AMID THE MADNESS

The world appears to have gone mad, so let us pause and gaze upon something that takes time, patience and art - from the Cicara Caffetteria in Modica:

I also marked my birthday at the Cicara last week and was presented with a lovely, miniature cheesecake dessert:

A seventy-fifth birthday is a landmark of sorts and the occasion set me thinking about how different it was from my seventieth, just before the first Covid lockdown in Italy. In my memoir, I began my chapter on that period in this way:

Two days before my seventieth birthday in February I sat in my local bar celebrating with friends. It was to be three long, miserable, terrifying months before I would see friends or sit in a bar again. Within days, all of Italy was in lockdown.

In abnormal times, we long for the "normal", even the mundane, so what can we do? I now feel neither young nor brave enough to weather the social media backlash and pile-ons that publicly expressing all my thoughts on world events would entail, though I am working on my lack of courage. I would, however, call out prejudice and unfairness when I see them in my own environment. Other than that, I can take pleasure in the day to day small things in life, I can thank those who provide them and I can be kind. That, I think, is a beginning.

MARKING AN ERA

On the occasion of Her Majesty The Queen's Platinum Jubilee, I'm going to begin with another extract from my memoir, A Place Called Siracusa:

I think we must have got the TV for the Coronation and we had red, white and blue flags all over the house in the run-up to it. I dressed up as the Queen and paraded around pretending to be her for what seemed like months and when it was all over I kept asking when the next Coronation would be.

“Not until the Queen dies”,

said Auntie Mabel, disappointing me abjectly.

I did not want Her Majesty to die but I couldn't believe I'd have to wait till I was as old as Mum and Dad, or even Auntie Mabel and Grandpa! But meanwhile we had a new, young Queen with a dazzling smile and a year or two later my class at school was taken to watch her drive through Bristol. All we really saw was a flash of the strawberry-coloured suit she was wearing as she passed but we waved our little flags like mad, and afterwards drew excruciating pictures of the occasion for posterity. The Queen was soon to disappoint me again, however and the reason for this was our new, red sofa. I was so happy because it was red, my favourite colour at the time but Dad quickly decided it needed to be covered and covered it was, in heavy, drab material. I cried buckets and asked Grandpa when the covers would come off.

“When the Queen comes”, he replied.

I spent months with my nose pressed against my bedroom window, waiting for the Queen to come, but she never did. I've been disillusioned with the monarchy ever since.

Sixty-nine years on and I still don't want the Queen to die. I'm not even a monarchist but I can't imagine the world without her. In a very strange way, which is hard to explain to non-Brits, the Queen has been a part of our lives, though most of us have never met her, many have never seen her at a live event and a large percentage are indifferent to the monarchy, if not against it. I can only explain this sentiment by saying that she perhaps represents the collective memory of the nation. On this particular Jubilee, I am watching the coverage and celebrating in my little way because I believe it is possible to have doubts about the relevance of the monarchy as an institution, whilst maintaining respect for a woman who has always done what she regards as her duty. I also rejoice because, wherever we are, we have had very little to celebrate together for a very long time. I must say that yesterday (2nd June), as I watched the crowd in London walking peacefully to Buckingham Palace, as the people of Britain have, on important national occasions of both joy and sorrow, for generations, I was able to think, “Yes, that is the Britain I remember and the Britain I continue to love.”

In this spirit, then, I wish Her Majesty and the country that made me a very happy Platinum Jubilee. This little rhyme came into my head the other day:

So here's my Coronation Crown

and I paraded up and down,

a “pretend queen”, when I was three,

yet all things pass – and I, and she. 

MEDIA MENTIONS

 It's been a while since I mentioned my book, A Place Called Siracusa, and I have just realised that we are approaching the end of the year, so I thought I would tell you about a mention of it in the daily newspaper La Sicilia back in May. For those of you who read Italian, here is the link to the story online.

I am still working on the file to put the book on Amazon (I'm sorry it is taking longer than I anticipated) and I hope I'll be able to do this by the end of the year. I will keep you posted.

This week I received another media mention, this time about this blog and it appears in issue 92 of the British magazine for women who write, Mslexia. I always look forward to reading Mslexia, as it encourages me to keep going and it was in fact this magazine which inspired me to begin blogging, back in 2006. Therefore it is a great pleasure to see my blog featured in it. 

I'm going to get back to that file now!

OF A LEVELS AND STARS

Today is A level results day in Britain and seeing the reports of joy and disappointment always reminds me of the day I got mine. (A levels are the exams students take in order to get into university.) Here is another extract from my book:

Besides, it was not all doom and gloom at those Friday night meetings* and after them we would all go to a nearby café where we drank coffee, ate cake, laughed and joked and talked about other things. I was there the night before my A level results came out and I suddenly started crying because I couldn't control my anxiety about them any longer.

* The meetings were Gamblers Anonymous for Dad and the Gam-Anon group, for family members affected by a compulsive gambler, for Mum and me (once I turned eighteen).

...

When I heard the postman the next morning, I put my head under the eiderdown and refused to open the envelope which Mum had brought into my room.

‘It's all right, Pat. You know we're still proud of you, whatever it says.’

But I carried on hiding and eventually she took it in to Dad, who was still in bed.

‘Well, if you won't open it, I'll have to!’

And a few moments later,

‘My darling, you've got a place in university!’

I had done it! Despite all that had happened, I had got even better grades than my first choice university, Cardiff (then The University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, to give it its full title) had required. I couldn't believe it because I really thought I had failed everything but then, I always convinced my parents that I would fail every exam I ever took. I had chosen Cardiff not only because the city was known to me through holidays and weekend trips, but because you could study Italian there and they had not required an O level in maths, which I hadn't passed. I wanted to study Italian, along with French, as a change from Spanish. I think ‘La Vida de Lazarillo De Tormes’, which every Spanish student had to study, had finished me off for that subject and now I wanted to learn the language not only of opera, but of some romantic Italian records I had bought. At Cardiff, if you already had an A level language pass, you could do a crash course in Italian which would take you to A level standard and beyond in a term, so that is what I decided to do. I was so happy and even Miss Williams told me I had ‘done very well, considering all that.’

We celebrated and told everyone we knew and soon a reading list as long as your arm arrived so Dad and I were in our element, buying books in Foyles in Charing Cross Road. Our motto was always, ‘Why borrow a book when you can buy one and have it on your shelf?’ Dad's cousin John, Auntie Ethel's son, sent the two enormous volumes of the Harraps French-English and English-French dictionary, considered the best there was and I was delighted to own them instead of having to go to the library to consult them. John, now a university professor in Australia, had visited us often in Bristol when he was at Clifton College and had always encouraged me academically. I also had to have an undergraduate academic gown and, the Hall of Residence list said, ‘a biscuit tin, a mug, instant coffee and a tin of dried milk powder.’ In that first year the friends I made in Aberdare Hall and I drank myriad mugs of coffee laced with the dried milk, which would often turn lumpy, and I have to say it was one of the most revolting beverages that has ever passed my lips.

So, dear students in Britain, I do know how you feel today and if you are disappointed, it is very unlikely to be as bad as you think so explore every avenue because there is always a way - I know this as a teacher.

Exam results at that level of course impact on our dreams and our dreams are often inspired by the stars. Today is also the feast of San Lorenzo and in Italy on the notte di San Lorenzo and on the nights surrounding it we all look for falling stars, which are said to bring luck. Having said that, on the notte di San Lorenzo in 2019 I saw, for the first time, several shooting stars in succession and look how 2020 turned out! However, when I mentioned this to a kind friend earlier today, she said,

"Hey! You wrote the book, you got through a pandemic and you and Bertie (my dog) are well. Maybe those stars worked!"

So there you are - things are rarely as bad as they may seem.

L'âme est pleine des étoiles tombantes - The soul is full of falling stars.

- Victor Hugo

Le stelle cadono senza far rumore per non svegliarci - Stars fall noiselessly in order not to wake us.

- Roberto Gervaso

Image: 
https://cliparts.zone/falling-stars-cliparts

LOOKING AT THE MOON

The anniversary of the 1969 moon landing always makes me think of my first visit to Italy, which took place in that year and I have written about it before on this blog. However, I could hardly believe that it was 52 years ago yesterday at 10.17 pm Italian time, if you focus on the moment Apollo 11 landed, or 52 years ago today, at 4.56 am if you  focus on the moment Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Here is another extract from my book, A Place Called Siracusa, in which I remember the night of 20th - 21st July 1969. I had been living with the Bianchi family in Bergamo and everything, including Italian food, was new to me. The wife had done a bit of matchmaking on my behalf and I had acquired an Italian boyfriend called Luca:

 It wasn’t only my tastebuds that were singing, though. It was as if all my senses had been awakened:  there were the sounds and the silences – the mad boys as their vespas roared by, the cacophony of sounds in the street, the silence of the convent opposite the apartment, punctuated only by bells. There was the smell of the food being prepared - often the aroma of ragù being prepared for lunch would drift up from another apartment from as early as 8 am. Then there was the delicate scent of vanilla that wafted through the air every time you passed a pasticceria and always there was the aroma of freshly-picked lemons.Touch - there was the tactility of Italy, certainly, but also the joy of touching Martina’s freshly ironed. crisp linen sheets, the velvet skin of peaches and apricots, the coolness of marble when you entered apartment buildings. And what a feast for the eyes this country was! In addition to all that, I had met with kindness everywhere.

When Dott. Bianchi took me to the Duomo (cathedral) in Bergamo I was rendered speechless by its beauty and when I first saw Milan Cathedral it was both its grandeur and its loveliness that stopped me in my tracks. When we went to Riccione and Rimini for a few weeks it was the blue of the sea; and it was the sheer majesty of the Alps when we went to spend a week at the Bianchi house there, in Foppolo.

Luca had followed us to both Riccione and to Foppolo, and it was in Foppolo that I found myself on the night of the moon landing, 20 July 1969.  Italian TV was playing songs about the moon late into the night and when they played "Guarda che luna" we all went out onto the balcony to do just that – look at the moon. We couldn’t believe there were men up there!  I only have to listen to the first bar of that song and I am nineteen again, standing back on that balcony in Foppolo, with the Alpine breeze cooling the night air and Luca's arm around me.

So here's to looking at the moon!

The book will be more widely available soon - watch this space!

WE WERE HERE!

Buona Festa della Repubblica, Italy!

June 2nd is also important for me because it marks the anniversary of my arrival, with my dog Simone, in Italy to live - sixteen years ago today.

They have not been sixteen years without trouble, darkness and even despair and of course the Covid situation has brought sadness and despair to us all, wherever we are. Those of us who have our hearts in two countries also worry twice, despair twice and grieve twice, just as we rejoice with both our countries when things go well. So please do not think that, because I have left the UK, I do not care about it, because I very much do.

This day brings many memories back to me and it is perhaps particularly poignant this year, as it was in 2020. I imagined many scenarios, both good and bad, that could happen when I settled here, but never did I imagine a tragedy like Covid - how could I, when the best scientists and virologists in the world did not? Nor can I inagine what the situation would have been like for me if I had lived through it in my country of birth; I can only try to deal with the situation here and now, and be happy that this is one bank holiday - only the second since the pandemic began, I think - which we in Italy are not spending in lockdown. 

And of course, today I think a lot of my little Simi, who "went on", as my mother used to say, six years ago now, though I believe she is still with me. Sometimes when I am out with my precious Bertie I see her there, beside us, and I say, "Walk with us part of the way, sweetheart", and I believe she does. Then she is gone again.

So on this day of many memories, I offer you an extract, recalling June 2nd 2005, from my book. (Yes, I have written a book! )

Three days later, I boarded the bus from Cardiff Bus Station to Gatwick Airport. I would stay three nights in a hotel there, walk around London and bid it farewell – for I didn't know if or when I would be in the UK again - and then, on the morning of 2 June 2005, Simi and I would board our flight to Italy. And that is what I did. I didn't go out to Pinner - Mum and Dad were in my heart, wherever I was or would be. Instead, I lit two candles for them in Westminster Abbey. Then I walked slowly around Poet's Corner to thank all those who are commemorated there, lingering the longest for Tennyson, Browning and his Elizabeth, Shakespeare and of course, Dylan Thomas.

I had, of course, kept in touch with the pet transporter company and they had reassured me that Simi was fine. At the airport, she had to undergo a final health check at which I could not be present. When I arrived there, I asked about her at check-in and was told I should ask at the departure gate. I knew she had been sent there but nothing more. The gate staff told me to sit near them and they would make enquiries. I had to wait until all the other passengers had been checked in and then a kindly ground crew officer approached me and said he had just seen Simi and had given her water. He took me to the window so that I could see her little crate being loaded. (She wasn't allowed to be in the cabin with me and I knew this. I also knew that pets are flown in a special area in the hold. I had been worried but my Cardiff vet had told me it is actually better for them because it's cool and dark and they usually sleep.) Oh, my little baby! As I was watching, the co-pilot came along and said that he, too, had just seen her and that she was a little anxious but otherwise fine. A nice Scottish lady also came over to tell me she had overheard our conversation and knew how I felt as she had previously flown her Westie dog from Scotland to London. Not so far, but it was empathy and I appreciated it. Once I boarded, I spoke to the captain too and he told me Simi was just underneath the spot where we were standing. I felt better then, knowing exactly where she was. By the time I sat down, I was so tired that I slept most of the way.

As we came into Catania, I did not see Etna this time, but felt the familiar surge of emotion as we touched down on the soil of this most beloved of lands that I had decided to make my home.

We were here!

I loved you then, Italy and I love you now.

I will tell the kind readers of this blog more about the book next time!