Tikka

OK, you guessed it!
Our home is rapidly becoming a hospital for pets.
But what other option did we have. We were driving to Ortezzano to dine with friends (at the Osteria 'La Rosa dei Venti' (highly recommended .. really excellent)... and as we passed Comunanza, I saw a little black shape moving in the road; it was getting dark and there were quite a few cars on the road and as we drew close I could see that it was a kitten so I instinctively swerved off the road and parked and managed to stop the cars as we rushed across the road to save the poor little thing.
So here she is. Vet says her sciatic nerve has been stretched and so she is paralysed in her left leg, poor mite, but the feeling could come back with massage, Reiki and vitamins.
So our animal farm now consists of Bessie, Forch, Eva, Marina, Lilla, Socksie and now Tikka (or could be Treacle)

Most of the cat tribe are ignoring her, except for Socks, who is always asleep anyway and wouldn't know if you'd put a tarantula next to him- See pic!














(Bessie likes her though and wags her tail enthusiastically and is thus adored which means she gets fed extra)

Best advice? Keep off the roads as much as possible around this time of the year. Fact is, people dump kittens. They do. Too mean to get females doctored and too lazy to find homes for the offspring. Makes me mad it does!

Pizzas and pilates

Would you buy a pizza from this man?
I think not.


And was it Ralph Waldo Emerson who said 'There is truth, then there is journalism'?
Probably not, although it was the sort of thing he would say.
But, whoever said it, obviously had pizzas in mind.
Don't know what I'm talking about?...Read this
http://sette-bello.blogspot.com/
Yes, you've guessed it. it's the weekend of the world famous annual Sant'Ippolito pizza competition.
Now, if ever there were a travesty of the truth, it's this little tale above; a demonic manipulation of the true story, the actual chain of events on that sunny afternoon in Bernie's backyard.

I know what you're gonna say 'Sour grapes'....But I never use 'em, only stone ground olives (are there such things?), and a speck of spek, but I can understand the confusion.
But as my old dad used to say 'A pizza speaks a thousand words'

So, it's enough to look, indeed gaze (ten minutes minimum) in wonder at my masterpiece.











Here you see true art; not only culinary art, but contemporary visual art.
OK I'm too late to enter the Tate competition this year I know, but, come on, you've gotta wonder at its splendour.
Oh, not that I could've entered it anyway, I ate it! So very very delicious it was.
Edible art!
Yes!

...and the Pilates?
After six months of stretching, bending, twisting and contorting my poor body, it's screaming 'enough, no more!'
And me, being the only man in a class of twenty women, I suffered the most. Because the teacher, Roberto, couldn't touch twist and bend the bodies of the ladies as he could mine (being male and all). So I'm more flexible but ache in the places that I used to play and have given myself a summer break. Gardening's gonna be my main exercise until Autumn and swimming and walking and Qi Kong and table tennis (for which, sadly, you don't need twenty women), oh and proper tennis if I can find an opponent, which is doubtful because I'm crap at it.
Massimo might give me a game though, if his toenail is better.