High in the hills near Montalbano Elicona, north of Etna, there is a plateau, called the Argimusco. In the middle of this plateau stand five megalithic rocks. Each has a name, according to its shape: the eagle; the lion; the big cliff; the praying woman; the old mother. The peace up there is total. No car horns, no voices, no machinery. Just the clang of goat bells drifting through the enveloping cloud, and the occasional muffled thud of wild horses’ hooves on bracken-covered earth.
I could have stayed there forever.
After the storm, the rainclouds remain as a warning
Goats galore
Minor rock formations
La Grande Rupe (the big cliff) viewed from behind
I’m not sure which rock formation this is a part of, but to me it looks like a face.
Dung beetles!
She was impressive, this spider, measuring a good four to five inches. Arachnophobes beware.
L’Aquila (The Eagle)
Il Leone (the lion) and, to the left of the picture, L’Orante (the praying woman)
La Grande Rupe and L’Orante (The Praying Woman) – she’s at the right hand end of the cliff, dressed in a robe with her hands folded in prayer.
Busy, buzzing bumble bees, busily being bees.
Tumbledown
Thornbush roots below L’Orante
Goats galore
L’Aquila looms through gathering clouds
From the bottom of La Grande Rupe’s heart …
Have you ever breathed in the scent of a cloud? I recommend it. Like dry ice, but without the cloying chemical choke, and with a fresh, damp feeling to it. There’s nothing quite as likely to transport you to another world …
Wild horses
Following the leader
The baby of the bunch
Mother and foal
Curious cows
The view from behind
The sun always shines on TV (or in the wing mirror).
Montalbano Elicona
Here be dragons …
Random dry stone walls in the middle of nowhere.
Tholos. Somehow linked to the dry stone walls, but there was no explanation at the site.
Another curious cow. She stared at us for a full quarter of an hour.
Beautiful. On our way home, driving through the Strada dei Vini near Mojo Alcantara. I’m assuming the hill in the middle was once a volcanic crater.
I’m at the station in Catania, battling with the automatic ticket machine. First the screen freezes, then, just as I’m about to pay with a twenty euro note, it tells me that it doesn’t have change. Most days this would result in me losing my temper, but today – unusually – I’m running ahead of schedule, it’s hot and I’m not bothered. I amble over to the desk to try my luck there instead.
An old lady scurries past me, pulling a tiny wheeled suitcase behind her.
At the desk a professionally bored and supercilious cashier is in the process of condescending to a woman in the middle of buying a ticket. The old lady with the suitcase stands at the woman’s shoulder, twittering madly. “Sorry gioia. I don’t mean to be a pain, but my train goes in fifteen minutes and I’m in a rush!” The cashier rolls her eyes. Unfazed, the old lady carries on chattering. “When you have a moment, gioia. Sorrysorrysorry!” The woman being served glances sideways and copies the cashier’s eyeroll. The old lady is undeterred. “One to Letojanni, if you wouldn’t mind. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.” She starts fishing around in her purse for small change, oblivious to the fact that the cashier has no intention of serving her until she’s finished with the other woman’s transaction. “How much is it, gioia?”
The woman before the old lady in the queue takes her ticket and walks away. The old lady scuttles into position in front of the window and the cashier, with ill grace, tells her the price. She slaps the ticket down onto the counter as the old lady pushes a ten euro note towards her, appearing not to notice her rudeness. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou, gioia. You’re too kind. Oh dear – only ten minutes! Will I make it?” The cashier shrugs, uncaring, as the old lady gathers her change and glances over her shoulder at me waiting behind her. “Ooh, sorry gioia! Go go go!” She wriggles out of the way, still talking. “Oh, I’m in such a flap!” I greet the cashier. “Single to Letojanni, please.” Hearing this, the old lady perks up. “Ooh, you’ll be with me!” I smile at her.
She hasn’t gone ten yards before she stops dead. “Oh goodness, gioia, some information: where are the machines?” I point her in the direction of the wall-mounted devices which stamp your ticket to show what time you arrived at the station; she beams at me. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou, gioia! You’re too kind!”
Two minutes later I’ve bought my ticket from the grumpy cashier and am heading towards the machines myself. When I reach them, the old lady is standing beside them, gazing down the stairs to the underpass with trepidation. She glances up at me and gives me a pleading look. “Can you help me, gioia? The suitcase …” She trails off, finishing her sentence with a helpless shrug. I smile and reach for the handle of her bag. Her mouth opens in a perfect ‘O’ of horror. “Oh no, gioia, I’ll help, don’t do it on your own!” I demur – the suitcase is tiny and light. “It’s fine, signora. You’re more than welcome.” She twitters at me all the way down the stairs. Thankyouthankyouthankyou, gioia. Oh, this station’s a fright – especially for the elderly. You’re so kind, gioia, bless you!”
I leave her at the bottom and head on. I’d rather not have to make conversation with her all the way to Letojanni. Even were it not so hot, my Italian small-talk would have been all but used-up for the day, and another hour of it would be nigh on impossible. I find a seat and settle opposite a young, studious-looking girl with long mousey hair and glasses hiding a pretty face.
A couple of minutes later the old lady appears again, still keeping up a running commentary about how she so nearly missed the train. She clambers into the seat next to the studious-looking girl and starts to chat. “What time does the train go, gioia? At twenty past, right? Oh, at twenty-FIVE past! Oh, well, that’s fine then.” The studious girl talks quietly about the possible difference between weekday and weekend timetables and how La Signora might have confused the two; the old lady twinkles her agreement. “Oh yes, gioia, you’re probably right. Well, in the end I made it.” She shuffles her bottom to the back of her seat – meaning that her feet now dangle just above floor level – and beams at the studious girl. “All’s well.”
At the next stop a young girl tears onto the train, yelling, and charges the length of the carriage. Her girly, expensive-looking floral smock belies her wild behaviour – it seems an odd choice of clothing until a slim, harassed woman who looks like her grandmother puffs into view. She’s also dressed in good-quality clothes but her hair is unkempt and her face only sketchily made-up; at a guess she’s not the one who does the regular morning shift with kiddo. She calls down the carriage in a voice tinged with hysteria. “Stop! Stop right there!” The girl obeys for a moment – but only a moment; she whirls on her heel and barrels back the way she came, still at a run and still yelling.
As the girl races past her grandmother and towards us, the old lady wriggles out of her seat and flings her hands out across the aisle. The approaching tornado of energy halts, fizzing in frustration: she can’t pass without touching the old lady and this she is clearly unwilling to do. She stops moving, but continues to yell; all that energy has to go somewhere. The moment of pause is enough for grandmother to catch up, though: the old lady’s work is done. She drops her arms and the girl rushes on to the next carriage, where – judging by the constant sound-level – she decides to stop travelling forward. Grandmother flashes the old lady a tired, grateful glance, but daren’t stop any longer. She hurries on after her charge, clutching a ragged, battered doll with half its hair pulled out; it looks like it won’t be long before Grandmother’s goes the same way. The girl continues to yell.
The train doors hiss shut and the air conditioning whispers into life as the train moves off. The old lady shivers. She pulls a turquoise cotton scarf printed with white spots and pink flowers out of her capacious handbag and wraps it firmly around her shoulders, keeping up a low-level running commentary with no-one in particular as she does so. “Ooh, it’s so cold, gioia. Why do they make it so cold? It’s not … really … necessary …” Her one-sided conversation slows as her eyes begin to droop shut.
As I mentioned in my post a few weeks ago, August in Sicily is a holiday month. It’s hot and sticky and really all anyone (me included) wants to do is have some fun sit on the beach or by the pool with plenty of gelato.
With that in mind, Driving Like a Maniac is currently ‘chiuso per ferie‘ to give my poor melted brain (and overheated laptop) a rest. The Facebook page will still be up and running, as will Twitter, so feel free to drop in there for a chat, but I won’t be writing any long posts for the next few weeks.
Don’t worry, though, it’s not for long – just until the end of the month. And hey! If you’re short of reading material there are three and a half years’ worth of archives to dive into …
So all that remains to be said is … happy holidays and … a Settembre!
The chubby girl with the paisley smock and the crinkly-eyed smile, as good as her word, gives her little sister an enthusiastic round of applause. The two girls are playing beside the restaurant outside which my friend Davide and I are waiting for the rest of our group to arrive, and there’s an n-shaped metal bar stopping vehicles from driving up the narrow side street behind them. In childish adventurous style, they’re taking turns to swing off the bar: the applause is because Little Sis has just done an excellent monkey hang, knees tucked up to her chest with her arms stretched up past her ears and her hands clinging to the bar with tenacious glee.
“OK, now me!” Big Sis takes hold of the bar with both hands and jumps up so that she’s hanging over the top of it, her round stomach resting in the middle. Little Sis is gratifyingly impressed. Pleased, Big Sis pushes away from the bar and thuds back down to ground level, before hauling the spaghetti straps of her dress back over her shoulders and yanking the tiered skirt back down towards her knees. “OK, now your turn again. Go! Go!” Little Sis doesn’t need asking twice. She grabs hold of the bar a second time, tucks up her feet and hangs underneath it, swinging gently back and forth with her mouth wide open in a happy grin and a giggle bubbling up her throat. Big Sis claps her hands enthusiastically. “Brava! Applauso!”
It’s too much for me to resist. I join in the clapping. “Brava!” Big Sis’s eyes go wide and she looks at me as an astonished smile spreads over her face. She pokes her sister. “Look how good you are! The signora’s clapping you, too!” Big Sis and I grin at each other and she leaps into action. “Watch this!” She hangs over the bar again, loving the fact that she’s now got a proper audience. Little Sis, momentarily stunned into silence by the strange lady’s approbation, regains her poise. “Applauso!” she squeaks, clapping her sister with mad abandonment while peeking at me shyly from the corner of her eye. I laugh and join in: “Brava!”
Photo credit: Maurice
Ice broken, both sisters now start doing tricks for the tall, friendly signora and her mortally embarrassed Italian companion, who is doing an excellent impression of someone praying for the ground to swallow him whole. There’s another metal bar next to the one the girls have been using thus far, so plenty of space for double trouble. I grin and clap and giggle for all I’m worth as Big Sis babbles away to me in rapid Italian about whatever comes into her head. “Our mum’s inside, by the way. We’ve already eaten so we’re out playing. Are you eating inside? What, you’re still waiting for your friends? At this hour? You must be starving!” She clutches her stomach and mugs for all she’s worth, a tiny, rotund comedian. A moment later, lightning-fast, her brain changes direction. She pulls herself up straight and proud, standing in front of the metal bar. “I used to do rhythmic gymnastics, you know. Ages ago.” I wink at her. “Me too!” I flick my hand back over my shoulder, in the universal EFL teacher’s indicator for the past. “Aaaaaaaages ago.” Big Sis – who can’t be more than seven or eight years old – gapes at me in disbelieving admiration of our shared experiences; beside me, Davide snorts in adult complicity of the differing understanding of what time means to children and to grown-ups.
Little Sis, who as yet hasn’t joined in the conversation, choosing instead to do ever more complex acrobatic tricks, now interrupts. “Come ti chiami?” She’s young enough not to be bothered with the formal ‘Lei’ form – as far as she’s concerned I’m just a rather taller kid. I tell her my name is Kate and Big Sis erupts into bubbling giggles. “Noooo! She asked what your *name* was!” I laugh and nod – “I know!” I repeat more slowly. “Mi chiamo Kate.” They repeat, italianising the pronunciation and giving it two distinct syllables. “Ke-it.” The unfamiliarity of the sound chewed around their mouths seems to throw them – I don’t think it’s occurred to them so far that I might not be Sicilian.
Little Sis recovers her equilibrium quicker than her sister. She cocks her head to one side, then says in a squeaky whisper, “I’m Miriam.” I smile back at her and repeat, her name’s pronunciation as strange to me as mine is to her. “Meer-yam?” Big Sis nods. “Yes! Miriam!” I smile down at Little Sis, who’s hanging half upside-down, her legs wrapped around the side of the metal barricade, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She twists away, saying something as she goes. I don’t catch it, but Big Sis does and falls about laughing. She turns to her sister, half-prostrate with giggles. “Ti voglio bene?! You can’t say you love her! You don’t even know her!” Little Sis shrugs, uncaring, and repeats louder: “Ti voglio bene, Ke-it!” She grins at me as, laughing, I clutch my hands to my heart in acknowledgment of the compliment. Who am I to argue with the unconditional instant adoration of a three-year-old?
I have stories to tell of days by the sea, and of Cyclopian legends, but for today they’ll have to wait. I have a friend in town, it’s hot, and there is cold beer to be drunk and delicious food to be eaten. You understand, I’m sure.
It was in August that I moved to Sicily. 12 August 2011, to be precise. So it looks like I’ve got a two-year anniversary coming up. Mind you, in the way of all relationships, there are various points from which you can start counting the time. The 12th of August was when I arrived in Siracusa with a few bags and a couple of nights booked in a hostel. On the 14th I hopped over to Taormina to enrol on a language course and started sending out job application letters. At the beginning of September I secured a job in Catania, and I moved into a permanent flat at the beginning of October. So I suppose you could say that Sicily and I started flirting at Ferragosto, got a bit more serious after the holiday romance was over, and decided to make things official a few weeks later. If only the rest of my relationships would run as smoothly.
Ferragosto here in Sicily is fun. For those outside Italy, it’s a national holiday on the 15th of August. However, it often extends out either side so that the whole of August ends up being (depending on your point of view) either a long holiday or a source of frustration when you can’t get anything done because everyone’s off sunning themselves at the seaside.
My ha’porth?: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
In fact, in Sicily businesses tend to remain open. Given that Sicily is where the people who live in the landlocked northern parts of Italy come on holiday, our shops carry on trading while the aforementioned landlocked ones close. It’s now, in the middle of July, that things are shut here in Catania. Or if not shut, being spruced up inside and out in preparation for the arrival of the tourists. My street yesterday was a hive of painting and decorating activity, and a few streets over all the windows had been ripped out of a local cafe to be replaced. Painters and decorators, it appears, are the same the world over: there may not have been wolf-whistles as there would have been in the UK, but there was plenty of pausing, mid-brushstroke and conversation, to scan passing women up and down with appreciative grins. It’s a wonder any work got done at all. Still, they’ve got two weeks before the crazy-mad influx of tourists begins, and a month until Ferragosto, so there’s time.
Ferragosto is a holiday that has its roots in many different traditions, In Ancient Roman times, the goddess Diana was worshipped on the 13th of August. Then along came the emperor Augustus, who decreed a break from after the festival of Diana to the end of the month, to celebrate the end of the harvest and to give workers a chance to relax.
After the Romans, the Catholic church appropriated the date to commemorate the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It makes sense: Diana and Mary are both women venerated for their chaste fertility, although Diana (dare I say it) has a much sexier image. It’s the outdoorsy hunting-ness and skill with a bow and arrow that does it – so much more attractive than riding, heavily pregnant, on a donkey into Jerusalem.
The modern tradition of Ferragosto, in which everyone in Italy decamps to the sea, started in the 1920s, when Italy was under the grip of Fascism. Essentially, the regime organised mass train trips to the seaside or the mountains, and fares were slashed from the 13th to the 15th – so of course that’s when everyone went.
Train travel over Ferragosto nowadays is a pain in the bum, due to the fact that train drivers need holidays too. However the idea of heading to the sea over the national holiday persists, and this is how I’ve spent the last two years on the night of the 14th, running into the 15th – on the beach, swimming in the sea at midnight with friends. Because you can do that kind of thing here. We’re not in England now, Toto. And, for that, my sun-melted brain, gelato-filled stomach, and comical love life thank Ferragosto.
Here’s to many more years happily living la vita Siciliana.
The theme for this month’s Italy Blogging Roundtable is August in Italy – don’t forget to check out the other ladies’ great posts as well:
Here at San Giovanni Li Cuti what sand there is is black. Not because it’s dirty (although it’s littered with rubbish), but because the rocks that created it were – like much of the stone from which Catania is built – once upon a time lava from Etna. In front of the sand, big rocks line the shoreline, pitted with the characteristic pumice surface of lavic stone; as I sit, I absent-mindedly rub my feet against them, getting a free pedicure along with my pitiful English tan.
Pigeons bob from rock to rock, scavenging for bits of food. From the battered, harried look of them, there isn’t much to be found. Later on, when the sun drops a bit lower in the sky and the beach starts to empty of people, tiny brown crabs will scuttle out of their shady hiding places between the rocks. I don’t think pigeons are that keen on crabs, though. So they continue to peck about among the empty plastic cups and beer bottles, missing out on the goodies at the waterline, where – apart from the crabs – the rocks are covered in algae and limpets.
More clued up than the pigeons, the pair of middle-aged women next to me giggle like schoolgirls as they splash about in the water looking for shellfish. One of them clings to her zebra inflatable, worried that she’ll sink without it, while the other – stocky, with peroxide-blonde cropped hair, leopard-print bikini and a ready grin – chips limpets from the rocks and pops the flesh into her mouth. The beaky, pale woman sitting on the rocks close by grimaces – “Che schifo!”. Limpet woman responds in a language that sounds to my uneducated ear like Russian. From the gestures that she’s making and the way that she’s popping the molluscs into her mouth with gleeful relish, she seems to be trying to persuade Beaky that she should try them, but Beaky’s having none of it. She shudders from head to foot and turns her face away, revolted by the very thought.
Arriving at the beach with pizza in hand, a small boy in armbands wades out along the channel which is the easiest entrance point to the water. Mamma, weighed down with bags and an inflatable boat, follows behind, alternately urging him forward and scolding him for going too far. “Samuele! Sit on that rock there while you finish your food! I’m not buying you any more if you drop it!” Samuele, with a Joker’s grin of tomato sauce smeared across his face, doesn’t acknowledge that he’s heard her. He does sit down, though. Mamma drops her pile of bags onto a nearby rock and goes to sit next to him. For five minutes there’s peace: then she gets bored. “Hurry up Samuele! I want to swim!” Samuele, wise beyond his years, ignores her and continues to munch at his own pace while gazing at the schools of tiny fish that dart around his feet in the shallows.
Photo credit: Mike Baird
Another small child – this time an unaccompanied girl in a pink bikini and multicoloured plastic necklace – makes her way deliberately to the shallows. In her hands she has three Barbies, their hair long and blonde. Hers is, too, but instead of perfect artificial peroxide it’s honey-coloured and mermaid-straggled from swimming. She sits herself and her girls solemnly on a rock, from which she dips them one by one into the sea for a controlled swim. Concentration writ large on her face, she then seats them in a row before wading away from them into deeper water. With her back turned and bent over as she swishes her hands through the water ahead of her to make a bow-wave, she doesn’t notice one of the Barbies falling off the rock and starting to float out to sea in her wake. I open my mouth to warn her, but as I do so she turns and sees for herself. She returns and gently places her wayward charge back above the waterline before sitting down with the reunited trio and, humming to herself, arranging their long limbs and hair just so.
The glamorous woman in black chiffon pulls her towel out of her bag with the tips of her fingers, as if it’s somehow unclean. Shaking out the folds, she tries to place it on a rock, but is unable to fathom the onshore wind, which blows it back towards her. Repeatedly she flicks it away from her, and repeatedly the wind blows it back. Eventually she gives up and drops it, wrinkled, onto the rocks, before folding one end back on itself to form a double-thickness cushion and patting a gleeful tattoo on it with both hands. Now comes the process of removing her outer clothes. She teeters unsteadily in her high wedge flip-flops as she pulls the thin gauze of her beach cover-up over her head and off into her bag. Plugging her headphones into her ears and settling back with her head resting on her bag she seems to be set for the afternoon, but the restfulness doesn’t last. She wriggles against the bag, trying to shift the contents to fit around her, but it won’t play ball. She sits sharp upright and, again with the tips of her fingers only, fastidiously shifts the contents of her bag over and over again until they’re in a pleasing formation. Twisting the neck of the cotton shopper around on itself and twitching her towel over the top of it, she gingerly stretches herself out again. Her head rests on the towel-covered bag, her butt on the next rock and her perfect, painted toes onto yet another one: this is less relaxation than Sicilian beach-style planking.
A generously-proportioned middle-aged woman battles with her bikini as she heads towards the water for a swim. First she fishes inside the top, hoiking her breasts into position. Then she pulls up the bottoms, which have folded over at the waistline under pressure from her rolling stomach. Almost at once, they fold back again. Undeterred, she starts to walk towards the water, along the channel where little Samuele is fishwatching, all the while continuing the infinite process of tucking her stomach back into its inadequate confines. She wades out until the water is waist deep, where – with a final tuck before she goes – she sinks into the waves with a grateful smile, able to relax now that her wayward flesh is hidden from public view.
With no such bodily qualms, a middle-aged man with an improbably yellow-tinged dark tan and bright orange speedos combs and smooths his highlighted mullet as he calls good-naturedly to his friends a few rocks away. Meanwhile, a teenage girl and her younger brother play cards while not five yards away a couple in their early twenties flirt and drape themselves over each other. The beach is a prime area for getting (almost) naked with your beloved, as the sunshine and acres of oiled brown skin melt all inhibitions.
On similar lines, the woman in the camo hat is here again. I’ve seen her a few times before, but didn’t recognise her at first today, as she had her hair down. It was her mirror that tipped me off. She comes to the beach armed with tweezers and spends the afternoon making good use of the light to do a head to toe depilation, including bikini line. I watch in morbid fascination as she cranes her neck forward, twisting her body to catch the best light and yanking at stubborn hairs with stolid determination. I, meanwhile, surreptitiously run my hands along my prickly calves, noticing all the bits that I missed in the privacy of my bathroom at home and wishing I had her lack of embarrassment. What it is to be English.
“Via Etnea! Etnea!” The young girl beside me on the bus is dredging up every last scrap of her English to tell the four tourists across the aisle from her where they are. “Here you work!” She mimes a walking action with her fingers and nods at the bemused-looking family. “Shop!” I’m pretty sure they don’t speak English.
The smiling man standing in the aisle next to the tourists, with the grey t-shirt stretched tight as a drum over his rotund belly, joins in. He sounds like he thinks he might be talking in English – but he’s not: it’s 100% Italian – as he tells them with pride that he lived in London for three years. The tourists smile and nod with polite incomprehension. I leap in, seeing the chance for a chat. “Seriously?” He gives me an incredulous grin. “You are English? Yes! In Stoke Newington! I made pizzas!” I beam back at him. Of course he did. He couldn’t look more like a pizzaiolo if he tried.
We start to talk about the areas in London where he lived – ‘Ack-nee, Ken-seeng-tonn, Say-fen See-stairs …’ – and his job. He went there knowing no English and doing what he could, but then one day the guy that made the baguettes in the local bakery got sick, so he took that over – and there he was, a baker and pizzaiolo. For three years in north London back in the early 90s.
The girl next to me joins in the conversation. “So how long have you been here?” I tell her my condensed story, well-practised after so long. “Two years in Catania, but four in Italy – I was in Calabria and Puglia before.” Her jaw drops. I assume she’s going to start talking about how hard Calabria is, but I’m wrong. “Two years? And you speak Italian this well?” I laugh inside: from my point of view, my Italian is dreadful. The girl continues. “I’ve been learning English for years, and I can’t say hardly anything. The grammar’s so hard!” She starts dissecting the present continuous tense, but the pizzaiolo soon gets bored, and starts talking about bread and about London again. The tourists get off the bus and the three of us wave them goodbye; I scoot into one of their vacated seats as the pizzaiolo, the girl and I continue to chat.
It turns out that the girl spent her summer in Calabria a couple of years ago, working in a camping village, and loved it. A spider web of links spreads out and we find all the things that we have in common. At any one time at least two of the three of us have something that we can both rabbit on about. We’re so engrossed in conversation that we’re almost at Acicastello, my destination half an hour outside Catania, before I realise where we are. Vic was supposed to be getting on the bus at Corso Italia in the centre of town. I glance over my shoulder, still listening and chatting to my new acquaintances about English characteristics versus Italian ones, but can’t see her. Dammit. If she’s missed this bus then there isn’t another one for two hours.
“This is my stop.” I shake hands with the pizzaiolo and wave to the girl, who’s taking a call from her mum on her mobile, and jump off, scrabbling in my bag to find my phone and send Vic a message to find out where she is. I don’t even look at the dark-haired girl in the green top who’s standing next to me until I hear a cheery, “Hello!” I look up: it’s Vic. “Oh my god! You *were* on it!” She laughs. “Yep. But I got stuck behind a load of people at the front, and then you were talking in Italian at the back and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up, so I just stayed where I was. Hi! Now – where’s this sagra happening …?”
A couple of hours later we’re standing in a queue of people, watching raw mussels being poured, kilos at a time, into steel pans sitting over roaring gas flames. The clatter of shells and hum of conversation are underpinned with a smell of hot sand and garlic, and my mouth waters as I watch cooks grabbing handfuls of chopped parsley and black pepper from giant bowls. They fling them into the pots with the mussels, then slosh white wine – maybe vinegar? – in on top. A quick stir with a three-foot-long wooden paddle and then the lid is wedged on to the pot for the bivalves to steam themselves open. It’s so simple. Fresh ingredients, cooked quickly without fuss. I love it.
A small girl walks past with a six-inch round tinfoil tray piled high with mussels and bread. Vic and I look at each other. “That’s the ‘super-pepata’, right?” says Vic, a little nervously. “Because seriously – that’s huge!”
When we reach the front of the queue we discover that the dish that the girl was carrying is the basic size. This may be the the most bargainous – and also the most filling – five euros that I’ve ever spent. I hand over my food ticket to the man in the orange t-shirt and bandanna and he looks up at me, assessing my non-Italian features. “This is the first time in your life you’ve had pepata di cozze?” he asks with a friendly smile. I nod, then correct myself, as my brain filters what he’s said, rather than what I was expecting to hear – “oh, no! Not in my life. Just the first time here.” Beside me, Vic interrupts – “first time in MY life!” I grin at the orange t-shirted man. “OK, it’s the first time SHE’s had it.” He laughs and passes the round tinfoil tray along the bench. “First time in her life! Make it good!”
I watch the server as he balances precarious slices of oval, yellow-edged bread on top of the mound of black-shelled mussels. His hands hover for a moment, making sure that nothing falls, then he moves them away. Vic goes to pick up the dish but he holds out a hand to stop her. “Wait a moment …” He tucks two bright yellow wedges of lemon into a space that he’s magicked out of nowhere – I swear it wasn’t there before – then stands back with a satisfied smirk and waves her on. “OK, you can take it now.” We slide the tinfoil trays carefully towards us onto napkin-covered hands, balancing them like waiters as we weave our way through the crowd and find a place to sit, exchanging our drink tickets for plastic beakers of local white wine as we go.
“So you’re speaking English, aren’t you?” says the boy sitting at the long trestle table in the seat next to Vic. She glances up from her food without a flicker. “No, it’s French.” His face falls and there’s a disappointed silence. She looks across at him. “OK. I’m joking. Yes, we’re speaking English.” He looks confused. “So why did you …” Vic relents. He doesn’t seem like a pick-up artist. He’s far too young for a start, and too easily rebuffed. He confesses later that he’s usually very shy, but the chance to speak English spurred him on. “I’m Antonio, by the way. Hello.” We start to chat, the three of us. His parents and little sister drift away, leaving him to it. Small-town living is grand.
“So did you hear what happened in Acitrezza the day before yesterday?” asks Antonio. Stuffing peppery mussels into my mouth, I shake my head and raise an inquisitive eyebrow at him. He takes a deep breath. “There is no music – did you notice?” This is the first time I’ve been to this sagra, so didn’t know that usually there would be karaoke as well as enormous dishes of food. The day before yesterday, however, high winds uprooted a palm tree in Acitrezza and someone was killed: the karaoke has been cancelled as a mark of respect. I gape in horror. I had no idea that it had been so windy – in Catania it hadn’t seemed like anything out of the ordinary. Antonio shrugs, embarrassed at being the centre of attention. Vic and I have, by now, finished our plates of mussels, so he changes the subject. “Let’s go for a walk.” The three of us head out of the courtyard and into the main piazza, where, after a turn around the square, we find a seat at the local kiosk.
As a teacher, I don’t have favourite students. That is, of course, unless they’re bright and silly with a ridiculous sense of humour that matches my own. In that case, all bets are off. And the boy that has just walked past our table was far and away my favourite in his class the year before last. I call his name. He looks back at me and does a double take. “Ciao!” I stand up and both of us titter in embarrassment. Do we greet each other like friends, or what? And what language do we speak? The rulebook has disappeared now that we’re no longer in the classroom. I lean forward to kiss him on both cheeks and the awkwardness dissipates slightly. I witter in Italian. How are you? How’s it going? He nods and grins, his curly hair bouncing madly around his face. I’m fine, thanks. What are you doing here? I tell him. We dissolve into laughter. I wave him away before we run out of conversation and things get awkward. “Go on. Have a good evening. Great to see you.” Or at least that’s what I mean to say. In fact, I just laugh and flap my hands about.
One day I’ll be grown-up enough to make small talk.
The town of Acitrezza is decked in red and yellow ribbons. They flutter from balconies as old men perch on the steps of the church of the saint that the ribbons are celebrating: San Giovanni Battista. Even at this time, just before 5pm, the sun beats down hot on the tops of my feet where they stretch out past the cafe table. I put one foot on top of the other alternately to give them some respite as I watch the steady stream of people heading along the street towards the church.
It’s 24 June, and I’m in Acitrezza to see ‘u pisci a mari’ which, if my shaky understanding of Sicilian dialect is holding up, translates to something like ‘the fish in the sea’. The rest of the day, and indeed much of this month, is dedicated to the town’s patron saint, San Giovanni Battista. When these seafolk aren’t celebrating their saint, however, they celebrate fish: hence ‘u pisci a mari’. I’m told it’s a pantomime. In a boat. I’m not sure what to expect, but it sounds entertaining.
I’ve settled myself in the chic, white-fronted bar close to the church, with what should be a prime view for when the procession prefacing the main show appears. I lean back in my chair and chill out to the lazy acid jazz that’s playing in the bar. It’s a bit of a contrast to the comic parps of brass instruments which drift at intervals along the street: I giggle quietly to myself.
The obligatory group of men is gathered in the corner of the piazza, guffawing at jokes that only they can hear. They’re younger than the usual – in their 40s rather than their 60s – so instead of sitting on the row of benches with their prime view of the sea they’re leaning on the railings. Their clothes are more casual than the older generation’s, too, being shorts and flipflops rather than trousers and button-down shirts. Their group dynamic is the same, though: old friends, hangin’ out and shootin’ the breeze together, just the same as they have done all their lives.
The hum of voices gets louder, as does the goose-like honk of a trombone. I can *hear* the procession; I just can’t *see* it. I decide to pay up and take a wander to see if I can find it. Just in time, apparently – in classic pantomime tradition, while I’ve been looking south along Via Provinciale the procession has appeared from the north. It’s be-HIND you …
The performers reach the church just as I walk out of the bar and realise my gaffe. They charge up onto the church steps, accompanied by a crush of grinning audience. I see flashes of red and yellow, along with waving palm fronds and floppy straw hats. Somewhere close to me a trombone slides and a trumpet parps; in response the performers caper about on the church steps, brandishing their palm fronds above their heads as they dance and cheer. A buzz of excitement grows throughout the crowd, winding to fever pitch until the men leap down from the steps and race towards the slipway in the harbour below. The crowd splits like oil around vinegar, melting back together as the performers pass through, and flooding down to the harbour after them.
At the harbour there are already crowds lining the walls. We who have either followed the procession or missed it entirely because we were looking the wrong way (*ahem*) are left on the slipway, watching the performers as three of them scramble into a traditional painted boat. Two others split off and rush through the crowds to their posts on the harbour walls. These two are ‘i rais di terra’ – the on-the-ground lookouts. It’s their job to keep an eye out for the fish and to shout to ‘la fiocina’ – the harpoonist – when they see him. La fiocina, meanwhile, sits at the very front of the boat, brandishing a trident and a machete with a grin that splits his face from ear to ear. He’s smaller and wirier than the other two in the boat. They circle the tiny harbour as he stabs his trident into the water with cheery relish, hunting for fish.
The man in the middle of the boat is known as ‘il rematore’ – the oarsman. His rotund appearance belies his strength: for the next hour or so he rows the wooden boat, complete with passengers, round and round the harbour single-handedly with a happy grin and without even seeming to break a sweat.
At the back of the boat there stands a tall man with a barrel chest and a joyful, dog-like expression of glee on his face who – if this were an English pantomime – would be the Dame character. In this show, he is ‘il rais di bordo’ and his job is to look out for the fish from the boat. Like the rest of the performers, he’s dressed in red and yellow, and now that they’re out on the water I get the chance to take them in properly. They all wear floppy straw hats, of the kind that my grandmother used to wear when gardening, tied under their chins with red ribbons. Yellow ribbons criss-cross their chests, tied as sashes over the top of red shirts, and they all have red neckerchiefs edged with yellow around their shoulders. Underneath, they wear blue jeans tattered to the knees, giving them a comical ragamuffin appearance. As the show will prove, these aren’t meant to be the most successful of fishermen …
The edge of the harbour is lined with boats, all of which are teeming with people – mainly young men – who are brown as berries from the sea and the sun, and (un)dressed for a swim. Somewhere in among this motley crew is ‘il pesce’ – the fish – but at this point in time it’s not clear where: the boat people’s job is to hide him until he chooses to sneak out into open water. It’s not long before he does so: there’s a shout from ‘i rais’ and a cheer from the crowd. The fishermen in the boat throw their arms up into the air with whoops of glee – the chase is on!
I don’t see it happen through the crowds of people, but suddenly the fish – actually a man in red speedoes with red and yellow ribbons tied around each of his wrists and ankles – is on his back, up on the prow of the boat, and la fiocina is brandishing a large wooden machete. The band starts to play – among other classics I recognise strains of Lou Monte’s Lazy Mary – and the fish wriggles, kicking his legs and waving his arms like a stranded beetle as the machete comes down on him, again and again. There’s fake blood everywhere: it would be macabre were everyone not having such obviously good fun. Time and again, as the boat goes round and round in circles, and to roars of appreciative laughter and suggestive slides and parps from the trombone, la fiocina pretends to cut off the prominent bulge in the fish’s speedoes, all the while smearing on more and more fake blood.
It’s beginning to look like it could be all over for the fish – but no! in a slick, slippery move, he slides, backwards and headfirst, into the sea while la fiocina’s machete is poised aloft for a second too long. The crowd goes wild, as do the two ‘rais’ on the harbour walls, who fling themselves into the water in comic abject misery at the loss of their catch. By the time they’ve hauled themselves back up to their posts, though, the chase is back on again with renewed vigour.
This time around, buckets of water have appeared on some of the boats, and grinning, bronzed boys in indecently small speedoes fling them over the fishermen as they pass. The rais a bordo gives a whoop of laughter and scoops a cheer from the crowd with the arm which isn’t clutching his lookout post. His grin gets ever larger even as his soggy straw hat flops around his ears and his ribbon ties droop; there’s no keeping a good Dame down, even if he is soaking wet.
A yell from the crowd and mad music from the other harbour wall signals the second capture of the fish. He flails on the front of the boat, now covered in blood from armpits to knees, as the crowd dance and cheer, and the fishermen grin fit to burst. But what’s this?! He’s escaped again! The fishermen rock their boat so wildly that it seems sure to capsize, but they manage to save themselves, and start their hunt again.
“Just wait until the fish gets away!” chuckles the man next to me. “Then there will be a surprise!” The crowd waits with bated breath – a good 90% of them are probably locals who see this every year, so they know what’s coming. The third time that the fish slides into the water, covered in blood but still swimming, the fishermen are so comically enraged that they really do capsize their boat. Into the water they go! The boys from the boats around the harbour have all been waiting for this moment and with whoops of glee they launch themselves into the sea, too, to help right the boat. The water is red with blood and a real fish, caught earlier and planted in the bottom of the boat, bobs to the surface. The fishermen may have lost their man, but after such an entertaining show it’s good to know that they’ve still got their fish.
We peer out of the door of the bar into the drizzle which can no longer really be called drizzle and is now plain, common-or-garden, gets-you-proper-wet rain. The girl behind the bar pulls a face. I’m pretty sure I do too. Just at that moment a bride and groom walk past on their post-wedding tour of the town. They’re grinning fit to burst and we all ‘aww’ a little bit. Somebody (me) comes out with the old platitude, ‘sposa bagnata, sposa fortunata’ (a wet bride is a lucky bride). The girl behind the bar gives a sardonic chuckle: “You know that’s only to make the brides feel better, right?” We all snort into our coffees and go back to gazing at the happy couple as they float, hand-in-hand, along the sea wall. Their photographer follows at a discreet distance.
It’s a busy day in the Duomo today: it’s only been a few hours since the blessing of the bread for frottola and already this wedding has finished. Given the number of hours that an Italian wedding usually takes up, they must have gone straight in after the bread ceremony. We caught up with them as they emerged. Or, rather, half an hour or so before. We were alerted to the wedding by the four people standing awkwardly at the door to the Duomo shooing people away. As I got closer I realised why: they’d made a design with rice on the Duomo steps – a G and an M in a heart, to signify the bride and groom’s names. The thing is that because of its positioning, it’s in danger of being kicked apart by passers by who have no awareness of their surroundings. In fact, as I watch, waiting for Giovanni and Maria (for I have discovered that those are, in fact, their names) to emerge from the Duomo, a woman does just that. The girl closest to the Duomo doors took her eyes off the ball for a moment and the woman marched straight through the middle of the rice design. The man on the far side throws out his hands to stop her, which has the unfortunate effect of startling her and making her jump, thereby kicking the rice even further out of place. There’s a collective groan from the people surrounding the doors. The woman turns bright red and scuttles away, muttering in embarrassment. Mother-in-law jokes spring to mind – it can’t be a good sign for the bride and groom to be metaphorically kicked asunder by a middle-aged woman. It’s just as well the rain’s starting.
After a soggy Saturday night in which we ran into flirty waiter again (still with his mum in tow and this time making no secret of the fact that he was being innuendous – “Wet dreams – er, I mean *sweet* dreams, ladies!”), we wake to bright sunshine. This is both good and bad: we’re on holiday and it’s sunny (good), but there is now absolutely no excuse for not climbing the Bloody Big Rock (erk). Deanna and I change into sensible shoes, grab our cameras and head out, picking up water supplies on the way.
I almost give up at the top of the first flight of steps, puffing like a grampus. Deanna, however, strides ahead, so my pride keeps me going. I gulp in some air, take a sip of water, curse the amount of wine that I drank the day before, and carry on.
As we reach the lowest defensive walls we are met by a group of cheery Italians on their way down. “Buongiorno!” they call, grins plastered all over their faces. “Are you going up to the castle?” We tell them that we are. They chortle with the self-satisfaction that comes from having already climbed to the top and being nearly back at the bottom again. “Good luck! It’s nearly three thousand metres up, you know!” I quail visibly. They laugh. I rally my sense of humour. “Well, at least we should lose some weight …” They roar with laughter and the leader pats his rotund belly with pride. “Yes, just as well, eh?!” They continue on their way down as I fashion a makeshift sling from my scarf so that I don’t have to carry my water bottles in my hands. I tie it around my waist and Deanna snorts with laughter. Apparently I’m less ‘retro hippy cool’ and more ‘crazy lady carrying her water bottles like crackly plastic babies’. Oh. Oh well …
Thankfully when we get past the steps and onto the trails carved into the hillside by generations of foot soldiers, townsfolk and, latterly, tourists, the climb becomes easier. We’re not rushing up to the top, both being concerned with stopping to admire the view – which is spectacular – at regular intervals, but we still do it in about an hour and a half. Which is better than All-Weather-Boy, who’d predicted at least two. To be fair, though, he would have been carrying a lot more weight than us, what with his ten unnecessary layers of clothing ‘n’ all.
When we reach the top, however, the time taken to climb is irrelevant compared to the beauty of what we can see around us. To one side, looking down the hillside past the Temple of Diana and the lower fortification walls, is Cefalù town, running down to bright blue sea which stretches into the hazy distance. To the other, a fairly much straight down drop below us, is the port, divided into aquamarine sections by solid, blocky, white man-made moorings and black, craggy, all-natural rocks. Meanwhile at the top, where we are, all is dust and olive trees and golden light. I sit on a wall, close my eyes, and inhale the scent of pines wafting up from below me. Cefalù, I think I love you.
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