pies, made by a friend's mother
Sunday, April 09, 2023
BUONA PASQUA 2023
pies, made by a friend's mother
Tuesday, April 04, 2023
AGRIGENTO 2025
Young people I talk to often ask what my favourite cities are and I always reply that in Italy, they are Agrigento and Florence because both literally took my breath away when I first saw them. I add that in the UK, London has to be on my list, for the simple reason that Dr Johnson was right and it has everything, while Cardiff has to feature because it is the city where I have lived longer than anywhere else, and Bath because it is so easily walkable and has homogenous stone which, like that of Noto (another Sicilian favourite) glows light amber in sunlight. But Agrigento lifts my heart, reminds me why I came to Italy and retells the story of Western European culture.
I was very pleased, therefore, to read last week that Agrigento has been chosen as Italian Capital of Culture 2025 for it is an honour it has long deserved. Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy's Minister of Culture, said on Friday that the (cultural) wealth and interconnectedness of so many places, cities and villages in Italy are unique in the world and something that only Italy has, making the country a cultural superpower. Every town, even the smallest, he said, is a treasure trove.
The Commission awarding the title was impressed by the fact that Agrigento included in its application the cultural importance of the island of Lampedusa and other towns in Agrigento Province, and stressed the importance of the relationship between the individual, his or her neighbours and nature. The concepts of welcome and access were also at the heart of the dossier.
Francesco Miccichè, the Mayor of Agrigento, said that Agrigento and Sicily had not really won because the real winner is Italy, and to have written and promoted this application in this historic political period, focussing on cultural exchange between peoples and the diverse ethnicities of the Mediterranean, was a great act of courage and sensitivity on behalf of the judges and all the institutions involved. He then issued an invitation to all the mayors who had participated in the competition to help create a tourist network from Aosta (in the Alps) all the way down to Agrigento, uniting all of them by being Italian.
As a lover of Agrigento, I feel very proud of her myself and I have written before on this blog about how I think its Sagra del mandorlo in fiore (Almond Blossom Festival) unites young people in particular and of how, on my first visit to Sicily, I managed to find and visit the birthplace of the writer Luigi Pirandello, which you, too, may like to do if you are interested in literature and find yourself in Agrigento. The city itself is also welcoming and pleasant, and you should not miss an opportunity to visit the 13th century church of Santa Maria dei Greci (built on the site of a Greek temple, hence the name).
However, Agrigento's main attraction for tourists is, of course, its Valle dei Templi and it really does have to be seen to be believed (in a good way). The last time I was there was on a sunny spring day in 2018 and it looked, as it always has, glorious.
The Culture Minister also said that from 2024 there will be, in addition to an Italian Capital of Culture and an Italian Capital of Books, an Italian Capital of Contemporary Art and a European Capital of the Mediterranean.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
STARS IN MY EYES
Monday, January 09, 2023
HAPPY NEW YEAR, A LITTLE LATE
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"I like it under here, I do!" |
Saturday, November 19, 2022
THE HAPPIEST COLOUR
I received this beautiful gift of oranges and mandarins from a friend's garden, presented in a traditional, hand-made Sicilian basket, yesterday.
To quote a certain Mr Sinatra whose father was from Lercara Friddi in Palermo Province, or maybe, as the singer himself once claimed, Catania,
"ORANGE IS THE HAPPIEST COLOR."
Yes, siree!
Sunday, November 06, 2022
DONA NOBIS PACEM 2022
BLOG4PEACE - NO FREEDOM, NO PEACE
On New Year's Eve 1999 I was having dinner with friends back in Cardiff, Wales. When the clocks struck midnight, we took our glasses of champagne outside, clinked them, watched the spectacular fireworks our hosts had provided, then hugged and kissed and went indoors to drink a toast, proposed by my friend's husband:
"Here's to the new century and we drink this toast in the hope that you young people who are with us tonight will enjoy good things to come, without the kind of horrible events that your grandparents' and, to some extent, your parents' generations had to live through. It seems that you might be lucky."
There is always conflict somewhere and there were conflicts going on even as he spoke, but we all knew that he meant those words sincerely. Then 9/11 happened, less than two years later and the threat of terrorism was everywhere in our daily lives.
As if that were not enough, in 2020, all over the world, we found our peacetime freedoms limited in ways we could never have imagined because of the pandemic and here in Italy we suddenly found ourselves living under a curfew. Every one of us lived in fear of our lives and those of our families and, apart from following the rules, there seemed to be nothing we could do about it. Has this made us better placed to imagine how it feels to have your freedom restricted by war? Perhaps.
On 8th September this year Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died and on the day of her funeral the world witnessed the passing of an era. As a British person, I watched in sadness but also in awe at the splendour of the uniforms and the precision of my country's military. Yet a part of me was in despair for how, I asked myself, could there ever be a mentality of peace when we carry our revered dead monarchs on gun carriages to the sound of gun salutes and have woven the iconography of war into that of the nation?
I am very aware that I am writing this one week before Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when the fallen and injured of all wars are commemorated, and I mean no disrespect. My own grandfather was blinded in World War I and I am profoundly grateful to him and to all who have fought for my freedom. I just wish there was another way of obtaining it, as, I am sure, do many soldiers. "No one abhors war more than someone who has been in one", my grandfather used to say. And it was that old warrior Sir Winston Churchill who said,
The one image of the war in Ukraine that I cannot get out of my mind is from the beginning of the conflict, when a young Russian soldier - a child, in fact, for he couldn't have been older than 19 - was captured in a village. The Ukrainian villagers were feeding him and being kind and even helped him to call his mother, at which point he began to cry. Is this what we want? Is this fair, that the old send the young into battle to try and resolve the messes that the former have made? Of course we do not want it and of course it is not fair. Where is the freedom for this young man and others like him to finish his education if he wishes, to have the joy of family, to live? No Freedom, No Peace.
My thanks, as always, to the indefatigable Mimi Lenox, who inspires us all to blog for peace.
Thursday, September 22, 2022
THERE HAD TO BE CAKE
Like so many all over the world, I devoted Monday to watching, on television, the ritual that accompanied the end of an era in London. I am glad I bought an extra box of tissues! A friend and I lunched, between processions, church services, standing for the national anthem and tears, on Italian stuzzichini (finger food) and a Turkish lahmacun (because it tastes good cold and I had therefore been able to make it the day before, using a pizza base not pitta bread, as it traditional). After that there had to be cake and my local bar made the one you see below for me - a thank you to the late Queen but also looking to the future with King Charles:
Thus a Welshwoman and a Scottish woman in Sicily bade farewell to this most international of queens and we do not think she would have minded at all.
Saturday, September 10, 2022
"SOME MORNING, UNAWARE"
O, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
TWILIGHT TONES
You are lucky to be able to capture a twilight image in Italy, as it does not fall slowly, as in Britain. Here, one moment it is there but go and get your phone or camera and it is gone. Our Modican Nobel poet Salvatore Quasimodo's words Ed è subito sera - And suddenly it's evening are true - metaphorically too, of course, as anyone who is ageing (like me) will tell you.
On Monday evening, however, I managed to reach for my phone in time and here is a view from my bedroom window but this time with the Ferragosto bunnies out of focus!
Thinking of this view, and its fast transition into darkness, I was reminded of some words from Colette:
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
BEHOLD, THE FERRAGOSTO BUNNIES!
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
BUONA NOTTE DI SAN LORENZO 2022
Monday, August 01, 2022
A BASKET OF GOODNESS
This is the hottest summer I can remember in Sicily and it seems to be wearing us all down because the extreme heat started early, in May, and I believe it has only rained for about ten minutes since. There are, of course, compensations, such as granita, anguria (watermelon) and myriad ice cream flavours and I certainly perked up when a friend brought me this traditional Sicilian basket of goodies from his garden on Friday.
There are aubergines, datterini (tiny, date-shaped tomatoes), salad tomatoes, tomatoes for sauce and occhi di bue (bull's-eye) tomatoes, long peppers and a kind of pepper that I had never seen before.These are called friggitelli (from friggere - to fry) and, although they are related to chilli peppers, they are not hot. (I understand they are known in the US.) My friend told me to fry them in olive oil and garlic until browned and to add coarse salt only at the end of cooking. That is exactly what I did and wow, they were good!
Monday, June 13, 2022
JUST A FEW PHOTOS...
Just a few photos of where I live, in Modica, a Unesco World Heritage Site, from its highest point, the Pizzo.
And what Saturday night is complete without a pizza? This delicious Ortolana pizza was consumed with pleasure at the smart new Pizzeria S. Antonio , Modica Alta.
Sunday, June 05, 2022
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.