TEN YEARS IN SICILY

Today is the festa della Repubblica in Italy and the tenth anniversary of my arrival here to settle so I am re-posting the account of that day that I published on this blog in 2006. I have added some reflections at the end:

Friday, June 02, 2006

L'ANNIVERSARIO DELL'ARRIVO!

Diary extract from 3.6.05
Modica, Sicily, Italy - at last!

Events of Thursday, 2.6.05:
Couldn’t bring myself to have a last ( for some time) cooked breakfast as I was feeling all churned up. Stuck with the fruit and toast (outrageously priced, by the way).

Got the 10 am courtesy bus as planned, and Martha [my friend and neighbour, who had surprised me a few days before by announcing she was coming to Gatwick to see me off, making her own way there] was waiting for me just inside the terminal.

I had posted a few things – non-urgent documents plus the books and little things I’d bought in London – to myself c/o Linda, so I did manage to get most things in the case and therefore didn’t have to check in my in-flight bag. They marked the case “heavy” but I didn’t have to pay any excess as the flight was not full. I asked about Simi at check-in and they said I should enquire at the gate. I had phoned Airpets earlier and she had been sent to the airport and was OK according to them. [Incidentally I think it’s terrible that you can’t have your pet with you in-flight, even in the carrier ; I wouldn't mind paying for two seats! After all, no one puts babies in the cargo area! But vets would say that it is less stressful for the animal to be in that darkened section of the plane; just more stressful for the owner!]

Then Martha and I went off and had (very early!) gin and tonic and crisps in the pub there. It was so good of her to come. The flight was boarding at 12.35 so I went through at 12. Martha told me not to look back so I didn’t.

Got a bottle of water for Simi as I thought I mightn’t be able to leave the taxi driver to get one at Catania and, anyway, might have to go upstairs for it which would have taken ages.

The gate number came up a bit late and when I got there I immediately asked about Simi. The gate staff told me to sit near them and they would check. But I had to wait till all the other passengers had checked in at the gate! The gate staff can’t see that you are anxious about your pet! Eventually a ground crew man came along and I asked him if he could help me. He knew all about Simi and said he had just given her water. He took me to the window to see her crate being loaded. Oh, my darling! Such a little crate it looked from up there, carrying all that I hold dear in it! I nearly cried. Simi’s mummy was still not satisfied, however, so I sat back by the gate ladies and asked them to double-check that she had been loaded safely. Then the co-pilot came along and he said she was a bit nervous – my poor love! – but had water and would be fine. A kind Scottish woman was waiting to board and she said she empathised as she had once flown a Westie from Scotland to London; not so far, but she knew how I felt!

Once on the plane, I spoke to the captain, who was standing at the front talking to the co-pilot and another male crew member. They were very kind and said Simi would be just under where we were standing. I felt better, knowing exactly where she was. (If you are reading this and are not a “pet person” – or maybe you have never lived alone with an animal – you probably think I am mad; but to me Simi is like my child, you see.) But every time there was turbulence, I thought, “Oh! My sweetie!” and tried to tell her telepathically that her mummy was near.

After a passable meal for an airline – a bit of pork escalope, I think it was – I was so tired that I slept most of the rest 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 land.

I spoke to the captain again as I got off and he assured me that Simi was being unloaded. (Another of my fears was that they would forget and take her on to Malta!) I bet they were glad to see the back of this anxious woman who only cared about her dog!

For once the luggage came out quite quickly and also, for once, mine was not the last case to appear!

Then the taxi man was there with a card with my name on it; he looked relieved that I spoke Italian and he knew about the dog. He said he would take me to the Scalo Merci [where I had been told to collect Simi] in the car as it was a fair way from the terminal – and thank goodness he did as it would have been at least a 30-minute walk – and there a woman took my details and subsequently took ages to enter everything into a computer. I was getting worried and started to pray silently; the driver sensed it and asked if there was a problem. “Oh, no”, said the woman, “it’s just that I have to calculate the charge.” (I had been told that there would probably be a local charge.) I explained to her that this dog really was my family and she smiled and speeded up a little. I was thinking, “This is going to cost hundreds” – and I wouldn’t have cared if it had – when suddenly she finished and announced, “Two euros twenty”!! So that was the local tax to bring my precious Simi into Sicily!

Finally they brought Simi out, in her crate on the back of a truck, and she looked so worried! Her fur always turns just the slightest shade darker when she is unwell or stressed – probably only I would notice it. But as soon as she saw me and smelt my finger through the cage she wagged her tail and was normal. I asked the driver if I could have her in my arms in the back and he said that was fine; then I had the cage open, Simi was in my arms and I was kissing her and telling her, “Sono la mamma, Simi. Siamo in Italia. Siamo in Sicilia.” The driver laughed and asked if she spoke Italian so I said of course! Then I put her on the lead and she was raring to go again! I had the water for her but she didn’t want it. She just sat in my arms, occasionally sleeping and occasionally looking out of the window. Cara Simi!

The taxi man was so nice and kind and we chatted. He was from Siracusa and had visited London several times. He offered to stop for Simi but she was OK and we pressed on. I spoke to Linda on the mobile and she said she would come and meet us once we were over the second bridge. (There are two bridges to lead you into Modica, one of which is among the highest in Europe.) So I called her again then and we stopped outside Bar Fuscia to wait for her. I got out with Simi to let her stretch her legs and much interest she caused among the local dogs! Then Linda and Franco arrived and we followed their car in the taxi.

At Linda's I gave the driver a good tip and she gave him a drink. Then he was on his way, happy with his evening’s work and his tip. Franco took a delighted Simi for a run round the garden on her lead. We all sat outside for a g and t and Linda presented me with a lovely basket full of food, coffee, tea, mineral water – and a bottle of gin and one of tonic! There was also a home-made photo collage of Modica with benvenuta written on it - I am going to frame it – and a bunch of beautiful roses from their garden. After about 30 minutes, Marco, Giovanna and children arrived and we all travelled in procession to the casetta.

Marco and Giovanna had also brought food so I am well supplied. I have:

Linda's Modican pizza
Oregano
Sun-dried tomatoes
Lettuce
Fresh tomatoes
Eggs
Fruit from the various gardens
Oil, vinegar, salt
Sugar
Coffee and tea
Mineral water
Biscuits
Pasta
Tomato sauce
Bread
Cheese
Butter
Franco's home-dried figs
Capers
Almond milk

So much kindness!

Simi was a bit nervous when we got here; I think she thought I was going to hand her over to these [to her] strangers! But once they had gone and we were together she relaxed.

The casetta is of stone and is in the old town. It’s a bit cave-like downstairs. It has a shower downstairs, a rather rickety but functioning fridge, a sink in the kitchen area and one in the tiny bathroom, a table and two benches, an old easy chair and a very small unit with a marble top. Upstairs is lighter with the bed and a wardrobe, plus a shelf that I am using now for the laptop and some others that I am using for cosmetics. The stone, twisty stairs are banister-less and so a bit treacherous but Simi soon got used to them! And the house is blessedly cool. Oh! I forgot to say that there’s a gas burner powered by a bombola of gas: I am afraid of it but Linda says it’s a rite of passage, for everyone starts off with one of these here! I’ll have a go at cooking on it tomorrow.

After everyone had gone, Simi and I went to bed and slept well, despite the noise of the mad motorini till at least midnight!

Epilogue:

Simi and I spent five weeks together in the casetta [little house, which belonged to my friends Marco and Giovanna] in the old town and she was my stability then as she was in the ensuing years. I never did get to grips with the gas bombola [cylinder] and was so scared of it that I gave up after about a week and ate out or existed on cold food, which is no hardship in Italy. Then we moved to the apartment where I still live.

About three months after our arrival, I received in the post a receipt for the €2,20 tax I had had to pay at the airport to bring Simi into Sicily. On it she is described as "goods":

Reflections in 2015

In ten years in Sicily, I have known much joy, great kindness, some cruelty, serious illness and several crushing blows, the hardest of which was the loss of Simi on January 8th this year. On the morning of her death, I found it very difficult to be driven to Linda's house again, clutching her little body. This was because Linda and Franco wanted to join us for the burial. I kept remembering arriving there that evening, ready for adventure, when Simi was still a young dog and I was a much younger and more naive woman.

The Italy I live in now is not the Italy I fell in love with as a student back in 1969, nor is the Sicily of today the Sicily that so enchanted me on my first visit in 1992. The economic crisis has taken its toll, here as elsewhere, leaving a trail of heartbreak and turning reasonable people into unreasonable beings. I would say that, for an expat woman of a certain age who is unprotected by family, money or perhaps by working for an international company, it can be a harsh environment - and I write this as an Italian graduate and as someone who has studied and loved Italian culture all her life. But would I go back? If Italy is not the Italy I once knew, Britain is not the country I left. There is still much to enjoy about living in Italy and I have a feeling that long after me, the crisis and the EU, when Italy's remaining ancient buildings have all but crumbled around the populace - but they won't, you know, for they will save them just in time - Italians will still be showing the rest of the world how to eat, how to create beauty and how to live.

Simi's pet passport photo - my favourite picture of her.

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:

Below is the full list of bloggers participating in this week's theme:

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.

WHAT IS HOME? - 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 is Home?"

On 27th May, 2005 I sat on the bare floor of my house in Cardiff, Wales, UK and I cried.  My possessions were on their way to Sicily, my precious dog was in boarding kennels at Gatwick Airport, London and I was remembering the last time I had seen the house empty, 21 years before.  

I had not always been happy in that house - indeed, it held as many sad memories as pleasant ones for me - but it had been my refuge from the world for a long time and now, with only the echo of my own footsteps and sobs where once there had been friends' laughter, the sound of dogs barking and my mother's beloved voice, I felt as if my heart would break. 

Yet it had been my choice to go and I was about to do something I had been dreaming of for 36 years, for I was moving to Italy.  So what was it that made that little house so hard to leave for the last time?  What was it that had made me call it "home"?

What I realised with a shock on that day was that, for a while, I would no longer have a home and that revelation made me feel strangely lost in the world.  Home, then, was not just the place I came back to at the end of the day or the trip, but it somehow fixed me somewhere on this vast earth.  I opened and locked my own doors, I received utility bills, I "belonged" to a street, a community, a town.  Now, by a stroke of a pen, all that was gone and I had no "space" of my own.

In Watching the English the anthroplogist Kate Fox writes that the British "sport" of hating estate agents [realtors] stems from our obsession with the carefully demarcated little spaces in which we live:  to sell our home is to invite an intrusion into that space - in other words, an invasion of our haven, the place where we can look and do as we like - and to agree to have judgement passed upon it.  And I had hated the estate agents' visits, the uncaring marches of others across my "little plot of land" so much that I had nearly given up the whole project.  So we  can be fiercely protective of our "home", even when preparing to leave it.

My garden in Cardiff had long become too much for me and even before I reached that point, I liked to look at it but had never wanted to do the work involved in keeping it even marginally tidy!  But I had shed tears for my garden ornaments, too.  They had been part of my life and I had "talked" to my stone animals and people every day.  Some of them were given to good, new "homes" but others have made a happy transition to my balcony in Sicily and I greeted them again as I unpacked them here:

When Simi the dog and I first arrived in Sicily we lived, for a while, in a tiny, traditional house belonging to a kind friend. It was comfortable and cool for us during the first months of that summer of 2005 and, with its magnificent Sicilian locks, we felt safe there:

But it wasn't "home".  No mail came addressed to me there and, although my neighbours were pleasant enough, they knew that we weren't going to stay so we did not become part of their community.   The house didn't contain our things but, more importantly, it didn't contain our memories.  We lived there but we didn't "live our lives" there, as we did in Cardiff and as we do now in our flat.   Home is a place for making memories. 

Simi and me at home in Sicily

Here is a list of other blogs which are participating in this week's "Blog Off" theme:

TWO ANNIVERSARIES

Today is a holiday and the festa della Repubblica in Italy, the anniversary of the 1946 referendum in which the country voted for a Republican form of government.  

It is also the sixth anniversary of the day when Simi the dog and I left a rainy Gatwick Airport to start a new life in Sicily. By way of celebration, I am reposting this slide show of the lovely town where we are lucky enough to live.

Happy anniversary, Italy and happy anniversary to us!

WE ARE FOUR....

.... me as a blogger and my little blog, that is.

It seems a long time since I sat down and tentatively wrote my first post and so much has happened since then.  Each of us who moves to a new country must find our own salvation, it seems to me and blogging was mine.  Even someone like me who is fluent in the language and who has many friends in their new land can be lonely at times and my blog alleviated that loneliness.  What is more, it gave this basically lazy soul a little discipline, for every day I had a fixed appointment with writing.  My blog has, indirectly, brought me paid work, it has taught me a lot about technology and it has been, and remains, fun.  But most importantly of all it has made me many friends all over the world and tonight I want to thank all of you who read us.  Won't you join me in a coppa di frutta over at the Altro Posto?

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, GOT THE FRIDGE MAGNET

Whenever I visit a new place, there are two things I want to bring back with me: a book about it and a fridge magnet. I have bought fridge magnets in Sicily at one or two of the more famous tourist attractions, such as the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento and the Greek Theatre at Syracuse, but in general Sicilians have not realised what tourists want as souvenirs. Here in Modica the magnets can be found in some shops in Modica Bassa and I have bought “Sicily” , though not “Modica” magnets in the local ironmonger’s up here but that is hardly a store that your average tourist is going to seek out, is it? When I did the Nelson Trail earlier this year, in the town of Bronte I did find some books but, although you could buy all sorts of articles made out of Etna ashes, I could not find one with the words “Bronte” or “Castello di Nelson” on it. Is it so very difficult to carve or engrave the name of the place onto an object?

When my furniture and books arrived from Britain, Gina, who was helping me unpack the boxes labelled “kitchen” had only just got over the amount of cookbooks I had when, poor woman, she came across the magnets! “Qua c’è un altro!” [= “There’s another one here!”] she kept exclaiming for the rest of that day. My other Italian women friends gazed in amazement at my fridge-freezer , proudly displaying its collection of decorations, the first time they visited as they are used to perfect, impersonal kitchens with everything tidied away. “Ma è arrivato così?” [= “Did it arrive like that?” ] asked Irma and I explained that I had personally wrapped each one in bubble –wrap, not entrusting this task to the removal men. [I love bubble wrap! Apart from stuffing it in bras for blog photos I always line my suitcase with it when travelling: thus I have a supply at the ready to protect any glass or china I am going to buy. Gina was actually going to throw some away during the unpacking and we had a tug of war!]

I’m quite fond of my fridge-freezer and the freezing compartment is bigger than that which most Italian women have as they buy few frozen foods and do not, as a rule, freeze portions of dishes that they make. In Britain I used to keep the fridge temperature at 2 C but here it refuses to go lower than 3. And if I make a mistake and leave the fridge door open an instant too long when loading the fridge in summer, up soars the temperature immediately and it takes hours to come down again. If I have to replace the appliance – and I hope I don’t for a good while yet – I am going to get one which does not show the temperature on the outside so that I can’t worry about it!

My search for fridge magnets continues everywhere I go but if I am with my Italian friends they no longer look at me questioningly: they have accepted the fact that I am quite mad!

NO PLACE LIKE HOME - NO PLACE LIKE ABROAD

Telegraph Ex-Pat had this last week so I thought it might be interesting to try to refute it.

1. I missed the Polish plumber invasion of Britain, I’m afraid. Are they all hunky like the Polish builder in Alexander McCall Smith's The World According to Bertie [which I have just read]? Here you can usually find a local plumber / tecnico quite easily but, as with everything else in Italy but particularly in Sicily, it is better to contact someone your friends know of.
2. I’ve never done that walk. I’m not a countryside kind of person so I don’t miss scenery – except for parks in the middle of cities.
3. Barbecues traditionally take place here on Easter Monday and, as in Britain, it is usually the man of the house who plays with fire. Artichokes, sausages, lamb and steaks are barbecued.
4. You could not say that of most Italian TV schedules! News and current affairs analyses are good, though politicians won’t be grilled by the likes of a Paxman. One excellent programme a day is about all I can find, looking at the schedules of all the channels!
5. Can’t beat the Southbank! But we have our 2 glorious Cathedrals, San Pietro and San Giorgio to marvel at and an excellent Ethnographical Museum.
6. What’s rain?!
7. You dare not go out here without very high protection suncream on - all year round.
8. People here laugh when I tell them we have “drought” summers in Britain!
9, 10: Hate sport.
11. Can’t get a tikka masala of any sort here: spices are hard to find. They do sell one called “Curry” and you wouldn’t even have found that a few years ago. I either buy my spices in a “global” shop in Ragusa or get them sent out from Britain.
12. Haven't got "Skype" - it would be more technology [aargh!] and anyway I like writing to people - but meeting in the pub must be nice, now there's no smoking! [Waiting for Crushed and James to come over and be indignant now!]
13. Never travelled from Plymouth to Penzance but I miss the journey from Cardiff to Bath. But during a long bus journey between cities here you will see some stunning scenery.

14. I've never done camping and I never intend to - anywhere! All those spiders!
15. Oh, I don’t know: This has got to be pretty bonkers, in the most well-intentioned way!
16. International cuisine is definitely not part of the scene here, partly because a lot of people haven’t travelled and partly because the indigenous food is superb!
17. I clean up after my dog and people stop me and say I’m the only one who does! But many dog-owners never take their pets for a walk here, not because they're cruel but simply because they have a different attitude to domestic animals.
18. When I was about 10, my Dad took my friend and me on a trip to North Wales. I’m ashamed to say I spent the whole time reading my “Romeo” comic in the back of the car! Here we have the amazing views around Etna and, nearer, the Cava d’Ispica.
19. I haven’t seen many plays here, but there are a lot of concerts, both pop and classical. And now we have our restored Teatro Garibaldi in Modica, which is quite charming. At the beginning of the summer, you can go to see classical Greek plays being performed at the Teatro Greco in Siracusa. That's something everyone should do once in a lifetime!
20. Yes, we have toll roads here.
21. And how I miss raspberries! But other fruit makes up for that.
22. At least you get announcements regarding public transport delays in Britain: here the bus stops are not obvious, they change their location without telling you and when a bus doesn’t materialise, no one gets on their mobile to the bus company to ask, “Where is it?” What do they do? - Yes, utter “Pazienza”! [Bus links between cities are good - it's within Modica that I'm grumbling about!]
23. We have some of the cleanest beaches in Europe here.
24. Absolutely! I so miss Radio 4 as a background to my life! [Listening on the net is not the same.]
25. Never been Glasgow-Oban but there are many scenic drives or bus journeys, as I've said, here.
26. – Or the air conditioning that we now have in the Post Office here! It was so cool in there this morning that I could have sat there all day! - No, I take that back, having nearly having had to do that on some occasions! [It only took 10 minutes to post a lettter to the US today.]
27. Never been to the Edinburgh Festival. We have our Chocolate Festival and Sagre [festivals devoted to particular foods] but we could do with some more cultural ones.
28. Hate sport.
29. Desperately miss waking up with John Humphrys, so to speak. Again, hearing a politician not being let off the hook by an interviewer is a peculiarly British pleasure.
30. Moving to one of those places where you are surrounded by Brits would be my idea of a nightmare! What would be the point? !!

ONE FOR MY OWN COUNTRY ...

... parts of which are in a bit of trouble.

These are the landscapes of my childhood and I remember them thus.

- Just another reminder of how something can suddenly hit you for six, emotionally, when you live abroad.

Anti-monarchist that I am, though, I would like to know what our beloved heir to the throne, who has a mansion not a million miles from these scenes, is doing to help? [Other than being towed along in a dinghy to survey the scene, that is.] OK, I know he can't exactly throw Highgrove open to the public, for security and other reasons, but surely the man could do something?

MOVING DAY IN SICILY

If you missed my early post about the day all my worldly goods arrived in Modica from Britain, you may like to read an edited version of it here at James's.

MORE LITTLE PLEASURES

I was feeling low for several reasons this morning but as Simi and I were setting out on our first walk of the day, a gentleman who works in an office across the road shouted a greeting and added, "Signora, you're prettier every day". I know it's just banter, of course, but it certainly starts a girl's day well!

Later, when I went to top up my mobile phone in the tobacconist's, the lady owner - one of the few Sicilians outside my immediate circle who has a concept of Wales as a separate nation - asked me, "And how is Sir Tom?", for all the world as if I am personally acquainted with him. I said that, as far as I know, the"boyo" from Pontypridd is all right.

Another pleasure, and not an insignificant one, is simply being known, greeted and generally accepted. This takes time whenever you uproot yourself but longer, I think, when you move abroad and especially to a small, southern town like this. It took one lady who lives in this street a year to stop cutting me dead but now we greet each other like old friends. It is I who am the interloper in her community, after all, so I felt it was up to me to keep nodding and acknowledging her and to summon my pazienza. What a morning it was the first time she smiled broadly and returned my greeting!

Blogpower Awards: If you would like to vote for me, please follow these links:

http://defendingtheblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/3-nominations-so-far-for-best-blog-or.html

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You can vote in each category today and tomorrow, until 19.00 UK time on Wednesday. [Please note change of time.] I really need and appreciate your votes! Many thanks.

SICILIAN SATURDAY

That's the name my friend Lee gave to yesterday, the second anniversary of my arrival, with dog Simi, in Sicily. I've written at length about that day here but when I think of it now two memories are uppermost in my mind: stepping off the plane and the heat hittting me and being reunited with precious Simi when they wheeled her out of the Scalo Merci in her little pet carrier. And I smile when I think back to the enormous supply of food my Sicilian friends ensured I had for my stay in the "little house".

Simi and I spent yesterday very quietly and actually I got all pensive and melancholy for at times one is bound to remember what was left behind, too. But I cheered up in the evening after I decided to cook myself these "citrus chicken wings", a recipe from a Prue Leith leaflet I picked up long ago. It's a dish I have cooked several times for friends here and it goes down well with them. The wings are marinated in wine, honey, citrus peel and juice, cinnamon, ginger and seasonings. I add some garam masala. I like to serve it with tabbouleh [for which I have to use couscous, no bulghar wheat being available here].

MY MOVING TALES

My new friend eurodog has expressed an interest in the story of how I brought Simi here. It occurred to me that other readers who have not been following the blog from the beginning might be interested, too, especially if they are pet owners and / or are thinking of moving abroad themselves. I chronicled it all last May and June in the weeks leading up to the first anniversary of our arrival here. I didn't have many [any!] readers then and wasn't getting any comments. Here are the links:

http://sicilyscene.blogspot.com/2006/05/moving-story-2.html

http://sicilyscene.blogspot.com/2006/05/moving-story-3.html

http://sicilyscene.blogspot.com/2006/05/moving-story-4.html

http://sicilyscene.blogspot.com/2006/06/lanniversario-dellarrivo.html

http://sicilyscene.blogspot.com/2006/06/note-on-flying-simi.html

UPDATE: The words of Robert Browning to which I refer in the first instalment are:

Open my hear and you will see

Graved inside of it, "Italy."

Such lovers old are I and she;

So it always was, so shall ever be!

- From "De Gustibus-"