Carmine thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doesn't it?

Three-fold curse with postscript

Overcast and humid with occasional shower and hot sunny spells.

To the person who came into my garden in the last couple of days and stole one of my new jasmine plants, I curse you thus:

As the jasmine in other gardens perfumes the air with romantic dreams, may this plant give off the foul stench of sewage and roasting Nescafé.

As the plant takes root and grows vigorous, may your bad conscience take root, grow vigorous and spoil your enjoyment of Gardener's Question Time.

As this jasmine cost the princely sum of nine euros, may you lose nine times nine times nine times nine euros-worth of tender green things to the slugs, and juicy red things to the birds.

Oh yes, and if you just yanked it out and threw it in the hedge out of pure spiteful malice, may all your own efforts toward beauty in life be hauled out by the roots and hurled into the gutter, there to rot in a putrid mass. Amen.

Now I'm going to take off my pointy hat, make a cuppa and feed Greymalkin and Paddock.

On a mission from God

After a stripey technicolour sunrise, the day is cloudy but bright, with a nippy little wind.


In an idle moment about 15 billion years after He made the universe, God made Sasso Carmine. And God looked down on His creation and saw that it was pretty good - it would be quite a tourist attraction once they had painted, lost, found and then repainted the frescoes, and hauled themselves out of grinding poverty long enough to appreciate the view...

1,035 years later, God looked again and saw that something had gone wrong. 

He was not pleased. 

He wondered what in Heaven's name was going on, and what the Hell He was going to do about it.   

One corner of the beautiful piazzetta he had designed on the back of a restaurant napkin sometime in 1200 AD was littered with oversize bags of trash. What started out as honest-to-God renovation refuse from His own priest's house had not been removed five months after it had been dumped there. Predictably, tourists and villagers alike had augmented the refuse heap. Dirty nappies, uneaten picnics, wine bottles ... and a surprisingly large pile of nasty notes from disgruntled tourists complaining about the mess. The Carmine cats had also gotten in on the act - dragging everything out, finding that it was not up to their usual standards of edibility and abandoning it for someone else to sweep up. 

No-one wanted to take responsibility.

God shuffled His feet and glanced around at them. 

The people cleared their throats and stared right back at Him. 

So the Almighty took a leaf out of His own Book, and came to a villager in a dream. He told the man he must make arrangements for the arrival of His mighty Red Angel. To a second villager, God whispered that he was in dire need of very large quantities of building materials, and like Joseph the Dreamer, he must stock up right away, and not to take seven years about it. Next morning the two men staggered from their houses amazed, and proceeded to do the Lord's bidding. 

And as it was foretold on the appointed day there came a great roaring out of the sky, and the Angel in Red appeared bearing a mighty cord and an even mightier hook. The people of the village looked out of their windows and were sore afraid, for the sacks were mighty close to the relatively-recently renovated eaves of God's house. But God guided the hand of the angel, and brought his wings close, but kept his beautiful church from destruction.

And as if by a miracle, the nasty white sacks, dirty nappies and all, swung into the sky and away, and the building materials appeared in their place. And all were most happy and rejoiced to see their little corner of paradise returned to neatness-and-tidiness.

For miraculously precise helicopter services in the Lago Maggiore region, contact 
The Angel in Red! .

First Monday in August

Warm and overcast. This morning I woke to the patter of tiny raindrops and the hope that it was enough to revive my wilting chilli peppers. But as soon as I hit the bathroom the sound was gone - perhaps it was all a nice dream...

Today is the first Monday in August, the month when all of Italian civilisation grinds slowly but surely to a halt. In Carmine Superiore, we conversely ascend to the height of the social season as each house bids welcome to its owners or to their guests, and our open-door policy brings chatty neighbours at all hours of the day and evening. 

The garden is producing - if you can find anything amid the foot-high grass that I'm feeling just too chilled out to tackle (next year, next year). Tomatoes, aubergines, a second round of strawberries and roses, blueberries, blackberries, chilli peppers and zucchini. The lavender is all but over, but my excuse for not tidying it up and putting it into twee lacy bags is that there are still butterflies and bees hanging about (and I prefer hanging about reading).

The children - a multitudinous and ever-changing cast - have plenty to entertain them : sticks to sharpen into lethal weapons, trees to fall out of, siblings to scar for life, streams to damn, wildlife to catch and cage, cats to torture with love. Younger brothers shoot their older brothers with stones from improvised catapults, older brothers boost younger ones onto high walls overlooking dizzying drops in the hopes of doing away with them. Younger girls trip over bath towels made to serve as princess ballgowns, and the older ones huddle in corners trying to reconstitute lipsticks stolen from mother and then snapped in two. Morning and evening the joyous ring of children arguing, insulting one another, laying down the law and demanding justice, sounds through Carmine's streets and rattles Carmine's stones.

The holidays are here!

Water, water everywhere, part 2

A depressing 10°C at 8:30am, as we rolled into Cannobio, both piccolini wet to the knees having waded down the mountain path, recently become a river (see here). By the time Cannobio's 5-6 year-olds had learned the difference between 's' and 'th', the temperature had struggled upwards a mere one degree. But by the time I had taken advantage of a lull between rainstorms to excavate several years' worth of gunk out of some of Carmine's gutters, and directed the flood water back into the culverts, I was starting to feel warmer. 


On that note, if anyone in the two Carmines or, indeed, at the Municipio wants to offer a token of appreciation, I accept fresh Belgian chocolates in lavish quantities. Large-denomination Amazon vouchers are also accepted, to be spent on material to help teach Cannobio's 5-6 year-olds the difference between 'path' and 'river'.

Water, water everywhere...

Eleven degrees at 8:30am. Raining. Lots. 


The streams are swelling in the direction of the chicken coop, which seems ever in danger of floating away like Noah's Ark. The lake is rising in the vicinity of our little boat, a week ago safely beached, but now in danger of drifting off like Huck Finn's raft on the mighty Mississippi. 


The sentiero is in places under water as I've never seen it before, not because there is more water than ever before, but because there are fewer young, able-bodied people than ever before who are prepared to man a shovel once in a while and dig out the gutters. The septuagenarian who carried out some remedial work in the last day or two has our heartfelt thanks. 


The house smells of wet dog on the ground floor, wet children on the first floor and wet kittens on the second floor. The entrata smells of wet socks. My Wellies, I've discovered, have holes in them. Anybody know where I can buy a puncture repair kit?

Monday morning

Sunny but breezy. 

All's well in Carmine. Ezio's in his vegetable garden. The cockerel's crowing over the chicks. The cats are lounging outside my front door like a bunch of hoodies waiting to be fed. The dog is on guard on the terrace. There are windsurfers down on the lake and a professor of art history in the church. 

And the great wild cherries are in bloom. 

Desperately seeking ... nice neighbours

Only 7°C this morning at 8:30am. Grey and a little rainy. Last night's more sustained rain brought snow to Cannobio's own Monte Giove and all the surrounding peaks. I'm looking sideways at the romaine, rucola and zucchine that I planted amid 25°C and sunshine last Saturday. I'm also looking sideways at the grass that's sprung up in the rain, and thinking about oiling the weed-whacker.

A beautiful Carmine Superiore house has this morning gone on the market. It's a rare opportunity to buy a lovely cottage-style property with two bedrooms, large kitchen, separate sitting room, cellar and a lovely open terrace - of which I'm very envious - with magnificent views of Lago Maggiore and the surrounding countryside. The agent is Marlis Zanetti in Cannero, although the property is so new to the market it hasn't even made it to the website yet. Give them a call - English, French, Italian and German spoken fluently.


However.


Those without Nice-Neighbour Certificates need not apply. In order to qualify for a Nice-Neighbour Certificate you will need letters proving the following : 

• You have passed the International Plumbers' Association advanced septic-system maintenance course and sworn an oath in front of a judge that you will never stuff your toilet with sanitary towels or flush out the shared septic ecosystem that I have spent the last eight years balancing with bleach, lye or caustic potash. 
• Your face knows how to form itself into a smile whenever one of your neighbours passes by.
• You promise to good-naturedly tell hikers the way to Cannobio, Cannero or Viggiona, even if they're standing slap bang in front of the signpost. 
• You have enough money or brawn to transport building refuse down the hill instead of dumping it in the woods. 
• You promise to learn a courteous answer to the perennial tourist question, "How do you get your shopping up here if there's no road?" in at least four languages, including one non-European one, and to always smile while exercising that skill.
• You understand that a continuous supply of freshly-laid Carmine eggs delivered magically to your doorstep can be assured by the occasional bottle of crémant d'Alsace propped by the side of the chicken coop - those bionda piemontese do like a drop of the old fizzy stuff after they've just laid.

Nice-Neighbour Certificates can be obtained from Louise, Carmine Superiore, Italy. Administration fee, a case of crémant d'Alsace, a large carton of Swiss or Belgian chocolate or this year's Booker shortlist in hardback. Applicants with strapping teenage relatives capable of wielding a weed-whacker and willing to do so in return for English lessons will be given preferential treatment.


PS The outgoing owners have enough Nice-Neighbour Certificates to paper the walls of their wonderful little house three times over. We'll miss them!

Easter in Carmine

Azure skies. Fast-flowing mountain streams. Blossom on the fruit trees. Camelias red, pink and white. Warm, wet, freshly-turned soil. Eggs under the broody hen. Chicks trying their wings. The Mama cat heavy with kittens. Children smeared with chocolate. The Carmenites in residence. Tourists in droves.


A belated happy Easter from a Carmine sprung to life.

AL-KO 5200

Grey, cold and snowy.

And Mama is today saying "thank-you" to our most wonderful neighbours J&R for their idea to joint own the formidable AL-KO 5200, with which she has just transformed one of M's perfectly tidy log piles into an untidy mountain of comfort and joy.

The mantis-like AL-KO 5200 packs a punch of five tons, a couple of newtons more than its predecessor, a five-foot-nothing woodswoman with an ageing axe and incipient spondylosis. The uncomplicated mechanism makes it a cynch to use, even for a partnership of sprogs with a combined age of eight (wearing safety goggles, leather gloves, steel toecaps and hard hats, of course).

Long live social ownership! And long live the AL-KO 5200!

Nature making art No. 3 : pomegranates

One of the things I love about Carmine Superiore is that every so often someone slips quietly through our narrow front door and leaves a little gift.

And I don't mean a cat looking for a quiet corner in which to do its private business...

On the old wooden bench - itself a gift - I have found great wheels of heavy dark bread from Franconia, a bottle of Pinot Noir from Bavaria, cheese from Hinterrhein, just beyond the San Bernardino tunnel, and fizz from Alsace. There have been walnuts fresh from F's tree and khakis from E's. Heaps of ripe plums and bags of bitter salad. And many times I have found magically-appearing Swiss chocolate for the children.

On Sunday, there were pomegranates. And the ghost of Vermeer shuffled his feet in a shadowy corner.

New arrivals

This week has been a week of new arrivals.

As we kicked our way down the hill for the first week of kindergarten, the children noticed with glee that the chestnuts have started to drop from the trees. The start of prickles-in-little-fingers season, then. The chestnuts are too small as yet to bother with, but soon we'll be collecting bags of them, roasting chestnuts on the fire and making chestnut-flour cakes.

Another new arrival was the entire Booker shortlist in hardback, which was slammed down on the stone bench outside the front door by our postina, who could have left them with our neighbour downstairs, but didn't because she's like that. Their arrival makes Mama very happy, because now she has the promise of Verifiably Good Literature to keep her going through many happy autumn and winter evenings in front of the woodburner, a glass of Monsieur Lafarge's best by my side.

With the cold weather, the cats from the outlying regions - the outlaw cats as I always think of them - have been popping by to see if their currency is still valid up at the big house. And a new tabby, all pointed ears and hungry eyes, has been running the gauntlet of the residents every day now to grab something to eat and, once, to curl up on the sofa while no-one was looking.

And at last, Carmine's tabby matriarch finally brought this year's offspring to meet me. She lost the first litter of the year, which she had nested in our next-door-neighbour's bedroom, but was immediately pregnant again. She dropped the second litter a couple of months ago, and there were wild rumours of the existence of kittens hidden away in one of the more inaccessible gardens, but also of the intermittent presence of two hungry-looking foxes. I wasn't hopeful. So I was very happy to see the proud Mama jump up onto the terrace the other day, to hear a little mew behind her, "You mean it's up there?", and then to see a fluffy white head and two white paws appear over the edge.

So the orientation tour began :

"Okay, now listen carefully, here's where they put the normal cat food. It's fortified with calcium and vitamins and it's good for you, so get used to it..."

"...If you nose your way into the kitchen, there, by that big, warm, silver thing - especially when the tall guy's cooking, you might be able to wangle yourself some offcuts of fish or meat. Just tilt your head to one side, flash those big blue eyes and look cute..."

"Oh yeees, did I forget to tell you? This is your brother. The big people call him Trouble, because he is. If you have any further questions, just ask him!"

The snakes in the long grass

Thank-you to the ragazzo who spent all of yesterday morning's meteorological perfection cutting back the vegetation on the sentiero that leads us up from the lakeside.

The first time this year.

We feared we had been forgotten by the Comune's maintenance department, and slowly, slowly like Sleeping Beauty in her castle we would be lost in a tangle of rambling roses and 24 varieties of long grass, habitat for three varieties of child-chomping snake.

Worse, that we would be spending our winter forcing our way, falcetto in hand, through rain- and snow-laden vegetation, emerging at kindergarten wet and shivering. With all the 'flu-related worries we have to look forward to when the autumn term begins, I'd like to keep pneumonia off the list.

Ha fatto bene. Grazie.

No dumping!

"No dumping anywhere along this watercourse
(infractions will be reported to the judicial authorities)."

Carmine's summer flowers soften even the most stern of ordinances.

Summertime...

Hot and sunny once again. 27° at 4pm as I dashed to Cannobio for emergency plumbing supplies (when will this house ever be finished?).

Summer is coming along nicely, with hordes of children dashing about the place - today with homemade bows and arrows. And more arriving on Saturday... I think we're on track for another Enid Blyton Summer.

Quote of the week No. 25 : Love thy neighbour...

Bright, but after yesterday evening's storm, it's close-the-doors windy. And there's a very handsome stray hunting dog lying disconsolate at my side as I work, waiting to be reunited with his chums (who, in his absence, have managed to bag a 100-kilo wild boar this morning not too far from Carmine...).


Eric Hoffer, (1902-1983), American writer and philosopher :

"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbors as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant of others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves..."

Sensing Carmine

Hot and sunny. Summer holidays in full swing, although for some reason Mama this afternoon finds herself chained to her desk and working - now how the hell did that happen?!

In my eyes, shady greens, greys and browns. Spots of red, pink and white. Luminous sky. Muted fresco colours.

In my nose, chiesa dust, wax for the pews, decades-old laundry smells from the vestments drawer, locked there by the hands of predecessor women who've now left us. Then mossy dankness by the old river-fed wash-tub where we go to get cool.

In my ears, the streams babbling, a boat way on down across the lake, cats squabbling, tourists gossiping, children calling, cockerel crowing.

In my mouth, taste of homegrown tomatoes and basil. Fresh white bread, pickled garden cucumbers, grana padano and sweet gorgonzola.

Under my fingers, grey stone warm outdoors cool indoors, perfect white linen and handmade church lace, sleek cat-fur, soft-smooth child skin. And the striated wood of my old desk.

Nice to be home.

Thank-you kind neighbours

Twenty-six degrees in Cannobio at 9:30am this morning as the campaigning for the forthcoming mayoral elections heats up. Bright sunshine. The warm air brings with it the welcome scents of jasmine and honeysuckle. Summer has begun!

Big thanks go to Franco, Giuliano and Livio, who spent their Ascension-day holiday in the service of our community, erecting a new handrail and repairing the path on a particularly dangerous part of the mulattiera, which almost everybody uses to reach Carmine. Also to Signor di Marco, the metalworker who made the handrails, and to Fausto, who I believe helped to organise everything.

As probably the single person who uses this path the most, I'd like to express my gratitude. Where would Carmine be without guys like you?!

Quote of the week No. 20 : On being in Carmine

Early this promisingly beautiful Wednesday morning, as I took a quiet, child-free moment to stand on the churchyard looking out across Lago Maggiore, with the sun rising golden behind the mountains, the cockerel crowing, and the surfer's sail snapping in the wind, Douglas Adams' words came to mind :

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be."

The city, from whence I came seven years ago, can trundle along without me.

I'm here to stay.

Yesterday...

Yesterday, the temperature recorded in the shade on a south-facing terrazza in Carmine Superiore was 25°C. Warm enough for a sleeveless T-shirt. Warm enough for the children to decide it was time to go under the garden hose in the altogether. Sunny enough for strap marks and sunscreen.

And talking of yesterday, many thanks to everyone who turned up at our beautiful little church in yesterday morning's glorious sunshine to help lift outside all the wooden furniture and give it a healthy dose of anti-woodworm medicine. With so many hands, the job was done in a jiffy, and everything put back shipshape and Bristol fashion in time for a quick aperitivo before we all went our ways for lunch.

After lunch, this family hotfooted it into the garden where we cut the grass (on a slope of one-in-two that's a major operation), planted tomatoes, chilli peppers and cucumbers. Oh yes, and basil, which AJ calls pesto-plant.

And today? Well, today I'll be endeavouring to find a sensible place to plant three zucchini, six strawberries (in a garden already packed with strawberries) and some parsley (in a garden where this year the parsley seeds have germinated where they never before did). And I'm hoping the weather's warm enough again for more sunscreen and two happily naked bottoms.