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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Nestling in the bosom of the Gauls

We spent Saturday and Sunday as guests of Peppe and Angiola Omenetti at their home just outside Senigallia.
    In reality, the town is named after a Gallic tribe, the Senone, not - as its name seems to suggest - a Gallic bosom. An interesting place with a rectilinear street layout reminiscent of Servigliano - or for those of you who've been there - an American city. Pat and I had a brief wander round the town before we got to Peppe's and I managed to buy this year's Montalbano giallo, Una lama di luce. Hope it's not as disappointing as the last five.  On Saturday evening the Omenetti treated us to a seafood supper at a quayside restaurant. We were joined by four of their friends: Massimo, Tomasso and respective spouses.
   On Sunday morning Massimo took Peppe and us on a guided tour - he works for a cultural organisation. We visited the former friary of  Santa Maria delle  Grazie.  The church itself was chiefly memorable for what I initially assumed to be a recording of the rosary. In reality it was a woman sitting in the front pew of an otherwise empty building reciting the prayers over a PA system. Maybe it was a penance for some particularly heinous sin. The ex-friary itself housed a museum of country life. A hand-cranked machine for cutting up cattle-feed was amongst its many exhibits. I assume it was similar to the one which cut off my grandfather's finger. The museum also contained a collection of stuffed birds. Glancing at their labels I was surprised to find that one of them, a small owl, was called a civetta, a word I'd always assumed meant shrew. A quick check in the dictionary revealed the source of my confusion: as well as meaning a small owl, civetta can also mean a minx, the only context in which I'd previously come across it. So I've now learnt that whilst in English such women are named after small rodents, in Italian they're likened to small birds!
   We then visited the Church of San Martino. A middle-aged man in an open-necked shirt gave us a long talk about the church's treasures and finally presented us with a book about its eighteenth century land-registry map. I assumed he was the sacristan but it turned out he was the parish priest, Fr. Giuliano Grassi OSM. Being very old I still instinctively expect priests to be wearing a soutane or at least a black suit and a dog-collar. No reason why they should - Christ and the Apostles seem to have sported some sort of nightshirt. But confusing nonetheless.

The Courtyard Circular: May & June

Term has begun and the day-boys are slowly trickling in. Jane has been here since the middle of May, Norman and Jayne arrived on Tuesday, John and Judy arrive today, and Tony and Shona next Wednesday.

On the 27th of May we had the chimneys swept which led to the discovery that many of our roof-tiles had been damaged by the winter's heavy snow. Fortunately the sweep's brother was a roofer and he replaced the damaged tiles over the following two Saturdays.

Also on the 27th, together with Jane and Angela and Peppe Omenetti, I went on an excursion organised by the Tartufi association of Amandola. It was led by an expert on wild orchids and we spent a day in the Sibillini foothills examining innumerable species. Rather wasted on me: I think wild flowers are attractive but learning about them in detail is about as exciting as watching a cricket match. However, the lunch at the Rifugio di Amandola was excellent. The following Tuesday, as Pat is interested in flowers - though, thank heavens, she's not so perverse as to find cricket  worth watching - I took her to the first wild-flower meadow I'd visited with the group. I'd taken a photo of  the meadow on my iPhone and TomTom satnav allows you to navigate to a photograph. Not a feature I'd previously thought would ever be useful.

Pat was in the UK from the 8th to the 16th June and Dave came over from the 11th to the 15th to keep me company. The weather in England was awful and she was glad to get back to an Italy basking in temperatures in the high twenties; this week it climbed into the mid-thirties. However, there was a downside to Italy's lacking the UK's rainfall. Having, in Pat's absence, to do all the watering I got up at six every morning  to walk the dogs, and water the orto and the courtyard. As Dave and I sat up until the small hours drinking and reminiscing I was absolutely knackered by the time Pat arrived in Ancona at twenty to nine on the evening of the 16th. Have just about recovered now. As I mentioned in the last circular, Dave is heavily into vaping. Just as the internet site, iLounge, has a section for Apple fanboys to display photos of their iPhones in exotic locations, so one of the vaping forums displays pictures of vapers' equipment in interesting places. I accordingly took this photo for Dave to display.

Housewives no longer desperate.

 
 
We watched the final two episodes of Desperate Housewives on Wednesday, a show which has been part of our mental hinterland since 2005. Like most long-running series it had gradually run out of steam, shedding viewers on the way. On a superficial level the ending was ludicrous: I know little about the American legal system but find it hard to believe that any system would have credited Mrs McCluskey's confession or ignored the mass of evidence of Bree's involvement.
However, like the equally improbable myths of the world's great religions, the ending did contain two profound truths: the redemptive power of love and the fact that, as Christ put it, 'Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it'. Mrs McCluskey's redemptive gesture was a direct result of the housewives offering her terminal nursing care - not that it was much in evidence! Their act of love brought them salvation. And it was only when the housewives leave the comfort zone of their life in Wisteria Lane that they are able to achieve their full potential: Lynette as CEO of the American branch of a multinational company, Gabrielle with her own company and television show. In a nicely judged satirical touch, the alcoholic and promiscuous Bree - who against all the evidence believes herself to be the embodiment of traditional American values - is elected to the Kentucky State Legislature as a conservative Republican Representative.
As no one reads this blog, there is no danger of my appearing in Private Eye's 'Pseuds' Corner' leaving me free to share this final flight of fancy:
Just as Christ had his Last Supper with his disciples the day before he left this earthly life so the housewives met for a final game of poker. Re-enacted as the Mass, the Last Supper symbolises the bond between christians; similarly, their card game had a quasi-sacramental role for the housewives.
As with Lost, the programme's producer gave it a closure which, whilst not entirely convincing or stemming naturally from the hodgepodge of material which had proceeded it, did articulate:
 
'Our almost instinct almost true
What will survive of us is love.'

Philip Larkin and the translators of the Authorised Version may have put the idea more elegantly but, to adapt the Heineken beer slogan, I guess Desperate Housewives refreshes the hearts the others cannot reach.
 

Earthquake in the north.

April's revelation of the corruption at the heart of the holier-than-thou Northern League was followed by the collapse of its vote in last month's local elections. Tragically the benign psephological earthquake which had metaphorically struck 'Padania' was followed this month by its literal cousin.

   The picture below graphically reveals that northern Italy's problems don't stem from an influx of African immigrants, as the xenophobic and racist Northern League would have its deluded followers believe. The real danger comes from the African continent itself pushing further into Europe as the Apennine phallus attempts to penetrate  the mons veneris of the Alps. Geologically speaking, Italy is part of Africa not Europe; the real immigrants are the Bossi clan not the poor souls fleeing across the mediterranean to escape war and famine.