Catch of the day at Marina di Vecchiano….

and one of our favourite sunset meals.

Our flashmob happened today, 25 August morning, at Ponte del Diavolo. The aim was to:

1. To prevent cuts to 118 telephone Health emergency number.

2. To ensure there’s always a doctor available to assist on ambulances.

3. To protect our local and provincial health services against any further cuts especially First Aid.

A good turnout was had on quite a blustery morning!

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Il nostro flashmob di oggi, 25 agosto mattina, al Ponte del Diavolo. L’obiettivo è:

1. Prevenire tagli al numero di emergenza sanitaria 118.

2. Garantire che ci sia sempre un medico disponibile per assistere sulle ambulanze.

3. Proteggere i nostri servizi sanitari locali e provinciali da ulteriori tagli e i particolare riportarci il nostro Primo Soccorso.

Una buona affluenza è stata registrata in una mattina piuttosto ventosa!

https://www.lanazione.it/lucca/cronaca/flashmob-punto-primo-soccorso-a5050b4d

Jim Roberts

We are told to call 112 in case of an emergency when we visit the EU. What is this special number 118 in Italy? Is it universal across the EU? What services are we to expect from using it? Will an ambulance always come? Is the Ambulance state-run and free even for non-residents of Italy?

Jim Roberts In Italy if you are facing an emergency, get in touch with the relevant national emergency numbers: Call 118 : Health emergency. Call 113 : Police. Call 115 : Fire Brigade.

Jim Roberts 112 is the European emergency number you can dial free of charge from fixed and mobile phones everywhere in the EU. It will get you straight through to the emergency services – police, ambulance, fire brigade.

National emergency numbers are still in use too, alongside 112. But 112 is the only number you can use to access the emergency services in all EU countries.

Another Flamingo? Yes there is! And it’s on the opposite side of the Serchio River near the Gallicano industrial estate which we visited yesterday to sort something out with the helpful staff of Gaia water.

Run by the brother of the Ponte all’Ania’s Flamingo its decor is more jazzy and informal in style. (It has jazz evenings too!).

The menu for a pranzo lavorativo (worker’s lunch) remains acceptable and at good value. Seating can be inside and outside.

Don’t let the situation by an industrial estate put you off: there are also decent DIY suppliers there too with ample parking.

Now which side of the river shall we find our next Flamingo?

More details here:

Flamingo Caffè
Tel: 333 807 5750

https://g.co/kgs/C4KXHjQ

A nice place for us yesterday to have what in Italy is called ‘pranzo lavorativo’ (worker’s lunch) but what in the UK would cost a bit more than the E13 (inc wine, coffee and mineral water) we paid for our excellent meal.

The restaurant/bar is not just near the petrol station but next to great river bathing with the clearest water. (No sewage here like in some countries we know).

Sadly Puccini died one hundred years ago leaving his ‘Turandot’ unfinished. Zeffirelli’s production from Verona’s arena is wonderful but the last act is lacking because of its completion by Alfano. For me Hao Wei Ya’s finale is so much better and ends with ‘Mo Li Hua’, the jasmine flower symbolising marriage and which Puccini always associated with the princess.. (a melody, incidentally, picked up from his friend’s music box at Bagni di Lucca, Baron Camossi, Italian ambassador to China).

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youtube.com

RUDY PARK – TURANDOT FINALE 2011 – SEOUL – HAO WEI YA – KNO – NCPA

In the noble setting of Lucca’s Collegio Reale we musically entered the battles of Prague, Austerlitz and other Napoleonic triumphs under the supremely assured command of Professor Peter Hicks and his band of loyal troops.

After a share of bombardment by timpani cannons and cluster forte-piano chords we emerged into the sultry city night confident of our victory over not just enemy forces but also over ignorance of the importance programmatic ‘battle music’ once held in European repertoire.

Thank you again Anna Benedetto for so energetically helping to make these enjoyable and instructive events possible.

Our favourite medical health Centre (yes, they can also be described as ‘favourite’) is the one at Fornaci di Barga named after the great poet and former citizen Giovanni Pascoli memorialised in this plaque affixed to the main building.

Situated in Via dell’Asilo (‘asilo’ also means ‘nursery’ or refuge in Italian – not just asylum!) it originated from an idea to help war orphans by the owner of the former local munitions factory (!) Founded by the Fornaci Pro-War Orphans Committee in 1918 the asilo was created to support those children orphaned by the First World War.

The asilo is an architectural gem whose restoration as a health and rehabilitation centre is largely thanks to star Bagni Di Lucca architect Francesco Rondina. Part of has even been converted into a theatre (for plays I hasten to add, not operations!)

After spotting my post Francesco Rondina wrote this to explain his contribution to the asilo project in more detail:

‘Thank you Francis for mentioning this long restoration of mine that has occupied many years of my professional life. The redevelopment works of the first pavilions began in the mid-80s (with the L-shaped body) and then continued for at least two subsequent decades when I restored the central block to locate the polyclinic and the pavilion behind it intended as a day center for the physically and mentally disabled. And finally the most difficult operation: inserting a new building, the psychiatric assistance residence, in that delicate context admirably conceived by my predecessor designer, Eng. Ottavio Tironi (for the record still alive at the age of 103 in Milan when I began the first restorations). On my Fb page ‘Francesco Rondina Architetto’ I explain the criteria I adopted for this delicate operation.”

I just hope munificence of this order may appear in those much needed areas of the world, so sad to mention at the present time.

We must ever believe that the Phoenix can be re-born from its ashes…

For example this is what I wrote for my post here on February 4, 2019:

“I return to Bagni di Lucca with some sadness at two events that have recently hit it during my absence.

One is the devastating fire last Sunday that burnt down the Mirafiume tennis club. We are clearly not only talking just about the structure but its equipment, which included rafting that is used in the highly successful white water courses on our Lima River”

Yet!!!

This summer not only is there a brand new tennis club house but Mirafiore has the honour of having nurtured one of the world’s foremost players and an Olympic gold medallist to boot: Jasmine Paolini!

This is what I also wrote on February 4, 2019:

“The other sad event is the closing down of the ‘Borgo degli Artisti’, a cultural association founded in 2005 in Ponte a Serraglio. This, too, is quite devastating. A forum for all artists in the area the ‘Borgo’ was also responsible for two major events in Bagni di Lucca: the extempore painting competition in the summer and the women’s week in the spring”.

Yet!!!

The ‘Borgo degli Artisti’ is now reborn!

A large, festive crowd of artists and well-wishers gathered yesterday afternoon at the Borgo’s location at Ponte a Serraglio. Five years of regretful absence of this essential part of Bagni di Lucca’s cultural and social life were whisked away with convivial celebration as the Borgo’s doors opened to a representative exhibition displaying the extraordinary variety of creativity our comune is capable of.

Yes, our own ‘rive gauche’ has made a welcome return thanks to the devotion of a group headed by the indomitable energy and guidance of Morena Guarnaschelli.

Watch the Borgo’s space on media for much more is to follow including art courses for those of us who still only dream of pla

cing our visions on canvas.

Below you will also find the Borgo’s opening times. (Mon – Sat : 5 – 8pm).

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So there we are. As new forests can grow from devastation let us also hope that not only tennis champions, not only fine artists but also PEACE can arise from rubble and ruin in the world.

I was recently slapped on the wrist by the moderator for bringing in politics into a local community page against the rules of engagement of that page which is a social and advice forum for the area. I brought in British political opinions as well..on a page devoted largely to English speakers who have either purchased a holiday property here or a visitors or are what some call ‘expats’ and others (more appropriately I feel) term immigrants.

Why did I indulge in this faux-pas? Why is it also ‘no politics please. We’re British.’

I had become rather worked up about the disgusting news broadcast by the Beep regarding the riots occurring in various locations in that otherwise green and pleasant land. These riots were principally aimed at refugees and immigrants by what the PM rightly classed as extreme right-wing thugs. They were principally suggested by misinterpretation of details regarding the horrific murder of three young girls by a teenager in Southport during a Taylor Swift dance event. It was the suggestion that the murderer was a recent Muslim immigrant from Rwanda that created fuel for the actions of the rioters.

If this had been Germany in the nineteen thirties then clearly the outcome would have been rather different. Another kristalnacht perhaps? Another return to totalitarianism? Indeed in many towns and cities in the UK there were disturbing echoes of brown-shirted violence. The following account, for example, was received by me from an acquaintance sadly living through these despicable events in England.

“The worst of the riots were literally in the streets around our workshop. The damaged cars of our neighbours were stowed around our workshop building behind locked alley gates to prevent further vandalism. Our staff went home early the next afternoon to enable them to store their cars with repaired windscreens out of the way of potential repeat activity. Their children were terrified as their front windows were smashed in. Their elders slept in neighbours houses to feel safer. I’m therefore well aware of the nature of the individuals who caused this wanton destruction. It was my community that was attacked. My community turned out in force at 6am the next morning to clean the mess and support each other. Someone started a £3K appeal to replace the professional carer’s car that was burned out. £7.5K was immediately raised”.

But note the difference. Were there any persons who raised funds for damaged properties in 1936? What a difference. What a truly admirable British difference also occurred this month! Remember if one does nothing then anything can happen….

Furthermore, the country’s new PM, barely a month in office, displayed a true firmness in dealing with the perpetrators of the riots. No longer were they just violent. They were rioters creating a situation close to treason because it affected the very social fabric of the nation.

Well done Starmer for acting so quickly and decisively!

So what was my mistake, my misinterpretation of the situation in the UK? It was by my suggesting that all extremist right-wing thugs had voted for Brexit and, worst, that consequently all those who had voted for Brexit were potentially right-wing thugs.

I should add at this stage that, as the offspring of an English-born father and an Italian born mother, and also as the husband of a dual nationality (italian-british) wife, I have been affected all my life by the ambiguities of nation and race. For me Brexit also represented a form of disguised racism, not just a revolt against Brussels bureaucracy. Sadly decent people were conned into this political duplicity as people like Welsh hill sheep farmers and hospital operatives, fishermen and family businesses discovered to their cost.

So what did I write that caused such a splurge of vitriol on the otherwise placid pages of the FB social forum?

“Hi we’ve been mostly very lucky in meeting convivial people here in Lucca and the Lucchesia and we’ve made a lot of good friends both Italians and those from other European countries. However, we’re a little wary of meeting new English people as we’ve been told that several of them are still Brexiteers. We would be somewhat worried about meeting them in view also of the recent riots in the UK. We would be so grateful to know if anyone could give us any ideas to help avoid these embarrassing situations. Grazie!”

At least I now know that thoughts on the ghastly B word must never escape again from my pen (or rather the thumb I am using to write this on my telefonino).

I read somewhere – perhaps it was in Samuel Johnson’s ‘Lives of the Poets’ – that Milton couldn’t write anything during the summer. Now I am no Milton but I am suffering from the same disease. Not every summer of course but this one when the well-named Charon anti-cyclone has been hitting the Mediterranean boot with temperatures never less than in the high thirties. Global warming rearing its ugly isobars again? Indeed the whole of our beautiful inland sea has been affected…..badly. No less than twenty five red Italian cities. No, not communist but compressed in insupportable heat. Any tourist still left in Florence, Dante’s summer hell at 45C?

Talking to an old small-holder who sells us some good vegetables (if you manage to get to him before ten in the morning) reveals a tale of woe: over half his yield has been devoured by the seating heat so far this year – he’s never known anything like it in his seventy-odd years on this ever warming up planet.
Does this mean that good epic poems and excellent carrots depend on the weather?

I shall have to do some further research on this. Did our greatest local epic poet, Ariosto, suffer from writers’ block when stationed in his miserable bandit-ridden quarters at Garfagnana’s own Newcastle because of the climate? It was, however, the pungent Apuan cold he suffered most from.
Anyway, now that daytime temps here are below thirty degrees for the first time since June I have been able to put obfuscated thoughts into words and think again. ..even sweet thoughts and not just about gelato.

Regarding the weather it’s interesting how climatically-themed music is written so appositely for the geographic area it is written in. If one avoids ‘Miltonitis’ and manages to get anything written in summer using music then surely Vivaldi’s Summer storm could only be felt in Italy as it was just a couple of days ago during the bank holiday here instituted by a Roman emperor and called Ferragosto. That was not just a typical boring English downpour but a devilish thunderstorm sweeping holidaymakers and their sunshades, if not their aperitifs, off the well manicured beaches of Viareggio. Compare the red Venetian priest’s version of a storm with Haydn’s refreshing sound in his own ‘Seasons’. So English, so much of a quick dash into the white pavilion for another Pimm’s.

But for how long like this? Evidently the populace are now getting ‘rain events’ in Brexitania. Whatever havoc could these ‘events’ now bring?

Goodbye summer showers Hello Rain Events.

At least I’ve unblocked writer’s paralysis for a few minutes. But then there should be every way to avoid sweaty nights tossing and turning in a dishevelled bed and hoping those heat flashes will announce a thunderstorm. Just step into our surrounding woods and be enfolded by their cooling foliage which might even release my fingers to write again…..