Monthly Archives: April 2020

A Walk Along the River Brent

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At last parks are now legally open to the public in the UK (provided correct social distancing procedures are practiced). We have wandered through some of our local parks in recent days and there was nothing to say we couldn’t have but now it’s nice to know that London’s open spaces are freely allowed to us.

The borough where we are currently staying is called Brent. It’s named after the eponymous river which, sourcing at the London borough of Barnet, flows eighteen miles before joining the Thames at (appropriately) Brentford.

A couple of days ago we decided to walk a stretch of this river by doing part of the Brent River Park walk.

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Brent River Park has recently been improved with a new cycle path and wildlife conservation area. It’s now full of flora and fauna and, with its meadows and colonies of bats, is a truly welcome escape from the current claustrophic times. The only thing is that the park’s entrance is rather difficult to find, sandwiched as it is between a ‘normally’ busy junction of the Harrow Road with the North Circular.

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On our route to the park we noted some interesting examples of urban art which pointed to the fact that nearby is the famous bikers’ Ace Cafe about which I have written about at

Ace Cafe

Sadly the children’s playground has been cordoned off for the duration. It’s so frustrating for parents and their young offspring, but then it’s easy for children to forget the rules of social distancing when they are playing.

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The park has a pleasant mix of meadow and woodland.

In one area we came across a large concrete ball. It turned out to be the remains of the flag post on top of the eastern of Wembley’s twin towers from the old stadium demolished at the end of the nineteen nineties

A general view (GV) of the Wembley twin towers before the England game against Brazil – 19th May 1987. (Photo by Mark Leech/Getty Images)

It was quite an emotional experience to come across this remnant since I remember the old stadium very well, especially when we went to the market which used to be held before this iconic building where the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final took place between England and West Germany. It was the first and, so far, only time that England has won the World Cup. Of that fabulous team just the two Charltons, Stiles, Hunt and Hurst are still alive.

The_Queen_presents_the_1966_World_Cup_to_England_Captain,_Bobby_Moore._(7936243534)

(That glorious moment for England in 1966)

We could have continued our walk for a further few miles but decided to turn back at a housing estate called Saint Raphael’s where we noted a pretty ecological growing area which supplies fresh food locally and a red.skin tipi:

(Photographs of Brent River Park courtesy of Alexandra Cipriani Pettitt)

 

 

Milling around in Lucchio

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We first encountered the concept of alternative energy some years ago when we visited the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth in mid-Wales.  Here one can find Europe’s steepest water-balanced cliff railway and a fascinating panoply of machines powered by wind, water and the Sun.

The Lima valley, where we have a house, has a long history of water mills. Unfortunately there are very few of them left in working order today: I can only think of one at Pieve Fosciana and another at Fabbriche di Vallico.

The stratospheric village of Lucchio in the Lima valley has its houses perilously hung on a steep cliff, almost defying the laws of gravity. Indeed, an old saying remarks that the hens of Lucchio have to wear knickers else their eggs would immediately roll down to the valley floor!

Lucchio is crowned by the ruins of its castle which was once used as an outpost defending Lucca’s frontier against its warlike neighbour Pistoia. The views from the castle are quite spectacular.

Every summer for several years there has been a very entertaining and instructive tour of Lucchio’s water mills by Graziano Serafini, a local man whose many achievements include beating the draisine world record in 2016.

What is a draisine? Better known in the UK as the hobby-horse it’s a primitive bicycle invented by Baron Karl Von Drais in 1817. Made of wood with, as yet, no pedals to turn the wheel it’s pushed along by one’s legs. Graziano Serafini broke the Guinness world record for one mile with a copy of the draisine built by him; he dedicated the event to the memory of his son Massimo, who had sadly died three years previously. The proceeds were generously donated to a children’s charity in Lucca.

Graziano Serafini is an expert on wind and water mills, particularly those of Lucchio. Passionate about industrial archeology, he has constructed a series of scale models, showing the mills’ interiors with their system of gears and stone grinders.

In the Bagni di Lucca area, the eighteen main tributaries feeding into the Lima were for long the main force in operating factories, silk factories, paper mills, and flour and chestnut mills.

I have attended Graziano’s tour of the Lucchio mills on a number of occasions but none were as striking to me as the first time I joined his mill explorations group in the summer of 2005. We delved deep into the valley floor and from the undergrowth emerged Lucchio’s ancient mills – testimonies of a time when the environment was treated with rather greater respects by people.

Here are some photographs from that tour:

Graziano also pointed out the ridge where the remains of Lucchio’s only wind-powered mill are sited:

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Perusing Old Photographs

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This hiatus in ‘normal’ life is going to carry on for longer than we expected. Lockdown in the UK has, today, been extended for another three weeks. Unable to travel around except if the journey is strictly necessary I’ve been spending time on various household tasks which had been neglected for years. One of these is going through my photographs. It’s sometimes a joyful occupation and sometimes a sad one, especially when one considers how many loved ones are no longer with us. It is, however, always an interesting one.

One big surprise struck me when I went through my photographs from 2005, the year I purchased my house in Longoio; that is,  how many places I visited for the first time, places I thought I’d only come across years later. Certainly, we did so much local sight-seeing in that landmark year.

Many photographs naturally relate to our new house and the village in which it is located. I’ve posted several of these on our local village FB pages which can be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1770997666551182/

(Administered by Longoio-born Tiziana Pazzaglia and aimed towards an Italian audience)

and

https://www.facebook.com/Longoio-271075589577951/

(Administered by me and aimed towards an English audience)

The main portion of the photographs, however, relate to such places as Colognora, a very attractive village in the nearby Val Pescaglia with a museum dedicated to that once staple food product, the chestnut.

Around Bagni di Lucca they show that we visited the ‘Cappella degli Alpini’, the sweet chapel dedicated to the Italian Alpini soldiers.

We had our first meal at the ‘Circolo dei Forestieri’ restaurant.

Further afield we achieved our first traverse of the ‘Ponte Sospeso’, the suspension bridge built by a factory owner to help his work force from the other side of the valley to turn up at work more quickly.

We discovered the wonderfully carved Romanesque church in the nearby village of San Cassiano:

We even managed it near the top of one of the highest Apennine passes, the Foce a Giovo. The snowfields stopped us but we were to have a second chance later in the year.

We visited so many more places in the space of just two months.

It’s really lovely to see these pictures again. They show us two as being full of enthusiasm, always keen to adventure to new places on our scooter (we didn’t have a car until 2008), and fifteen years younger.

 

 

Barham Park Revisited

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Sudbury, which is a part of the London borough of Brent, does not immediately strike one as a foremost tourist attraction but it’s near where I’m staying and there is a sweet open space, with romantic connections for us, called Barham Park.

I realize that I’ve already posted something about the park at

https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/barham-park-sudbury/

We returned to it the other day as part of our permitted exercise walk on a particulary beautiful day.

Barham park is named after a landowning family who possessed a herd of dairy cattle. In the nineteenth century, Sir George Barham realizing that the milk generally supplied to the capital was of a poor quality and recognizing that this was because of the conditions in which dairy cattle in London were raised decided to change the situation and founded Express Dairies (remember them?) in 1864.

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(An Express dairies milk float – now a rare sight in London)

This was the first company to use glass milk bottles, pasteurize milk, carry 30, 0000 gallons of milk by train into London every night, and supply milk to Queen Victoria. Sir George wanted to provide top quality milk to his customers and so arranged to transport fresh milk into town from the countryside by railway, hence his choice of name “Express Milk Company.”

His son, Titus, opened a range of Tea Shops and Bakeries,. My wife remembers shopping, as a girl, with her mum at the Express Dairies of Pont Street, Knightsbridge. She states in those days one bought butter cut on the spot by the shop assistant from a large pat and then wrapped upfor the customer in grease-proof paper.

When the dairy herds moved further out of London because of increasing urbanization Sir George’s son Titus, in 1937, donated his estate to Wembley Borough Council.  To this day Barham Park remains essentially an 18th-century landscaped garden.

Unfortunately, whilst the council continued to maintain the park  they neglected Barham’s mansion and it was demolished as being unsafe in 1956. What remains is the much older ‘Crabs’ House: It’s now used as the parks office and as a library. There’s also a games room, veteran’s club (am I old enough to join it?) and a Nepalese club. Sadly all three are now closed for the duration. 

One feature that was there on our previous visit, a delightful ornamental well in Crabs house courtyard

barham

is no longer there!

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We wonder where it is and whether this attractive feature will ever be restored.

Barham park also has a walled garden,

a coniferous plantation and a war memorial adorned with a particularly sad lion.

Unfortunately the children’s playground is closed for the duration. How long that will be is anyone’s guess…

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Barham Park is just one of London’s ‘lungs’. There’s nothing particularly outstanding to draw the occasional visitor to it but on the very sunny day we had it was a lovely place to walk about in and enjoy. For it’s not how important a sight is in London which draws one to it but it’s how one relates to it that gives it its special significance.

The  park certainly regained its significance for us again, reminding of our walk there the day after we married.

Ours was the garden;

fresh flowers spread before us

 blessing our wedding.

 

 

Altruism in the Present Age

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‘Se questo è un uomo’ (if this is a man), Primo Levi’s book recounting his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz (he only managed to survive because his chemistry knowledge was considered useful by the Nazis in their death factory of Birkenau) describes how people placed in an impossibly horrible situation under a ruthlessly inhuman oppressor will not necessarily club together as a solidarity but egotistically fight it out among themselves for personal survival: it’s the ‘I’m all right Jack’ attitude or ‘let me snatch it from you before you snatch it from me’ policy.

I’m wondering how many of us in the present situation are pretending to be in cohesion with their local communities and how many are really on the egotistical agenda. True, the scams are coming out: dud testing equipment sold at exaggerated prices, conning knocks on the doors of houses belonging to elderly residents and so on. Fortunately, however, the trend everywhere seems to be to help others as least as much as helping oneself in the present emergency.

Nowhere is this more visible in Bagni di Lucca where voluntary organizations such as Gemma Fazzi’s Auser Filo d’Argento are busy making health masks and organizing food distribution for vulnerable families in these difficult times. Especially welcome have been the chocolate Easter eggs and Easter Colombine (dove-shaped cakes) made and distributed to children and their families by local temporarily closed bars and  volunteer associations. As the Italian saying goes: “Con un piccolo grande gesto si può generare tanta felicità” : every litte bit helps.

bagni di Lucca

In the UK at this present moment the big issues are the high mortality rates from Covid-19 in care homes and the continued lack of PPE supplies. The fact is that this crisis is being directed by a caretaker government in lieu of the PM being able to resume his front seat in the operations. However, in the UK, too, there has been an increased sense of community values in order to combat the very difficult situations the horrible virus has put most the world in:

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A couple of days ago in the continuing days of the extraordinarily lovely weather London has been having we did our weekly shopping using a very pleasant alternative route: that along the Grand Union Canal.

London has a canal mileage at least as equal to that of Venice. Indeed , there’s a part of the canal  in Paddington which is called ‘little Venice’. However, do not think you’re likely to emerge into anything like Piazza San Marco!

The government warns about doing only strictly necessary journeys. On this one we combined three highly necessary reasons: shopping for food, need for exercise and mental therapy!

Incidentally, I’m glad to note that even the Canada geese are respecting social distancing…

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(Photograph suggested by Alexandra Pettitt)

The Ghastly British Easter Egg

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Of the many things I’m missing about Italy, exiled as I am in the UK, apart from a decent café or a Campari at the bar (well, even the Italians have been denied that avenue of pleasure for over four weeks now) or the improved weather, are the fabulous Italian Easter eggs which are exchanged at this festive time.

The common or garden English Easter egg is an absolutely pathetic affair for four main reasons:

1. It is so poorly presented it’s quite unbelievable. It is generally purchased in boring superfluous cardboard packages which inflate its price.

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Compare that with the sweet ribbons and shiny paper wrappings used for Italian Easter eggs.

2. The size of the egg. British Easter eggs seem as if they’ve been laid by half-starved hens. Compare them with Italian Easter eggs which can range from the smallest size to some which look as if they’d been laid by some gigantic ancestor of the ostrich.

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(An Italian Easter egg suitable for the larger family)

3. The British chocolate used in the eggs’ production, with over 5% of the ingredients being vegetable fat, and with a quite excessive quantity of sugar mixed in has not even been recognized as chocolate by the EU who have called it ‘vegolate’.. Compare that with the really fine dark chocolate used for Italian eggs. Their milk chocolate eggs aren’t half bad too.

4. There is no ‘sorpresa’ or surprise inside the egg. Indeed, all that’s added to the egg carton are a few measly sweeties and usually not inside the hollow egg – absolutely no little Hambros-type toys for children or liqueur chocolates for grown-ups. Sometimes the two halves of the British egg aren’t even melded together.

 

(What’s the fun of eating an Easter egg if one finds there’s nothing inside it!)

Some of the ghastliest concoctions eaten at a typical UK Easter celebrations are those crème eggs which are so sickly they want to make any chocolate connoisseur vomit.

If I ever manage to get back to Italy this year I shall appreciate even more things like being served a cup of decent coffee, a Campari with soda and lemon with delicious pastries to go with it.

As the Joni Mitchell song goes:

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone

Is there anything positive one can say about the standard or common English Easter egg? Yes, the Easter egg hunt few continentals knew about but which, introduced by resident brits, has become very popular in Italy in recent years. Now those are eggs really worth hunting for in the ‘bel paese’! Roll on next year.

 

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Suburban Exercise

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How do we spend the day here in this north-western London suburb? How did we get to be here anyway? We returned to Heathrow from our curtailed holiday in Sri Lanka and were meant to fly to Italy on the 31st of March. Since March 24th however, Italy has been under lockdown. So any return to our place in Longoio will be out of the question until at least May (if that!). Luckily we have a place to stay in London. My mother-in-law sadly died last year but at least she was spared the pandemic. Meanwhile, there is much to do in sorting out her house.

This is an area of London near Wembley stadium and we can see the famous arch from one of our bedroom window.

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Like so many parts of London, it’s a very ethnically mixed area with a large proportion of people from the former Raj and with many from Eastern Europe. It’s also quite a green area with extensive open spaces like Gladstone and Fryent parks. For olde worlde charm there’s nothing to beat the place where Churchill and Byron went to be educated: nearby Harrow and its famous school.

There are several well-stocked corner shops near where we are staying. They are useful in that they avoid supermarket queues and their prices are quite reasonable too.

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(Queueing by our local Supermarket)

We often combine our shopping trips with a daily exercise walk or ‘constitutional’ where we are attempting to clock up ten thousand steps, or five miles daily.

The area is not lacking in varieties of plants including wild borage:

Currently it’s cherry blossom time and the suburban streets display a charming spectacle. If not Japan then at least the London borough of Brent.

Yesterday we discovered a considerable expanse of open space encircled by the back gardens of semi-detached house. It seemed almost as if when the area was being developed in the nineteen thirties the builders ran out of money and this area of former meadowland was saved for recreation.

We walked around the green and appreciated the three copses planted on it. What we appreciated less was a group of about eight men armed with beer cans congregated in a corner of the open space. Clearly they’d found a spot where the police would apparently be unlikely to find them. I initially thought of taking a photo to demonstrate the problem that most of the UK has in containing and separating current illegal congregations of people. After all, the same rules of social distancing occur throughout the infected world and are there to safeguard the spread of the virus and to reduce the various health services load (or overload…). I noticed the men had some dogs of the aggressive species grouped around them and so, upon the advice of my wife, desisted from photographing them.

How long the majority of decent-minded people will endure the present lockdown is anybody’s guess. Even in London there is a limit to the local walks one can take. We just hope that the notorious ‘curve’ will soon bend in the correct manner so we may be spared any significant civil disobedience or mob rule. This country will anyway have enough on its plate after December 31st this year…

 

Is Bagni di Lucca’s Mayor Doing Enough?

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We are living in a world where, increasingly, less and less of what is said or written can be trusted. The term ‘fake news’ is especially banded about those who, themselves, wish to conceal or distort facts; just look at the increasing use of the BBC for government propaganda purposes and compare the way it reports on something with Channel Four news or even CNN!

We’ve had this story for a long with UK newspapers. Reading through something like the ‘Daily Express’ I have to pinch myself to realize I’m reading about the same things in the same country. Clearly this situation is being exacerbated in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Most essentially it’s statistics which lie (no new thing since as the saying -popularized by Mark Twain – goes: ‘there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics’). To limit victims of the pandemic in the UK to those who die in hospitals, for examples, and not, include those who perish from the virus outside them, in nursing homes or hostels, is shocking.

Who can we turn to to get clearer indications of what is actually happening?

Social media is certainly not the ideal place to find the truth. However, it is an excellent way of taking the temperature on certain issues which are troubling people.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our commune of Bagni di Lucca. The current junta has been slated by all sides for not sufficiently informing its citizens and residents about the current situation. In particular, it prefers not to disclose the names of persons tested positive or those who have died from the virus for reasons of privacy.

(Shooting against an unseen enemy? Bagni di Lucca’s crossbow competition in 2005)

Here is a particularly telling opinion raised by a well-considered lady, resident in the commune:

“Il Paesello’ (The little town)

… We have been left alone, a communication every now and then … never exhaustive, often not precise, sometimes quite wrong … We … the citizens who ask for information … as in the best dictatorships we are silenced. .. Today the weapon used is the insult: we are accused of ignorance, wickedness, perverse curiosity, disrespect towards the sick person… we are called plague spreaders.

The request for information was for the place where the victim is and not for the name of the unfortunate person who is fighting against the new evil and to whom we are close and for whom we pray every day.

It is the lack of information that generates fear and chaos – not vice versa.

The war that is unfolding in the media is your fault;  it’s your fault if today a person infected by this cursed virus feels guilty instead and not a victim!

Apparently we have no right to basic information, we have no right to speak ..

We have to accept in silence the three words of an informal statement made every now and then only if a city council or other meeting is not scheduled that day …

We really have to envy those neighbouring town which are guided, well-informed and morally supported and where everything is done without breaking the law and without disrespecting anyone …. On the contrary …

Watching others team up … a united and strong team that is able to win …

Moral duty … appeals to those who can make an economic contribution to the emergency that will be managed by … by the absentees on duty … after they have contributed to the economic decline of the town …(half the shops had already closed down before the crisis)

Trust is earned through work …. building not destroying … opening not closing …

Even without a captain we have a strong team…

Let us thank all our voluntary associations. First of all the Red Cross, doctors, law enforcement officers, village shops, supermarkets, restaurants, pharmacies … all increasingly at our service with home deliveries

… do they also have no right to information?

Together we will make it ..

Bagni di Lucca is not going to sink like the Costa Concordia”.

Now let’s have your opinion…

Swallows congregate

freely in the summer’s flight;

could we do likewise. ..

 

 

 

 

Easter / Pasqua 2020

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EASTER 2020

 

What’s Easter but resurging earth

beyond dark season’s blight;

reliving flesh, unseeding birth,

the new day over night.

 

Soil’s primal violence, cracking roots,

holds shaking of the skies,

tumescence of fresh shoots,

inconsolable eyes.

 

And must they fall upon this day

that ripped the veil in two?

And shall world’s peace still yet betray

and ever war be through?

 

The people weep when they might joy

at life anew refound;

could love reform what hates destroy

as Christ rose from the ground?

 

Deaths fall like bombs upon the heart

and tear away its breath:

where is the strength, so far apart,

to conquer living death?

 

***

 

PASQUA 2020

 

Cos’è la Pasqua ma la Terra che risorge

oltre le rovine della stagione oscura;

rivivendo la carne, la nascita nascente,

il nuovo giorno nella notte.

 

La violenza primordiale del suolo, le radici schioccanti,

contengono l’agitazione dei cieli,

la tumescenza di germogli freschi,

gli occhi inconsolabili.

 

E devono cadere su questo giorno

che ha strappato il velo in due?

E la pace del mondo tradirà ancora

e mai la guerra sarà finita?

 

Le persone piangono quando potrebbero gioire

nella vita di nuovo rifondata;

potrebbe l’amore riformare ciò che l’odio distrugge

come Cristo è risorto dalla terra?

 

I decessi cadono come bombe sul cuore

e strappano il respiro:

dov’è la forza, così lontana,

per conquistare la morte vivente?

 

FP

 

affresco-resurrezione-piero-della-francesca

 

Monte Argegna

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One of the places we managed to see before the dramatic changes  affect ing our planet this year was the sanctuary of Our Lady of Safekeeping (Della Guardia) of Argegna which is situated in the commune of Giuncugnano near the Carpinelli pass which divides Garfagnana from Lunigiana.

We first visited this delightful area in 2005 and were taken by the expansive level lawn in front of the sanctuary, unusual in such a hilly area.

Fifteen years later we passed by the sanctuary, stopped for a short while there and still found it as charming as ever.

The sanctuary dates back rather more recently than we thought. It was built at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1944 German forces set fire to it and in 1945 the sanctuary was strafed by British planes. Fortunately it was subsequently restored.

The sanctuary’s festival is held on the last Sunday of August and hopefully we might even make it there this year if the quarantine is terminated.

Here are some photographs I’ve managed to find of that first visit in 2005. Looking at places we visited in  our past can be a reassuring thing to do in these troubled times.

At nearby Piazza del Serchio we passed by an old steam locomotive of a type in regular use in this region until the nineteen fifties and employed anew to haul special vintage train summer excursions on the Serchio railway line. Let’s hope that they return soon!