Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Sunny and breezy. Windows thrown open, bedding thrown out to air. Doors thrown open, children thrown out into the street.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Welcome arrivals
Thunder, heavy rain, clouds down to about 350m and water running ankle-deep in the streets of Carmine.
It had been a sadness to us that so far this year the shutters of one particular house have remained closed. Normally, this particular house is occupied from June onwards. Has been, indeed, for more than 40 years. And if Carmine had a garden fete, the associated garden would be busy producing the 1st-prize winners Biggest zucchini, Tastiest lettuces, Reddest tomatoes, Most luscious bean plants and Longest cucumbers.
It had been a sadness to us that so far this year the shutters of one particular house have remained closed. Normally, this particular house is occupied from June onwards. Has been, indeed, for more than 40 years. And if Carmine had a garden fete, the associated garden would be busy producing the 1st-prize winners Biggest zucchini, Tastiest lettuces, Reddest tomatoes, Most luscious bean plants and Longest cucumbers.
But now our closest neighbours have finally arrived. And it's great to see their smiling faces, hear the clatter of their washing up, the chatter of their tv.
Ben tornati!
Note the appearance of the deer in the village this evening, perhaps here to say welcome back as well.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Storm story
More storms today have brought the temperature down to seventeen degrees at 5pm. The recent new additions to the garden (three miniature geraniums, a pineapple sage (smells like not looks like) another rose and a lantana) are very happy.
As a mere slip of a twenty-something Mama (before she was Mama) took a life-changing journey to Southeast Asia. During a prolonged visit to an island off the coast of southern Thailand, teaching a bit of English, learning some Thai, she found out many things about herself and about life. Accommodation was a palm-thatch cottage on stilts on the beach, and food was arranged by the proprietor in a large 'restaurant' area - a large palm-wood skeleton with a cement floor and no walls. Gap-year kids who are reading this will probably recognise the scenario, although at the time, the 'gap-year' was a thing of the future.
One day, our host, an attractive, tallish Thai was to be seen frowning at the horizon. The fishing boats that usually twinkled their lights at night from the far-distance had suddenly turned-tail for home. There was the start of a swell along our normally tranquil stretch of the Gulf of Thailand, and the normally azure skies were starting to look murky. Within a couple of hours a storm blew up which lasted two days and two nights. The sea bubbled below my bed and the wind bent the palms to horizontal. The inland lake burst out and water came crashing down to meet the sea sending, one beach hut sprawling. The noise of wind, rain, moaning palms and thundering ocean was deafening. The restaurant owner unfurled long swathes of heavy canvas and secured them to the ground so that damp customers could eat with only a faint mist of rain surrounding them.
On the third day the wind abated and the rain came to a reluctant halt. Houses were turned inside out as possessions were taken out into the sun to dry - mattresses, clothes...
It was only very much later that I discovered we had been sitting ducks for Typhoon Gay, which devastated Thailand's Chumpon province in late 1989. Hundreds of people died, and hundreds of fishermen went missing. We were lucky.
This afternoon, I and about 50 parents and children found ourselves huddled under a canvas awning in a corner of Cannobio's parco giochi, frowning in much the same way as my Thai friend of so many years ago. A sudden cloud burst had brought 4-year-old Emanuele's birthday celebrations to an awed halt, and there was rather a lot of water swirling around our feet. As we hauled our kids up onto the table and put Emanuele's mountain of birthday gifts out of harm's way, I thought of how much work my guardian angel has had to put in over the years (thank-you). I hoped that after shielding me from 190km/h winds and a roiling sea, he would be ready for the relatively minor task of helping us back along the lake road and up the hill, safe and sound, and perhaps not too wet.
He was.
As a mere slip of a twenty-something Mama (before she was Mama) took a life-changing journey to Southeast Asia. During a prolonged visit to an island off the coast of southern Thailand, teaching a bit of English, learning some Thai, she found out many things about herself and about life. Accommodation was a palm-thatch cottage on stilts on the beach, and food was arranged by the proprietor in a large 'restaurant' area - a large palm-wood skeleton with a cement floor and no walls. Gap-year kids who are reading this will probably recognise the scenario, although at the time, the 'gap-year' was a thing of the future.
One day, our host, an attractive, tallish Thai was to be seen frowning at the horizon. The fishing boats that usually twinkled their lights at night from the far-distance had suddenly turned-tail for home. There was the start of a swell along our normally tranquil stretch of the Gulf of Thailand, and the normally azure skies were starting to look murky. Within a couple of hours a storm blew up which lasted two days and two nights. The sea bubbled below my bed and the wind bent the palms to horizontal. The inland lake burst out and water came crashing down to meet the sea sending, one beach hut sprawling. The noise of wind, rain, moaning palms and thundering ocean was deafening. The restaurant owner unfurled long swathes of heavy canvas and secured them to the ground so that damp customers could eat with only a faint mist of rain surrounding them.
On the third day the wind abated and the rain came to a reluctant halt. Houses were turned inside out as possessions were taken out into the sun to dry - mattresses, clothes...
It was only very much later that I discovered we had been sitting ducks for Typhoon Gay, which devastated Thailand's Chumpon province in late 1989. Hundreds of people died, and hundreds of fishermen went missing. We were lucky.
This afternoon, I and about 50 parents and children found ourselves huddled under a canvas awning in a corner of Cannobio's parco giochi, frowning in much the same way as my Thai friend of so many years ago. A sudden cloud burst had brought 4-year-old Emanuele's birthday celebrations to an awed halt, and there was rather a lot of water swirling around our feet. As we hauled our kids up onto the table and put Emanuele's mountain of birthday gifts out of harm's way, I thought of how much work my guardian angel has had to put in over the years (thank-you). I hoped that after shielding me from 190km/h winds and a roiling sea, he would be ready for the relatively minor task of helping us back along the lake road and up the hill, safe and sound, and perhaps not too wet.
He was.
Friday, 4 July 2008
Windy.
Oh dear.
While Mama was busy...
AJ was doing a spot of hairdressing on his own and his sister's hair with his father's hair clippers.
The usual look is 'medieval street urchin'. Now it's 'medieval street urchin with the mange'.
Ho-hum.
Oh dear.
While Mama was busy...
AJ was doing a spot of hairdressing on his own and his sister's hair with his father's hair clippers.
The usual look is 'medieval street urchin'. Now it's 'medieval street urchin with the mange'.
Ho-hum.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
The summer (ought) to-do list
Last night's storm has left us with a refreshing 23 degrees and overcast skies. Thundery showers.
The to-do list is getting out of hand :
The to-do list is getting out of hand :
- tackle the ironing pile which has reached, if not Everest proportions, then at least K2
- lavender : cut back, make sure all the thousands of stems are facing the same direction, tie into artful bunches, festoon the house; alternatively cut off the heads and stuff into any available pouch-like object - handmade lacy lavender bags sent from England, pillow cases, M's socks...; alternatively allow to go to seed, swamp everything else in the garden and obscure the steps as part of an artistic 'wilderness' planting scheme
- roses : dead-head, weed around, tie up and fertilise with very expensive liquid feed then watch the hail knock them down
- tie up everything in sight : the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the three jasmines, the ten oleander, the children...
- locate and air the summer duvets; air the winter duvets and shove them into the space where the (less bulky) summer duvets lived; fail, then change mind and opt to use sheets and blankets (if I can find them)
- put away all the children's clothes that aren't suitable for summer, filing for age and gender; when the 20ft room in which this operation is to take place gets too full, move house
- pantry : take everything off the 20 shelves; wash the tea towels that cover the shelves, iron and put back; get rid of the slug trails on floor, walls and ceiling; ditto cobwebs; clean containers and put everything back in a different place just to give il cuoco a taste of his own medicine
- omigod -- sweep the chimneys...
- build an elaborate and imaginative train set, watch AJ (or B, or the cat) wreck it, build another elaborate and imaginative train set, return ten minutes later to view another Island-of-Sodor catastrophe, build yet another somewhat less elaborate and definitely less imaginative train set, return twenty minutes later, put train set away
- do photograph albums for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008
- arrange a birthday party, potty-train a toddler, teach AJ his ABCs and his 123s, proofread husband's latest blockbuster...
Did someone say something about summer holidays?
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
A perfect 28 degrees at 10am, a slight breeze and azure skies.
A lovely summer day for collecting our big cat (sans equipment) from the vet.
A lovely summer day for collecting our big cat (sans equipment) from the vet.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Book Notes No. 8 : A Partisan's Daughter, Louis de Bernieres
Cracking thunder storm last night, doing nothing for Mama's unaccustomed insomnia. Hot, sunny, cloudy and breezy today. Yes, all at the same time.
Once upon a time, Mama (before she was a Mama) travelled with her tent in the South Pacific. On one of the Fijian islands, she visited a village built inside the crater of an extinct volcano and heard about village life from one of the residents, who had studied and qualified as the local tour guide. Whenever he began a new episode in his history of his people, he would begin his sentence with, "It says...", as if he carried with him a huge invisible (and, I imagined, dusty) book in which his forefathers had written down the stories and facts he was now 'reading' to us. This verbal tic endowed everything he had to impart to us with a certain gravity, with the full weight of his cultural history, and I could see that the other westerners with me were listening with unaccustomed respect to this man's version of reality.
In Louis de Berniere's new novel, A Partisan's Daughter, Roza, the storyteller (for like Salman Rushdie's latest, this is another book about storytelling), has a similar tic, but with the opposite effect. She often says, "I told him...", or "That's what I told him...". "I told him that after he was a partisan, my father was a secret policeman..." And as these expressions appear and reappear, the reader, who at first is carried along with Roza's colourful story, starts to get the feeling that perhaps what she's telling him isn't quite the truth.
A Partisan's Daughter is a love story, set, to my great nostalgic pleasure, in the 1970s, the age of the brown Austin Allegro, Sebastian Coe at his fastest, and The Police singing 'Roxanne'.
In a derelict building in Highgate.
Unlike Birds Without Wings, the terrifying brutality of which I couldn't bear, here de Bernieres proves his ability to write the subtle sadness of opportunities missed, relationships gone cold and lumpy, realities misunderstood. And as the reader grasps for threads of truth, and as it slithers and slips around, there's a little voice somewhere that says love means resisting the temptation to tell the ultimate lie.
Read it.
Once upon a time, Mama (before she was a Mama) travelled with her tent in the South Pacific. On one of the Fijian islands, she visited a village built inside the crater of an extinct volcano and heard about village life from one of the residents, who had studied and qualified as the local tour guide. Whenever he began a new episode in his history of his people, he would begin his sentence with, "It says...", as if he carried with him a huge invisible (and, I imagined, dusty) book in which his forefathers had written down the stories and facts he was now 'reading' to us. This verbal tic endowed everything he had to impart to us with a certain gravity, with the full weight of his cultural history, and I could see that the other westerners with me were listening with unaccustomed respect to this man's version of reality.
In Louis de Berniere's new novel, A Partisan's Daughter
A Partisan's Daughter is a love story, set, to my great nostalgic pleasure, in the 1970s, the age of the brown Austin Allegro, Sebastian Coe at his fastest, and The Police singing 'Roxanne'.
In a derelict building in Highgate.
Unlike Birds Without Wings, the terrifying brutality of which I couldn't bear, here de Bernieres proves his ability to write the subtle sadness of opportunities missed, relationships gone cold and lumpy, realities misunderstood. And as the reader grasps for threads of truth, and as it slithers and slips around, there's a little voice somewhere that says love means resisting the temptation to tell the ultimate lie.
Read it.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Cat in castigo
Thirty-two degrees at 9am (in the sheltered spot on the bathroom windowsill), but with a wind that's whipping up the white horses on the lake. Feels fresher following yesterday afternoon's storm, which has left me with a rather large amount of oleander- and tomato-tying to do.
The first summer vacationers have arrived from north of the Alps. And today is AJ's first Monday of the summer holidays, which stretch ten weeks into the heat-haze distance (God help Mama).
Upstairs, one of the spare rooms has become Cell-Block C, home to a rather disgruntled cat. Here's a picture of him taken a few months ago during a particularly energetic bout of mousing. He's almost the oldest cat in Carmine and considers himself lord of all he surveys. He's known to be fairly brutal with his subject cats, and now he's in trouble. On Saturday night he frightened our neighbour's new, all-white, female import and she disappeared (to return on Sunday morning, thankfully unharmed by woodland predators). Our neighbour was understandably fairly angry and put out a fatwa on our cat, so he's upstairs in castigo, but also for his own safety.
We've promised to have him done in the hope that without the essential equipment he'll be less aggressive, so tomorrow he and I will be plunging down the hill to the vet. God-willing, that will save him from a slow death by pot-shot.
The first summer vacationers have arrived from north of the Alps. And today is AJ's first Monday of the summer holidays, which stretch ten weeks into the heat-haze distance (God help Mama).
Upstairs, one of the spare rooms has become Cell-Block C, home to a rather disgruntled cat. Here's a picture of him taken a few months ago during a particularly energetic bout of mousing. He's almost the oldest cat in Carmine and considers himself lord of all he surveys. He's known to be fairly brutal with his subject cats, and now he's in trouble. On Saturday night he frightened our neighbour's new, all-white, female import and she disappeared (to return on Sunday morning, thankfully unharmed by woodland predators). Our neighbour was understandably fairly angry and put out a fatwa on our cat, so he's upstairs in castigo, but also for his own safety.
We've promised to have him done in the hope that without the essential equipment he'll be less aggressive, so tomorrow he and I will be plunging down the hill to the vet. God-willing, that will save him from a slow death by pot-shot.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Chick-rearing, the end of the line
After last night's storm, the 9am temperature has dropped to 28 degrees, which is fresh by comparison.
The first of the male chickens from February's brood is cooling its - erm - drumsticks in the fridge, awaiting the big deep freeze.
The first of the male chickens from February's brood is cooling its - erm - drumsticks in the fridge, awaiting the big deep freeze.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Thirty degrees in Cannobio at 9am. Thirty-four at 1pm. On the sultry side all day, resulting in this year's first thunder storm.
Twelve kilos of child on the back and another six kilos of shopping at the ends of the arms was this morning's Really Stupid Idea. Next time I'll leave the kid at the shop and just bring the cat food and the juice.
Twelve kilos of child on the back and another six kilos of shopping at the ends of the arms was this morning's Really Stupid Idea. Next time I'll leave the kid at the shop and just bring the cat food and the juice.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Thirty-two degrees at 9am in Cannobio. Sunny goes without saying.
Time to blow up the blessed paddling pool.
Time to blow up the blessed paddling pool.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
The straw in strawberries
Twenty-eight degrees at 8am. Sunny. The blessing of Carmine is the breeze that blows almost continually, leaving us merely hot when we would otherwise be overheated.
The cherry tree that M. planted in 2003 is fruiting beautifully. And B. was today ecstatic to find her walk up the hill (yes, now I only have to carry her one-third of the way) is paved with wild strawberries. A great part of her vocabulary is devoted to hunting strawberries, including, "Where are they? There! Strawberry! B.!....Oh dear, all gone." Her two-year-old mind is so caught up with fruiting strawberries that last night the First Little Pig made a house of them (rather than straw)...Now wouldn't that be nice!
The cherry tree that M. planted in 2003 is fruiting beautifully. And B. was today ecstatic to find her walk up the hill (yes, now I only have to carry her one-third of the way) is paved with wild strawberries. A great part of her vocabulary is devoted to hunting strawberries, including, "Where are they? There! Strawberry! B.!....Oh dear, all gone." Her two-year-old mind is so caught up with fruiting strawberries that last night the First Little Pig made a house of them (rather than straw)...Now wouldn't that be nice!
Monday, 23 June 2008
Twenty-eight degrees at 9am. Sunny. In Milan at 10am, M. clocked 32 degrees.
Counting down to the last day of kindergarten on Friday.
Counting down to the last day of kindergarten on Friday.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
Sliding into summer
Sultry and overcast.
After about a month of almost continual rain, we in Carmine are welcoming summer.
All the windows are open (yes, even at night), and every corner of the house is permeated with the scent of jasmine. The geraniums are flowering on windowsills everywhere you look and the lavender has taken over the herb garden and is going for world domination.
Yesterday, we cooled down for the first time this summer with a dunk in the old village fontana, fed with freezing mountain water. And a mother deer and her youngster paid a visit to Palazzo Pollo.
Everyone in Cannobio was in sunny Saturday morning mood. The Vice-Sindaco in crisp white linen was holding court outside the Caffe' Centro in Guardian Angel Square, and the post office was humming with the unmistakeable perfumes of shower gel and sunscreen.
Today, the gentle schuck of Ezio's sickle as he tackles the grass in his meadow in his own time-honoured way, is drowned by the roar of multiple strimmers doing the job in a fraction of the time.
After about a month of almost continual rain, we in Carmine are welcoming summer.
All the windows are open (yes, even at night), and every corner of the house is permeated with the scent of jasmine. The geraniums are flowering on windowsills everywhere you look and the lavender has taken over the herb garden and is going for world domination.
Yesterday, we cooled down for the first time this summer with a dunk in the old village fontana, fed with freezing mountain water. And a mother deer and her youngster paid a visit to Palazzo Pollo.
Everyone in Cannobio was in sunny Saturday morning mood. The Vice-Sindaco in crisp white linen was holding court outside the Caffe' Centro in Guardian Angel Square, and the post office was humming with the unmistakeable perfumes of shower gel and sunscreen.
Today, the gentle schuck of Ezio's sickle as he tackles the grass in his meadow in his own time-honoured way, is drowned by the roar of multiple strimmers doing the job in a fraction of the time.
Friday, 20 June 2008
Motherhood means...No. 5
Sunny and warm.
As the holidays edge closer, motherhood means not saying, "Please share your ice-cream with your sister," for fear of summoning up the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...
As the holidays edge closer, motherhood means not saying, "Please share your ice-cream with your sister," for fear of summoning up the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Oh what a night
Twenty-eight degrees at about 4pm, when I finally arrived in downtown Cannobio in search of antibiotics after a night of bronchospasm, a visit to the Guardia Medica and a surprise strepp throat (with a prospect of joining the growing ranks of kindergarten scarlatina notifiees). Sunny.
Today was also a helicopter day.
Today was also a helicopter day.
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Homecoming reccie
Twenty-one degrees at 9am. Sunny, but the weather can't fool me -- it's been raining in Carmine virtually non-stop since our departure. The clues? Moss and algae everywhere, energetically-flowing streams, lots of brown jasmine flowers and a garden like a jungle, with weeds taller than the trees.
The famous mouser (cat 12 : mice nil) dives into my arms every available moment since our return. I think we were missed.
And...there's a pristine all-white, spring 2008 kitten putting its nose around the door.
The famous mouser (cat 12 : mice nil) dives into my arms every available moment since our return. I think we were missed.
And...there's a pristine all-white, spring 2008 kitten putting its nose around the door.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Sunday, 15 June 2008
Saturday, 14 June 2008
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