SUMMER'S LEASE

And summer's lease hath all too long a date, as the bard did not say and as I think everyone would agree here. As most of you will have seen or read, we have been sweltering in extremely high temperatures, even for Sicily (39°C as I write and that is considerably cooler than last week) for almost three months now and even in the evenings, there has been little respite.

There have also been wildfires, as elsewhere in Europe, but in July a fire seemed to have been started deliberately in the hills around Modica. These hills slope down to the backs of very beautiful old houses in the Old Town and towards other inhabited areas and obviously the situation was very frightening for people living nearby. My area was not affected but you could see and smell the smoke. Thank goodness for the skills of so many groups and organisations, among them the Corpo Forestale della Regione Siciliana, the Corpo Nazionale Vigili di Fuoco, the Gruppo Comunale Protezione Civile Modica and Canadair.  As far as I know, one person was arrested on suspicion of arson but was later released.

As if all that were not enough, Etna has certainly been making her anger felt recently and last week there was ash everywhere on my balcony and around the entrance to my building. She has calmed down a bit now, I am pleased to say.

However, there are some compensations:

Enjoy the rest of the summer, everyone!

INFIORATA DI NOTO 2024

 It was a great pleasure to be back, for the first time since the pandemic, at the Infiorata di Noto (Carpet of Flowers) on Saturday. (Last year, I was all set to go when a severe weather warning was issued and everybody in Modica was advised not to go out unnecessarily.)

The event was as beautiful and joyful as ever but more crowded than I have seen it before and that, of course, is good for Noto! The queue was long and the heat only just bearable but a conversation with some pleasant Americans standing near me helped. 

Then, once you were admitted to the "Carpet", you forgot all about the wait and just enjoyed the beauty before you. The theme this year was Puccini and music from the operas was playing as you walked along. I even shed a tear, as my dad loved Puccini and I thought how much he would also have loved this. I will now let the photos speak for themselves. (Some are inevitably wonky as you are walking along the sides of the display.)

I liked the little representations of instruments
adorning flower containers along the way.

And of course, a visit to the famous Caffé Sicilia is compulsory in Noto! The cake was flavoured with saffron and orange.

Well done, Noto!

THE RETURN OF A FAVOURITE FESTA

 It was a great pleasure, on Saturday, to be able to visit the Infiorata di Noto (carpet of flowers) again in person, as it has not been held as a "live" event for the past two years because of the pandemic. This year's theme was the Val di Noto Baroque cities, marking the twentieth anniversary of these eight towns becoming, collectively and deservedly, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

For the first time, the Infiorata has been held for five days instead of three, from last Friday until today, allowing many more people to enjoy it. Also for the first time, it has been necessary to buy a ticket - not to enter the city but to walk along via Nicolaci where the carpet has been displayed - at the very reasonable price of €2,50 per person. These could be purchased on site or online, though I have to say that the latter system took some time!

Because you are walking on one side or the other of the display you are contending with some strange angles for photos and also with sun and shadow and having to crop out faces, so I did the best I could:

As always, no visit to Noto is complete without a visit to the Caffè Sicilia, where you can partake of delicious and unique ice creams such as this one. Finally, here is your faithful blogger enjoying the Noto sunshine.

Well done, Noto and thank you for a great day!

CAKE, GELATO AND SAINTS

My birthday on Monday (St Valentine's Day) prompted a trip to Catania with a friend on Saturday, and also led to much thought, principally about how, with a bit of luck, you feel reasonably strong and energetic for quite a long time in your life and then suddenly you are seventy-two and everything takes much more effort than it used to. You also have to start admitting that there are some things you can't do any more and for me these include standing for long periods, standing on ladders or chairs (balance problems) and chopping an onion as if I was on Masterchef. However, being here is better than the alternative, as they say, and, as we have all led such restricted lives due to Covid over the past two years, I was very happy to go to Catania in December for the first time since my birthday in 2020 and again last Saturday when a friend offered to buy me lunch there. It was a lovely, sunny day, warm enough to eat outside and watch the world go by, and this semifreddo agli agrumi di Sicilia rounded off a delicious meal:

The atmosphere in Catania was happy, for, although the processions which would normally take place for the feast of the city's patron Sant'Agata had again been cancelled due to Covid, masses were taking place for her in the cathedral and everyone seemed to be still feeling festive. Sant'Agata's feast day is 8th February but processions are held on the 12th, the ottavo or eighth day after her feast. This brave lady was jailed for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods and / or because she refused the advances of the Roman prefect. In prison she underwent several forms of torture, including having her breasts pulled out with pincers and being forced to walk on broken glass and hot coals. Unsurprisingly seriously ill after these ordeals, she is said to have been healed by St Peter, who appeared to her. She was sentenced to be burnt at the stake but an earthquake prevented the sentence from being carried out. Sant'Agata died in prison, probably in AD 251. She is the protector of people suffering from breast cancer, wet nurses, bell-founders and bakers among others and is thought to be able to protect the city from the eruptions of Etna. Therefore, you will understand, she is a most beloved saint.

"Got the fridge magnet"

After lunch and a pleasant stroll along Catania's wide main shopping street, via Etnea, we decided to find the new gelateria opened there by Don Peppinu. This company make the most delicious ice cream and their efficient and cheerful delivery service saved me when the first lockdown continued into April 2020 and I was gasping for gelato. I will be forever grateful to them and, also in lockdown, I ordered one of their cannoli kits to gladden a lonely weekend. The Catania shop is beautiful and Don Peppinu has lots of new and unusual ice cream flavours so, if you're ever in the city, do pay a visit.

On Monday I treated myself to another birthday lunch in my local bar, the Cicara Caffeteria, and when I ordered a slice of their strawberry tart - because you have to have cake on your birthday - it came with a candle, which made me happy.

Then I went home to be with my dog, read and reflect on other birthdays: the seven-shaped cake my dad ordered, obviously, for my seventh, the romantic, padded birthday and Valentine cards I used to receive from my first love back in Bristol, the disappointing birthday when an emotionally unavailable man gave me a gift the day before but didn't want to spend the actual day with me and was totally unaware of how much that hurt, and of how the postman in Cardiff used to think I had many lovers because I always received lots of cards on Valentine's Day. I never disillusioned him. Then of course there were the other milestone birthdays I've celebrated in Modica - my fifty-fifth before I came to live here, my sixtieth when I decorated my house with images and record covers from the 1950s and 60s and my seventieth, also in my local bar, two evenings before the fourteenth and twenty-nine days before the beginning of Italy's first national lockdown. I look at the photos of that night and think, "What if we had known?"

Modica, 1995 - my 55th; Modica, 2020 - cake for my 70th; 
me on my 70th; 2022 - Cicara Bar, Modica

But in the month of love let us end with love: Valentine's Day, of course, is much commercialised but I think the saint - associated with love either because he signed a letter to his jailer's daughter "from your Valentine" or because he secretly married Roman couples who were in love, so that the husband could not be conscripted - has left us something precious if it causes us to remember, and be grateful for, all the love we have in its many forms. I go home, I look at my dog and I realise I have all the love in the world, right here.

NON SE NE PUÒ PIÙ

 "It's been too long", wrote a kind reader of this blog in a message to me last month and it's true - it has been over a year since I last posted here. The reason? The pandemic, mostly. I did not bake bread every day, though I continued to cook, I did not follow an exciting exercise régime online and, though I kept in touch with friends, I did not spend hours on Zoom or Skype. I spent most of my time scrolling through the news, hoping, day after day, to see a hopeful headline and, as you will all know, it was months before one appeared. Yes, last summer in Italy we felt that we could breathe and life returned, for a while, to something resembling normality but the respite was short-lived.  

Then came the autumn and we found ourselves in lockdown after lockdown, all over again. None of these was as strict, or felt as oppressive, as that first long lockdown that began in March 2020, but the restrictions and the uncertainty from week to week and even from day to day began to get everybody down. Italy was again divided into zones, with red zones having the most restrictions, orange ones some and yellow zones fewer, with the white zone, the one we all long for, seeming impossibly far away. 

Non se ne può più - "We can't stand it any more" was the sentence I heard everywhere from Easter onwards and indeed I do not think we could have. Sicily at last became a yellow zone last week, which means that bars and restaurants can open in their outside space and the hated curfew has been moved to 11pm. It had been so sad, in recent months, to pass my local bar and see no one sitting on its terrace and to witness the accompanying silence of what is, in normal times, a joyful and welcoming place. That is why it has been such a pleasure, this week, to be able to enjoy a gelato and an aperitivo there again.

I don't think it is understood by government that small local bars can be much more than places of refreshment: For many people who live alone, they are a point of social contact and I know that if I did not appear at mine for a coffee in the morning, they would worry about me and there would be a good chance of someone quickly coming to find me if I fell, or worse, at home. It makes me feel generally safer.

My dog, who has kept me going and provided the affection and cuddles I have so missed over the past fifteen months, is happy to be patted and spoken to on our walks again and she, like me, senses that the heaviness in the atmosphere has lifted.  

"I'm under here, mummy!"

I am pleased and grateful to be able to say that I have received my first vaccine. I know that this alone will not guarantee my safety but compared to how I felt a year ago, it has made a tremendous difference. You will all know the story of how, at the beginning of this year, Italy seemed to be doing very well and was even ahead of some other countries in its vaccination plan. Then it all fell apart when the promised quantities of doses from more than one company did not arrive in the EU as expected, for reasons that are not yet clear. I think many of us became very frightened again then and it was a bleak time. But the country has made great progress following this setback, not without difficulty, frustration and tears, and it seems to me that most of us feel very cautiously optimistic.

Anything that disrupts our routines, the things we take for granted, is hugely stressful and it is usually not  until it happens that we realise this. But it is not only routine that punctuates our lives -  collective celebrations or, sadly, mourning, festivals, public anniversaries and other events also play their part and of course they are missed. Almost every year since I have lived in Sicily (sixteen years on June 2nd, Republic Day) I have attended the lovely Infiorata in Noto to see the "carpet of flowers" which is always on show during the third weekend of May. As I've written here before, such events take place in several parts of Italy and in other Catholic countries and the most likely reason for their origin is simply a desire to create something beautiful for God. And I'm sure that God, like the rest of us, could do with gazing upon some beauty in this situation. Last year the carpet was created but only shown online and this solution had to be repeated this year. Its theme in 2021 was a homage to Dante and the famous words,

e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle - and thus we came out to see the stars again

were spelled out in flowers.

Non se ne può più has never seemed more true and the words of the father of the Italian language have expressed the hope of everyone, all over the world.

Image from Quotidiano di Ragusa

I'll try not to leave it so long between posts from now on!

THE END OF SUMMER

Summer has officially ended and, whilst I am not a beachy person and rejoice in everything at last being open again, I will be sorry to see the end of the gelato season and of its companions cremolate and granite.

Left to right:  granita di mandarino; cremolata di gelsi (mulberry); granita di pesche e fichi d'India
(peaches and prickly pear, the latter being a late summer addition to the granita repertoire)

My favourite peaches,  pesche tabbacchierie, get larger and less sweet as August ends but then these delights appear:

Centre:  frutta di Martorana
Right: "cakes" of cotognata (quince paste)

Finally, I cannot let the summer end without sharing this with you:  the other day, a Sicilian friend said he had spotted a British man coming out of the B&B opposite his house. I asked how he had known the man was British.

"Because he was wearing sandals and socks", came the reply.

Embed from Getty Images

SWEET CATANIA

A day in Catania is always a welcome change but when it's 40°C, my first port of call is not my favourite bookshop but the first bar selling yummy-looking gelato (not that it ever looks anything but delicious). The one below, with stracciatella, pineapple and gelsi (mulberry) flavours was particularly so.  I liked the idea of the mini-cones on top, too. Later, when a friend suggested a break in order to partake of a little cassata and iced tea, who was I to refuse?

HAPPY BUNNIES

At the Liolà in Modica

I reckon they get to eat all the ice cream at night!

BREKKY BREAK WITH BERTIE

Stopping for refreshment on our walk the other day, Bertie thoroughly enjoyed her little taste of a seasonal Sicilian brekky!

A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

If you are thinking that I have been somewhat absent from this blog of late, you are right, for a little thing called Brexit has been taking up much of my time and thoughts. Like most British expats  and, I imagine, most EU nationals currently resident in the UK, I find the situation very worrying indeed. My 23rd February post on this subject has had, to my surprise, over 22,000 views to date - a record for Sicily Scene - but I wish it hadn't been necessary to write it.

I spent most of yesterday - jubilantly called "Brexit Day" by the Brexiteers - in deep gloom but did raise my head for long enough to notice that the bars of Modica are starting to bring out traditionally made gelato again and what could I do but console myself with some?

The freshly squeezed orange juice I so love in autumn and winter has now disappeared, as no bar owner worthy of the name would sell you a glass of the stuff once he deems the oranges past their best but gelato is definitely back for the duration, if not of the Brexit process, at least until October! Yes, I can safely say that Brexit has driven me to gelato!

DECEMBER GELATO

You don't often get artigianale ice cream out of season in Modica, but this evening my friend Ignaziella and I enjoyed these at a local shopping centre.  I can honestly say the experience lit up my night!

ANOTHER VISITOR

It has been lovely to welcome my friend the writer and editor Carol King back to Sicily and Sunday had to start with brioche and gelato!

Later there were antipasti, including some fine taralli biscuits from Calabria:

I also made my pizza estiva with grilled nectarines

and a semifreddo di marrons glacés. [This last is a Cucchiaio D'Argento recipe, not one of mine]:

Hope you come back soon too, Carol!

WOULDN'T YOU?

Try a cheesecake ice cream, that is? Life's too short not to!

GELATO GIRLS

Yea - a gelato with Snickers for me and a yogurt and carrot doggie one for Bertie!  [I know you can't see Bertie's gastronomic treat as half the fun seemed to consist of pushing it around the floor but she pronounced it "cool" in all ways.]