of computer problems and climatic anomalies

Well, again some technical problems forced me into a short break from posting on this blog. This time it was a virus on my computer. A pop-up claiming I needed to update my Google tool box turned up on my screen and couldn’t be clicked away. Alarm bells should have been ringing then, but foolishly I clicked ok, the only option that seemed to work and bang! there it was. I couldn’t access the internet for a bit. Our extremely helpful and friendly neighbour Marco came up with a solution though and everything is running smoothly again without any permanent damage. Thank Marco for that!

Talking about technical problems, my printer, a Canon Pixma IP 2000, was also playing up. A message told me that it’s ‘ink absorber’ was full and that I would have to take it to an authorised Canon service department. Marco did a quick internet search and also found a solution to this problem. All I had to do was press a few buttons in a specific sequence and, hey bingo, the printer works again. Is this some sort of scam by Canon to get their service departments some work? You take your machine to one, they tut and hah: “ooh, that’ll cost you mate…”, give it back to you the next day and charge you €30 for a 2 minute job. Sort of an inbuilt, pre-designed fault to make you spent some more money with their company? Sounds ridiculous to me.

Anyway, what else has been happening in the meantime I hear you ask. Well It has rained a lot. A hell of a lot! Shortly after the last post it started. Some villages along the rivers Magra and Vara were cut off from the outside world due to flooding. Below you see a photo of the Magra on one of the few days on which we had a break in the weather and judging by the rubbish stuck in the trees (which normally stand on dry land!) the river was up to about 2 ½ metres above it’s normal level.
This weather is being blamed by a wind called the Scirocco. It’s a south-westerly originating in the Sahara desert in Africa. Now you’d think a wind coming from the desert brings nice warm and dry weather to your shore, but unfortunately it crosses a fair bit of the Mediterranean on it’s way here, where it can pick up plenty of water. Once it arrives up here with us it meets up with a cold air sitting on top of the alps and northern Appenines and simply dumps half of the Mediterranean Sea over our heads.

And talking of climatic anomalies, our car appears to have developed it’s own micro-climate. Somewhere it has sprung a leak and with all that rain there are some serious puddles, if not to say ponds inside the car. This means, even when the sun is shining outside, it’s raining inside the car. It’s like a tropical rainforest. I need wipers more urgently for the insides of the windows than for the outsides! And with us transporting a lot of freshly cut wood in the car, we have introduced quite a varied wildlife to the car as well. In one of the ponds I believe the first signs of some primeval life form have started to evolve.

Enough of all that. Since about Wednesday the weather has finally improved again and the sun is back. We built a small poly tunnel as you can see above and will sow some early lettuces out in there this weekend. Today I sowed the first indoor seeds, namely various tomatoes, various peppers, aubergines, melons, cucumbers, chillies, basil, savoury, chervil, dill. And the best news of all, Mickey the kitten is finally over her period of being on heat and doesn’t miaow at us all night, nor do the toms outside.

A horse, a kingdom for a horse (and plough)

I thought we'll get some more work done, before I'm off to Germany with Stefano. Susan sowed some carrots, parsley and Swiss chard, whilst I dug a new bed for sowing & planting later. Hard work that with a spade. Dug over a large bed of about 6x2 metres. Wouldn't it be so much easier with a plough and horse. Mind you getting the horse down our steep terraces would be job in itself. I suppose I'd have to carry it...

Meanwhile the talk of the village is the early return of the swallows. Dario had spotted some and he had never seen them as early as that. And right enough, next day we had seen them too. This winter deserved it's title a bit more than last year, where it was cancelled completely, but whilst at least we had some rain, frost was rare. The weather has still been fine, although the nights are a bit chillier and there were some signs of ground frost at least the last few days. We could do with some rain again I think, now that we've sown out things. I'm going to have to get used to the cold of Germany again next week, brrr...

Quando ‘r pèo I fa ‘r grizin

Quando ‘r pèo I fa ‘r grizin
Lascia ‘a môssa e date ar vin
(When the hair turns grey,
Leave the women and date wine)
Riccardo Borghetti


Just as I thought I’m getting the hang of Italian we get invited to the launch of the latest CD of local hero and troubadour Riccardo Borghetti, who sings all his songs in Spezzini, the dialect of La Spezia! Women instead of donne become môssa. ‘k’ sounds become slurred ‘g’ sounds (as in the g in George when you’ve had a bit too much to drink). ‘tch’ sounds become ‘ss’ sounds and a load of other confusions. Everything becomes softer, a bit like Portuguese in sound, although influences are more French apparently. Riccardo Borghetti is the most famous current musician in the province, his greatest claim to fame being the fact that he wrote the supporter song for Spezia football club, after they got promoted to Serie B last season. We managed to get an invite to this exclusive event, because, in addition to his usual band he needed an extra accordion player (our neighbour Mauro) and a banjo player (our neighbour Marco). Incidentally, Marco reckons with me and him both playing the banjo, Ponzano Superiore possibly has the largest concentration of banjo players in Italy.

The music? Well his voice is certainly distinct, especially after several cigarettes and glasses of red wine. Folk-pop probably describes it best. Bits of Country and even rock come out in between, certainly a sense of humour, no… it sort of grows on you. The man doesn’t have a web-site as far as I can see, otherwise I’d direct you towards it for a sound sample. After the show there was traditional food: farinata (little chickpea fritters) and mes-ciua (a soup consisting of chickpeas, cannelloni beans and farro) and wine from the nearby Cinque Terre. And afterwards we went to Ali’s Pub next to the market in La Spezia with Marco and Susana and their parents. Really nice evening out!

Susan in the meantime has nearly finished her first week’s teaching. And it hasn’t turned out as bad as she had feared. She takes 10 different classes, which means she only has to prepare one lesson a week. I told her it would be good idea to start with a sporty theme in her first lesson to get their attention, as most Italian kids are sports mad. So as there are the 6-Nations on at the moment she tried to interest them in some rugby: Contrast and compare football versus rugby. Amongst the things we came up with was in football they dive and feign injury, but if a rugby player stays down he’s broken a leg! Anyway, some classes seem to have been better than others, but certainly manageable. Next week she’ll do Irish music. I on the other hand will be away from Sunday to Wednesday or so for a couple of wine tasting events in Germany with one of my clients.

On the agricultural front, we haven’t done much on the land, but I sowed a lot of things indoors. Here’s the list: peppers, cucumbers, 3 types of tomatoes, melons, aubergines, chervil, basil, savoury, tarragon, dill and chillies. If only half of this takes we’ll be well supplied over the summer and autumn.