate it. And if I could give everyone a gift, I would give peace. The kind of peace that is not only silence without, but also silence within. The peace that brings the strength to face every passing day whatever it might bring. Real peace. The peace described so simply in the Gaelic blessing:
Happy Christmas all!
The other day I wrote about the silence that follows the snow in Carmine. A friend stopped me in the street a day or two later and amid elaborate Italian Christmas greetings mentioned that my words had made her laugh, because in Carmine Superiore she imagined it was always silent. We talked a little about that special silence that comes after the snow, and about how Carmine isn't as silent as one might think, what with the wildlife crashing around the woods and all.
Our conversation made me remember the silence that would come on Christmas morning (with or without snow) when I was a child. No cars. No rushing too and fro. No buses, no bells, no siren for the start of work at the nearby factory that gave our town life. Peace for a day.
Today I'm wishing all readers a quiet and very happy Christmas, however you have chosen to celebrate it. And if I could give everyone a gift, I would give peace. The kind of peace that is not only silence without, but also silence within. The peace that brings the strength to face every passing day whatever it might bring. Real peace. The peace described so simply in the Gaelic blessing:
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the flowing air to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep peace of the shining stars to you,
Deep peace of the gentle night to you,
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Happy Christmas all!
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Red sky in the morning...
And yes, it's been chucking it down all night and all this morning.
The outdooor cats are slinking about wondering if they'll be noticed if they take a dry snooze in the furthest recess of the attic among the sheepskins, and the All Saints arrivals (what must be a record six vacation-house chimneys smoking) are looking rather glum in their Timberland jackets. Mind you, the hunters are undeterred - the first shots were fired exactly as dawn broke. Jakob! is confined to baracks.
The outdooor cats are slinking about wondering if they'll be noticed if they take a dry snooze in the furthest recess of the attic among the sheepskins, and the All Saints arrivals (what must be a record six vacation-house chimneys smoking) are looking rather glum in their Timberland jackets. Mind you, the hunters are undeterred - the first shots were fired exactly as dawn broke. Jakob! is confined to baracks.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
San Gottardo
I wonder who will come to our patronal festival mass. The sentiero will be damp. The umbrellas and raincoats will be damp. The flowers will be damp. Our souls will be damp.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Is that a heart amid the squiggle?
Amid all the squiggles of daily life,
With him dashing this way, you going that way,
Amid the noise and confusion made
by that beloved rabble you brought into the world,
Thursday, 31 December 2009
The Happy End
Cold, misty, and trying to rain. Carmine lies sleeping, like a cat curled up on a sofa.
New Year is the time when we are urged to think of new beginnings, new resolutions, new good intentions (with which to pave the road to hell, no doubt). But if there are beginnings there must somewhere be endings. As Seneca wrote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
Today, I wish you auspicious beginnings, and whatever happy endings your heart desires.
New Year is the time when we are urged to think of new beginnings, new resolutions, new good intentions (with which to pave the road to hell, no doubt). But if there are beginnings there must somewhere be endings. As Seneca wrote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
Today, I wish you auspicious beginnings, and whatever happy endings your heart desires.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Today, the children wondered at Jack Frost's first masterwork of the year and tapped apart the year's first ice-covered puddles with their boot-toes. The temperature at 8:30am was a big, fat, round zero degrees and the skies are threatening snow.
Yesterday afternoon, every man jack of them under-6s (see yesterday's post) was a star shining bright under the gaze of their doting parents. They did us proud!
Yesterday afternoon, every man jack of them under-6s (see yesterday's post) was a star shining bright under the gaze of their doting parents. They did us proud!
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