ANCHORS - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "The Edge of your World".

When we are children, the edge of the world is represented by the limits of the world we know - the comforting scent of a mother,  the bars of a play pen or cot,  a garden wall, familiar rooms - and  perhaps this is why so many of us scream at our first children's party at another house or on our first day of school. 

For most of us, there is always a loving adult policing our surroundings when we move from that edge

and if we feel we are alone, even for a moment, we become pretty miserable:

However, I think I wanted to test the waters from an early age

and go off on the big ships

but always come back:

As a member of Churchill's "island race" it is not surprising that I am drawn to islands

Me, Elba-bound in 1977

and one day, more than half a century after the black and white photos above were taken, I flew to the biggest island in the Mediterranean and knew that I would not turn back:

In Donnalucata, Sicily - 2005

Sampieri, Sicily

I've written before about how, even then, leaving the comfort zone of my house in Britain was scary but tonight I want to think about one of the things you lose when, having stepped off the edge of your world, you arrive in your new one:  you lose what Alexander McCall Smith calls your "anchor-points".  He puts it thus:

"Just as Freddie de la Hay was missing him, so too was he experiencing that sense of incompleteness when a familiar presence is suddenly no longer there. Such feelings can be profound and long-lived..... or they may be less substantial, more transient, as when a shop or coffee bar we like closes down, or a favourite office colleague is transferred. These may seem little things, but they constitute the anchor-points of our lives and are often more important than we imagine."

- Alexander McCall Smith:  The Dog Who Came in from the Cold

If this is the case even in a city where you have lived all your life, imagine how important such "anchors" are when you change not only your city but your country.  You find new ones, as I wrote here, and you have to cultivate them but when you in turn lose one of these, you can feel quite disorientated for a while. Perhaps that was why I was so upset when Mr T shut up shop.  Yet this regret, for the loss of landmarks in an unfamiliar place, also means that you have integrated, so can be celebrated in a way. These days, though I still miss Mr T, I have become used to the new folk in what used to be his shop, and the butcher who occupies part of it has turned out to be a treasure - an "anchor", in fact.

So for me, stepping beyond the edge of what was my world has meant finding new anchors and it is still an adventure!

I couldn't find a suitable picture of an anchor, so here is my paternal grandfather in naval uniform, complete with anchor on his cap:

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Note: This is my last "Let's Blog Off" post as the project has now been wound up. I have enjoyed participating and would like to express particular thanks to Paul for inviting me to do so and for his unfailing support and courtesy. I've made some new friends along the way and I hope we can keep in touch. The "Let's Blog Off" archive can be viewed here.

SICILIAN FLOWER PROVERBS - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "Flowers".

"Mai" flowers in Sicily

Not being a flowery, or "planty" person, I have spent most of this evening wondering how to tackle this post.  Please don't misunderstand me - I am happy to receive, look at and inhale the scent of flowers at any time but I don't want to dig holes for them, worry about them in all weathers or wait for them to grow.


For years I couldn't afford to tame, let alone do anything creative, with my garden back in Cardiff, UK - much to the chagrin of my neighbours - and when I finally did plant some specimens, I enjoyed them when they were small but got rather overwhelmed when they began to spread like triffids.

At around the same time, I went through a house plant phase but the charm wore off when one day I observed live THINGS crawling on some of them.  Yes, I know - "Cu' mancia fa muddichi" - "He who eats makes crumbs", as the Sicilian proverb goes, roughly the equivalent of "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" - or grow houseplants without attracting a few attendant bugs, I suppose.

This brings me - unintentionally at the outset, I assure you - to Sicilian proverbs and now we can have a Sicilian proverbs quiz in honour of this week's subject.  Are you ready?  All you have to do is match the proverbs and one saying 1 - 5 with their meanings a - e.  You'll find the answers at the end of the post.

1.  Marva ti sarva.

2.  Favi 'niciuri, acqua a vadduni.

3. 'A biddezza è comu 'n çiuri ca nasci, çiurisci e mori.

4.  Nun c'è rosa senza spini, nun c'è amuri senza peni.

5.  Eni friscu com'i rosi.

a.  Beauty is like a flower that buds, flowers and dies.

b.  Mallow saves you.

c.  There is no rose without thorns and no love without pain.

d.  He's as cool as roses [said of someone who stays calm in a difficult situation].

e.  Broad beans that are in flower need plenty of rain.

Finally, this week's topic does give me an excuse to repost this favourite song from home.  It is sung by the much missed David Alexander:

David Alexander - My Wales

Proverbs quiz answers:
Please highlight the space below to see the answers:
1b, 2e, 3a, 4c, 5d.


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IN HONOUR OF THOSE WITH NO TEETH - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "Cookies".


When I saw that the topic for this round of the Blog Off was "Cookies", I was first relieved that those whose idea this was meant the culinary and not the technological kind and then peturbed as I'm not sure when a cookie is not a cookie!  On this side of the pond we call them "biscuits", you see, but according to the dictionary a cookie can also be "a flat and crisp cake".  Does that mean that Welshcakes are cookies, then?  You'll be able to decide for yourselves by the end of the post!


Living in Sicily means being surrounded by cookies and their names and recipes vary from town to town and even from village to village.  There are cookies for every occasion and they are made on the premises of every pasticceria and self-respecting bar.


Why are the Sicilians so good at making cookies?  Well, the Greeks brought honey to the island, the Arabs sugarcane and the Spanish chocolate from Mexico.  Nuns in convents began to make pastries as a source of income and Swiss and French pastry chefs arrived in the nineteenth century.  With all these influences and the island's natural resources, successful pastry-making was ensured.


Then there are the wonderful names that Sicilians give their cookies [or little cakes]: among my favourites are "virgin's breasts", so -called because of their mounded shape and affogapreti or "priest drowners", crunchy little biscuits filled with honey.  These are popular at Easter time and get their name either because they are so hard that you can't talk and eat them at the same time, so giving some to a priest would cause him to stop telling you off or because if you ate them during a sermon the sound of your chewing would "drown out" the priest's voice.  

affogapreti

In Modica, the city of chocolate, impannatighe biscuits are especially popular and there are variant spellings - 'mpanatigghie, impanatiglie - of this dialect word which is a corruption of Spanish empanadilla, meaning a filling enclosed in pastry.   I promise you that if you make these and offer them to your friends, no one will guess that they contain beef!  Here is a recipe for them:

Pastry:

800 gr plain flour

250 gr sugar

200 gr lard

12 egg yolks [!]

a glass of water if needed

Filling:

350 gr finely chopped almonds

250 gr lean minced [ground] beef

400 gr sugar

90 gr bitter chocolate, grated

25 gr cinnamon

a few drops of vanilla essence

1 dessertspoon cocoa powder

grated rind of 1 lemon

4 egg whites

To make the pastry, rub the lard into the flour and sugar. Add yolks and a little water if necessary to make a dough. [It will be very sticky at first, but it gets better!]

Cook the minced meat in a little water and grind down in a processor. Add to the other filling ingredients in a bowl and mix all well together.

Let both the dough and filling rest in the fridge - for 24 hours if possible.

Roll out the dough and cut into circles using a coffee saucer. Put some filling on each round, then fold over to a half-moon shape. Stick the edges together and make lines with the prongs of a fork. Cut a slit in the top of each one.

Put the pastries on a lightly greased tin and bake at 150 C - 175 C for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them. Serve cold, dusted with icing sugar.

impannatighe

That's a recipe from Sicily; now, what of Wales?  I've mentioned Welshcakes several times in my Blog Off posts and some of you have asked for a recipe so here is how I make them in Sicily:

1 lb plain flour

A few drops of vanilla flavouring [sold in little phials in Italy] or vanilla essence [not an authentic ingredient but my Sicilian friends like the cakes better when I add it.]

8 oz margarine, chopped into cubes

6 oz sultanas

6 oz caster sugar

2 eggs

1 teasp mixed spice  [Friends send this from Britain. It's similar to pumpkin pie spice.]

a little milk to mix the pastry

The easiest way is to just whizz everything together in a food processor, using as much milk as you need to make a firm dough.  On a floured board, roll out the dough to about 0.5" thickness and then cut into rounds with a medium-sized fluted cutter.  

Now, you really need a flat griddle to cook them on but you can use a heavy frying pan.  I use an Italian pan called a "testo romagnolo" and I found out that it was the perfect flat griddle substitute by accident! Grease the griddle or pan very lightly with lard and heat it.  Lift the cakes on with a fish slice and cook for about 1 minute on each side.  You have to watch them carefully and flip them over quickly! As soon as they are done, lift them out onto cooling trays.  [I always end up with some that are more "done" than others but it doesn't matter.] Sprinkle the cakes with caster sugar while they are still warm.  They are traditionally eaten warm with butter and honey but they are good cold too and can be eaten just as they are.  All my Sicilian friends like them and think there is ricotta in them! 

Last Christmas I used dried cranberries instead of sultanas in them and this was a success but don't tell any Welsh friends that!

Welshcakes at the front
of my St David's Day table

I cannot finish this post without quoting my favourite Sicilian proverb again:

" 'U Signuri runa 'i viscotta a cu' nun avi rienti - God gives biscuits to those with no teeth."

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GRAMMAR PEEVES - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What's your grammar pet peeve?"

Oh, what a gift this week's topic is to a language teacher! I could go on and on and I probably will!  As those nice folk say over on the Blog Off site, nearly everyone is publishing at least some content on the internet these days and "the English language is being abused like never before." 

Yes, everyone is a "writer" these days and, by prefacing their names or twitter handles with either that word or "author", many are making sure that we know it.  Grammar rules are being broken everywhere and there are already societies for the protection of the apostrophe, semicolon and comma.  

The point is, does this rule-breaking matter?  That will depend to a large extent on who the target reader is and if he or she is someone like me the answer is "Yes" because if the writing is ungrammatical I will stop reading. 

Ridding the publishing world of the "men in suits" might be a good development in some ways but with them we are losing the quality control that used to make reading a joy and what the self-publishing outfits won't give you is an editor.  If, as a consequence, we are all to become our own editors, then, we need to take extra care and respect the reader by making our offerings legible - and yes, that means grammatical.

So what are the grammar mistakes that really drive me mad?  Number one has to be misuse of the apostrophe.  I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people find its use difficult because the rules are actually so simple. In my hometown of Cardiff I used to want to go around with a red pen to correct the signs of traders offering "potatoes' " or "carrots' ". I wish I'd written a book about it before Lynne Truss got the idea and I'm sure the erudite Stan Carey won't mind if I quote here a ditty I made up for a competition on his site a while ago. [No, I didn't win!]

Oh, what a problem is “it’s”

It’s driving me out of my wits

When “its” means “belong”

the apostrophe’s wrong

but students think “its” is the pits!

I wish that my name were Lynne Truss

who, spotting this error in us,

put it all in a book -

you should have a look,

She made a few million thus.

I took the photograph below in Modica Bassa some years back and it illustrates perfectly the kinds of mistakes that are made with the possessive apostrophe.  I would add that there is some excuse for the non-native speaker of English but none whatsoever for someone brought up and educated in the UK!

In case any of my students are reading this post I have explained the rules here on the EIS blog.

Other pet grammar peeves of mine are "could / should / would of" for "could / should / would have", the fairly new habit of using the continuous tenses with "state" verbs [ as in "I am loving"] and the use of "sat" for "sitting". 

Of the mistakes that Italians learning English most commonly make, "use to" to express a present habit [as in "We use to go to the sea every summer" for "We go to the sea every summer"] is the hardest to eradicate and I'd better not even get started on the present perfect tense ["have done" rather than "did"] because you Americans use it less often than the Brits.  The placing of "very much" in a sentence is also a nightmare and day after day I have to remind students that it is usually placed at the end. ["I like English very much", not "I like very much English."]

Any linguist will tell you that much erroneous grammar eventually becomes acceptable in the language - if that were not so we would still all be speaking Elizabethan English - but this is a slow process and it is almost as if there is an invisible consensus.  The jury's still out on the apostrophe so I will continue, when in the UK, to carry a large red pen with me wherever I go.

I have been loving very much this topic.

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RIDING TO MONTE CARLO - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "That song stuck in your head."

"After the ball was over,

Two little girls in blue,

Riding to Monte Carlo

On a bicycle made for two"....

....sang my lovely grandad often.  As he told it, these were lines from different songs put together by a poor seller of sheet music to the tune of "Two Little Girls in Blue";  the enterprising gentleman would sing his improvised lyric in the street and thus sold more music!  I have no idea if this is true and, although three of the lines are well-known, I can't find any song with the line "riding to Monte Carlo" in it so if you know of one, I'd be most grateful to hear about it. The tune has gone around in my head for over 60 years! Even here in Sicily, I sometimes find myself humming it.

Gerald Adams - Two Little Girls in Blue  [original lyrics]

And you know those tunes that you keep humming but you can't place the words? There was one that drove me crazy for ages when I first arrived in Modica and it wasn't until the eve of my sixtieth birthday, when I was looking through some CD compilations of 1960s music, that I realised it was this song:

Bobby Darin - Change

Quite why I had been humming a Bobby Darin song every day in Sicily is beyond me but the forgotten lyrics were very appropriate for me at that time!

Then there are the Sanremo Music Festival songs that get a lot of plays on Italian radio so you would have to be completely tone-deaf to live here and not end up singing along to some of them.  Just ten days after this year's Festival, I cannot write a music post without mentioning this annual event and this winning song from 1959 was the first Italian song I ever learnt:

Domenico Modugno - Piove [Ciao, ciao bambina]

One of the most hummable songs ever to be sung at the Festival is, in my opinion, Arisa's Sincerità which won the Newcomers' section half a century later, in 2009:

Arisa - Sincerità

From the Riviera dei Fiori to Cardiff, Wales, UK, where it was announced at the weekend that Dame Shirley Bassey, who was born in my hometown, is to receive the Freedom of the City.  "Our Shirl" is one of the world's great performers and she has a wide repertoire but it is this song from one of her earliest LPs - that's a long-playing vinyl record or disc, for all you young folk out there - which most often goes around in my head:

Shirley Bassey - I've Never Been in Love Before

Well, another Cardiff girl, the one who is writing this blog, did not "ride to Monte Carlo" but to Modica, Sicily, where, every day at almost every hour, her life is punctuated by the bells of the little Sacro Cuore Church.  Their tune is often in her head, too, and she would have to take a recording of their sound with her if she were to be marooned on the BBC's famous desert island!

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WHAT SMELL TAKES YOU BACK? - A "LET'S BLOG OFF POST"

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What smell takes you back?"

In the book Une Gourmandise [Gourmet Rhapsody] by the French novelist Muriel Barbery a famous but unloved food critic lies dying.  Before he shuffles off this mortal coil, he wants to experience a certain taste sensation again.  The trouble is, he can't remember what it is.....

I think it's often like that with smells.  They can be very elusive but also very evocative and, once we identify them, they can take us as far back in time as we can remember.  For a couple of years here I'd been sniffing numerous tester perfumes in an attempt to find .... what?  That's just it - I didn't really know what aroma I was searching for but my longing for whatever it was became like a thirst.  I have a theory that this is partly a result of not having been in my own country for a long time.  Then one day I realised:  as a child I spent my holidays on the beach in Paignton, Devonshire and my Dad used to buy "Devon Violets" perfume for my mum, whose name was Violet.

I was last in Devonshire as a teenager in 1964 but any smell that is similar to "Devon Violets" takes me right back there:

Me at the Model Village in Babbacombe, Devon

Most of you know that I'm an avid reader and the smell and feel of books fascinate me almost as much as  their content. At school and at university I loved the smell of French Livre de Poche editions and I still do:

Then there are the smells I miss on an almost daily basis and one of these, during this particularly cold winter even in Sicily, is that of warmth. [Not heat - we get plenty of that in summer - but warmth!] Houses here can be very cold because so much heat is lost through long windows and balcony doors which are not double-glazed.  Many Sicilians are reluctant to switch their central heating on, preferring to wear numerous layers of clothing even at home so it is often colder inside than out.  I miss the all-enveloping warmth of a well-heated British home and the welcoming smell of that warmth.

I can't say I miss the smell of Cardiff's black beer wafting over the city from the brewery, though and I'd much rather inhale the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans which fills Modica's Sorda district on certain mornings - not for much longer, though, as Caffè Moak is planning to transfer its headquarters to Pozzallo.

The aroma of Welshcakes cooking on a flat griddle was the smell of home to me as a child, in an era when women had weekly "baking days" and there were always homemade cakes for tea.  Here I manage to make Welshcakes on a pan called a testo romagnolo and I'll be preparing my next batch on St David's Day [March 1st].

My testo romagnolo - take off the lid and rack
 and you have the perfect flat griddle!

Welshcakes - Sicilian style

What are the smells I most closely associate with Italy?  The unmistakeable aroma of vanilla as you pass any pasticceria and, in Sicily, the lovely perfume of the jasmine flower - which is not unlike that of "Devon Violets".

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MY GRANDMOTHER ALWAYS SAID... A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "My grandmother always said...."

I never actually met either of my grandmothers but I do remember "helping" my grandad to wash the dishes and his saying, "Lady to the house" if I dropped a spoon and "Gentleman to the house" if I dropped a fork.  I lived in hourly expectation of these visits and, as my parents ran a newsagent's and sweet shop in Bristol, UK, people were always dropping in anyway so I was able to nod sagely upon their arrival and puzzle them with the information that "Grandad told me so."

My mother, like many of her generation, instilled in her daughter the necessity of always wearing clean underwear "in case you get run over" and, having grown up in an era when some of her classmates did not have shoes, used to angrily declare that there was "no such thing as the good old days" whenever her contemporaries became sentimental about those times.

My mother - front row on the right - at school in Pencoed, South Wales, UK

From my great aunt Mabel I learned that "This, too, will pass" and that there were few troubles that could not be assuaged by getting your nose into a good book.

My father also taught me to love books and that, as Helen Keller said, "The highest result of education is tolerance."  He deemed it important to have what is termed in one of our favourite films, The Philadelphia Story, "some regard for human frailty".  "There but for the grace of God go I", he would say of the misfortunes of others, much more often than he would utter the words, "Serve him right."

Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in High Society

[I couldn't find the scene where Dexter talks about "regard for human frailty" in The Philadelphia Story so here is the next best thing!]

Dad believed that people should be themselves and he had no time for pretension. If the neighbours disapproved of him, he declared, "They could all move out."  This may be why his daughter, today, can say that those whom she calls the "Sicilian dust police" - women who judge another woman according to her housewifely skills - need not come to her house if it is not to their liking.  Her Sicilian friends find it hard to believe that she really does not care but it is true.

Then there was the uncle who told me that if I ate too many bananas I'd get to look like a banana;  this made me cautious about eating these fruits for years. 

What wisdom will I pass on?  Even though I'll be 62 in a couple of weeks, I'm not sure I've acquired any but I am learning some "new old wisdom" from Sicilian proverbs.  Here are three of my favourites:

"Pi fari beni l'amuri ci voli 'a forza rê picciuotti e 'u pitittu rê viecci" - "To make love you need the strength of the young and the desire of the old."

" 'U Signuri runa 'i viscotta a cu' nun avi rienti" - "God gives biscuits to those with no teeth."

And one for our times.  I wish I'd learned it long ago! 

" 'Cu accatta cosi 'nùtili, prestu vinni 'u bisugnèvuli" - "He who buys useless things will soon have to sell the things he needs."

I think I'll leave you with the advice I offered my female readers on the occasion of my sixtieth birthday, as I am still convinced that it could save generations of women to come from a lifetime of misery:

"Only weigh when you're thin!"

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IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "If you could turn back time...".


We've all done it, haven't we?  At certain moments, we've all thought, about trivial events or life-changing ones, "If only I had...", "If only I hadn't..." or "If only I had said / could say...".  Here are some of the the things I might change if I could turn back time:


I wish I could have come of age in an era when women wore hats - it would have spared me so many stressful moments on bad hair days

and I often wish I'd become a housewife and a mother instead of a career woman:

The garden shed my grandad made into a "little house"
for me to play in

I'd like to be able to say that if I could turn back time I wouldn't have broken a flowerpot over my friend "Wrecker's" head when I was four - she got the nickname because she broke all my toys - but I'd be lying, even 58 years later.

"Wrecker" sitting on my car [which she didn't break!]

Being blessed with curves was not an advantage in the late 1960s so I'd change the fashions of the Mary Quant era.

And I wish I'd spent more time studying and less living it up at university, but to have done so would have been to have denied being young.


If I could turn back time I would have spoken out more often about some situations and kept a wise silence about others. The advice in this early twentieth century postcard is not a bad maxim:

"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."

I also wish that I had learned to live within my means long ago and had not, in Mr Micawber's words, "blighted the blossom".

If I could turn back time, I would have come to live in  lovely, Baroque Sicily sooner but we tend to forget how "life" can get in the way of our plans and dreams.

Duomo di San Giorgio, Modica

We can, of course, never know how things would have turned out on "the road not taken" and perhaps it is better thus so I would like to end this post by telling you about a happy moment that I would change only by prolonging it:

Christmas Steps (Rosalind Mitchell) / CC BY-SA 2.0

I do not know how old I was but probably not more than two or three.  I was standing with my mother at the top of Christmas Steps in Bristol, UK and we were waiting for my father.  

Christmas Steps:  such a wonderful, Dickensian-sounding name for a little street full of secondhand bookshops, as it was then, and in my mind, it snowed every time we went there.

And suddenly there was my father, walking up the steps towards us and beaming at me, holding his arms out.  I loved him so much at that moment and as his arms and warmth envelopped me I felt so safe.

If I could turn back the clock, I would make that moment last forever - as, indeed, it has, in my heart.

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

The roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference."

- Robert Frost:  The Road Not Taken 

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