I've had better days.
I've had worse also.
I want firstly to say sorry to this snake

















I'm sorry snake, I didn't want to kill you, please forgive me!

It happened like this..
It's been unusually hot this last week, temps hitting 34C, and if you know anything about snakes, you know they love it hot. Baby snakes hatch in these conditions: baby vipers are born live, up to a hundred at a time.
leela has already marched into the garden with a snake in her mouth and this morning it was the turn of Socksie who (as a present to Lili) dragged in the chap above into the house and placed it, still alive, under our bed.
It was a metre long.
Shrieks in the house!
I managed to clunk a glass cake cover over it and slide a piece of cardboard under its body (all this under the gaze of the feline sharks); to then slip it into a large glass jar which I sealed with a fitting glass top.
You're so brave!
Yes I know, but to continue...
I take the jar down to our neighbours thinking that they might at least tell me if it was a viper or not and they say yes kill it. I get this feeling that they call every snake a viper and kill it whether it is or not so I walk back home with snake in the jar looking at me with quite a sweet expression on its face and back home leave it on the garden table with the plan of taking it to a chap we know in town who really does know a snake from a cake.
Then...shrieks, even louder than before.
'It's escaping' Lili cries.
I rush downstairs and find she has taken the lid off to give it some fresh air!!
By then it is zooming in every direction and decides to bury itself in the dead leaves under the wisteria bush.
We are already getting late for appointments and the domestic sharks are waiting to go in for the kill. And I can't risk that it might indeed be a viper and the death of one our pets.
So I had to kill you poor creature.
I'm sorry and Lili is sorry too
Particularly because when we took you poor remains in to show snake expert he tells us that you were just an harmless grass snake.
We have decided to take a course on snake recognition

Fireflies

They're back!
How do they know it's the 4th of June? They're amazing, that's what they are. It was the first time Tikka had experienced them. and what with them and a couple of Dinos (Bambi-like deer) at the bottom of the garden making their cooing noises, she was astounded, in awe, hopping around from shrub to shrub. And all this after two days of torrential rain. Just look!
























Twenty centimetres of rain! Mudslides everywhere!

Update

OK, I know, you're right....I'm lazy!
I could, and I should, write a blog everyday and....well, what I usually do is wait until something completely absurd strikes me, (usually about the trials and tribulations of living in Italy), and then I pounce! (for all that the world cares)
But recently there's been so much, so much, that my critical mind has been swamped and overwhelmed.

Oh! You're wondering what the photo is all about? No connection really but..
It's me eight years old. I was so sweet! My sister was down in Le Marche and she brought me a DVD of old family photos. I remember this one quite clearly. It was taken in Kent, in the hop fields. My mum and dad were Battersea Cockneys and hop-picking was what you did if you were poor by way of a holiday. So where was I last weekend? In Kent, in the same area where this photo was taken. Oh, this time with friends Tony and Sheila in a posh pub with a refined menu and a polite Polish waiter and a rude English waiter too. I remember also a family of foxes playing in the garden of the cottage where we stayed and the owner bawling me our for hobbling around in his wellington boots. But I was a happy little chap and told this story to a group in London that same weekend; I'd gone on a workshop weekend and we were asked to remember a happy time in our lives.

So, here I go again with a simple tale of yesterday. And you can take this as a metaphor for all the thousand and one tales I'd like to relate to you but haven't the time. (for example the one about the traffic cop with dark shades).. or last weekends riotous Pizza party at Bernie's...Wow!!












Now you're going to wonder what all this has got to do with the following tale of yesterday. Not quite sure myself but I think it's as J.P.Sartre said, hell is other people. Of course he was referring to the French so he was spot on there but sometimes, sometimes, Italians are a pretty close match.
So back to yesterday, we reach the end of our little road and there, wonder of wonders is a team of workmen laying tarmac. First of all, let me explain that a year back all of us in our little community of Sant'Ippolito signed a petition appealing to the Mayor for a tarmac road because our sand road is a perpetual disaster. And yesterday there they were! Sealing the road. And as we gleefully drove on to the fresh tar, the workmen started to yell at us and the boss came hurtling over to the car shouting 'Get off, get off!!'


The conversation

I said what do you mean get off? where to?
He says 'Didn't you see the sign?'
What sign? where? I ask.
The one at the other end of the road, he says.
The end of which road?
The one two K along this road
Why did you put it there, nobody uses that road? All of us (some 50 people) use this one. So how would we know?
Well the sign is there he says and you should have seen it and now you're ruining this fresh tar.
You're not listening to me and why are you doing this part of the road? It's been fine, it's the rest that needs attention.
He shrugs his shoulders..
We've only been told to do this bit.
But it's a waste of time and money.
What do you expect, this is Italy?!

Now if there is one phrase which guarantees a complete meltdown in my brain it's this one.
But Lili touches my arm and says 'Go!'
So I take a deep breath and drive off.
I spend the next half hour repeating 'This is Italy, this is Italy, this is Italy!'
Calm down, she says, let's go for a swim in the lake. So we do, and it's gorgeous. Deep clear blue water and not a breath of wind.
This is Italy too, she says.




















Like our new road?
It ends 100 metres along from here. just look.




















Oh, and guess what? The local elections are next week.
Got the connection? As voters drive past they will think 'Hey, that Mayor is good, he's fixed that road at last'

Benjamin Button

Last evening we went to see the film Benjamin Button at the Multicomplex Cinema in Piedripa. If you've seen the film, you'll know the narrative was set during the hurricane Katrina. What we took as sound effects however, was in fact a thunder storm which was passing overhead. When we got out of the cinema the whole parking lot was flooded and as we drove home and got nearer our mountains, the rain was snow and at home we were under another foot of the stuff.
Just look!




But I've given up on snow...too tiring. We're exhausted after so much of it; best that it stays on the mountain.

The Railway Man

This is a book written by Eric Lomax about his experience in Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burmah and then in Singapore. Happened to pick up the book in a new s/h bookshop here in Sarnano opened by a friend who is selling up having been broken by the Italian system. This... and yesterday....yesterday.
One of the principle points of the book is how Lomax describes closing down; cutting off his feelings and emotions because this was the only way he could protect his fellow inmates when under interrogation. So he learned how to stay mute and govern his natural reactions...and he did so successfully for three years, suffering finally of course when he tried to settle back into normal life and couldn't undo the damage.
Not that I'm suggesting that a visit to a Comune tecnico's office is in any way similar to the experience of being tortured in Japanese prisoner of war camp, this would be insulting to all those brave abandoned men, but here is one similarity; a desire to kill. Lomax even after 50 years had nightmares about his torture and harboured a desire for revenge. You're losing the thread of this one aren't you?
Two events in one day might link a thread or two. Ok, of course I'm exaggerating, as is my wont, but the knowledge that you are powerless in the face of ignorance can do internal damage whereas a swift punch on the nose would feel so good.

The events
Our last winter's gas bill did away with any hope of a holiday and we have switched to our wood burner for most of the winter. But I've been trying to call our gas supplier for ages but no one ever answers the phone. I wanted to know the current price of GPL. This is derived from oil so my guess was that the price must have come down somewhat in line with oil, maybe not 75% but perhaps half?
I get through eventually to on of the managers of Liquigas

The conversation

Hi, just wanted an update on the current price of gas,

I can't tell you right now because I'm not in the office, can you call me tomorrow at 8.30 am?

But it's only the cost of gas I'm asking, surely you know that?

Not off hand, call me in the morning

Next morning

Boungiorno, It's me again..about the price of gas.

Oh yes, give me your a/c number and I'll tell you

What's my a/c number got to do with it, I just want the price of gas.

Ah, yes, here you are, the current price is E4.04 a litre

But that's the same as a year ago!

Well, you'll see when your February bill arrives that there will be a reduction.

How much?

Eight cents

But the price of oil has come down by almost 75% in the last year.

Has it?

What do you mean 'has it?' Everybody knows that.. and your product is derived from oil and it's the same price as a year ago.

Well sir, would do you suggest? What price do you think our gas should be?

At this stage, I give up , he is taking the piss, and post it all into my anger box along with my experience in a comune later that day (which you wouldn't believe unless you'd been brought up on a diet of Kafka novels). Internalised anger= damage.

So I concentrate on a fresh wave of snow and Bessie who simply adores it, and hasn't to deal with crooks and idiots and has fresh bones delivered to her kennel door every morning by a devoted friend

It's Tuesday 10th Feb and it's Jahli's birthday and a full moon is up and guess what?
I went outside to check my bonfire as a fantastic scirocco is blowing, looked up and saw a moonbow. A moonbow? a rainbow caused by the moon's light passing through an approaching shower blowing in from the mountain. A first. Never imagined such a thing!
Went to grab my camera (doubting all the while the moonbow could possibly register), someone calls from New York and in those few seconds the moonbow disappears. But it was there, honest. A magic moonbow for Jahli.
Moral of story: Never let a phone call get in the way of a moonbow.
This morning I checked on Google and look...well this link won't come up, but it's
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/bowim51.htm
I feel privileged I do.

The month of January

I know what your thinking...another story about cats (what is it with this guy?)


















Well this is a picture of..what? A bonfire? Yes, it's a bonfire but also a ritual. It's what I do on the 31st of January every year to destroy the dark God of winter and to clear the way for the changing of the light.
And I won't even go into the fact that I was ordered to stay next to the fire throughout to make sure Tikka didn't jump in it.
I mean, as if she would ?