Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorating genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, Sudan, as well as the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. As a schoolchild I was not yet made aware of the facts surrounding the Shoah and even at a highly politicised time at university I knew few facts about it.

A friend of Jewish Czech heritage brought back from a nation, then still stuck behind the iron curtain, drawings originally smuggled out of a concentration camp (Theresienstadt?) by a family member. The drawings later formed part of an exhibition of Konzentrationslager art giving harrowing insights into life in those bestial institutions.

In the summer of 2001 my Honda Transalp bike and I found ourselves near that most splendid of Polish cities: Cracow. Meeting up with a group of bikers at a campsite a little way outside the city we compared notes and one of the bikers said “we’re quite near Oświęcim”.

That name, translated in German is Auschwitz, and, as any sentient human knows, it is the site of one of the most horrible killing machines in the history of (in)humanity.

The following day I visited both Auschwitz and Birkenau. I climbed up into the entrance watchtower made famous in the film “Schindler’s List”. No-one else was there. I looked out onto to the vast flatness of the camp – most of the barracks had vanished but their foundations remained to show how huge the camp had been. In the far right-hand corner I could make out the mangled ruins of the crematorium blown up by the camp officials when they abandoned it in the face of the Russian army’s advance. Strange feelings of desolation, utter emptiness, and complete annihilation assaulted me. I had to get out and rushed down the stairs silently screaming.

Yet so many never got out….

Afterwards I went for a walk around the camp perimeter. A family was picnicking near the interminable stretch of barbed wire fence. I walked into a little wood.

AUSCHWITZ 2001

Ash pond reflects clouds

silence by the little wood

a stork takes to flight.

Twisted iron bars

concrete minds

rusty furnaces:

Resurrection’s castle

Is a heap of crumbling concrete…

Holocaust Remembrance Day was designated by the general assembly of the United Nations in 2005. January 27th was chosen because it was the day Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by allied troops.

In our part of the world, the Mediavalle and the Garfagnana areas of Lucca province, the Todt organization built bunkers, casements, tunnels and anti-tank walls to halt the allied advance up the Italian peninsula. In the Serchio valley and the surrounding mountains around three thousand people are estimated to have worked in the service of Todt for a period of twelve months. The Todt organization had its administrative headquarters in the Santini palace building at Borgo a Mozzano, now the town’s public library.

Many workers were Italian army deserters from the armistice of 8th September 1943 since they were promised they would not be deported to German concentration camps if they worked on building the Gothic line defences. Others were forced labourers, captured during raids and subsequently detained for transportation to Auschwitz at the local concentration camp at Socciglia near Anchiano.

Today that area is an industrial estate and also the place where the Sagra del Bacalà (Norwegian cod festival) takes place at the beginning of May each year to commemorate a happier event, that of the twinning of nearby Anchiano with Aalesund in Norway – not forgetting, too, that Norway was also subject to the Nazi scourge and has its own victims to mourn.

On the Brennero route to Lucca from Bagni di Lucca a commemoration stone, dedicated to the majority of those victims who never returned, has been erected on the site of the camp. (Trans: ‘This place has known the inhuman sufferings of patriots and rounded-up civilians waiting to be deported to Germany or to a more tragic fate. We entrust this memory to new generations so that they might follow decisively the paths of peace.’)

Let us fully remember the significance of this day and may we never believe that these events are an endemic part of the human race and that there is nothing we can do about it. That contaminated thought is tantamount to us giving up hope in all that we hold most dear in our lives – life itself. May indifference perish!

Ukraine is very much on peoples’ minds at the present time and this thought has prompted me to remember that I visited Europe’s second largest nation (after Russia) in the earlier part of this millennium. Then Crimea still formed part of the country, the ‘Orange’ revolution had yet to occur and the war in the Donbass region had not yet started.

My visit was distinctly divided into two parts.

First, the Crimean peninsula, that stupendous Russian Riviera, favoured by artists and writers such as Anton Chekov and location of one of the most important conferences of the modern age, Yalta.

Second, the capital of ‘little Russia’, Kiev, a city amazingly rich in its architecture which ranges from rock-cut mediaeval monasteries through to gloriously gilded Baroque churches, the finest art nouveau, to monumental soviet memorials.  

Ukraine is both Russia and not Russia: its history has been intertwined with that of the Muscovite Empire but it has evolved its own very distinct culture and politically it has stood apart from the Soviet period even to the point of much of its army allying itself with the third Reich!

The foremost impression I had of Ukraine was of a country on a vaster scale than that of any other European nation, a country straddled between the desire to adopt European values, in particular its wish to form part of the European Union, and the need to appease its Muscovite neighbour and, above all, a country imbued with a history of immense glory and immense suffering. (We still don’t know how many millions died in the Holodomor, the devastating Ukrainian Stalinist famines of the nineteen thirties, the horrors of the Babi Yar massacre, or how many are still suffering as a result of the World’s greatest nuclear disaster, Chernobyl.)

I just hope this epic country will not have to submit itself to further futile suffering – surely it has agonised enough!!! My dream would be that Ukraine is left alone to become once again not only the bread-basket of Europe it used to be but form an integral part of the European Union to which it historically and culturally belongs.

The main thing to note about our chronicle for this year is that for much of 2021 it is not so much ‘our’ as normal but  ‘my’ instead since, thanks to Covid-19 restrictions, Sandra, beleaguered in Brexitania and I, entrenched in Italia, were only able to meet up for the first time on August 26th. This meant that such events as ‘La Befana’, Burns night, Saint Valentine’s Day, my wife’s birthday, Easter and even our wedding anniversary were only able to be celebrated via the miracle of modern internet technology.

I think of another age when momentous events separated people from their loved ones. The period of the Second World War had no such communication aids as WhatsApp or Skype and mail was frequently disrupted by enemy action. How lucky we have been in 2021 to be able to join up for breakfast on the laptop screens, to be able to read whole books to each other and to accompany our virtual presences on walks and visits.  Incidentally, among the most prized books we read to each other in 2021 were ‘Little Women’ and its sequel ‘Good Wives’, so modern in sentiment and such a delight to read aloud, and the delightful ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. (How we would have loved to have met Paramahansa Yogananda).

Cultural visits were necessarily curtailed this year. However, two memorable ones stand out for me. The first was to Florence’s famed Uffizi gallery which I had virtually to myself. It was as if that wonderful array of some of the most marvellous paintings of western civilization had become my private gallery. I was particularly attracted by the new Leonardo gallery and, in particular, his ‘Adoration of the Magi,’ returned there after a seven-year restoration which has done so much to give back the freshness of this unfinished painting.

Another visit was to Rome and again it seemed as if I had the whole of the eternal city to myself. The main reason for my visit was to view Alessandro Torlonia’s, Prince of Fucino, collection of classical statuary on public view for the first time in a generation. It is perhaps the world’s greatest private assemblage of Roman (and some Greek) sculpture: Venuses, sarcophagi, fauns, gods, mythical heroes, vases and urns are all included. The collection is so vast that it accounts for one third of all Rome’s ancient sculptural heritage and is seven times larger than the national museum’s Palazzo Altemps collection.  It was again wonderful that I could share these exceptional experiences in real-time with Sandra using my telefonino’s mobile data!

Friends prompted me to make an effort to visit my spouse during these difficult times and I remain ever grateful for their encouragement. I’d already obtained my green passport through two vaccinations done at Viareggio’s health centre and booked my test upon arrival in London so I was well-prepared to face the restrictions. I did not tell Sandra that I would be coming. After all, with so many flights cancelled, what was the point of informing her that I would arrive and then find that it was all in vain?

I felt a little like a soldier coming back on leave and certainly absence DOES make the heart grow fonder. Our time in London was spent with many more visits than I had managed in Italy and during the late summer and early autumn in this magical city of my birth and upbringing we were present at, among other sights, Bentley Abbey, Gunnersbury Park, the Canal museum, Evensong at Saint Paul’s cathedral, Upminster Windmill, Richmond palace, Charlton Lido, the Post office private underground railway, organ recitals at Saint Margaret’s Lothbury, Pittshanger mansion, Carshalton spa, the V and A’s fab ‘Alice in Wonderland’ exhibition, the Docklands museum, the delights of Eastbourne, George Harrison’s old haunt at Bhakti Vedanta manor, Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ at the ROH, the latest James Bond film and Mudchute urban farm. (I think we more than made up for visits lost because of our enforced separation…)

We were looking for a new place in Italy for over two years and had been largely disappointed in our search. The houses offered to us were either without proper car access (so necessary, especially at our age), or too close to other houses, or with too much work to do (or undo!) on them or just too plain expensive! Finally a property came up that managed to tick all our boxes. It was with brilliant car access, isolated but not remote, surrounded by its own ample grounds absolutely ready to move in – indeed it seemed to have sprung up like magic especially for us!

But could we find the money for it without having yet sold our present abode? It was a little touch and go, especially with those additional costs that ennervatingly emerge when purchasing a new house. However, we managed it and on December 6^th signed a multiplicity of papers and, hey presto, a loveable little farmhouse on the slopes of the Apennines complete with its fine trees, outbuildings and gorgeous views became ours to own and enjoy.

However, we did not move immediately on the day of signing except for one of our family. Our endearing cat Corneglia, the oldest member of our feline family, had just died and it was pride of place for her to become the first inmate to be welcomed to our new dwelling in her own private garden grave.

Christmas and New Year have followed and we are so happy to have a place that we can truthfully call our own. It’s been such a wonderfully different winter this time when compared to last year! We are together again after almost a year apart. We have a lovely new house in which to spend our remaining span of time on this planet and we consider ourselves truly blessed and lucky to be able to be still alive and well together!

We sincerely hope that 2022 will be a happy and prosperous year for you too!

Italy is mourning the unexpected death of one of its most honest and integral politicians, David Sassoli.  Born in Florence in 1956 David started as a journalist, became a popular television presenter, was deputy director of the Italian TG1 news desk and was elected an MEP in 2009 representing the centre-left democratic-socialist alliance. In 2019 Sassoli was elected president of the European parliament, a position he retained until his untimely death from a form of blood cancer on 11^th of January this year.

Italy does not have a very wonderful reputation for the way it handles its political scenario. However, this does not prevent some of the greatest figures emerging from its often confused and corrupted situation. The names of Giorgio Berlinguer (whose daughter is a well-known television presenter) and Alcide De Gasperi immediately come to mind. They helped to rescue a land mired in the ruins of a nation traitorously led into a war by a fascist regime and re-established Italy as one of the leading members of the European community and a solid upholder of democratic values. Sassoli was of this class and it is terribly sad that this utterly straightforward and candid person who described himself as a ’socialist christian’, has left Italy at the height of his competency and powers as the head of one of the world’s greatest politico-economic organizations.

For once I know that politics can also produce truly honourable persons. For once, I am deeply sad about the death of a politician…

Somehow I prefer Italian seaside resorts in the winter. In summer so many of the nation’s beaches are carved up between various bathing companies who lease their stretch of coastline from the municipal authoritie and the ‘free’ beach is reduced to a tiny stretch and becomes terribly overcrowded. True, there are ‘wild’ stretches of seacoast that one can head for but they are often without easy access and at some distance from where we live.

Paying for the privilege of accessing a stretch of the Versilia sands enables one to have a deckchair and sunshade plus showering  and changing facilities and, of course, a bar or restaurant. The area is all so manicured with regimented rows of holidaymakers gathering around them the same neighbours that they had last year…and the years before that. No polite chaos such as exists on British seaside places happens in these well-drilled stretches of the Italian Riviera: it’s like being in a holiday butlinesque open-air classroom.

In winter the region is all so refreshingly different: the beach is free of deckchairs and all the paraphernalia of holidaymakers and one can walk for miles across footprint-less and litter-free sands traversing an almost Saharan semi-solitude.

True no-one appears to be bathing – although the waters felt to me to be as warm as any on the Welsh coast during the Celtic summer but there is so much else to enjoy. We particularly love to pick up a ‘fritto misto’ from one of the floating fried fish caterers whose boats lie tied up by the sides of the main canal leading to the lighthouse at Viareggio.

The fried shrimps aren’t half-bad either.

We truly enjoyed our time in an off-duty Viareggio and the weather was quite idyllic – a spring-like day in fact with the bluest of skies and a radiant sunlight.  

What other seaside resort is fringed on one side by the most placid of seas and on the other by the most jagged of mountain ranges?

In February, Viareggio’s famous carnival is planned to take place, this year at the traditional time instead of last year’s event which had to be rescheduled for autumn because of the pandemic. We intend to participate in this gloriously creative event and truly hope that it will mark the beginning of the end of one of the most unpleasant events to have taken place during our life-time. For it was in 2020 that we last attended the carnival and it was on the last day it was held as the pageant had to be closed down prematurely because of the swelling Covid-19 emergency. Then we wore no masks, knew nothing about social distancing, and had no compulsion about disinfecting our hands when entering public establishments, shops and bars – in short we knew nothing about how radically our lives and behaviours would be altered by the ghastly virus.

Humans in common with other animals are immensely adaptable. We made the changes required by the authorities and what seemed so weird now became a matter of habit. Let us trust that we shall in the not too distant future be able to remember how we were living before that fateful last Viareggio carnival of 2020 we then attended with blissful unawareness.

Sky and sea combine:

wavelets lap our salty skin

sunshine breathes on lips.

What do you do with your Christmas tree when Christmas is over? Thrown away Christmas trees are some of the most frequent items in rubbish collection these days. However, they can have a useful afterlife as chicken, sheep or goat feed. Why not check out where your nearest urban farm is and head there with that discarded fir?

We bought a Christmas tree, fortunately complete with its roots, some five years ago and have carried it indoors in its pot and decorated it for our last few winter festivities. This year we decided to give our fir a well-deserved retirement – it would, otherwise have grown too tall for our living room – and the evergreen has now been re-planted into a welcoming patch of our garden.

Long may our Christmas tree thrive and provide company for our other rather larger fir to the front of our house.

Maybe it might even outlive its senior relative but that, regrettably, will never be for us to know…

We’ve been very busy with our move. Starting on the sixth of December, the day we concluded the purchase of our new house, we thought everything in our move would have been done and dusted by now. Vain hope! It’s not so much the furnishings which are taking up our energy: it’s things like blankets and bedclothes, that bane of bureaucracy, files and, of course lots of leaflets and pamphlets which we have collected over the years and point directly to so many things and places we have been to since we moved to this country over sixteen years ago.

Worst of all (or rather best) is, naturally our library which, although not mammoth is large enough to create logistic problems especially when we have no bookshelves in our new place ready yet for our tomes!

And all our move has been done (so far) on our sturdy little fiat 4 X 4 Panda complete with roof rack. At least we’ll know that if items arrive damaged it’s our fault!

Of course, minimalists and ancient sages might say that there’s no need for all this baggage we carry around on our backs rather like Pilgrim’s sins. True, but there is that slavery of attachment, that respect of memory and gifts given to us, that sense of security that otherwise unremarkable objects instil. This is particularly the case with my old vinyl which more sensible friends have either never indulged in or have disposed of eons ago.  However, each one of these twelve inch relics of previous recording techniques with their evocative album covers reminds me either of a concert I attended, or a Christmas present received or even a charity shop where I bought it.

To go to more eternal things. Nature surrounds us with all its often harsh winter glory, Yet, in the gnarled trunk of the chestnut tree flanking the entrance to our little manor with that old letter box firmly embedded in it, in the courageous narcissi pertly promising that spring will arrive after winter’s niggardly hand, in the extensive views of a land rooted in the most ancient of histories there is so much to please and comfort, so much more than those worldly possessions we avaricious mortals condemn ourselves to trail behind us through our petty vanities.

One of the biggest complaints home owners have today is the lack of storage space in houses, especially those in new developments. Not everything we own is in regular use but somehow we can’t throw or give it away…it could come useful one day, who knows? But where to put it when the place we live in has no attic or cellar or even a box room?

When we bought our ‘new’ appennine farmhouse its sale description made little mention of what we would be getting apart from the rooms in the house itself: two bedrooms, kitchen, living room and two bathrooms. We were worried about how much we might have to downsize and decant our wordly possessions.

We need not have worried for we found our house had eight additional rooms which, with a little modification, could be turned into living space.

Here is the first of our three cellars in our house:

As can be seen this space, formerly used for agricultural purposes and certainly for housing animals, has already been put to a new use.

This is our second cellar. Sandra immediately saw its potential as a miniature theatre or performance space as it even seems to have a sort of stage. Our piano will get a place here and music scores, cassettes and old vinyl have found their way here.

Our third cellar houses the boiler and gas cylinders. It’s a bit smaller than the other two but could still give us useful storage space. If needs be we could even rear rabbits as there are hutches here.

At the side of the house there’s a lean-to holding stacks of tiles which could come in very useful for our project in restoring the roof of the barn which also forms part of our property.

We now come to this barn.

The building contains a wood store:

Next to the woodstore is a garage/work-room:

The first floor of the barn is occupied by a hay loft.

And by an adjoining room:

There are also a couple of shacks in our grounds which could usefully be used as timber stores:

However, I’ve said enough to believe that we won’t have too many problems with storage space.