Day 2
Day 2
Day 1.
That was about it for today.
More of the same tomorrow. (minus the cricket… but I’m sure my lot will be able to find other sporting events to subject me to!).
The longest memory by Fred D’Aguiar
The lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
I’ve been trying to write this post for the past three days but real life is taking over and time seems to just disappear.
Our family will be wildly scattered around the globe in the next week, the house needs to be sorted for my parents who will look after the dog (who hates suitcases and follows me around everywhere.). I’ve been furiously doing lots of washing and ironing because there’s nothing worse thank coming back to a mountain of washing already waiting for you and watching lots of episodes of Lucifer, which is terribly bad and terribly addictive. The pseudo religious references are hilarious.
I should be packing my bag for our holiday instead I’ve been booking skips for a friend, sorted out the gate people out there fixing out gate, made coffees, called the council emergency line because the poor chaps found a gigantic wasps nest hidden in the hedge and … disturbed it… and got stung and it was scary… then I ironed the last few things, packed No 3’s bag, called the plumber for my parents, and now I’m sitting here in a daze because it’s only 10.30am and my brain feels fried.
As usual it takes me longer to decide what books to take with me than which clothes… I’m still not sure, but I’ll probably take the Beauty Myth (by Naomi Wolf) to finish and then a few chewing gum for the brain novels just to rest my brain. And the kindle. Just in case.
But let’s talk about the two books I mentioned above. They’re both part on the reading list of one of my courses next year.
‘The Longest memory’ is one of those books that will echo in your head for ages after you close the last page. We’re in Virginia, in the 18th century on a plantation… there’s Chapel and his thirst for knowledge and learning and who tries to run away, Whitechapel his father, the oldest slave of the plantation who inadvertently betrays him, there’s Lydia, the white girl who he loves. There’s a society who de-humanize people, hate, respect, humility and cruelty. It’s about the relationship between masters and slaves, between slaves and slaves. Each chapter is written from the point of view of a different character and you get to know all different point of view on the story. Absolutely brilliant, poignant, heartbreaking. It’s only a short novel but it definitively pack a punch, there’s a lot ‘written’ in between the lines.
Sam Selvon’s The lonely Londoners is very different. It’s a vivid portrait of the immigrants life of a bunch of characters arriving in London in the 50s from Jamaica. They’re workers, hustlers, friends, lovers; they try to make it against all odds, they try to get by in a country that is cold, that doesn’t welcome them, that doesn’t really want them… and they do this in all manners of ways, different attitudes, different spirits. The language is great too, took me a while to get used to it and to properly understand it… but it’s has a musicality all of its own and it’s almost better to read it out loud. I had never read anything of this period in English history and I really enjoyed it.
And now I must seriously get back to my packing!
Yesterday we had a special service at Gloucester Cathedral for this year School Leavers. Aside from the fact that I can’t quite reconcile with the fact my first born has finished school… it was a wonderful service. Beautiful words, beautiful hymns… and I cried… managed to hold back the ugly crying… but I felt a huge/gratitude/respect love for him and his school/teachers/friends. These kids are the future… and let me tell you, the future doesn’t look too bad at all.
Anyway, the Dean said a lovely thing in his speech. He mentioned how the Cathedral (the school is attached to it) is now part of them, and always will be. And they are part of the Cathedral in the wider sense and he hopes they can be like its ‘living stones’ in the world; knowing where they belong to, but moving on and taking its strength with them.
I love the image and it reminded me of this Mary Oliver poem:
Watering the Stone by Mary Oliver
Every summer I gather a few stones from
the beach and keep them in a glass bowl.
Now and again I cover them with water,
and they drink. There’s no question about
this; I put tinfoil over the bowl, tightly,
yet the water disappears. This doesn’t
mean we ever have a conversation, or that
they have the kind of feelings we do, yet
it might mean something. Whatever the
stones are, they don’t lie in the water
and do nothing.
Some of my friends refuse to believe it
happens, even though they’ve seen it. But
a few others—I’ve seen them walking down
the beach holding a few stones, and they
look at them rather more closely now.
Once in a while, I swear, I’ve even heard
one or two of them saying “Hello.”
Which, I think, does no harm to anyone or
anything, does it?
‘Wimbledon’ is as English as it’s possibly be… as English as strawberries and cream (sadly, I didn’t have any…) and Pimm’s (… ahem… moving on swiftly) and on a superbly sunny day like yesterday it was pretty glorious.
(It is, however, incredibly and anachronistically white/middle class English… not quite, not at all actually, a true representation of modern England the way that I see it… AND my blood got to boiling point when the army of grey haired/linen suits men in front of us upped and left after the Federer’s game and didn’t bother watching Serena Williams – female/black, take your pick – and that left a sour taste in my mouth).
If we can concentrate on the tennis though it was amazing. Speaking as someone that in the first two lessons, a couple of years ago, managed never to serve in the right box and got tennis elbows in BOTH elbows… I was in awe. How can anyone hit that little yellow ball at 147mph (the fastest serve we saw yesterday) and still make it go in the right place… is beyond comprehension.
so much fun.
Don’t ask me what possessed me to bake brownies first thing in the morning the other day… because I have no idea… I had eggs that needed to be used, I had children ready to eat them so I found myself melting butter and chocolate and trying not to drool in the pan
The recipe is from the big anthology of Delia Smith, which I don’t use much because it hasn’t got any pictures and I like to see what ‘something’ is supposed to look like at the end. I figure brownies would be ok though… I mean, brownies are… brown, quite flat, squidgy in the middle…
Anyway, the ingredients are in the photo above and here are the instructions. I omitted the nuts because they would have cause a riot.
Easy peasy. In the interest of disclosure, I think the amount of sugar is waaaay too much. I would literally used 50/80gr less next time. Don’t know what would happen to the ‘chemistry’ of the things, but we’ll see.
They are however, delicious. crunchy and chewy on the outside and moorishly (is that a word?) soft/gooey on the inside.
They didn’t last long.
They are definitely in the ‘to do again’ pile. Possibly after my ‘oh god I need to wear a swimming costume’ week in Greece… you know how it goes.
Do you have a favourite brownie recipe? a really dark chocolety flavoured brownie recipe… they’re all seem so sweet… do share!
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Who doesn’t love Greek myths and stories? who doesn’t love the Iliad?… I do… it’s my favourite… in Italy it’s a huge part of the curriculum together with the Odyssey and the Aeneid… I studied it, read it, translated part of it, wrote essays and had exams… No matter how many times you read it you always find some new detail or imagery or turn of phrase…
Cantami, o Diva, del Pelìde Achille l’ira funesta che infiniti addusse lutti agli Achei…. this is how it begins, in Italian of course…
Anyway, Achilles is my hero. And Patroclus too… hard to choose between the two… Yeah, I know there are others… but Paris is an idiot, Hector… maybe… Ulysses thinks a pile of himself, Menelaos is a cuckoo, Agamennones, nah, never liked him… but in the end is all about Achilles for me; a couple of years ago I read the brilliant ‘The song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller, which rekindled the fire and so when I saw this latest Pat Barker novel I simply couldn’t resist it.
The novel tells the story from a completely different angle, it’s actually Briseis, Achilles’ slave who’s the narrator and it’s absolutely fascinating. She’s angry and bitter and sad… she does NOT like the Greeks, for the first time it’s not about glory and heroism, but exploitation and cruelty and the worst side of the war. It’s a story about defeat, rather than victory. Unusual, but for that reason utterly compelling.
I got a little cross with the dissing of my hero… but actually… it all turns out as it should…. it simply is a brilliant, well written novel. (I did get a little bit bored with the some of the negative descriptions and Briseis’ ‘feelings’, if I have to be honest, but it’s a minor niggle.)
Do read it. It’s fab. And if you’re in a book group it would spark great discussions. Just, just read it.
One more posts.
Just for me. So I can remember.
Cesena:
It was a fab few days.
They could have been filled with longing and sadness but instead it was laughter and fondness and remembering and the certainty that leaving all those years ago had been absolutely the right thing to do. Friends, real friends, always remain friends and it’s easy to pick up where we left off but my life was, is, elsewhere and … yes… it was very good to come back home to my tribe, recharged and ready to go.
Day 2.
I woke up in my parents’ place in Tuscany…
… and had to force myself to get up… it’s such a relaxing place I feel immediately lazy and chilled there…
… the weather is incredible, really really hot. Not that I’m complaining!
I then drove to my home town to have breakfast in the best possible way, standing at the counter in a bar full of locals with the tiniest of espresso (which packed a hefty punch) and the best pastry: a ‘bombolone’, a fried doughnut filled with custard – sorry English friends, this jam business is an abomination, get in with the custard!
This weekend is slowly turning into a feed-fest… which was not my intention.
Especially because after a morning of mooching around the local market we made it to the coast and had lunch here:
In the afternoon I went back into Cesena for a sport of shopping (… when in Rome, right?) and to meet up with my all school friends, so it hasn’t been only about the food I promise
Enjoy, it’s no me.
These are ‘piadine’ (plural, ‘piadina’ singular, let’s get things straight). And they are delicious.
It’s a food typical of this region ‘Romagna’, the eastern side of Emilia Romagna, it is a flat bread usually made with white flour, lard or olive oil, salt and water. The dough was traditionally cooked on a terracotta dish, although nowadays flat pans or electric griddles are commonly used. And it’s delicious. It’s sold in kiosk all over the region and it’s proper street food, cheap and freshly made. It’s eating during meals instead of bread, or with cold cuts of meat, or cheese… I like the double ones, closed in half like a ‘calzone’, filled with ‘herbs’, or tomato and mozzarella.
Piadine are cheap, 0.75 Euro for a plain one, £2.50 for a filled one. And need to be eaten fresh, the next day they are already hard.
Mum and I de-toured off the motorway to get some at an old favourite place, queueing with the locals like we used to do when we live here.
Every time I eat one is a real Proustian Madeleines moment… those ephemeral moments that last only the length of a breath and then they’re gone, that leave you with the memory of a memory, the feeling of the past. This food, this taste, this city is part of me. It is my past, it is who I was and who I left behind and have become.
At the end of the road there was a green grocer who used to gift me juicy San Marzano tomatoes every time mum shopped there. Behind the kiosk is the police Academy where dad used to work and behind that the first home I remember. I can close my eyes and see all places I used to go, the schools I attended, the friends’ homes, the running track, the shops, the parks, the churches, the streets… all connected by million of steps taken, and cycle rides and moped rides and later by car journeys… like a tight spider web that nevertheless couldn’t hold me here.
Do I miss it? No. I don’t regret leaving.
Am I glad it still exists?. Yes, I am.
while you're ahead... 