A SPRING IN MY STEP

More countryside-oriented folk may celebrate almond blossom and birdsong but the sign of spring sure to put - well, a spring in my step - is when the bar owners of the Sorda district here in Modica start making their own ice cream again.

Goodbye, diet - see you around October!

BUONA PASQUA 2016

SABATO MUSICALE

At the end of this sad week, here is one of my favourite songs by a Belgian artist:

Jacques Brel - Marieke

I wish you all a peaceful Easter, wherever you are.

HOT AND SPICY EASTER STEW

It's the time of year when Sicilians go in for lamb so here's a hot and spicy spezzatino I've invented, mainly becaiuse I wanted to use the tiny, round chilli peppers I found in the greengrocer's the other day:

In a wok or other deep, wide pan with a lid, heat 5 tablesp olive oil.  Add 1 kg lamb pieces [for spezzatino in Italy, otherwise a bit bigger than the usual cubes sold for casseroles in Britain, preferably bone-in]. When the pieces are browned on all sides, add 1 sliced white onion and a chopped garlic clove.  Continue cooking, stirring, until the onion is soft. Then add a small, sliced aubergine and the contents of 2 tins [400 gr each] of pomodorini [cherry tomatoes in their juice.].  You can use tins of chopped tomatoes if you can't get these, Add some chopped sage and sprigs of rosemary, seasalt, black pepper, 6 - 8 tiny chilli peppers or some chilli pepper flakes, 2 teasp of my favourite spice sumac and 200 ml water.  Add 2 - 3 large potatoes, sliced but not peeled, some cinnamon ground from a  cinnamon mill and just a few cumin seeds.  Put the lid on and simmer for 1 hour.

If you were able to get the tiny chillis, use a few more to garnish.

PALERMO IN A JAM

Now it's official: every palermitano who drives - and that's most adults - spent 147 hours stuck in traffic during 2015. Thus the city earns the dubious honour of being the worst in Italy for traffic congestion, according to the TomTom Traffic Index. Rome comes second, Messina third, Naples fourth, Milan fifth and Catania sixth.

In the table for Europe, Palermo is fourth, after Łódź, Moscow and Bucharest and Rome is in ninth position.  

Mexico City "wins" first place for congestion in the world table and is followed by Bangkok, Łódź, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro.  Rome is 15th, London 16th, Manchester 25th and Athens 29th.  

Dear old Cardiff, for those of you who are interested, has no world ranking - presumably because of its size - but was 121st in the "all cities" congestion index.

I'm sure you're wondering, as I am, what the palermitani do with all this time that they spend in traffic jams: Do they read their smartphones or newspapers?  Do they occasionally dart out of their stationary vehicles to consume a quick espresso? I rather think they watch each other and the world around them and indulge in the occasional good-natured shouting match. 

THE PALM LADY

DOMENICA DELLE PALME

This was one of my most popular posts back in 2010 and, indeed, ever.  I am reposting it this Palm Sunday. I hope longstanding readers won't mind seeing it again.

She has been there all week, the palm lady, sitting at the side of the road, deftly weaving fronds into objects of beauty.  She sets up her stall long before the morning rush hour begins, and she is still there as everyone hurries home for lunch.  She carries on braiding and plaiting, adorning her finished palms with ribbons of all colours, through the silent siesta hours and as the shop shutters go up again for the evening reopening.  As darkness defeats her, she stops, but she is there again the following morning, bright and early.  On Sunday she continues her dexterous craft and only when the bells for the last Mass of this Palm Sunday morning have sounded does she pack up her wares for another year.  I hope she is having a rest.

SABATO MUSICALE

I love this, from Modà:

Modà -  È solo colpa mia

SOLIDARITY

With borders closing, an EU deal on migrants which means that, from Sunday, anyone arriving in Greece  from Turkey illegally will be sent back - much to the concern of refugee aid agencies and UNHCR - attitudes everywhere are hardening. Conditions for migrants in Idomeni have been described by the Greek Interior Minister today as "being like a Nazi concentration camp" and the news reports I have been watching tonight indicate that migrants on the Greek-Macedonian border just do not believe that they will not be allowed to go further north within the EU.  Amid all this comes a gesture of solidarity from Italy:

On Wednesday the Italian Senate approved a measure, already passed by the Camera dei Deputati in 2015, to make 3rd October each year a National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Immigration. The date is the anniversary of the migrant tragedy in Sicilian waters of 3rd October 2013, in which 366 people lost their lives.  The President of the Senate, Pietro Grasso, posted the following to facebook on Wednesday [my translation]:

"The Republic recognises 3rd October as a National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Immigration. It is designated a 'National Day' with the aim of preserving and reaffirming our remembrance of all who have lost their lives trying to reach our country whilst fleeing war, persecution and poverty.  This is now law.

It was on 3rd October 2013 that a boat sank near Lampedusa; on that day alone 366 people died. Since the beginning of 2015 there have been 4,200 victims in the Mediterranean.  Let us stop for a second and try to think of this enormous number as individuals and attribute to each of them a name, a face, wishes, dreams, fears and weaknesses: in this way we can understand the scale of the tragedy which is happening day after day off our coasts. The boats also sink under the burden of the stories of people escaping terrible tragedies, war and abject poverty. They are men and women like us, but now they have nothing and desperately seek a future. Europe must put away selfishness and divisions; we must do our part, remember the victims and above all, act to prevent thousands more people dying in our seas."

During this week the Italian Coast Guard and Navy saved 2,500 people in the Mediterranean over two days. On Wedsnesday, with the help of a Norwegian ship, they rescued 1,467 people trying to cross the Sicilian Channel in 12 rubber dinghies.  Three bodies were also found.

Because of the situation in Greece and Turkey, it is thought that migrants will try to reach Italy by crossing the Strait of Otranto from Albania and the region of Puglia is making preparations to deal with the situation, should it happen, by providing the checks and aid required and with humanity.

SABATO MUSICALE ON WEDNESDAY

Illness at the weekend prevented me from posting, so here's a song for Wednesday instead of Saturday - one to cheer us all up from Cordasicula , with some nice shots of Modica, too:

Cordasicula - Stidda Lucenti

CASA NATIA - A SICILIAN DREAM

Have you ever dreamed of a holiday in a Sicilian paradise, near both a world-renowned centre of culture and beautiful beaches, with the opportunity to gather, if you wish, your own organically grown fruit and vegetables? 

Well, now you need look no further than Casa Natia on the Marina di Modica, run by my good friends Giorgio and Giovanna!

Situated only 6 km from both the sea and the centre of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Baroque Modica, at Casa Natia you can gaze towards the Sicilian Channel from the windows.

Surrounded by 15 hectares of grounds [150,000 sq. metres] on which Giorgio and Giovanna produce organic meat, vegetables, pulses and fruit [grown by rotation - no chemicals are ever used], both for their family and for sale, at Casa Natia you can pick, completely free of charge, all the tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, onions, zucchini, cabbages, celery and parsley you can eat. In addition, you can put out bottles for fresh milk from the property in the mornings or you can even milk the cows yourself! Fresh eggs are also available. Should you feel inspired to bake your own bread whilst at Casa Natia, you will be given flour from Giorgio and Giovanna's granary. Believe me, you will never have tasted bread like this before! Imagine lying on a sunlounger on the ample terrace with the aroma of freshly baked, genuinely Sicilian bread drifting towards you.....  If you like the olive oil produced in the grounds, you can order some to take home.

Upon arrival you will find a welcome basket full of traditional, local products, including focacce and arancini made by Giovanna and a welcome brochure to read at your leisure. In addition, and at an extra charge, Giovanna is available to give lessons in Sicilian and Italian cookery. If you would like to have a family dining experience whilst in Sicily, you can arrange, at a very reasonable extra charge of €20,00 per head [including wine], to spend an evening with Giorgio, Giovanna and family. I can personally guarantee that Giovanna's cooking has no paragon.

As mentioned above, the sea and the centre of Modica are within easy reach of Casa Natia and Giorgio and Giovanna will always be on hand to help you arrange excursions: An accompanied sea excursion is available at an extra charge, with optional packed lunch. [Giorgio's boat has room for seven passengers.] Other paid excursions by minibus to Noto, Marzamemi, Capo Passero, Etna, Taormina, Agrigento and into the Sicilian countryside can be arranged, as can an excursion to Malta by katamaran from the Port of Pozzallo [ten minutes away by car and two hours to Malta].

Casa Natia was built by Giorgio's ancestors in 1866 and was renovated this winter. It has five bedrooms [four double and one single] and room for nine people to stay at one time. One en suite bedroom is downstairs. There are three bathrooms, a well-equipped kitchen [supplied with basic foodstuffs, machines to make whatever kind of coffee you prefer and a juice squeezer for the basket of citrus fruit you will receive each week], a large lounge, a barbecue with ready-cut wood, a swimming pool with its own shower surrounded by carob and olive trees, air conditioning, a fireplace for use in winter, satellite TV and Wi-Fi. Interpreting services are available upon request. There is safe, covered and uncovered parking and if you want to have a party, there is no one around to disturb so feel free to enjoy yourself and play loud music to your heart's content! You can even bring your pets [subject to airline and local regulations].

Casa Natia is open all year round - it is an ideal place for a winter holiday too -  and is 40 minutes by car from Comiso Airport and one hour from Catania Airport [Fontanarossa]. Further details and prices can be found here, as can details of a smaller property owned by Giorgio and Giovanna, Villetta Nausicaa [150 metres from the sea at the Marina di Modica].

Whichever you choose, you'll be happy to arrive, delighted with your stay and sad to leave!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2016

"To be a woman is really fascinating.  

It is an adventure which requires so much courage,

 a challenge of which one never tires."

- Oriana Fallaci, 1929 - 2006

The symbol of International Women's Day in Italy is mimosa blossom and you can read how this came about here.  It was nice to find mimosa blossom decorating my espresso saucer in the bar this morning!

SICILIAN SUNDAY

SABATO MUSICALE

This song came 7th overall at Sanremo and this week is at no. 17 in the Italian charts:

Clementino - Quando sono lontano

FEELING "PETALLY"?

Flower petal carpet, Noto, 2015

At the end of the week which included St David's Day, you could say that petals, particularly those of daffodils, have been much on my mind.  But that's not the only reason for, like everyone in Italy, I have been enchanted this week by the story of an eight-year-old boy from Copparo [ Ferrara Province] who has coined the word petaloso.

It all started when Matteo's teacher gave a lesson on adjectives and Matteo wrote about a flower which was petaloso. The teacher, Margherita Aurora, liked the word [which did not previously exist in Italian] so much that she suggested sending it to the Academia della Crusca, the National Institute for the Protection and Study of the Italian Language, for evaluation. On February 23rd she received a very pleasant reply, saying that the word was well-formed, beautiful and clear but that, to be inserted into the Italian dictionary, it would have to be understood and used by lots of people.  Following a facebook post by Margherita, thousands of people began using the word on all social media, with Prime Minister Renzi congratulating Matteo on twitter.

Matteo's father even tried to get the word registered as a trademark, only to find that three other "inventors" had requested patents in this name three days before, it has emerged today. It has not been revealed exactly what kind of brands these are.

Meanwhile, though, let us add our congratulations to the flood of those reaching Matteo and his teacher and let's enjoy rolling the lovely word petaloso around on our tongues!

ENNIO....AT LAST

As I hoped when I posted my sabato musicale at the weekend, 87-year-old Italian composer Ennio Morricone at last won an Oscar for a film score on Sunday night. The maestro had been awarded an honorary Oscar for his career in 2007 but, despite being nominated five times over the years, had not won an Academy Award for Best Score.

All that has now been put to rights with the award for the score of Tarantino's The Hateful Eight and the director, like the whole of Italy, is delighted. How could Italy and the world not love a man who, in his acceptance speech, dedicated both the score and the award to his wife?

Here is an excerpt from another of my favourite Morricone scores:

HAPPY ST DAVID'S DAY 2016

It's St. David's Day again and who better than "our Kath" to sing the Welsh national anthem?

Over at London Town, Modica - Centro Linguistico Internazionale, we've been making some really scary dragons and of course we've got daffs and Welshcakes!

HAPPY ST DAVID'S DAY, EVERYBODY!

SABATO MUSICALE

Congratulations to Ennio Morricone, who was awarded his well-deserved star on the Hollywoood Walk of Fame yesterday. Speaking at the ceremony, the composer said,

"I always try to create a soundtrack which pleases both the director and the public, but it must also please me."

This may explain the constant integrity of his music.

Here's an old  Morricone favourite of mine, which became well known in Britain as the soundtrack to a 1981 TV series about David Lloyd George:

Ennio Morricone - Chi mai

The 87-year-old maestro is hotly tipped for an Oscar for The Hateful Eight, so let us wish him luck.

A DIFFERENT ARRIVAL ON LAMPEDUSA

The quayside at Lampedusa has featured many times on this blog, often as journey's end for migrants who have survived the dangerous Mediterranean crossing but also sometimes as a scene of tragedy as the bodies of others are brought ashore.  I have also often written about the incredible forbearance and kindess of the islanders towards the strangers they have found in their midst.

Today, however, the island's airport saw an arrival of a different kind - that of a little golden bear being clutched by a familiar figure to inhabitants, namely Dr Pietro Bartolo from their own ER department.  

"Questa è la sua terra - This is his land", said Dr Bartolo, laying the little bear on the ground. This was the Golden Bear awarded to Gianfranco Rosi [Sacro GRA] at the Berlin International Film Festival for his documentary Fuocoammare which he filmed over eighteen months whilst living  on Lampedusa.  The film shows a migrant boat trying to reach Lampedusa and also focuses on the daily life of the islanders.  Dr Bartolo, caring for both the influx of migrants and the island's inhabitants, is a key figure in the film.

Meryl Streep, who chaired the Film Festival jury, said of the film,

"In a year of thrillingly diverse films, the jury was swept  away by the compassionate outrage of one in particular. It’s a daring hybrid of captured footage and deliberate  storytelling that allows us to consider what documentary can do. It demands its place in front of our eyes, compels our engagement and action. It is urgent, imaginative  and necessary filmmaking.”

Dr. Bartolo said that he hoped the film would cause people all over the world to think about the suffering of migrants and that those in a position to help but who have been pretending not to hear of their plight would also stop and reflect. 

Gianfranco Rosi has dedicated the award to "the wonderful and generous people of Lampedusa."

The first video is via La Repubblica:

SABATO MUSICALE

To come third at Sanremo is no mean feat so congratulations to Giovanni Caccamo from Modica and Deborah Iurato from Ragusa.  Here is their song:

A MIGRANT TALE FROM LONG AGO

This week I have been watching events in my own country, and in Brussels as I was writing this last night, closely.  As a former state sector teacher, I can empathise with frustrated junior doctors in Britain as I know how hard it is when your profession becomes a political pawn. What I cannot imagine, however, is what it is like to become a political pawn simply because of your provenance or geographical situation and, as if that were not hard enough, to be unable to defend yourself because you do not have that right. I am thinking, of course, of migrants, whose position within the EU has become part of the British "in or out" [of the EU] debate.

Despite plenty pf posturing post- Brussels meeting, I have not heard one politician refer to the fact, tweeted by UNHCR yesterday, that on average two children a day have died crossing the Mediterranean since 15th September. In 2015 12,272 unaccompanied minors reached Italy - a country the world has once again forgotten in this crisis - on migrant boats.

Every time I see that look of anguish on the face of a migrant child being carried ashore by kind helpers, I wonder where I have seen it before and then I remember a boy I called "Winter" long ago. This is an edited version of a post I wrote about him in 2007 and I hope you will bear with me as I tell his story again: 

WINTER

It is usually winter when I think of “Winter”. I don’t know why; I was too young for the time of year to have really registered in my mind; but I think it must have been winter when I knew him, as I remember him in long, woolly socks, short, dark trousers and a grey, rough-textured coat that would scratch my face as he hugged me in the playground.

Everyone wore drab clothes then, mostly grey or a very dull green. Some women used to try to brighten things up by wearing red lipstick and dead foxes round their necks [which used to terrify me] but mostly the dreariness was unrelieved. People of my parents’ generation were still in shock from the Second World War and certain items remained on ration. Interiors were dark, too [though people were shortly to rebel against this], there were still bombsites in Bristol and the streets seemed grey and cold. There was a lot of poverty and it was so normal for children to wear threadbare old clothes to school that no one remarked upon it.

I could only have been about five and school was St Gabriel’s Cof E, at the top of Twinnel Road in Bristol. [It was one of the roads leading off Stapleton Road, where our shop was.] I can’t remember a sunny day in that playground, though there must have been some! I can only visualise it as dark and dismal.

"Winter's" name was actually Gunther, but there was no way I could pronounce it. He used to spend ages trying to get me to say it properly, but his tuition was of no avail to the future linguist! I can hear him now: “My name is Gunther, not ‘Winter’. Say it: G-U-N-T-H-E-R”. “Winter”, I would diligently reply. [I honestly could not understand why he would laugh and I used to get quite upset about it!] Then he would kiss me and tell me that he loved me and I would feel a warm glow for the rest of the day. It was a lovely, all-enveloping feeling of knowing that you are loved and I’m not sure if I have ever recaptured it.

I don’t know what his nationality was or what tragedy his family had escaped; he always talked about his mother, never his father. There were so many families from Central and Eastern Europe pouring into the country then and there were a lot of Poles in Bristol; but obviously his name was not Polish.

“Winter” had ash-blond hair, worn with a long fringe flopping over his forehead, large, smiling blue eyes which I can picture even now and I don’t think I ever saw him without that overcoat on.

He must, I think, have been bullied because I can remember one day telling a teacher, “Winter’s crying”. Then I was pushed aside while Miss Adams [whom I hated with a vengeance from that moment] dealt with whatever it was that had upset him. [It was my job to comfort Winter, not hers!]

Breaks were the highlight of my little life, because I knew Winter would come and find me and we’d stand in a corner of the playground cuddling and exchanging chaste kisses while he told me that we were going to get married when we grew up. Winter had it all planned; he was going to buy the shop from Dad! I didn’t see him at lunchtimes; most women didn’t work then , so the majority of children went home for lunch. In fact the “dinner children” were regarded as something of an oddity. I couldn’t wait to get back to school in those days!

One day he just wasn’t there. “Gunther’s gone”, said Miss Adams when I enquired and that was that. Winter certainly hadn’t known about any move or he would have told me and I’m sure he would have cried! I suppose the family were suddenly rehoused in the efficient, unfeeling manner of the time; or perhaps he was taken out of school because of the bullying; or maybe his father reappeared; I just don’t know. The sense of loss was overwhelming and suddenly the world grew even colder.

We all need fantasies to keep us alive and one of mine is that one of these days I’ll be strolling along a street in Modica, Catania or Palermo, I’ll suddenly stop and there he’ll be – Winter!


"Winter" and his family did not endure the hardships that today's migrants do to reach what they hope will be safety but I have no idea what had had happened to them in their own country prior to their journey. What I do know is that every time my TV screen shows a frightened child looking, from the arms of a stranger, for the people who had always defended him and realising that they are not there, I see the face of Winter  - in a playground in  Bristol, UK, in 1955.