Sambuco newsletter.... read in on my newsblog...click here
Sambuco newsletter August 2005
I'm invisible, honest I am-
No, not really!
But nearly though. This is the story of my near invisibility.
Ferragosto has reared its trafficy, whimsical, noisy and irritating head and I've become almost invisible. And this is the proof...... Read on..
Let's face it. You could never ever honestly say that going into the post office or the bank in town is an experience which makes you feel like a valued human being. No no, you always feel slightly guilty and you know you shouldn't really bother the post office cashiers with anything as trivial as asking for a stamp for instance (frown) or if a special parcel has arrived maybe? (Look of outright disgust)…(I should add here that the signs above the cashiers booths in the post office are all deliberately confused, the indications for pensions, paying accounts, stamps and posting of parcels don't really mean that at all. Instead you buy stamps at the pensions counter, pay bills at the parcel posting booth etc etc. Well of course, didn't you know that?)
But at this time of year It's even worse. Feragosto Whooa..keep away, keep away. But today I can't, just can't . I have to pay a grossly unfair speeding fine; deadline this very day. So I'm stuck. And this is where the invisibility comes in.
I've already become partly invisible at the Bank a half hour before. Naturally, none of the cashiers there like being cashiers, particularly at Ferragosto time. They prefer to edge away from the living and instead peer with deep concentration and slight concern at computer screens. So with me being part invisible and all, I suppose it was a bit much to expect anyone to notice my presence at the counter, which was open, but cashierless. After five minutes I dare to say 'hello' And nobody looks up. I say is anyone here to serve me? And I get a wave and a grunt. I say sorry I didn't catch that and I get back a tangible wave of hostility and I can feel on the point of exploding when the Bank Director (now he's a very nice chap BTW) bursts through the labyrinth of desks and says 'Michael, hi, I hear you got married, I sympathise I really do!' And then they all look up and I'm obviously gradually becoming visible again and then lo and behold I have two cashiers desperate to serve me-
But the Post Office… the Post Office, the Post Office. Oh dear! Not only am I becoming invisible here too but so are all the other customers (three lines of). There are pensioners lining up at the parcels counter. People with bills to pay at the stamp counter and I have to pay my speeding fine- So I opt for the queue of pensioners. Big mistake. An old lady two people ahead of me slaps her book on the table and I think OK five minutes but she gets paid and then for goodness sake gets out another book from her bag and gets paid this and then another book, oh my God, she's collecting for the whole of her village! So I dare, I dare to ask if I'm in the right queue through the triple thickness glass to a couple of cashiers who are playing the 'I'm on the computer you cant ask me' game and I get cross looks and no response. The guy in front of me explodes on my behalf. Jesus he shouts , if this were Rome, you'd all be dead in there by now! Bingo, this hits the spot and suddenly all the computer zombies spin around and man (woman in this case) the cashier counters.
He obviously had very good connections.
Hmm, for some reason this type of threat carries some weight in the Bella Republica. My theory is that these public service workers are angry that they can't get away for Ferragosto too like the rest of the insane masses, and don't really have invisible-making powers at all. Or maybe there's a connection between anger and invisibility. And Ferragosto. But I'm a bit muddled on this subject.
Erik and Harry The baby owl.
This one'll slay you! Got back late the other night after seeing Aida at Ripastransone. Now I'm not an opera person but I like a good show. Our good friends Al and Al invited us to come along and see it with them and we thought ooh a trip to Verona, what fun. Well Ripastransone ain't exactly Verona and when to comes to putting on Aida it's more like the Sound of Music except I wish it was and it wasn't. More like the sound of an abattoir at dawn… on a Monday morning. A small to crippling stage with a cast of thousands. Everybody who ever wanted to be an opera singer and their brother was there, elbowing for a space. So. We slid out early to have a look at the town. As good an excuse as any we thought. A pretty place, but deserted except for a few local sleuths. Maybe the locals were hiding from Aida; this being the sixth year the town had run it. Why six years of such torture? I've no idea.
Took us ages to get back home though those tortuous roads around Offida.I parked the car and a figure (it was Erik and it was well past midnight) sidled up to me as I attempted to disembark. Now Erik, I should explain, does actually have red hair, which means he probably had parents who were either smart Alecs or School teachers. Erik is married to Lees who is Australian, Erik being American with obvious Viking ancestry.
And this how it goes.
It's dark, it's nearly one am and Erik asks is there a society for the protection of birds here.
At 1 a.m.?
What here in Amandola?.
No here as in anywhere in Italy.
It's Harry isn't it I ask? Harry? Who the hell is Harry? Our pet owl.
Oh Jesus he says I've killed your pet owl? Oh God Oh God But I couldn't tell if he was dead or not. I just picked him up and he stared at me.
Look I say don't worry he's always doing it. Doing what? Playing chicken An owl playing chicken? Look I say, trying to calm him down, he was just standing there in the middle of the road right? And he didn't try to fly away, right? And you reckoned you ran over him, right? And the stopped the car, ran back and found him lying on his side and you picked him up and he didn't struggle and just gazed wistfully at you, right?
Yes to all that he says.
That's Harry I say, He's always doing it.
Erik wanders back to the house with a look on his face somewhere between shock and wonder. And I hear him mumbling….'Harry? A pet owl? Playing chicken? An owl? But then he spins round and shouts I'm going back to check and he jumps in his car and zooms off. Come and get me if you need me, I call, I lie. But I know he won't. I know Harry. So I go to bed.
Up and down and back again and then down and back once more
That's where we've been these past ten days…up and down and back again. Down to Puglia, and back for a week in Le Marche, then up to the Venito (twice) once for our wedding and then for a family bash, then back to LM then Puglia for another wedding and then on the weekend across to Rome and then down to Calabria for a five day break and back again.
Two weddings and a truck full of water melons (two thousand water melons spewed across the autostrada south of Pescara and we're stuck for two hours in forty degrees of heat. Nice smell though, although I haven't eaten water melon since. (just the odd banana)….Because with all the crashed cars around that overturned container lorry it looked like blood. It really did. Blood. So it's Ferragosto; it's that time of year, summer, heat, traffic, chaos, everyone dashing about to get the most out of every moment which could, I decide, have something to do with the long harsh winter before.
No, heck, it's because it's Italy, it's because they're Italians, punt e basta.
On a domestic note
I order winter wood from Bepe, the woodman…€500 worth please. Yes fine OK, agreed… then comes the day of delivery and as he is pouring a huge load over our Peruvian wall and Lili's prize rosebush, I ask him are you sure this is 500 euros worth?, looks like a lot more lot to me. Don't know about that he says but there are 60 quintale (what are THEY?) and it's 12 euros a quintale. But that's €720 I say, no it's actually €780 he says. Oh come on I say, we agreed on €500. You must look on it as an investment he says.. For next winter. I think you weren't listening to me last week I say, and I think the extra €280's worth is for Bernie. What's that in quintale he asks?
Our neighbour, Fiore, comes out of his house, looks and the mountain of wood, buries his face in his hands and walks back indoors.
Lili pops out and shrieks at the pile where once grew her prize rose and I just sit down on the wall with a deep sigh as I see Bernie's load trundling down the road towards us. I fear for his fledgling olive tree.
Newsletter, May 2005
The Russians are coming.
And the Poles, the Croatians, The Albanians, the Ukranians.
Do I have any evidence of this?
Sure. This is how I know.
It was Alberto who got me thinking about the matter. I was passing by the notorious Bar Centrale. Now this bar isn't difficult for me to pass by because it's the hallowed haunt of the local Anglo Saxons and thus to be avoided at all costs. But Alberto called me over for a quick drink and a packet of crisps. I say it's too early for me to drink alcohol but he says try this …a lemon non alcoholic cordial with mint. And as I sit down he asks are you going to the opening tonight? Opening?
What opening?
The new nightclub, he says
A new nightclub?? Here in Sarnano? You must be kidding me .
Yes, they're closing the discotec and opening a night club.
You mean they're closing the only discotec left in the western world and opening a trendy night club?
Yes he says, who wants to go to a disco with only two people inside? In the new nightclub there'll be low lights and music and Polish, Croatian, Ukrainian and most of all Russian girls and you have to pay €20 to dance with them for eight minutes…or talk for twenty.
Do they speak Italian I ask.
Probably not he says.
Can you talk for ten and dance for four minutes?
How could I know he says? No chance I can ever go, what with the wife and all.
You live just nearby…you could pop in at some early hour I suggest.
He buries his head briefly in his hands.
I forgot to ask Alberto if there were going to be fireworks. There were. And the next morning I find Bessie (our dog) has destroyed another door. (her firework phobia you'll recall)
Dave comes to cut the grass the day after. Dave did you go to the opening? Yes he says and I paid €20 for a twenty minute chat with a Russian girl. Did she speak Italian or English I ask. No. And do you speak Russian? No, he says but I'm sure she really liked me. I walk away and leave him to cut the grass.
Three or four times a week now, empty freight planes, huge ones, fly in from St Petersburg and Moscow. They leave full of shoes and jewelry and the Russians pay in American dollars, cash. This information comes from an indisputeable source…a guy I know who stacks deck chairs on the beach near Ancona, under the flight path of these beasts.
(I wonder why they arrive empty though? Maybe the Russians don't produce anything we want…oh except gas and oil, but it would be silly to bring that ne'est-ce pas?) But mind you lorries full of nicnacs arrive evry weekend from Russia and the Ukraine throughout Italy full of cheap stuff. Stuff, yes that's the word, stuff. Military regalia(rubbish) and cameras (rubbish), telescopes, binoculars ( brilliant) and then mainly household goods. And we bought a few weeks ago in Ascoli a Russian hunting knife for €7 which is an absolute beauty and according to my friend Keith who knows about such things extrememly dangerous and illegal ( super!) and this I must confess I adore. To the extent that I pull it out of its equally beautiful casing at every opportunity just to play with it and to finger its very illegal snap close mechanism.
Lili bought a cigarette lighter which is about a foot long and in the shape of a rifle by way of celebration of her decision to quit smoking. It was empty of course so I had to buy the necessary fuel for it and to adjust its flame. OK, I admit, I should have tested it more extensively before leaving it around for her to (not) use but it could have been worse…the accident that is… the burned eyebrow. Hey who needs two eyebrows I pleaded? Eyebrows are like kidneys, we just don't need two of everything.
How would you like one knee she said.
I swiftly adjusted the flame thrower to a more manageable and less incendiary state.
Oh, and my impeccable source of info tells me the Russians are buying property all along the coast too. It's a mystery to me where they get the money from. If it's true that is.
The garden It's the end of May and we have decided to dedicate as much spare time as daily life allows us to our garden. For a start we are simply just grateful that it's still there after the massive mud slides of the Spring. And then, too, we feel we should give it a bit of a thank you for surviving the harsh winter. Two months of deep lying snow killed off almost half of our shrubs and compressed the earth in the orto to the point where it turned instantly to concrete on the event of the sudden warm weather in mid April. The only thing I could do was to go at it with my cherished English spade. It took me a week but I managed to dig over the soil (120 sq of it) into one foot square chunks. These too, after a couple more days of heat, were cubes of solid concrete and I had to admit defeat and asked Keith if I could borrow his rotivator.
Never in my long years of gardening have I stooped so low, I mean.. a rotivator? My old dad would turn in his grave.But it's a beastie, Keith says, a real beastie.
But will it chew through the cement blocks? I ask.
It'll make mincemeat of them he says, merrily mixing our metaphors Hmm!
It's an American machine, at least it says made in America…a Husqvarna and a Briggs and Stratton hybrid. It's got a starter pullcord of about a metre in length and it says on the side of the machine 'hold handle when starting'. I've absolutely no idea what this means. Nor does Keith. After thirty or so pulls it explodes into action in a plume of black smoke; I click it into forward gear and it takes me at some fantastic speed towards the orto; which it plunges into and ploughs straight through the sage patch before I can manage to punch it into neutral. A beastie indeed! But does it do the trick? Nope In the first run it merely leaps from concrete chunk to concrete chunk and spins over on it side, spluttering. I think I've broken it Keith if you read this! Sorry! Graciella appears from nowhere, as do Renzo and Claudio and Lili runs out of the house too. She says you are not to touch that machine again and the audience nods in agreement. And she says, if you only have one leg I won't marry you.
The image of being single with one leg quickly has the desired aeffect and Renzo says we're coming back with the tractor. And sure enough, they do and the orto is ploughed by there earth masher attachment to a fine tilth. So the veggies are in and new shrubs too. New animals are appearing, a black squirrel has taken to the little wood on the side of the garden and our nightingale is back for the season. The garden is full of tail-less lizards once again (grazie a Eva the cat) and the butterflies are back from where they go to (Egypt I imagine)… oh and we've seen our first snakes. To Lilia, every snake is a deadly viper and must be killed before it kills us. Roman law, I Imagine. I say, how can it be a viper if it's thin and black with a yellow head. I say go ahead and get the book on indigenous creatures. She says OK but kill it first. Spiders suffer the same fate. They are killed remorselessly. Well, what do you expect she says, They're spiders for God's sake.
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newsletter, spring 2005
It's spring!
How do I know?
Uhm?....The birds are singing?
No! ...
The buds are budding?
No!
It's worms!
Lili has taken to the garden and has today destroyed (is destroying) my kitchen herb patch and replacing herbs with Ortenzia. And every 2 mins she shouts? 'Ci sono vermi, ancora vermi, tanti tanti' There are worms, more worms, lots and lots. To which I reply ' Worms are good'… but to no avail. Worms are bad, they must be she says because they wiggle and eat plants, especially roots she says.
A lesser man would lose it at this point I know but instead I say ' Hey, what if we make a worm farm?' (I nearly said hospital; such are the wounds they bear) ' It could be mightily profitable' Agreed. Her ex-boyfriend had one and it paid for holidays. Oh dear! So I get to save worms on condition I pick them up, the pieces of the that is. But this is also alright she says because she's read she says that each bit turns into another whole worm… of a different sex. I mentally scrap the worm farm idea and head for the orto where I can hide behind the Sambuco trees where worms and other creatures are safe. Briefly.
But Spring after such a disastrous winter is welcome. Two months of snow and all the records broken not to mention the shrubs and trees around; the sound of these cracking and moaning and the crash as they fell around our car as navigated our way to Porto San Giorgio at 7am in the morning (that morning of our departure for Africa) is one I shall not forget, huge oak and elm trees just keeling over as we shunted back and forth to avoid them. Two metres of snow while we were away and Le Marche declared a National disaster area. And even when we got back it was bad enough, another two weeks of snow, a day to find and dig out Lili's car and a huge gas bill.
Gas?
Yes Gas
Another national disaster area. If you are living away in a town where they have methane gas piped to most houses, then costs are pretty much the same as UK, or maybe 20% HIGHER. But we poor rural souls have to rely on liquid, petroleum based gas and the costs are extreme. In fact we have to seriously find alternative heating systems for next winter. There are no govt initiatives in Italy (where help and compassion exist only within the family and amongst friends), so to save energy so you have to pretty well find things out for yourself.
So we are looking at the more recent solar heating technology and back boilers for out fire and stoves which you can cook on and which also heat water, closing down part of the house during winter or failing all these, to move nearer the sea where it's generally 5 degrees warmer.
And the rain! ( I'm writing five days later)
Bucket loads. Just met a chap in Comunanza who has an agriturismo in Smerillo. Road's gone he says. Gone where I ask. Swept away he says and what's more Servigliano is cut off by a mudslide he says. He says you have to drive via Montalto to get there, which is like driving from London to Ipswich via Birmingham. Are you sure I ask? No, he says.
One of the worst effected is our cat Fortunato who is just winding up his' Season of love' as Lili puts it. He comes back once a day (or night) to be fed, them back out again to fulfil his mission, which is to impregnate every female cat in Southern Le Marche. We know he's arrived by the sound of the metal cat flap and we wait whisperingly behind the kitchen door to grab him and dry him before he wolfs down his regular two tins of cat food, (gourmet it's called, the cat food) and off. Soaked as he is you can see how skinny he's become. That's what males look like at the end of the season of love Lili says.
Which brings to mind to mention our monthly attempt to diet.
The diet
have copies of every diet ever known to man. In a file entitled 'Diets' And we've tried most of them too. But they get so boring after a day or so. They do don't they. We started yes another one last Friday but Sunday found us in Montecosero, which is not far from Civitanuova. And passing through town, there would you believe was a restaurant that Bernie recommended to us a few weeks back, La Luma (which means 'light' in old Marchigane dialect). Absolutely delightful fare. We had beef tagliato, beef cut into fine strips and a gorgeous plate of vegetables, a sort of mixture of potatoes, carrots, and onions followed by a delicious local wine I meant to take note of and then a dolce made in house and then, and then.. Boh! So you see, diet rubbished within a couple of days! No discipline, no will power.
This much I know is true.
But I ask you, how can you be on a diet and live in Italy? But we're back on it and have had rice for lunch. Rice. Rice. The orto It's a disaster area. Waterlogged with not one vegetable planted and it's mid April! There's nothing for it but to wait until May and have a summer veggie patch. But I can't bear the thought of not having fresh new potatoes from the garden so I drove down to the forestale station and acquired twenty sturdy black plastic bags which I've filled with peat and popped one seed potato into each. It's an experiment. And it might just work. Although nobody else seems to think so.
Easter has come and gone. The Easter eggs were bigger and costlier than ever and you couldn't help noticing how many weren't bought this year. And then they disappear from the shelves two days after Easter.
But where do they go?
I asked but nobody knew.
On a National note I read that Italians are getting into greater debt than ever, borrowing to survive and taking out mortgages to do so. Sound familiar?
Sambuco Newsletter, Christmas 2004
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And then came the snow.....
The tree has been stripped of its bangles, baubles and bright shiny things and it's all over, bar the unopened and thus uneaten Christmas puddings which Bernie brought last year and which Lili (if you remember) declared an abomination and unfit for human consumption and only the English eat them she said. I didn't follow that one up. Last year at this time I was writing from a snow bound Sambuco, but this year it's pretty mild as it is throughout most of Europe. Snow's where it should be, up above us in the Sassotetto ski resorts.
Just before Christmas I had this bright idea of taking some Italian friends (6 of same) to London for a wee cultural holiday; a sort of magical mystery tour of MY London, see it like it really is sort of thing. Now look, I must tell you straight away that if you ever harbour such an idea yourself, head straight for the nearest pub and drink yourself into blissful forgetfulness. In other words, don't…ever…ever. I've recovered now and am well enough to talk about it and one day I might even be able to laugh about it. I'm sure I will. So this is what happened…or didn't happen. My idea was to give these now ex-friends a glimpse; a taste, a light and savoury dip into il mio mondo Londinesi. The plan was to avoid the tourist postcard stuff and give them London as only a Cockney sparrer could… the real stuff like transport caffs, the markets, the Indian restaurants, the rowdy pubs, the rush hour crowds and magnificent jewels thrown in to the package like The New Tate and the Opera House. As a starter and a real eye-opener, Lili and I choose an Hotel in the new Docklands area, smack in the middle of this brave new architectural world which has brought a huge wasteland along the river back to life.
OK I admit that was a mistake and it didn't help that there weren't any restaurants there when we arrived there late in the cold and rain. There was just this pub, which turned out to be some on-going hen/ Christmas party of drunken young ladies. It's a Christmas tradition I told my ex- friends. Their husbands have given them their yearly night off. More like every Friday night I though to myself. It wasn't a good start. Next day (up at Nine I said for the full English) was to be a ride through Docklands on the Docklands Light Railway and then to the Greenwich tunnel for the WOW! effect I just knew would set the scene for the rest of the trip. Have you ever tried to get a rabbit into baby grow outfit? Well, no I haven't either but can just imagine that it would be very very difficult. Ditto 6 adult Italians through Greenwich tunnel. OK I shouldn't have told them the story of the hundreds of deaths that had occurred during Brunel's construction, but I did.
And Italians get scared pretty quickly and easily, as you might just know. Spiders, airplanes, moths, anything wiggly (like the Greenwich tunnel) or airborne, they just go to pieces, to pieces. (If you dine a lot with Italians you get used to this trauma effect, I might add. If a lady at the dinner table suddenly looks as if she has seen Macbeth's ghost, going from pale to green, mouth agape and with expression of sheer terror on her face…why, it's more likely to an insect, a massive one centimetre in length. crawling across a wall some twenty feet away) To continue… Next to Greenwich park, to the meridian line, what fun I thought to get them to hop from the Eastern to the western hemisphere whilst I spun stories of our great maritime empire, the canons that sent our finest ships to sea braving the oceans to bring back silks and tea. Tea? Hopping back and forth over a line on path? They just didn't get it. And then off to the New Tate. Yes, this will do it I think. The old Southwark Gas station turned into a magnificent new art gallery. A wonder indeed. Here I suffered the first mutiny. Half the group refused to go in and the other half said they wanted to stay there and not continue onto the next phase of my magical tour.
Oh, this is getting boring, so let's cut it short. If you take a group of Italians to London, here's some advice. 1) Don't 2) If you really have to, and can't fake illness to get out of it, this is what they will want to see. Big Ben. Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, The Big Wheel (but not to go on it…dunno why), Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, London Bridge. Forget about magical tours, or any themes like 'My London', or 'The eye of a Cockney Sparrer', any such dreadful ideas… Give 'em a postcard tour. That's enough of that. I've traumatised myself just writing about it.
Back to Italy.
On Christmas Eve we went to Di Priori's restaurant in Monte San Martino. The food was just OK as usual but the cost was double what it usually is, in fact prices have been steadily rising over the last year or so at this and other local eating establishments and, it seems to me, in direct proportion to the decline in the number of people in the restaurant. Well, the equation is obvious isn't it? And the opposite is true. Let me explain. If you want to discover a good restaurant, look for the number of cars outside. On a Sunday, this is the best day to do your research, the restaurants with dozens of cars outside, stretching fifty metres or so along the road. These are the best ones. The Italians know what's best. Best food, Quickest service. Best prices. The Italians care more about these things then they do about internal décor or lighting o expensive wines. So I would say this. That the restaurants that are beginning to cater for tourists and the new Anglo Saxon invaders. These are now having problems. They've upped their prices and are losing their Italian clientele. So remember, do a car check before you go in.
Signing off.. Snow is on its way and the snowploughs too thank goodness, and we're off to Africa. And why not?
Sambuco Newsletter, October 2004
Ever since early summer, friends who have been staying, especially at Bernie's place across the road, have mentioned strange sounds, talking and music in the night. In fact light sleepers at Bernie's have tossed and turned within the dark phantom churnings of insomnia whereas we, quite honestly, don't hear a thing, being sound sleepers with double- glazing. (Actually we don't think Bernie's double glazing can be all that good)
Now as the evenings are drawing in, we too are hearing these strange nocturnal rhythms and have put it all into the convenient category of other peoples' madness. i.e. Bernie's neighbours (they are some 200 metres down the road) are plain nuts and they turn their TV up loud either a) to drive us nuts too, b) to drive each other even nuttier or even c) because they might be nuts AND deaf, in which case we shouldn't be angry but sorry for them. And so as from about 7pm these evenings it all starts up again, to the point where Lili asked our neighbour Graciella if she knew the answer to the mystery. Oh she said it's the cinghiale (wild boar), it's for them. At this point we look at each other sideways with the same question in our eyes? Berlosconi's Channel 5 maybe? No no she says, it's to stop them ruining the corn.
Now I must pause here to explain that wild boar hold maize parties. They happen at night so you don't really ever know what goes on but the result is always catastrophic… they can destroy a maize field in one night flat. Or flatten a field of maize in one destructive night. Same thing. But from the evidence of the aftermath my guess is that they run relay races round and round the fields using corncobs as batons and then and the end of their Olympics, they simply roll around on the ground in the ecstasy of eating said same corncob batons… all night.
Anyway, back to the story. Yes it is a TV, Graciella says… it's out in the field below the house, in the middle of the corn. The idea is that it'll scare them away when they see the light of the TV and hear the loud noise of a variety show or an epic film. We glance at each other sideways again. You mean it actually stops them ruining and eating the corn? Well actually not really she says, they've eaten their way almost up to the TV, but haven't quite got as far as the screen. (Here we imagine twenty or thirty of them curled up together watching a late night movie whilst nibbling at their corn batons) At this point I ask her what's the point if the TV in the field is not working as a deterrent and anyway it's a bit daft leaving it out there in the middle of a field and all. Oh she says no, the weather is dry and summery still and it won't come to any harm. More sideways glances. I should add that the cinghiale get pretty cocky at this time of year. They know the hunting season has started but only for little birds. Hares come next, but their season, the cinghiale season, doesn't start until the end of November. So they think nothing of coming up as far as our back garden to hide in the bamboo, sort of waiting… for something. We know they are there because a) you can smell them and b) the animals, Bessie, Eva and Fortu come rushing back into the house with a you'll never believe what I've just seen look on their faces. You know the look. Frightened yet amazed.
As promised, the comune came and fixed our road with that stony brown stuff, breccia, and it's already a mess again even and especially after their brave efforts. I stopped to tell the guys working on the road that they were wasting their time because already within one day it was as bad as when they started. They said they knew but they were only following orders. I used to get angry in situations like this but now I just smile and walk away almost in agreement with them. Because the weather is nice, plenty of fresh air and lovely views whilst you work. Why not?
What does get me angry though is the habit of pushing in. I'll explain. It happens all the time around here and Lili assures me it's a Marchigiane thing but this is how it goes. Scenario: the front wheel of my car is wobbly and I go down to Domenico at the car mechanic's and he says yes you must have a wobbly tyre, let's go down to the gommista, the tyre centre and sort it out. I say I'll wait for you and he says OK I'm right with you. And I watch him as he walks back into the workshop and is pulled away by one person after another who in turn make their demands and each of whom go to the top of his priority list. It's amazing to see. So I start my engine rev up and drive up to him opening the door to let him in and in he hops. Straight to the top I am again and what's more I'm whisking him away and all the other poor chaps just step back resigned to further waiting. I'm not so lucky at the tyre centre however.
Dominico disappears instantly after mumbling something to Maurizio the tyre man and a job which only needs ten minutes takes an hour. Same prob. In they come one after the other, straight through the huge swing doors with their needs and each one going to the top of the priority list until Maurizio has a dozen peoples all shuffling around in a circle trying to get top slot. He does one wheel and then gets pulled aside, another and ditto. I want to drive off but my car is hanging in the air. Then Maurizio comes back to finish the job and winks and says I'm getting priority treatment. I look at my watch and it's lunchtime. And I'm off and the wobbliness has almost disappeared. And it's my birthday. He didn't charge me. Maybe he knew.
A weather note We've had the most glorious summer and into October it continues. Very little hint of even autumn as the trees hang on to their leaves and the colour green. No winds, lashing rain or night chills just lovely sunny days. Quite as it should be.
And the orto? Don't ask
They're out there. They are. Crawling like beetles across my vast vista. That’s the panorama I’m talking about, NOT my pancia.
And despite their straw hats and long sleeved shirts, they get burnt to a crisp. And they sit on their tractors and go up and down, up and down...all day.
Have you ever driven a tractor all day? No? Well, I'll tell you what it's like, oh but that's easy... it's hot dull and monotonous. And I tell you too; without a glass or two of vino cotto before you start, you never would.
Yes yes, I'm talking about our true heroes, the farmers. Those brave chaps without whom we would starve. And what do you feel like after a day's ploughing? (let alone two months)... brain dead. I know, 'cos I've been there. The thump thump thumping of the deisel engine continues in your head for the rest of the evening (what little there is left of it) which has been drained of any thoughts or any desires... other than to eat and sleep……alone. And worst of all? Often these guys plough with headlights through the night. It's cooler you see. But dangerous as you can imagine, if you doze off, and roll over into a ditch. A tractor just keeps on going you know. You have to punch a red button to cut the engine, not switch off the ignition. This I learned the first time I'd driven our tractor…….. (through a wall). Ecco!
That's my summer tribute to the farmer, the contadino.
And yes, it's summer, real summer. All that cold wet stuff is forgotten and we're back in Italy again. It was a bad dream. Couldn't have happened. And reading that it was the worst, coldest, wettest Spring almost ever ever (official). Well, that sort of makes it acceptable. It's when you actually read it in a newspaper, that's when it's real. Do you think so? Maybe that's just me. Like if I was to see on TV that Saddam Hussein had been let loose, as a sort of pardon, in the Australian Outback to rear kangaroos with a UN subsidy, I'd say humm ha, then in the morning rush to buy my Republica to know if it was true. But enough of my silly mind... What would he know about kangaroos anyway? Mind you, there are a lot of camels out there, I've seen them.
We've had the girls staying at Sambuco! The girls? Lili's sister's 9 year old from Padova and her 11 year old friend, joined by Angela (also 11) from down the road. An explosive cocktail of energy, mischief and perpetual hunger (they are all dieting, yes dieting). They erect hammocks in Bernie's garden and swing there for 25% of the day, gossiping. In training no doubt for their later lives. For the other 75% of the day? Look out! They're out to get ya! They have schemes, plans. Examples of which being. a) To seek out and cure all sick animals in the vicinity.
Thus they are plundering the bathroom medicine cupboards for ointments, disinfectants, plasters. Then they spend days scurrying back and forth with all sorts of poor creatures which carry a sort of 'Why me?' expression on their faces as they whisk them past smelling of dettol and bandaged up to the eyebrows ( those which have them) b) The manufacture of exotic perfumes ( they have a recipe).
So they strip as many of our roses bushes as they can reach and fill the bath with the petals+ water and alcohol (pure, not my whiskey thank God, but even that is possible). Let them be Lili says as I moan about not being able to find my shaving cream (shaving cream, you might ask? ) She says up north they live like mini adults, discos, fashion shopping, and oh yes, diets. Here they can be kids again. It's the way they should be. Well, what can I say to that? So in the evening, one evening, I tell them a story.. and they love it. And every evening after I have to tell them first the same story over again, then another or they won't be able to get to sleep (they say).
And one afternoon I show them a trick. My egg trick . So every day another trick it is, after a repeat of the egg trick. These kids teach me a lot. About what living should be. Animals, stories, tricks and perfume. Oh and singing too.
Butondoli
Met an English chap down at Pedaso (the beach) who fills me in with local gossip at which I make a show of being aghast. Butondoli is up in arms he says. The whole community is split down the middle and grave portents have been seen in the sky ( I am thinking sunset maybe? stifling an inner snigger). It’s about something or other and about the number of English living there have got a lot to do with it, whatever it is and I’m blowed if I can remember what it was he said. But as only five people live in Butondoli I figure it’s not gonna make the evening news on CNN so I put my concentration in the direction of my ice cream and give him my glazed over look which seems to do the trick, because suddenly they are gone.
Bessie
Now I’ve getting pretty tired of people making comments on Bessie’s hugeness, her girth. Her weight, her roundness. So a diet it is, a strict one. Now with a dog this is not that difficult. None of this fancy stuff that human being get up to. All I do is cut her meals in half. So what does she do? She digs up the bones she has secreted throughout the garden these past two years and supplements her diet with these. So now we have bones littered everywhere. Then we have guests to stay for a couple of weeks in the B&B and they are dog lovers. And as much as I cut down Bessie’s food , she doesn’t slim by even as much as a centimetre and I can only wonder why. As I say goodbye to our guests a fortnight latter, the lady says after her adieu to us ‘And Goodbye to you dear Bessie’, she says ‘ I shall really miss our little evening treats’ Evening treats? I enquire. Yes, she says. Every evening Bessie and I have our little quality time together.. we share salami, cold sausage slices and often prosciuto. She loves it, she says.
Bessie throws me one of her ‘what do you expect?’ looks.
What ever happened to Nerds?
I used to teach them photography in the eighties. There they were, always early for class with their long focal length lenses and their knowledge of things I hadn't a clue about, like focal length and bellows factors.
And where are they now?
I can tell you where they all are now, they're ruining my world yet again by working in and starting up companies which purposely invent trouble for people who don't know anything about meta tags. Yes this is where they all are, developing and fiendishly producing ways of making life more complicated for the likes of me.
What's he on about, you might well be asking?
Well' I've been trying to push up our websites on the net.
And I've been trying to find out how to do it.
And I've had to be rescued from insanity by friends who know more than I about robots and spider friendly index pages.
Yep, that's the world I've been inhabiting these last few weeks and I tell you what ...don't go there!
Plants are better, trees too, dogs, cats, horses and even real spiders, flies, wasps are OK too, but search engines... now they are very worrying.
Back to nicer things..
The English breakfast
Last Sunday we did our first English breakfast for Italian friends at Il Sambuco. And guess what? They loved it to bits.
I'll paint the picture.
Five guests in all, (they arrive at 9.30 am)... plus Lili and me.
Me the cook, (being English and all and having been brought up as a Cockney kid with the full English fed to me very morning of my young life). So do I know anything about cooking English Breakfast? I should say!
And our guests are so beautifully dressed like they are going to the Theatre.. (And there's me in a raggedy old T shirt and jeans) And they are so excited!
Rabbiting away they are as I deliver their first cuppa, already sugared and with milk, none of this nasty lemon stuff.
I already have the hash browns cooking away (hash browns? Ok this bit is American but they don't know, for God's sake) and the tomatoes in swift pursuit. The fried bread is waiting in the oven and the mushrooms all sliced ready to be piloted into a wide frying pan we bought on a camping trip to Sardegna (Sardinia).
Very wide it is and the mushrooms don't seem to like it very much because they are rapidly turning black. So into the hot oven they go to join the fried bread.
Guests still chirping away as they grimace through their tea, expectantly.
It's here I really go into action.
Bacon cooked as fast as you like and then as if by magic all the contributive parts i.e. bacon, hashbrowns, tomatoes, fried bread, mushrooms, are whisked onto their plates and they are instructed to await the eggs before tucking in (at this point they are drooling BTW).
Here you see me at my best.
Eggs?
Over easy? Sunny side up? Poached? Scrambled? Boiled? You name it...
I'm your man!
And my omelets? Don't even ask!
So I cook and deliver them to said guests in a matter of seconds, one at a time, as I get straight into cooking the second round - more fried bread is loaded onto plates and top ups of tomato and mushrooms arrive faster than they can eat.
More tea?
No no they cry in unison as I hover from one to the other with my huge Welsh Teapot.
But I ignore them 'Get in down ya' I say.
So we're now 40 minutes into the action and the combination of high protein intake with sugar and milk in their tea is working wonders. Conversation is becoming more animated, all the ladies are smoking like and talking about sunbathing and the men are talking about art.
And I sit down at last to eat my breakfast cold.
They say .....
This is a marvellous idea.
You must organise one very weekend.
And they chat and they stay until 1.30 pm.
Some breakfast eh?
Inversion layers
Well there haven't been any because we've had one low-pressure zone after another zipping across the Med since mid March. Trees have loved it, bushes, shrubs and snails. But for us? Horrible. In fact most of our English friends are considering emigrating back to England where the weather has been hot and sunny and nobody eats English breakfast anymore.
But enough of weather.
We have managed to get to the sea a couple of times but never to swim... too cold and even the famous Pizza party at Bernie's place was almost called off after a morning downpour of tropical dimensions. May 29th and we could see our breath it was so cold. But really really really enough of weather (although it was awful really) 'cos the pizza party was a goodly quite refined and civilised affair. The oven was started hours before and the pizza base was bought in town beforehand (yeasty so they zoomed up like balloons)
And the wine flowed freely, A little too freely in some directions t'is true. But nice afternoon and evening.
No tea, no cake, no toast. Just pizza, beer and wine.
The garden
The grass grows like bamboo. No, hang on, the bamboo is growing like grass, the grass is growing like mustard and cress, it grows as you watch it, it does and I can't keep up. The orto is a no entry zone and -
The only living things happy out there are the trees and shrubs, oh and Bessie and Eva who have made friends after two years of sneering at each other. Fortunato is a wreck ( Fortunato is our tomcat) because he now has wives everywhere and kittens too. Taken on too much he has and is as thin as a rake and is out all night. Poor wretch.
And Eva (our spiritual cat) has got an eye infection. Lili wants to sack the vet. 'He's an animal' she says.
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If I see one more robin! Or hear another rook screech in the bare branches of our oak tree! Or glimpse one more black, baleful cloud edging its way over the hillside towards us (spilling spirals of snow)... Hmm...What might I do? Re-emigrate to Australia or Africa maybe? Yes yes Africa, that's the place. Egypt where the sun shines every day of every year.
It's been bleak folks. Sunny Italy? Forget it! Seed potatoes in? Broad beans? Peas? Just glad I didn't that's all because they'd by now be mere.. mere.... mere what? Well, they wouldn't be anything because they wouldn't exist. They either have been eaten by starving voles or, even worse, shrews, or simply would have rotted away. And now? (after a short break in sunnier climes)... It's Easter, And the weather is even worse. Cold grey slime for days on end, the roads one big bowl of mud and whatever you don't don't take the short cut... which we did yesterday to get to our lunch invite.. At least a warm kitchen to defend us from the bleak outdoors...why the shortcut? Because if we go the Graziella way, Bessie comes zooming after us straight into Charlie, David's dog, whom she swiftly demolishes and then into the jaws of Georgie who demolishes her. And you can't concentrate on a lamb dish with all that going on outside. And as I write this, the low cloud has already consumed our view of Sarnano and is inching this way. Ancona Those of you who might have been following the original newsletters on the Living in Italy site would have read many a time of my heralding and praise of Ancona as a City. This despite it's historical write-off by decades of travel writers most of whom hadn't ever actually been there (but had plagiarized previous ill-informed writers in an equally ill informed way). Well I'm here to tell you folks that the tide has turned.. Because Ancona has come of age, has emerged out of it. Has shrugged off the bombed, earthquaked City tag and is now (according to this month's Gente Viaggi mag.) the new San Francisco! Can you believe it? I feel really really vindicated, San Francisco though! One of my favourite cities and we've got a new one just up the road. Well I feel chuffed. Well. OK. It ain't got no Golden Gate Bridge, nor a Mission District nor a Height Ashbury or even a Golden Gate Park or even a BART Metro, or an Alcatraz Island... but let's not get picky. It does have a sort of Fisherman's Wharf and really good fish restaurants and a real active port which SF doesn't have (with boats to Croatia, Greece, and Turkey) and it doesn't have a crippling traffic problem. Quite frankly I think they should have called it the New Seattle but we all know about journalists don't we, truth and accuracy sometimes slip behind the words. A way bit behind.. But Hey? What would I know? The day after, we are invited to lunch (Easter Monday) with Peppa (local witch), Alfredo, her brother, Renzo and Simona. Me feeling groggy from the lingering flu with a precipitant need to cough everytime I spoke. After the meal I was guided closer the fire and Peppa asks can I touch you, sure I say, and she does and jumps back as if given an electric shock. 'Aieeaieeyai!' she screams. And so began twenty minutes of her wailing and crying as she identified what I could only imagine were demons lurking inside me. Someone jealous has put a curse on you she says and I must come back for the next two days to have the Malocchio (evil eye-curse) taken off me. And so I do and still feeling rough from the flu and all.
That was yesterday. Last night I woke up bathed in sweat and I must say feel a darn sight better as if something has left me. The sun is shining for the first time in a week and the mountains reveal a crisp fresh white covering of snow. The first day I find two patients ahead of me and I have to wait my turn as she runs her hands over this poor woman's legs and chanting all the time makes criss-cross patterns with her fingers on the woman's hip and knee. Rheumatism I suppose and then a man, next in line who has a bad knee and she does similar things to him too and with sort of sweeping away gestures as if to flush away the illness into space (or in this case to the very dirty floor which I'm now looking down upon and Oh My! There are blood smears over it and my mind conjures up animal sacrifice and I say to myself, Michael what are you doing in this medieval world? But I stay (as much out of curiosity as any else) and my turn comes and Peppa walks in with a bowl of water and some sacred oil which she drops into the water. It's to find out the name of who it is who's put this curse on you she says. The oil becomes a film across the water, as you'd expect, but there are two or three little globules, which float around each other. She tries this three times but eventually says she can't make out a name, only that it is a man jealous of me and that Lili is involved. Huh! Might have known! That Lili. Next day she puts me through the wailing and praying again and says I must carry bags of salt around with me for protection, although she doesn't say how big. Also she packs me off with a small red cloth bag which I must keep on myself at all times. It contains protective herbs she says and shows me one she has had pinned on her bodice for twenty years.
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Fans of Michael Eldridge can follow his previous adventures in Tuscany in The Physik Garden ...
© Michael Eldridge 2003; 2004