Italian Neighbours? Apart from another, still empty, house we can espy at the end of that precipice which acts as the western limit of our little estate, we have none. Do we miss them? Not really. In fact, we’ve decided that, as far as we’re concerned, the less we have to do with neighbours the better. Idyllic Enid Blytonesque encounters with those on the other side of the garden fence exchanging tea-time banter or the occasional glass or spoonful of sugar are not for us. True, neighbours have come in useful at times. Now, however, that we have our own car-battery charger and the lawn-mower has, to date failed to break down we need them less and less. Have neighbours perhaps proved useful in informing us of anything untoward happening to our property if we’ve been away from it for any length of time? It has happened.

It has also happened, however, that neighbours have informed other less agreeable members of the community. Here’s an example:

When a brexitanian neighbour kindly told us, while we were away abroad on family business, that someone had complained to them about the wisteria hedge of our former house overgrowing on the path outside our gate, apparently impeding pedestrian progress, and that perhaps they could trim it for us we were grateful for their offer and remunerated them accordingly.

We have now received (three years later…!) a three-figure fine from the local municipal police stating that at that same time they received a complaint from X and that they had to issue an injunction against us for breaking the law on the obstruction of public foot-paths.

Having lived in that particular property for close onto seventeen years we had never previously received any complaint about our garden hedge, let alone been issued with a fine for it. In any case, if some wisteria twigs had become too long could these have not been severed with a ‘pennato’, or local version of the machete, which every household in our mountain country communities has, especially when local paths regularly become overgrown with brambles particularly during the summer?

No…this incident appears to us to display the negative side of neighbours who, like those who begat us, we have no choice in selecting.

Unless one is desperately sociable and cannot live without neighbours on either side, no matter of what ilk these might be, or unless one has a village or town dwelling suitably insulated from others and (preferably…) without a hedge then – for us, the best choice we’ve done – is to move to a place where the nearest neighbour is at least a mile away and where the only nuisances one is likely to get are from wild boars, badgers, deer, the occasional hunters’ dogs and wolves.  

One thing we will have learned because of the war being waged in eastern Europe is that Ukraine is one of the world’s major wheat producers. We are all affected by the horrors of what is happening to the people there and, apart from our energy and fuel predicament, the panic-buying of Ukraine’s cooking oil (sourced from a flower that is that country’s symbol) and rationed supplies of flour on depleted shelves in our local supermarkets indicate that absolutely no-one remains unaffected in this tragic situation.

May Peace and bread soon return to this troubled world!

One of the pleasures of purchasing a new property in winter is inheriting its garden and seeing what flora will appear when Spring returns. In addition to the flowers we have added we have also become owners of a variety of fruit trees and shrubs. These include apple, pear and cherry. Everyday springs new surprises upon us as more natural fireworks from our blossoms are displayed.

Our land extends into the surrounding forests and the other day a lady visitor turned up promising a jar of honey since she’d had an arrangement with the previous owners to keep her beehives on part of our property. Another surprise. We had, time ago, thought of raising bees in our old house but never did. Maybe that might happen now?

One thing is sure, however; we have started on our new ‘orto’, or kitchen garden, in this incredibly strange first quarter of 2022 when hardly any snow has fallen and where there has been just a sprinkling of rain.  

The ‘Via del Grano’ (way of the grain) is one of several footpaths which have been cleared and opened up to the public by the Gruppo Pegaso, Bagni di Lucca’s enterprising trekking association.   Formerly a mule-track it starts from the old Demidoff hospital at Ponte a Serraglio, now the headquarters of the alternative healing Global Village. It wends its way upwards to the village of Granaiola, whose name derives from the wheat fields for which it was famous in past generations. The route then continues along a ridge to descend to Fornoli and the railway station and return to its starting point at the Demidoff.

We are fortunate in that our house is not too far away from the ‘Via del Grano’ and that we do not even have to cross a road to reach it. This makes it very useful for a walk with our cats, Carlotta, born 2012, Cheeky, born 2013 and Archie, born 2019.  They certainly enjoy following us, or more often, leading us along this mountain path. The scenery the ‘Via’ crosses is quite varied ranging from forest to meadow to orchard. At one point it meets a little hamlet with its own chapel, the Madonna Della Neve, the Madonna of the Snow. Here is a selection of photos from the walk we took along it a couple of days ago.

I sadly see that the present granary of Europe (and a large part of the world) is still under the most horrific and sensless attack. I sincerely hope that another ‘way of the grain’ may not have to wait too long before it is returned to peace and to growing wheat again.

The last few years have been for me full of whammies, mainly health ones. This year, however, there are three whammies that will affect all of us. They are, not unsurprisingly, the latest transmogrification of Covid-19, the hike in energy costs and, probably, that which will undoubtedly hit us most of all, although thankfully we are (or think we are) not directly involved in it: the fratricidal-tinged war in Ukraine.

In our part of the world we are fortunate regarding the energy crisis. Surrounded by extensive Apennine forests, with excellent cast-iron stoves available and with fewer strictures regarding air pollution from wood-burning we can have at least one room in the house kept warm during our still very nippy evenings.

With regard to hot water we could have a roof ceramic heater which works on the simple basis of the sun’s rays warming its contents of redirected water. This we had in our old place and may probably install it sooner than we planned especially when our first inflated electric and gas bills arrive!

We should always prize our luck in living here for there are too many parts of the world today where it’s either ‘eat’ or ’heat’ and where, in some of the most cruel instances of war, people have neither. Let us try to never fall into the desolation of some families who turn away from accepting free potatoes from food banks because they cannot afford the fuel to boil them… 

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,

Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glühn,

Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,

(Trans)

“Do you know the land where the lemon-trees grow? 

Where in darkened leaves the gold-oranges glow? 

A soft wind blows from the pure blue sky, 

Perhaps Goethe’s best-known lyric, the lines taken from his ‘Mignon’, illustrate Italy’s wonderful country panoramas of endearing lemon trees and other citrus fruits. Coming over the Brenner pass from the grey winter of Weimar the sight of lemon groves hugging the shores of the Lake of Garda, tempering the area’s mountain climate raised ecstatic thoughts in the beleaguered poet’s mind.  Today the lemon groves of Lake Garda still survive although sadly there is a shortage of hands to tend them and many have been abandoned. To see more extensive lemon groves one must venture further south in the peninsula and principally on the Campanian coast, the birthplace of that delectable nectar liqueur called Limoncello.

However, throughout Italy, birthplace of ice cream, the most luscious lemon ices may be found which for me is the best way to assuage the parching heat of the country’s summers.

Nevertheless, there appears to be one item derived from lemons which is virtually impossible to find in the ‘Bel Paese’. It’s lemon curd, that high Victorian spread without which any teatime would be sorely lacking.

The other week my desperate need to be satisfied by this bijou of jams reached fever pitch. No place seemed to offer anything approaching lemon curd although pasticcierie supplied pastries with a lemon tinge and I even found some delicious lemon biscuits in a local supermarket.

I decided, therefore, to make my own lemon curd and came up with this recipe which has offered brilliant results:

Ingredients

2 lemons, zest and juice

100g caster sugar

50g butter

2 eggs, beaten

Method

Put the lemon zest, juice, sugar and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Stir occasionally until the butter has melted. Then, with a whisk or fork, stir in the beaten egg. Continue gently whisking the mixture over the heat for around ten mins until it becomes thick like custard.

Pour the ambrosial concoction into a jar and allow to cool.

Spread the curd on a slice of bread either toasted or not and enjoy its tangy texture, so much better than the usual sort one is forced to get from supermarkets!

Soon we shall be able to bring our own lemon trees out from their cosy winter hibernation in our log-shed where they have been protected from Jack Frost and let them breathe the temperate air of spring. I am sure some of their fruit will be used to make us more lemon curd!

With so much that is indescribably awful happening in our Europe at this moment it does help to have a few goodies to taste and, rather like Goethe’s lemons, take the mind away from those horrid actualities.

If Winter comes can Spring be far behind. If War comes can Peace be far behind….?

Our new houses’s garden is taking shape. May it flower soon!

Despite philosophic warnings that those who do not remember their history are bound to repeat it the majority today continue to forget theirs. These days, for instance, we are repeating what occurred during an interwar period summed up by the word ‘appeasement.’

European nations during the nineteen thirties sought to avoid a confrontation with Hitler by entering into weak diplomatic agreements whereby the wish of a megalomaniac for a greater Teutonic empire was gratified, for example, by the parcelling off of lands from the Sudetenland and the eventual gobbling up of Czechoslovakia. Today a parallel phenomenon is occurring in central and Eastern Europe. Nations appeased the Russian dictator by not interfering as far as his invasions of Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea were concerned. Putin did not even wait for any appeasement attempt before invading Ukraine. There was no ‘piece of paper’ to tear up here since no diplomatic accord was ever reached. Hence there was no obligation for the UK to declare war on Russia from that Cabinet Room in Ten Downing Street. Hitler’s invasion of Poland, in concurrence with Russia’s, came under the name of ‘border rectification’ and the current invasion of Ukraine is called by its perpetrator, a ‘military operation’.

Are we going to wait until the Kremlin’s plans for a ‘Greater Russia’ develops into interference with the Baltic States – in other words a direct confrontation with members of the European  Union (which, one may recollect, was set up with the prime objective of keeping the peace)?

One thing is certain: those who do not know the history of Russia – the history of a nation whose colonial empire (like the former German one) did not lie overseas but next door do not realise that they do things rather differently in that country Everything there appears to be on a much more colossal scale whether it  be novel-writing, symphonic composition, railway construction and, above all, human suffering – as agonised principally in the rise of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian famine, the Great Patriotic War and the Gulag Archipelago.

(Stalingrad 1942, Mariupol 2022)

I remain cautioned and my increasing preoccupation rests sadly unappeased by any convincing effort towards the avoidance of a truly possible start to Word War Three.

Nine years a-blogging…

(My first blog was written exactly nine years ago)…..

It took just 21 years for Russia to wait before invading (with the collaboration of Nazi Germany) its neighbour the newly independent Republic of Poland, an action which precipitated World War Two.

Ukraine enjoyed 31 years of independence before being invaded by its neighbour Russia whose premier/dictator asserts that it won’t do the same with its other neighbours. Does this mean that the Baltic republics are safe?

Meanwhile neighbour Moldova, not yet an EU member, is on high alert. The main reason for founding the European Union was to prevent further wars. Does this mean that Russia’s EU neighbours won’t be threatened and that non-members will?

The pathetic response of HM govt. to the Ukrainian refugee crisis and the fact that the Tory government, ruling triumphantly over a Brexitanian con-conspiracy, counts Russian oligarchs among its most generous donors fills me with shivers and shame. I remain so glad to be living in a country which is a member of the EU and which has, despite its hardships under the Covid-19 crisis, shown unconditional solidarity and help towards the Ukrainian people.