Quinn's third birthday.

Got back from the UK yesterday afternoon.We arrived on Sunday 15th. Monday was Quinn’s birthday and we took him to Toys R Us in Peterborough to get him his birthday present: a Scoobie Doo set and a Kung-Fu Panda doll. We then went on to Play Days at Guyhirn, a children’s activity centre. Finally back at Candy’s for the birthday party. Click here to see a film of the party. On Tuesday we went to Lynn to stock up with clothes from Marks & Spencers and for Pat to get a new pair of glasses. On Wednesday I met Matthew and Charlie for lunch at the Lattice House - Greene King IPA only 99p. a pint! - and in the evening I went for a drink with Richard and Jane. On Thursday Candy flew from the East Midlands Airport with a group of girlfriends to see the Kings of Leon in concert in Paris. She had quite a frightening flight: ten minutes from Paris the plane turned round with ‘a system failure’. They landed at Stansted where they were kept on the plane while fire-engines and police cars surrounded the plane. Eventually they took off in the same plane and landed successfully if bumpily in France. Now what was that all about? On Friday we took Quinn to Sandringham to replace his pop gun and managed top lose the hire-car for a time until Pat worked out where we’d parked it. In the evening John and Joy came round for a meal. Saturday afternoon Candy returned much to Quinn’s joy. In the evening Pat and I went for a drink at the Crown Hotel, Outwell. On Sunday Deborah came down and we had lunch at the Crown.

  We left Italy covered in snow, but the weather in Norfolk was mild - 11 degrees - and sunny much of the time. Our time in England has made me an expert on Kung-Fu Panda:  Quinn’s DVD of the film was an almost constant background presence. Very enjoyable the first three viewings, but then it began to pall a little - for me not for Quinn of course!

A visit from Candy & Quinn.

Candy & Quinn came to stay for a week last Saturday. Tomorrow, weather permitting we all go to England for a week. On Wednesday the snow came and Quinn had fun playing with Pippo, Linda, and Michele. On Thursday Candy went off to meet some friends in Abruzzo to go skiing. I took her to Pedaso station from whence she took the train to Pescara where she was picked up by her friends. Jane Fineren came up for a meal and Pat was left to cook and look after Quinn while I was taking Candy to the station. She returned Friday evening. Unfortunately, I’d buggered my back so Pat had to collect her. As Candy had got to Pescara late she hadn’t had time to buy a ticket and was thrown off the train at San Benedetto so Pat had an extra long journey.

Click here to see a movie of Candy & Quinn’s visit: Quinn in Italy Feb 2009

The last of the Alexanders.

Pat’s sister, Deborah, phoned last night to let us know that their uncle, Leslie, had died earlier that evening. Leslie shared two passions with his brothers Victor (Pat’s father) and Maurice: whisky and tobacco. The latter was particularly remarkable as Leslie, having contracted TB, had a lung removed during the war.  He survived into his late eighties, without ever contracting cancer. A sign-writer by trade, he ran his own business well into his seventies. Life went downhill in his eighties after he surrendered his driving licence and could no longer make his daily pilgrimage to Leigh-on-Sea conservative club. Click here to see photos of Leslie’s 85th birthday party held at the club.

  He was not, of course, in reality the last of the Alexanders. Although neither he nor Maurice had children, and Vic had no sons, the Alexander genes survive in Pat and Deborah, Sophy and Candy, and, most recently of all, in Quinn pictured above with his great-great-uncle!

La vampa di agosto.

Have just finished La vampa di agosto, my sixteenth volume of commissario Montalbano stories - thirteen novels and three volumes of short stories. I started reading them because I thought that detective stories would have a fairly basic vocabulary, suitable for someone witha limited grasp of Italian. What I hadn’t realised was that much of the direct speech in the Montalbano stories is in Sicilian dialect. It’s relationship to standard Italian is a bit like that of Middle English to Modern English - largely a matter of spelling, with some differences in vocabulary and grammar. Sicilians use the passato remoto - confined to the written language in standard Italian - where their compatriots would use the passato prossimo. There is an Italian/Sicilian dictionary of the Sicilian vocabulary used by the author, Camilleri, available as a book or on-line.

I persevered with Camilleri’s books because I find Montalbano an enormously sympathetic character - a grumpy old man with left-wing tendencies but with a deep contempt for politicians and a profound distaste for many contemporary trends , for example the anti-smoking vendetta and trendy clerics. Here’s an example:

' "E trova gente disposta a vendergli la figlia?"

"Dottore, ora non c’è il libero mercato? E il libero mercato non è signo di democrazia, libirtà e progresso?"

Montalbano lo talio ammammaloccuto.

"Pirchì mi talia accussì?"

"Pirchì quello che hai detto l’avrei dovuto diri io …" '

[‘ “And he finds people ready to sell him their daughter?” “Doctor, don’t we have the free market now?” Montalbano looked at him shocked. “Why are you looking at me like that?” “Because I ought to have said what you just did …” ‘]

Montalbano was born in 1950 and the first novel featuring him, La forma dell’acqua, was published in 1994 and at least one new book is published each year. He ages in real time and his relationships with his girlfriend, Livia, and his colleagues develop and change over the years. I would therefore recommend reading them in the order in which they were published. They’re all available in English from Amazon.

Camilleri is the best-selling living Italian writer and I think deservedly so. He’s a well-read man - in English, French, American and Spanish literature as well as Italian, and his plots are well-constructed. But above all it is the development of Montalbano which is central. La vampa di agosto means ‘the August heatwave’. But ‘vampa’ has a secondary meaning - blush. And this has a significance which I wouldn’t spoil the book by revealing!

Don't fall ill at lunchtime.

A nasty scare today. Eva vomited copiously around 10 o’clock - not an uncommon occurrence with dogs. Then just before I was due to take her and Meg out at lunchtime she was sick again, this time shaking uncontrollably. Pat suggested she may have been poisoned so I phoned the vet. Lombi’s assistant told me to go to the chemist’s and get a certain drug to inject Eva with. But at 12.50 I found the chemist’s had already shut for lunch - to re-open at five! Having phoned her again the vet told me to phone the emergency number posted up outside the shop. I rang it repeatedly over the next hour and a half before we got a reply: the pharmacist didn’t have the drug. Meanwhile Lombi had rung to tell us to take Eva to his surgery in Amandola. By this time she had almost stopped shivering and seemed much better in herself. Lombi examined her and gave her a precautionary injection. However he said she was in no danger and had probably eaten slug pellets which although unpleasant didn’t do any damage.

HOWEVER, if she had been poisoned she would almost certainly have died - we couldn’t inject her ‘subito’ as instructed by Lombi’s assistant because everywhere is shut for four hours while the Italians eat their pasta. The moral is: if you want to live, don’t fall ill at lunchtime!

Going Dutch.

To supper last night with the Dutch artist Aaat (no relation) Van Rijn at the holiday home of an Englishwoman for whom he house-sits. Penny and Paul had been invited but had to cry off because Paul had been struck down with a bad back. We first met Aat at Penny’s wedding last year. He subsequently exhibited at Pat’s gallery. Pictured above is one of his paintings, Luigi’s Cantina, held by Luigi. The other guests were a couple of Dutch guys who run an agriturismo in Montèlparo and an Italian banker, Livio, from Ascoli. The Dutch couple had spent two years restoring their home which had been empty since 1968 and learning how to tend vines and rear pigs. One of them, a psychologist, is returning to Holland for a few weeks to re-establish contact with former clients. In Holland if a firm fires someone because he’s failing to do his job properly the business is, as a consequence, fined. It’s therefore cheaper for the firm to pay a psychologist to sort him out. Matthijs is hoping to persuade his former clients to send their problem staff to him in Italy - RyanAir flights are cheap whilst conference facilities in Holland are very expensive.

Aat is an excellent cook. The antipasti included excellent homemade asparagus and tuna sauces and exquisitely marinaded artichokes. An excellent lasagna for primo. The pudding was Dutch - a semolina based coconut compote.

K finally enters the castle.

In December 2003 we went to Ascoli Piceno with Fabio to apply for our Permesso di Soggiorno, the document required of all foreigners resident in Italy. In March 2004 the carabinieri arrived to present us with it. It was valid for five years. In 2007 new regulations came into force: EU citizens who had been resident in Italy for five years could apply to their comune for permanent resident status. In January we duly applied to the Comune only to discover to our horror that our permesso had expired not, as we had expected, five years after we’d received it but five years after we’d applied for it. In other words it had lapsed and we would have to begin applying for residence all over again, as though we had only just arrived in the country. Only after another five years would we be able to apply for permanent residency. This morning, Pat received a phone call from the Comune. I went over to the municipio to find that the problem had been miraculously resolved and we’d received our permanent residency after all. If you haven’t lived in Italy you’ll probably shrug your shoulders and say ‘So what? Big deal’. If you have lived in Italy you know that describing Italian bureaucracy as kafkaesque is a monumental understatement. What happened today was a minor miracle: rendiamo grazie a Dio.