End of World Review

The twin highlights of 2012 were the family get-together

in August - when James, Gabrielle, Ruby and Olly made it across from Australia together with Candy and Quinn and Matthew and Charlie from Norfolk - and Pat's riding holiday with Sophy in Ireland the previous month.

Pat made her usual Flying Granny visits to the UK at regular intervals to look after Quinn. Apart from the family in August, we had Maggie and Phil as guests in March, and Dave came over in June to keep me company during one of Pat's visits to Candy and Quinn. An extremely severe winter - we were snowed in for four weeks -

prevented us from coming over for Quinn's birthday but we made it for Candy's in April, and I was able to pop over to Leicester for a couple of days to see Dave & Sue. In July I took Quinn with me to Leicester while Pat was in Ireland and we both had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

My final visit to the UK in November

ended unhappily as I managed to leave my suitcase on the train. Not, alas, the only sign of my deteriorating memory: next stop the Laurels! Fortunately, the suitcase was recovered and Pat brought it back to Italy the following month. It did, however, lead to an underwear crisis which I failed to resolve satisfactorily. Apart from visits to the UK we had two trips to Senigallia on the Adriatic coast to stay with two Italian friends, Peppe and Angiola.

Next March we plan, Mayan prophecies allowing, to visit Sophy and Adam in Dubai.

We has a super Christmas last year

with Sophy and Adam and Candy and Quinn, but were expecting to spend this year on our own. Happily, owing to a change of plans, Sophy and Adam will be coming across from Christmas Eve to the 29th. This year I failed to get any letters published in the Guardian. However, my English tourist guide to Montefalcone, published by the Comune, did get a mention in the Italian press. My translation of two mediæval texts about the Appenine Sybil has fared less well, the President of the Mountain Community insisting that it contain an Italian as well as an English translation of Antoine de la Salle's Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle. God knows why as there is an Italian translation readily available and in my view the language into which a text is being translated should always be done by a native speaker. And the more I read Italian the more it reveals its way of structuring experience to be very different from that of the English language. A reflection, I suppose, of its different culture: its attitude to animals and the behaviour of its old men are two cases in point. Not that English culture is static: it's changing as its vocabulary becomes increasingly Americanised and its sport globalised.

Northern Italy suffered two major earthquakes this year, the earlier one figurative, the latter literal. The second devastated swathes of Emilia Romagna, the first exposed the xenophobic and separatist Northern League as being as corrupt as Italy's other political parties. Their only saving grace is that they have the sense to realise that Europe hangs together or its nations will hang separately as the balance of power swings eastwards. Meanwhile the UK's paranoia increases as it tilts at bogus enemies whilst its leaders snuggle ever closer to its inhabitants' real foes. Having made great strides in its mission to destroy the NHS, the Tories are renewing their attack on the BBC - after the temporary setback to the fortunes of its puppet-master Murdoch - by using the Savile affair as a crowbar. If the blogosphere is to be believed, there were far more powerful figures involved in his repulsive circle of abusers than a few clapped out DJs. Some at the very top of government in the 1970s have sailed off to the next world, others are still alive and as exempt from police investigation as Savile was when it might have done some good. Meanwhile the BBC is being berated for wasting public funds on Entwhistle's £450,000 pay-off. Rather fades into insignificance, I'd say, compared to the £370,000 pension the taxpayer is giving Fred Goodwin every year for helping to plunge the country into its greatest post-war financial crisis.

Apart from War and Peace my reading has has been largely confined to crime fiction: Dave introduced me to Jo Nesbos and Fred Vargas's novels, and they were a jolly good read. The one literary work I read, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, was a disappointment. In an attempt to improve her mind, Pat is doggedly persevering with Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain. She is not enjoying it!

Finally, if you wish to respond to this post Lynn Truss may be able to give you some hints. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all - assuming the Mayans got it wrong!

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Pat Tyler

Pat got from the UK last Friday after a week at Candy's working hard tiling her bathroom and finishing knitting Quinn's cardigan. She brought back my suit carrier and a large number of Christmas presents, one of which - shampoo from Deborah- was confiscated by Stansted security.

The dying of the light.

For some years now I haven't had to remember much: my memory's been outsourced to the Internet. Can't recall the source of a quotation? No problem, just Google it. And the coming of the iPhone meant this information was always on tap. No doubt the spread of literacy brought a similar feeling of emancipation to those who'd been previously totally reliant on their powers of recall. And just like an unfortunate who's lost a scrap of paper containing a piece of vital information, I'm bereft when our Internet connection's down. But unlike the scrap of paper, the information in cyberspace is still there and can be retrieved the following day.
   Two years ago, having bought an iPhone 4, I gave Candy my first iPhone, the 3G, which I'd acquired in the summer of 2008. On my recent visit to England I similarly passed on the iPhone 4, having upgraded to this year's model, and Quinn became the proud recipient of the 3G - minus SIM card - which he is using to play games on. But what a sad state the phone is in, bits of plastic are flaking off, and the volume switch has virtually disintegrated. Unfortunately, as my misadventures in England this November bear witness, the physical state of this former repository of my memory reflects the state of my actual memory. My forgetting to remove my luggage from the train, mentioned in an earlier post, was merely the culmination of a series of lapses.
   In the course of mooching about School after the OEs' dinner, Sam, Eccles and I ended up in the choir stalls. A battered copy of The Public School Hymn Book was in the pile of music by the organ. I thumbed through the book to find my favourite hymn, number 311 Lord Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing, always sung on the last day of term. To my horror I discovered that 311 far from being the best of hymns was the very worst: Lord Behold Us with Thy Blessing. No prizes for guessing when that was sung! For over fifty years, ever since leaving the wretched place, I've bored people with my fond recollections of hymn number 311, when all the time it was actually number 317. Soon I'll be confiding to people what a splendid chap Hitler was for standing up to Churchill's aggression and saving England from being invaded by the Nazis.
   Worse was to follow. When Matthew and Charlie came to Candy's for supper the conversation turned to their visit to Montefalcone this year. They said they hoped to come again, to which I responded that it would be a pity if this year's visit should be their only one. But it wasn't, they said. Oh yes it was, I insisted until with a sudden start I remembered that they were of course quite right, and the memory of their visit the previous year blazed into life.
   Just as the colour fades from an old man's hair, so his inner light begins to flicker warning him that soon it will disappear altogether. All that is left is to take to heart Thomas's plea to his father and

'Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'

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Pants!

The word 'pants', as any fule kno, is one of the many examples of the UK and the US being divided by their common language. In America the word signifies 'trousers'; in England what we wear underneath them. I used to be puzzled by the fact that in American English the word can also be used as a pejorative term e.g. 'your phone is pants'. I no longer am.
   A couple of years ago Sophy bought me some Pierre Cardin underpants for Christmas. They were admirable garments in almost every respect: boxers with lycra, my preferred style of underwear. Unfortunately they had a fatal flaw: no flies. One of the many advantages of being male is not having to get undressed every time you want a pee. No long queues in public lavatories for us chaps; no problem either when you're caught short on a country walk. And now, I raged, before throwing them into a drawer for redundant clothes, some buffoon has decided to discard centuries of collective wisdom in order to make a fashion statement. Alas, two years on I have discovered the problem is much greater than even my worst nightmares would have led me to believe. To explain.
  One of the unfortunate consequences of my recent encounter with the widder-woman was  leaving a week's supply of underwear in the UK. This meant I had to fish out the Pierre Cardin pants from the reject drawer. It also meant I had to buy more underwear. And this is when I made my terrible discovery: in the whole of the Girasole shopping centre not a single outlet sold cotton and lycra boxers with flies. The cheap unknown labels had joined their upmarket cousins in this sartorial lunacy. And at last I appreciated our transatlantic cousins' linguistic wisdom: nowadays:

                                                    Pants ARE pants!

… trains and … planes …

On Saturday I returned from a trip I'd made to the UK to attend the OEs' Bristol dinner and to visit Candy and Quinn.
  I'm in rather better physical shape than either my Bristol host, Sam Jefferies - he's been recently diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis - or Sam's other guest, Eccles Vincent, who's recently had a triple heart by-pass. However, as a quick glance at my vacant stare in the photo at the top of the page will confirm, the same cannot be said for my mental state.
  I don't normally talk to my fellow travellers on planes or trains but was given little choice on the second leg of my journey from Bristol to March. Having changed trains at Birmingham I sat next to a student bound for Cambridge and opposite a man in his forties. As soon as I was seated he said, "Why has your hair got no colour?"
  "Because I'm old," I replied. "Yours'll be the same when you reach my age."
  "I don't think so," he replied in a Dublin accent. He was drunk, but not aggressively so, and over the next half an hour or so his life-story emerged. He'd been taken into care at 12, had been living rough for the past five years and had seen the inside of a large number of English and Irish gaols. On Friday he'd been released from Gloucester prison. On Sunday he was arrested in Cheltenham for being drunk and disorderly. Having spent the night in the cells, the magistrate before whom he'd appeared had given him a train ticket to Corby where he had some acquaintances. I learned we shared a christian name and a religion. I didn't begrudge giving him the pound he solicited before he changed trains at Leicester. Neither did the student sitting next to me. Despite his frequent profanities, a well-spoken elderly woman sitting across the aisle gave him some cash without being asked. He didn't  pretend to be anything other than a irredeemable alcoholic or ask for pity, but he certainly evoked it.
    Having had one conversation on a train I made the fatal mistake of having a second. After a pleasant few days with Candy and Quinn - I saw Richard and Jane on Tuesday morning who gave me lunch; Matthew and Charley came to Candy's for dinner the same evening;

on Thursday evening Candy, Quinn and I had dinner at the Crown; and on Friday morning  I went round to see Linda and Shen - Candy took me to Downham station early on Saturday morning. I began chatting to a woman in her sixties on the platform and, having carried her suitcase onto the train bound for King's Cross and stowed my own safely in the luggage-rack, we carried on our conversation. Widowed the same year that  Pat and I moved to Italy, she was on her way to spend one of her twice yearly holidays with her son who had moved to Florida a couple of weeks before his father's unexpected death. Gathering up my hat, scarf and man-bag I bade her farewell at Cambridge where I had to change trains for Stansted. Strolling down the platform and eyeing the closed refreshment kiosks - it was still only 6.30 - I was brought up short by the tannoy warning passengers to keep their luggage with them at all times. With a sickening feeling I realised that mine was heading for King's Cross, snugly ensconced in the luggage rack where I'd left it.
   Fortunately my 'moment of madness' had a happy outcome. Cambridge Station 'Communication Centre' rang King's Cross who phoned Candy when they'd retrieved the case. When Shen returned from visiting his mother in London he brought my case back with him and Pat will bring it home in early December. But I strongly advise my elderly readers to avoid engaging widder-wimmin in conversation when travelling by public transport; instead focus your few remaining mental powers on remembering to take your luggage with you when you alight!

The Courtyard Circular: October 2012

Tuesday 2nd. 

Picked up John and Judy at Comunanza bus station to take them to their home in the Faveto. They had flown to Rome and made the rest of their way via bus and taxi.

Wednesday 3rd - Saturday 6th. 

Spent a very enjoyable few days as Peppe and Angiola's guest in Senigallia.

3rd Visited Senigallia's castle in the afternoon.

4th In the morning went out on Peppe's boat with Peppe and Angiola, Massimo and Augosto. I took    the helm for a while.

In the afternoon Peppe and I visited Pio Nono's birthplace. In the evening we went to the Pesce Azzurro restaurant in Fano with Massimo and his wife, Uliana.

5th After lunch we went to Ancona and visited Trajan's Arch (see head picture), the Archæological museum and the cathedral.

6th In the morning went with Peppe to the Palazzo  Pianetti

 in Jesi via Massimo's country house

 and Ostra.

Lunch at Peppe's house with his son and daughter-in-law and their daughter and his daughter, Giovanna, and her two daughters. In the evening I went to Ancona airport to meet Pat back from her visit to Candy and Quinn.

Thursday 11th 

Supper at Jane's with Peppe and Angiola.


Friday 12th. 

Peppe and Angiola and Tony and Shona came to supper.


Saturday and Sunday 13th &14th. 

Montefalcone's annual Sagra dell'Autunno. Despite a dire weather forecast, it turned out dry and fairly sunny unlike the previous year.


Monday 15th. 

Dinner at the Taverna in Santa Vittoria as Tony and Shona's guests.


Tuesday 16th

Lunch at Jane's with Tony and Shona. They returned to the UK the following day.


Friday 19th. 

Jane came to supper, was very appreciative of Pat's curry. She returned to the UK the following Monday.


Sunday 21st.

Went to Smerillo's annual Castagne in the Piazza.


Wednesday 24th. 

Visited Glyn at his home in Monte Rinaldo in afternoon. Went with him to the Taverna in evening. 


Monday 29th.

Lit fire for the first time since last Spring


Tuesday 30th.

Snow appeared overnight on the Sibillini mountains. Winter has definitely arrived.

The Courtyard Circular: September 2012

Wednesday 5th: To a concert of Bel Canto at Villa Vinci with Jane and her house guest, Don.

Wednesday 12th: To Pedaso for the final swim of the season.

Thursday 13th: Glyn and Jane came to supper.

Saturday 15th: Pat went off to the UK to look after Quinn. She will return on the 6th October.

Sunday 16th: Our neighbour, Polonio, held an afternoon party in the Tronelli Gardens to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of his arrival in Montefalcone. Click here for a video of the event. Sadly, one of the guests, Mario Valentino, died last week when his hairdryer electrocuted him! I'm glad I've always stuck to using a bath towel.

Thursday 20th: To Lupo's with Glyn and Jane.

Saturday 29th: To Peppe and Angiola's for supper.

Shedding of shorts.

Today we have shedding of shorts. Yesterday,
We had nocturnal drizzle. And next month,
We shall have lighting of fires. But today,
Today we have shedding of shorts. The ocean
Glisten'd like jade, beyond all of the basking bodies,
    And today we have shedding of shorts.

[With apologies to Henry Reed]

The temperature in Montefalcone was 28 yesterday and 30 in Pedaso where we spent the day on the beach. However yesterday evening it began raining and today the temperature has dropped to 15. Summer's finally over and I've consequently discarded shorts and sandals in favour of jeans and shoes. A wrench because, apart from my visit to England in July and a couple of days last week when it rained, I've worn shorts every day since June 7th.  

Butterflies, Language and Crime

Last week I read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and ended up feeling like Ray Bradbury's Eckels, just back from his holiday, staring at the sign in Time Safari's office.
  Previously I'd been reading nothing but crime fiction. Dave had  introduced me to Jo Nesbo and Fred Vargas and I thoroughly enjoyed both of the books he lent me: Nesbo's The Redbreast and Vargas's Have Mercy on Us All. He told me that like Camelleri's Montalbano novels Vargas's should ideally be read in sequence as there is a developing thread connecting them - in the case of Commissaire Adamsberg his relationship with his occasional lover Camille. So I began with The Chalk Circle Man. which I found entertaining but far less interesting than Have Mercy on Us All.  I read the next book in the sequence - Seeking Whom He May Devour - hoping to confirm the obvious explanation that Vargas's skills improved with time. At first, to my consternation, I found this book rather tedious, possibly because Adamsberg hardly features in it until half way through. I also had problems with the translator, David Bellos, choosing to give the book a new title rather than simply translating its original: L'Homme à l'envers. The book centres on a homicidal wolf, and in the AV's translation of Peter's first epistle 'seeking whom he may devour' refers to a lion not a wolf. Although Bellos puts the phrase into the mouths of characters in the novel I doubt that the French original used an instantly recognisable allusion to the Petrine epistle. The original title, on the other hand, neatly encapsulates both the novel's central motif, lycanthropia, and the dual nature of the murderer. That aside, once Adamsberg took centre-stage things improved enormously so I'll probably buy the next in the series: Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand.
   This year's offering by Camilleri, Una lama di luce, was a distinct improvement on the last few books. Once again Montalbano was playing Mike Tucker to an intelligent version of Vicky but this time he ended the relationship because he'd come to terms with the reality of his life:

E ora sapiva finalmenti quello che doviva fari. Con la sò morti, François ligava lui a Livia e Livia a lui chiossà d'essere maritati.
…Quella stissa sira, alle novi, Marian tuppiò a longo a 'na porta che non sapiva che non le sarebbi stata mai cchiù aperta.
And now he finally knew what he had to do. François [a boy he'd once been going to adopt] had bound him to Livia [his long term partner] with his death more than if they were married.
… At nine the same evening Marian [the younger woman] knocked at the door for a long time, unaware that it would never again be opened.

   Having overdosed on gialli, I thought that it was time to take a break from crime fiction and read a 'proper' novel again. Bel Canto was one of the books we'd inherited from Laurie when she sold her house in Italy, and I was encouraged to read it by an article in the Corriere which, starting from the absurd premise that women are incapable of writing great fiction, listed Ann Patchett as a case in point. Alas the novel didn't reveal her to be another Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf or Margaret Atwood, let alone an Emily Brontë. Nor had I escaped the world of crime.
   The action of the novel takes place in the official residence of the Vice-President of an unidentified South American country where a birthday party for a Japanese industrialist is being hosted. A passionate opera-lover, he has been persuaded to come to South America because the world's leading soprano has been engaged to sing at the party. The party is interrupted by the violent incursion of a band of rather inept terrorists who hold the guests hostage for several months. Gradually the individual personalities of the guests and terrorists emerge and a variety of relationships develop between them. Most importantly, the Japanese businessman, Mr Hosokawa - we never learn his first name - and the American diva, Roxanne Coss, fall in love; as do his interpreter Gen Watanabe and a female terrorist, Carmen. The setting and the characterisation are handled well, but the ending is lame. Although one could justify it structurally the author fails to make it feel authentic and a great writer must do both. I'd had problems with the novel's authenticity earlier. The guests and terrorists come from a variety of linguistic communities and are consequently heavily dependent on Gen's services. The narrator comments that some have a smattering of languages other than their own and offers the Italians' knowledge of schoolboy French as an example.  The problem is that whilst it is true that Italians learn French at school, anyone who has lived in Italy will know that most Italians have little difficulty in understanding Spanish - the language of the terrorists. A fact which completely escapes Ann Patchett, and a major blunder for a novel which is centred on exploring the relationship between language and life. I thought that I'd detected another problem in the novel's understanding of language. A priest is described as 'performing' sacraments rather than celebrating them, and giving a dying man 'viaticum' rather than the viaticum. I assumed that this would be due to the author being protestant and consequently being as unfamiliar with catholic terminology as she was with Italian culture. Wrong: she had a catholic education. I then assumed that this was an American usage cognate with their calling maths 'math' and sport 'sports'. Wrong again. Consulting the current catholic catechism revealed that the viaticum has dropped the definite article throughout the English-speaking world. The reason for my confusion was that I had stopped practising my religion in England since the early seventies, only returning to it when we moved to Italy. Although, like every language, English is in a constant state of flux, when you live in the middle of the river you're caught up by its movement and are carried along by it. 'Train station' replacing railway station and 'bored of' supplanting bored by are both deplored by us elderly pedants, but they no longer strike us as odd, only regrettable. However, by losing contact with the language of English catholicism for forty years the changes struck me forcefully. By abandoning catholicism, like Eckles I had stepped on a butterfly.
   This Wednesday Pat and I went with Jane and her house-guest, Don, to a concert at Villa Vinci: '"Primadonna" La tradizione del Belcanto'. In Ann Patchett's novel the soprano was a white American and her accompanist Japanese. Villa Vinci is even more sumptuous than the her fictional Vice-President's residence. In a mirror image of the novel, the soprano - Hiroko Morita - was Japanese and her accompanist, Roberto Galletto, white. Fortunately no terrorists emerged from the central heating ducts. But the butterfly put in an appearance: Miss Morita's final aria was Un bel di vedremmo!

The Family Reunion

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE


SYNOPSIS

 The action of the drama is set in and around a small village in central Italy.

Act One: Tuesday 7th August. At one o'clock Pat picks up Matthew and Charlie and Candy and Quinn from Ancona. They had been waiting there since just after ten, their flight having left Stansted at 6.55 not 9.50 as their parents had assumed. The odyssean pattern established in the first act will reveal its full horror in Act Two.

Act Two: Wednesday 8th August.

The family gather at three on the panoramic terrace to greet James, Gabriele, Ruby and Olly who are expected  to arrive between 3 and 3.30, their plane having landed at Ancona shortly after one. After two hours Godot has still not arrived. Around six they receive a desperate phone call from Perugia. It transpires an idiot at Ancona has directed James to Montefalco in Umbria rather than Montefalcone Appennino in Marche. The lost sheep are given directions to Pedaso. At 11 they ring from Pedaso. Pat tells them to station themselves in the central piazza of Pedaso and Jim and Matthew will pilot them to Montefalcone. At midnight they finally arrive.

Act Three: Thursday 9th August.

Apart from Pat, who stayed behind to walk the dogs, the family spent the afternoon on the beach at Pedaso. In the evening they held a barbecue in the courtyard.

Act Four: Friday 10th August.

Pat drives Matthew and Charlie to Ancona from whence they are flown to exile in a rain-swept chilly island off the north coast of Europe. In the evening the remaining members went for Pizza in the Piazza - in reality held in the Tronelli Gardens - accompanied by live music.

Act Five: Saturday 11th August.

The family drove in convoy to Ascoli Piceno. After everyone had toured the cathedral where Ruby lit a candle for Cathy, Pat and Gabriele and Olly and Quinn visited the art gallery whilst Candy and Ruby went shopping and Jim gave James a swift tour of the town's major sites. Everyone met up for drinks at the Caffe Meletti before Pat and Gabriele went to see the Modigliani exhibition in the Palazzo dei Capitani whilst the rest of the family had lunch.
 

In the afternoon they visited the Lake of San Ruffino and James, Candy and the children took a pedalo ride across the lake.
  In a comic masterstroke worthy of Shakespeare, whilst preparing supper Jim is attacked by a jar of passato which leaping from the fridge splatters the kitchen walls and furniture and leaves him with an apparently bloody leg.

Act Six: Sunday 12th August.

In the morning the children watch a DVD of their father in Dalkeith. Ruby and Olly are particularly keen to see James snogging another woman. Jim, James and Gabriele have lunch at il Tiglio whilst Pat and Candy look after the children. In the evening James cooks a much appreciated bolognese for the children.

Act Seven: Monday 13th August.

A trip to the Piano Grande and Norcia. In the evening James cooks a gourmet meal for the whole family.

Act Eight: Tuesday 14th August.

A quiet day prior to James, Gabriele. Ruby and Oliver's departure for Venice. In the evening a farewell meal at the Taverna in Santa Vittoria.

Act Nine: Ferragosto.

Early in the morning James, Gabriele. Ruby and Oliver set off for Ancona, and from there by train to Venice. This time the satnav is working and they reach Ancona without a detour to Perugia.
  In the afternoon Pat, Jim, Candy and Quinn go swimming at Marina di Altidona. Pat cooks chicken fajitas for supper.

Act Ten: Thursday 16th August.

Lunch at the Faro restaurant on Pedaso beach, followed by affogati at a gelateria and a swim at Marina di Altidona. Jim almost drowns trying to retrieve Quinn's inflatable baseball bat.

Eleventh and Final Act: 17th August.

Candy and Quinn are driven to Ancona to begin their journey into exile in the Fenland Penal Colony.

The Courtyard Circular July 2012

July 1st: Garden party at Jane Fineren's. Click here for the video. She returned to the UK on the
5th.

July 6th: Launch of the Montefalcone Tourist Guide in the Tronelli gardens. Click here for the
video.

July 7th: Celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary with lunch at il Tiglio restaurant,
Montemonaco.

July 8th: John and Judy Cairns joined us to watch their compatriot lose the Wimbledon Men's
Finals

July 9th: The first 2 tons of next winter's wood was delivered. Norman and Jayne helped us to
put it in the cantina: a three hour job was completed in less than an hour thanks to
their help.

July 10th: Norman and Jayne came to supper.

July 12th - 21st: Pat in the UK looking after Quinn.

In the evening a party of young people from Padua, staying at
the Domus Appennino, gave a concert in the Tronelli Gardens.

July 16th: Supper at Norman and Jayne's again; had previously gone with Pat and Jane in late
June.

July 18th:

Barbecue at John and Judy's together with Tony and Shona.

July 19th: Norman and Jayne left for England.

July 21st: In the morning an organised trip to the Smerillo fossa together with Tony and Shona.
Click here for a video. In the evening to Tony and Shona's for supper.

July 21st - 27th:
Sophy treated Pat to a riding holiday in Ireland: The Ring of Kerry. Click here for Pat's account of her trip.

July 22nd - 27th: England:

Monday 23rd : to Dave and Sue's with Quinn.

Tuesday 24th: Quinn went swimming with Sue; Dave and I to the Cow and Plough.

Wednesday 25th: to Foxton Locks with Quinn, Dave and Sue and three of Dave's
grandchildren. Click here for video and here for photos.

Thursday 26th: to Dersingham with Quinn to see Matthew and Charlie. Click here
for video. In the evening I went to supper at the Lamb and Flag with Richards and
Jane.

July 27th: Supper at Lupo's with Mick Burton and gave Bruno his electronic pipe.

July 31st: Piatto unico at Lupo's with Peppe and Angiola.

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Paranoia Rules.

 
 
In 2010, when a snowbound passenger was prosecuted for tweeting that he'd like to blow up the airport in which he was stranded, I thought that John Bull's island had plumbed the depths of stupidity.
Yesterday I was proved wrong. Some dipstick got the driver of the coach he was travelling on to summon assistance because a man of 'asian appearance' was pouring liquid into what turned out to be an electronic cigarette. As a consequence a motorway was closed for seven hours as 'a full multi-agency response was put into motion, with an army bomb disposal team, a chemical and biological weapons team, armed police, counter-terrorism officers, ambulance and fire crews'.
I know it's not a crime to be stupid, otherwise the gaols would be full to overflowing with Daily Mail readers and every non-billionaire who's ever voted Tory. But in this case I think an exception should be made for the dipstick, the coach-driver and whoever failed to check the facts before launching the 'multi-agency response' and making hundreds of people's lives a misery.
 

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Technophobia.

 
We are just recovering from 24 hours without the internet: no newspapers, no radio, no Wimbledon info for Pat etc. I spent much of that time desperately seeking to restore the connection.
However, to people like our occasional neighbours, Norman and Jayne, such dependancy merely evokes contemptuous laughter: computers, smartphones and tablets are silly irrelevancies, unnecessarily complicating the straightforward business of everyday life. I'm sure the mediæval world was full of people who similarly poured scorn on those sad folk who laboriously wrote things down rather than simply committing them to memory. For, in the middle ages, people's memories were very good. They needed to be as most people were illiterate and the average book cost the equivalent of several thousand pounds in today's money. One Pope was reputed to know the whole of the Bible by heart and it was not uncommon for a monk to have memorised the psalter.
Significantly, Norman commented that, in his days on the bench, using a computer was a task he left to his secretary; once again he was reflecting mediæval attitudes. Prior to Henry II English kings were illiterate. The sovereign and the aristocracy had a man to do their reading and writing just as they had a cook to prepare their meals, a groom to look after their horses, and a bailiff to oversee their estates. The Renaissance brought a gradual shift in attitudes. Education became the prerogative of the upper classes rather than a field best left to a short-sighted peasant unfit for farm work. Oxford and Cambridge became finishing schools for the gentry rather than institutions for training those same peasants to become priests or gentlemen's secretaries.
The history of the secondary school I attended illustrates this development. It was founded in the late sixteenth to provide a comprehensive education for poor children. The academically inclined were prepared for Oxbridge, those of a practical bent for apprenticeships. Come the Civil War, everything changed: a university education was no longer considered appropriate for the common people and the school stopped sending boys to university for a century and a half. In the nineteenth century things evolved once more. It began sending boys to university again, but it also started recruiting fee-payers.
Within the last few years the foundation boarders - I was one - who paid no fees and for whom the school was founded, have disappeared, entirely replaced by fee-paying day-boys. And computer-literacy forms an integral part of their education.
'The moral of this story, the moral of this song is that one should not be where one does not belong.' It's no longer the twelfth century, modern man does not belong there. 'For the times they are a changing': illiteracy has long been the hallmark of the alumni of the lower streams of Bash Street Comprehensive rather than the distinguishing characteristic of the gentleman. Similarly, feeling at ease with computer technology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the pimply nerd with malodorous armpits. We are rapidly approaching the time when technophobia will be more readily associated with elderly readers of the Daily Mail and with the lumpenproletariat than with membership of the Establishment.
 

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