Sicily Scene

My birthday on Monday (St Valentine's Day) prompted a trip to Catania with a friend on Saturday, and also led to much thought, principal...

"The time has come", the blogger said, to talk of many things, of popes and queens and festivals and carnivals and kings." Le...

How lovely it is to see the Sanremo Festival back this year with a live audience in the Ariston Theatre. This, of course, wasn't possib...

 A young person asked me today what I thought about this commemoration. I replied that I thought it was essential, as an event in Italy this...

In Catania at the end of November Every now and then, in this seemingly never-ending Covid situation, I get stopped in my tracks with fear a...

 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 ...

What a lovely surprise today when a friend brought me these fruits from the Etna area, where she had been over the weekend. I knew that the ...

As I mentioned in my hurricane pasta post last week, Sicily has suffered some very bad weather lately. Just one week after the almost total...

  BLOG FOR PEACE 2021 #blog4peace  

 At the end of last week, we were all very worried and frightened in Sicily because a Medicane (a blend of the English words "Mediterr...

  I interviewed young Modican watchmaker Gabriele Aprile for this blog in April 2019 and I thought we should visit him again to see how his ...

Oh dear, oh dear! Yes, I just checked and he really did say it: Chef Gordon Ramsay, during episode 1 of his roadtrip cookery programme Gordo...

Italy, as you may have noticed, is having a very good year for championships but you may not have heard about one that has nothing to do wit...

The European Green Pass, available to EU citizens or legal residents who have completed their Covid vaccination cycle, tested negative to a ...

As most of the world watches, seemingly helplessly, events in Afghanistan today, Italy mourns the loss of a very rare man, someone who, seei...

Me in Paignton (Devon, GB)  c.1953  

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 ...

In Italy domiciliari , or house arrest, is often used for minor crimes and sometimes for prisoners who are nearing the end of their sentence...

 ‘ That time of year thou mayst in me behold’ ,  wrote Shakespeare but he wasn't referring to summer and Sonnet 73 is not one of his che...