People here take their holidays in the most extraordinary places. Probably it springs from their residence in what most regard as an idyllic place to go on holiday. Off they set to Mauritania, Iraq, Afghanistan...., the better to enjoy their earthly paradise on return home.
This story in today's WSJ :
'Afghan police said militants beheaded six Afghans for cooperating with government authorities. ... a seventh Afghan man is being treated for serious neck injuries.'
was greeted with the local response - 'three times they miss then you're let off'... and - 'keep still'.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Friday, 25 December 2009
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Yes! Oil Is Us.
Calls on the landlines can be irritating; rooms to cover, stairs to dash up or down, unheated bits to fly through. Not this time. The fattore from Florence was gathering in supplies of good oil to meet international orders, even small quantities.
Yes! We have oil. Yes! It's the best. Yes! we can take some for sampling. Price to be negotiated - well, it might be upwards, how desperate are they to have arrived at Monculi?
Yes! We have oil. Yes! It's the best. Yes! we can take some for sampling. Price to be negotiated - well, it might be upwards, how desperate are they to have arrived at Monculi?
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Impressive
Depending which windows we look from there is a view of just about every rooftop in the village. Not one has lost its mantle of snow. Even the houses with skylights have insulation so effective the skylights are still snow-covered.
This is the result, undoubtedly, of the European Union funded availability of grants for housing insulation. When I came here with the New Dawning to renovate what had been discarded so long ago - other times and another country - snow would have been sliding off every roof, threatening passers-by. The Comune served me with a notice to immediately repair all gutters giving onto the pubic street (seeing as I was here and they could at last get hold of somebody responsible). Now it would not matter if there were none at all, until the thaw comes. Every last degree of heat is inside the buildings. The News has shown the gorgeousness of various cities under snow, but there is no suggestion of a breakdown in power supplies.
I was unnerved by the snow and ice-clearing yesterday morning. Luca with a giant squeezy bottle of pink alcohol rather than men broadcasting salt before the shovellers and sweepers seemed unconcerned about potential inflammability. Salt harms cars, so it seems alcohol is the de-icer of choice in Monculi.
This is the result, undoubtedly, of the European Union funded availability of grants for housing insulation. When I came here with the New Dawning to renovate what had been discarded so long ago - other times and another country - snow would have been sliding off every roof, threatening passers-by. The Comune served me with a notice to immediately repair all gutters giving onto the pubic street (seeing as I was here and they could at last get hold of somebody responsible). Now it would not matter if there were none at all, until the thaw comes. Every last degree of heat is inside the buildings. The News has shown the gorgeousness of various cities under snow, but there is no suggestion of a breakdown in power supplies.
I was unnerved by the snow and ice-clearing yesterday morning. Luca with a giant squeezy bottle of pink alcohol rather than men broadcasting salt before the shovellers and sweepers seemed unconcerned about potential inflammability. Salt harms cars, so it seems alcohol is the de-icer of choice in Monculi.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Climate Change overwhelms Monculi
Snow has covered everything. Deep snow and it's freezing cold. This snow is more than settled - it's settled in. It has also brought down a large branch from the pine tree doing duty as an olmo in the middle of the piazza. Unfortunately my little red Lancia caught it. Couldn't come down on the Landy, which would have shrugged it off. It can't even be taken down the hill to be mended because it hasn't any chains.
From the upstairs sala windows I can watch the cars skidding round the bends towards the city - chains are no exaggeration - so no festive outing to the last market before Christmas to load up with tinsel and toffee, pomegranates and pandoro and presents wrapped like works of art (the bookshop does particularly fine Bauhaus-style wraps, it must be the all those geometric forms dictating style).
I shall boil a fine piece of beef with some veal bones that Mr HG skated across to the butcher for earlier; carrots, celery, a red onion; make a maionese of hard-boiled eggs and chopped capers with the new oil. There is pearl barley I brought back from Poland in the store cupboard, and long leaves of tightly crinkled dark green cabbage, beet leaves, a big jar of those summer-bottled tomatoes, so resented then but so welcome now, thank you for all that hard bottling work, some of those white, fluffy potatoes -not the yellow, waxy small ones - and we'll have soup for a seige.
Good thing I dressed in my velveteen track suit this morning, with fluffy socks and one of those fleecy-lined undershirts from Brussels; I must have known I wasn't going across the doors even before I opened the shutters. The light was all wrong, the bells were muffled, no footsteps on their way to Mass; open the window, unlatch, push, and it wasn't just the cold that took the breath away. Miles and miles and miles of perfect white.
From the upstairs sala windows I can watch the cars skidding round the bends towards the city - chains are no exaggeration - so no festive outing to the last market before Christmas to load up with tinsel and toffee, pomegranates and pandoro and presents wrapped like works of art (the bookshop does particularly fine Bauhaus-style wraps, it must be the all those geometric forms dictating style).
I shall boil a fine piece of beef with some veal bones that Mr HG skated across to the butcher for earlier; carrots, celery, a red onion; make a maionese of hard-boiled eggs and chopped capers with the new oil. There is pearl barley I brought back from Poland in the store cupboard, and long leaves of tightly crinkled dark green cabbage, beet leaves, a big jar of those summer-bottled tomatoes, so resented then but so welcome now, thank you for all that hard bottling work, some of those white, fluffy potatoes -not the yellow, waxy small ones - and we'll have soup for a seige.
Good thing I dressed in my velveteen track suit this morning, with fluffy socks and one of those fleecy-lined undershirts from Brussels; I must have known I wasn't going across the doors even before I opened the shutters. The light was all wrong, the bells were muffled, no footsteps on their way to Mass; open the window, unlatch, push, and it wasn't just the cold that took the breath away. Miles and miles and miles of perfect white.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Avoiding Chilblains
Eco living is not going to suit everybody. Solar-powered heating, hypocaust style, is not for the cosy comfort seekers. What it gives, free (after the instalation costs are met) is a damp-free, virtually maintenance-free, environment. Turn up at the ecohouse on a blustery, grey November day after a week of similar weather and the house will have consumed what sunshine there has been and kept it indoors. But it isn't enough for our soft, centrally-heated selves.
I arrived with the bags of food, ahead of the breakfasting, newspaper reading, coffee drinking, well, I could manage a boiled egg to go with this toast, brigade down in the village. Anoraked-up everything was lovely as I lit the fire in the kitchen, swept up a fat and disgusting spider and threw it out to face its fate over the terracing, put on large pans of water to boil, and checked where the olives had been stored to make sure it had been thoroughly swept after the last round (we don't want trampled in olives on the treated floors do we). But when I sat down to well - have a sit down - I wondered if I would have liked to wake up and find wrap and slippers at these temperatures. Certainly there wasn't an icicles on the inside of the windows scenario (there had better not be with triple glazing and whatever gas lies between the sheets of glass), we could have made up the perfectly dry beds with perfectly dry linen and taken up residence forthwith. There was none of the get you by the throat icy grasp that used to greet us in the house in the village when we arrived for Easter and the building had been closed since the previous summer; it didn't matter how big the fires, how loaded the stoves, it was always days before a single intake of breath didn't chill the lungs. There were wooden frames with metal containers full of hot coals slung within them which had to be placed inside every bed for hours before people dared to slip between the sheets warmly clad in night clothes - not a phrase for nightie, but a full outfit, in brushed cotton with night undies under, and woolly, large socks. Mr HG used, as a child, to be sewn into a fresh vest after his bath. Anyway,
If we have to live the good life after meltdown it's going to be at lower temperatures than we enjoy. We need more clothes, all the time, and life has to be lived with zip, with energy, with keeping warm by keeping up effort and busyness around the house. I've been there before and just keeping clean and warm and healthy takes up a lot of effort. All those granny-level admonitions are probably true as well - draughts, taking off wet things, no bare feet.....
I arrived with the bags of food, ahead of the breakfasting, newspaper reading, coffee drinking, well, I could manage a boiled egg to go with this toast, brigade down in the village. Anoraked-up everything was lovely as I lit the fire in the kitchen, swept up a fat and disgusting spider and threw it out to face its fate over the terracing, put on large pans of water to boil, and checked where the olives had been stored to make sure it had been thoroughly swept after the last round (we don't want trampled in olives on the treated floors do we). But when I sat down to well - have a sit down - I wondered if I would have liked to wake up and find wrap and slippers at these temperatures. Certainly there wasn't an icicles on the inside of the windows scenario (there had better not be with triple glazing and whatever gas lies between the sheets of glass), we could have made up the perfectly dry beds with perfectly dry linen and taken up residence forthwith. There was none of the get you by the throat icy grasp that used to greet us in the house in the village when we arrived for Easter and the building had been closed since the previous summer; it didn't matter how big the fires, how loaded the stoves, it was always days before a single intake of breath didn't chill the lungs. There were wooden frames with metal containers full of hot coals slung within them which had to be placed inside every bed for hours before people dared to slip between the sheets warmly clad in night clothes - not a phrase for nightie, but a full outfit, in brushed cotton with night undies under, and woolly, large socks. Mr HG used, as a child, to be sewn into a fresh vest after his bath. Anyway,
If we have to live the good life after meltdown it's going to be at lower temperatures than we enjoy. We need more clothes, all the time, and life has to be lived with zip, with energy, with keeping warm by keeping up effort and busyness around the house. I've been there before and just keeping clean and warm and healthy takes up a lot of effort. All those granny-level admonitions are probably true as well - draughts, taking off wet things, no bare feet.....
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Woodcutter Next
The very last of the olives were milled at 10.30 this morning. The mills work round the clock and with the harvest in full swing it's best not to forsake a booked slot. Which is how you can find yourself driving a heavily laden Landie through the fog on deeply curvy roads. And when you get there everyone who hangs about offering to unload and tip the olives into the hoppers has gone to mass, so you have to haul the crates about yourself muttering unChristian remarks.
The very high yield of the previous lot seems to be a rogue; this lot was giving 18 kilos a quintal, so I put it down to dogs. You drive your vehicle onto the weighbridge. Then you empty its olives into the hoppers. Then you get reweighed with and without the crates in. Then they do sums. If a dog or two joins in during the weighing - they go in for a lot of tyre-sniffing - then you get dog diversion of totals. Happens all the time they say.
Still very fine yields though, particularly for a bad year.
At crack of dawn this morning, loading up, the groves looked very fine. All ploughed freshly, ready for the winter. If they are ploughed now it keeps down weeds, specially brambles, aerates the soil, allows winter rains to get well into the ground, and looks lovely with the autumn colours on the oakwoods as backdrop and that cared-for, groomed look in the fields of silver-green trees.
(Well, I didn't know why the ploughing had been done so immediately, but I know beautiful fields when I see them).
Now for the wood cutting. The woods are kept best by constant thinning and harvesting; bit like the hunters shooting the deer and the boar, only not so distressing. After that everything goes nice and quiet, which is best because frankly farming can be a bit archersish, as a day after day occupation.
The very high yield of the previous lot seems to be a rogue; this lot was giving 18 kilos a quintal, so I put it down to dogs. You drive your vehicle onto the weighbridge. Then you empty its olives into the hoppers. Then you get reweighed with and without the crates in. Then they do sums. If a dog or two joins in during the weighing - they go in for a lot of tyre-sniffing - then you get dog diversion of totals. Happens all the time they say.
Still very fine yields though, particularly for a bad year.
At crack of dawn this morning, loading up, the groves looked very fine. All ploughed freshly, ready for the winter. If they are ploughed now it keeps down weeds, specially brambles, aerates the soil, allows winter rains to get well into the ground, and looks lovely with the autumn colours on the oakwoods as backdrop and that cared-for, groomed look in the fields of silver-green trees.
(Well, I didn't know why the ploughing had been done so immediately, but I know beautiful fields when I see them).
Now for the wood cutting. The woods are kept best by constant thinning and harvesting; bit like the hunters shooting the deer and the boar, only not so distressing. After that everything goes nice and quiet, which is best because frankly farming can be a bit archersish, as a day after day occupation.
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