Tales from the Gael

Well, I have been planning for Christmas for ages- the first time I have been so organised. Presents bought, menu sorted, and outfits prepared. And then as our wonderful national poet said:

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”

A wee quotation there from ‘To a Mouse’ by Robert Burns.

Our small world here has been like a scene from a hospital drama. First John’s op developed complications and he had to be readmitted with an infection and was put in a weird isolation room here in the Western Hospital, Edinburgh. He is now recovered and that is good. Then Natasha was suddenly admitted to hospital in Cardiff with appendicitis, which had an abscess which burst, as well as the ruptured appendix and a tear on the bowel, so it was a nasty operation. She was very ill and I flew down to take care of Bonnie. Leo is great and coping well so I am back home to cook the meal that should have been for all of us, but now only for ourselves and Gerry and Cathal, which I know will be good and  we shall have a good day. But my thoughts are with Tasha at this time.

She is being let out between drips to spend Christmas morning with Leo and Bonnie. Poor girl, it just makes it extra horrible because it coincided with this special time of year that we had all been looking forward to.

So I shall raise a glass (or three) to you all, and wish you well for this Christmas.

From the chief nurse and bottle washer, and  convalescent carer and companion, Cheers! – Tae a moose!!

and here she is discovering the joys of Granny’s bag!

I’ve been up since 3 am. Had tea and toast, finished my book, tried to get back to sleep but just have given myself more wrinkles by screwing my eyes shut tight. So, I’ve given up.

This last month has been all about opening and closing the curtains and shutters. The days disappear, and its dark, and suddenly there I go again, closing the curtains at about 4pm. It reminds me of those old movies where time passing is depicted by leaves of a calendar flying off into the wind. So, here, days pass and if the film was to be speeded up it would show me opening and closing, and light and dark whizzing by. So November has almost gone.

Walking home in the evenings other people around here are not as emphatic as me about keeping what they do in their sitting rooms private. Not that I do nude hovering (anymore… though it has been done in the past, as a sort of celebration that I could!) and it is a sort of contradiction really, considering I do write a blog which is not exactly something a really private person would do, but I hate the idea of living in a fish bowl and people looking in at me from outside. Shadows in the bushes aaaargh!

 I walk about these crescents and fine addresses of Edinburgh’s New town, and stare in at the dark red painted rooms, hung with art and large decorative mirrors, view birthday cards displayed at the window, Christmas trees in season, and sometimes recoil at the harsh bright colours that some people choose to paint their walls. People sit and stare at their television sets, seemingly unconcerned that passers-by can see in.

Well not so at this address. We are tightly curtained in at 4pm.

This last week has been a night mare. I fell victim to some campylobacter bug, no D or V but high fever and a tummy that blew up tight as a drum and I was in such pain. Anyway I opened my curtains, went back to bed and slept, then closed my curtains and huddled with the hot water bottle and TV then back to bed and slept. Seven days after being afflicted my tummy suddenly went soft and I was HUNGRY! Zoomed to the kitchen and made rice and apple puree and that was it, I was on the road to recovery. Oh the joys of being well! I gingerly went out and breathed the air, walked about and came back exhausted, closed the curtains and went to sleep!

Now…it seems I have slept enough as I am full of beans in the middle of the night. All this and John has been away, so I have been on my lonesome. It’s no fun, but at least we have Skype. I do miss him, and his caustic humour and his ability to laugh at the world (and me grrrr.) But it is therapeutic, I suppose it’s like the old adage, ‘if you frown at a mirror, it frowns back, but if you smile it returns the greeting!’ Oh it’s good to have ‘and adage’ to keep you going!

 I did see Bonnie on skype, she was playing the ukulele. Literally. She had it across her knees and she was plinking the strings and laughing at the sound. Clever girl!

I noticed the pot of pineapple sage is in flower, how beautiful. Who would have thought it could be so exotic.

And finally because I was ill I threw out some of my home made cereal, full of lovely nuts, cranberries, seeds and so on, and when I looked out later there was a scene that could have come straight from a forest created by Walt Disney. There were two squirrels, a robin and the tiniest mouse all munching together! What a grand afternoon tea!

Today I am off on my hols for a mini break to stay with my friend Sheila in Perth. I have washed my dressing gown and slippers specially!

Tally Ho! And off I go!

Milan and Lake Como

 Our mini Grand Tour of Italy was coming to an end. We had seen the art, admired the architecture, sat in churches, ate pasta and drank wine in the squares. Now we were in Milan, and it was as though we were back in modern time. There were cranes and cement mixers, refugee Africans selling tiny strands of beads, people busy going about their business. We felt as though we had stepped out of a golden bubble. We did go on a city tour bus, but were disappointed that the recording just pointed us to the sculpture that had been voted the worst in the city, and then she pointed out a mile of fencing with graffiti, completely ignoring Leonardo Da Vinci’s giant bronze horse. We were whipped around the famous AC Milan football stadium, and I looked at John and he looked at me, and I think we were just ‘toured’ out.

Walking back to the hotel we saw a pair of socks abandoned on the pavement, and John commented, very wryly, ‘Someone’s been laughing too much!’

We did walk down the Corso Buenos Aires and Corso Venetzia and met up with old friends, Arcimboldo’s creations. I have introduced so many children in my various classes to his wonderful fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish, all turned into portraits! Now here they were solidified in stone!

Milan is said to be the one of the high fashion capitals of Europe, so I got my hair cut, and two very cosy puffer jackets that I took great pride in modelling outside the Prada Store!

The Duomo put all other Duomos to shame. It rose like a dream creation in pink marble with 135 filigree spires and 3200 statues. The details of the relief work around the doors were exquisite. Going inside I felt I had entered a forest of stone trees, as the columns and pillars seemed to dwarf us all, but ahead the largest stained-glass windows in Christendom glowed with crimson, yellow and blue light, and drew the eye ever upwards.

The sobering statue of St Bartholomew stands towards the right of the apse.

He is skinned alive, as he is always depicted, and as Michelangelo painted him in the Last Judgement in the Sistene Chapel.

The statue in Milan, however suggests a growing interest in the anatomy of the human body. Every vein and sinew is cut into the stone.

We did not have time to visit Leonardo’s Last Supper; instead we took a train to Lake Como.

Oh how lovely!

There were mountains in the distance, pretty pastel-coloured houses rising steeply up the hillside, and the sweetest town with a history of being the best silk in the world.

We walked leisurely round the marina,

and came to the Funicular railway, which chugged its way up to the top of the hill in seven minutes, and we were treated to the most beautiful view. We had lunch naturally in the Ristorante Bellavista, and ate wild mushroom papparadelle and drank our last Spritz Aperol. The sun shone and we relaxed and felt we had come to the end of our Italian holiday in true style.

What a wonderful month, we had seen so much and learnt so much, and on a cold miserable day in the future, I know we can just close our eyes and conjure up any of the images we like, and it will all come alive again.

And what is more, I rubbed the wild boar’s nose, and that means I will return one day!

And here I am, back in Edinburgh, and really life is not so bad!

Venice

I missed a lot of the scenery as we sped along on the train from Florence to Venice, for I was totally engrossed in the third volume of Ken Follett’s trilogy, ‘Edge of Eternity.’ I relived all the excitement of the fall of the Berlin wall, and I saw on the news last night, that it is the 25^th anniversary of that amazing time. There was a lot of reflection yesterday on BBC, with Remembrance Sunday and the march out of royalty, church and state, then the ever increasing number of veterans. But now I flick through the diary of the more recent past and remember that the day we arrived at St Lucia station in Venice the whole country was on strike and all the river taxis were on NO GO!

Ah well, our hostess from the AirBnB had sent a guide to help us find the only vaporetto working and we were like cattle loaded on to the boat, and crammed in tight, and sailed down the Grand Canal to the Rialto Bridge. Our new home was minutes away, on a watery canal between St Marks and the famous bridge. Inside the mighty door that shut us away from the little piazza, we were in a private paradise. Quiet gardens with sculptures and ancient reliefs on the walls, and the water lapped quietly at the private boat entrance. What a lovely place to escape the throngs that crowd out the squares. Tourist ships disgorge their passengers every day, and we found it impossible to gain entrance to St Marks itself.

Instead we admired the glittering mosaic domes, and decided we would not waste our time in more queues. We got lost in the myriad of streets, drank coffee and spritz aperol in the sunshine, and admired the fashions and the pink palaces.

On one walk we came across a most disconcerting sight. Some Italian artist must have a thing about our Queen! Who on earth would think to buy this on their holiday? Where would they put it when they got home? Would they start a collection?

We crossed bridges, saw fish markets, sat in squares

and was horrified to see an old English couple open a plastic box with their packed lunch, and pull out two triangles of Dairy Lee cheese spread, and gobble it up with a piece of bread. No pecorino, or prosciutto or purple aubergine for them, or sweet roast peppers on focaccia bread. No No…pass the Dairy Lee if you please. It’s like that poem,

To a fat lady seen from the train by Frances Cornford

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

Missing so much and so much?

O fat white woman whom nobody loves,

Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

When the grass is soft as the breast of doves

And shivering sweet to the touch?

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

Missing so much and so much?

Anyway, we did have things to see, and we bee lined for the Scuola Grande de San Rocco, where I was once introduced to the most amazing artist, Tintoretto.He painted most of the paintings as well as the ceiling of this building dedicated to the patron saint of the plague stricken.

St Roch is always portrayed holding his dress up a little coquettishly to show off the blemish on his upper thigh!

Tintoretto’s subjects are modelled on Michelangelo’s sculptures, so they are muscular and brawny, and literally just leap out of the canvas. His angels and prophets swoop down out of the sky and his pictures have a different ‘take’ than the ordinary genre. His ‘Last Supper’ and ‘Nativity’ are totally original. Subjects are portrayed on different levels, the holy family on the top, and all the animals in the stall beneath. The paintings seem open as though the viewer could literally walk in and be part of the meal or the gathering. Later we saw more of him in the Academia Gallery. I loved the improbably muscular, long-armed saint rescuing a sailor from a frothing violent sea. All other seas now look so tame, so quiet.

By contrast the work of Giovanni Bellini is gentle and so beautiful. I reckon he is the only painter that has made the baby Jesus look natural.

The painting of Mary holding her infant, with her eyes filling with tears as though she knows what is to come, the child’s arm flopped down in sleep is so evocative, but then you walk into the next room and there is Bellini’s Pieta, and the pose is exactly the same, but this time Mary holds her dead son. The hair on the back of my neck prickled and I could feel the tears.

The other wonderful painting we saw was in the Frari church of Maria Gloriosa. This was Titian’s Assumption, with Mary being taken heavenward, on a cloud wearing a red cloak. Absolutely stunning.

John and I did go out on a very strange Limoncello pub crawl. Very delicious, and it was all so atmospheric. The canals were like black ink, the shadows held the secrets of centuries, and we crossed bridges and stumbled down dark alley ways, and the following morning I had a VERY sore head.

We took a vaporetto to Murano. What a wonderful surprise. I sort of expected a furnace, a display of glass blowing and a factory outlet (which we did see) but the town itself was like a miniature, sunny Venice, and we ate spaghetti vongoli and drank Prosecco and wandered about, and bought some glass balloons. I took a picture of a flower box complete with a glass garden!

On the way back to the boat, we decided to drop in to a church that was there. No real reason, can’t remember its name, but suddenly I said to John, ‘Look! There’s our friend!’ And there was a massive Tintoretto with his dive-bombing angels, and a Bellini. Just there for people to see, no entrance charge, no publicity and no security.

We left Venice on a crisp sunny day, and as we sailed up the Grand Canal, we saw a wedding taking place on the balcony of the state registrars. The bride and groom were in black, and they kissed and waved to us. I imagine that is where George Clooney and bride tied the knot.

So goodbye to Venice, with its churches, glass and gondolas. There is just too much to take in, too much to see and absorb. I loved the story of Casanova (the great corruptor of nuns), who was imprisoned in the famous attic prison but escaped across the Bridge of Sighs, and walked confidently out of the front door, even pausing for a coffee on Piazza San Marco. Nowadays you almost need a bank loan to pay for a coffee complete with small orchestra. Ah well … it’s Venice!

PS Was quite surprised to see some wooden shorts for sale!

San Gimignano

We were whisked away from Florence and our bus passed through the terraced hills of Chianti and the cypress-lined gardens of villages. We finally came upon the fifteen towers of a walled hill town, looking a little like a medieval Manhattan.

As we approached I kept thinking of Matthew 5:14 ‘A city set on a hill cannot be hidden…’ and I was later intrigued to read that there had once been seventy two towers and it was a way of flaunting ones wealth apparently. Build a tower!

We settled into the apartment and went walkabout. We loved the narrow streets, the unexpected turnings down arched alley ways, and then out to ramparts with vistas of the whole of Tuscany rolling away at our feet. It was so beautiful.

We joined the throngs of tourists that are bussed in every day, and looked at shops selling leather, pottery, cheese, and hams. We also made a note we must visit the two torture museums.

Later when the sun had set, and the busses had gone, we were almost alone in the square, sipping a drink and waiting for our pizza to arrive. The ancient well in the centre stood as it had done for centuries, and a flute player played a melancholy tune.

The next day Natasha and Leo and Bonnie arrived. It was fun to catch up on all the adventures and we made plans for the day ahead.

Leo asked me if there was anything I hadn’t done before my BIG birthday that I might have wished I had. I admitted I had never eaten a truffle! Well, we were in truffle country and that night we found a tucked away restaurant and I was served a mountain of tagliatelle with truffles.

I looked at the plate in horror, thinking of my waist line – SO much pasta! But after the first tentative sniff, then bite, I gobbled it all up like a famished bear and would have licked the plate. Ah! Now I understand what all the fuss is about!

My birthday was wonderful. I was greeted with balloons and cakes and cards and presents, and little Bonnie was quite bemused by it all.

She was dressed up in her best dress, then given a quick walking lesson by John then we all set off to see the Collegiata church. With our head phones on we strolled about, taking turns to hold Bonnie who was more interested in pulling herself up on the bars than seeing the 11^th frescoes which were like a medieval comic strip. Natasha was very concerned that Bonnie would be having night mares with all the depictions of ‘the massacre of the innocents’ that she had seen in the last few days! Bonnie didn’t look as though she cared tuppence.

We climbed up a narrow street, way above the town itself to a park full of olive trees. We laid out a blanket and had the most blissful picnic.

There were cheeses, hams, wild boar salami, bread and white wine. Black olives fell randomly, and the day was hot. Bonnie discarded her dress then had a nap, Leo and John sat on a bench and played chess, and Natasha and I drew portraits of each other. It was idyllic.

The following day we all set off for Siena, and I had to smile at the photos that John took of the little family and the strange woman that was trying to butt in on their scene! She looks as though she was just passing by and decided to just be in it!

We did look at the Fonte Gaia that I had once learnt all about as part of my studies, and is linked in my mind with my first taste of Grappe. It nearly blew my head off. The tutor said it would warm me up. It was a very cold day as I remember.

This time it was the scene of a horrible death scene. One pigeon was floating dead in the water and the other was fluttering pathetically and gasping its last breath. What on earth could have happened? I do hope some hardened killer of pigeons hadn’t skulked off leaving the carnage.

Anyway we looked at everything and boiled, and eventually sat down to rest under a tree. Tasha suddenly swooped down between John and me and pulled up a four leaf clover! She has such eagle eyes. Then she found another two, so we were very blessed. I have them safe, and hope they bring us good luck!

The next day we parted, and I felt such a wrench and missed Bonnie and Tasha and Leo so much. They were returning to France before going home. John and I made our way back to Florence and got a taxi to Galluzzo, just outside the city on the other side of the Arno.

We stayed in the Lemon House, a most beautiful location, surrounded by olive trees and vines, overlooking the town.

We sat out the first evening and drank some wine and got eaten up by the most vicious mosquitos we had encountered the whole trip. I looked a sorry sight with huge bites on my ears, along my jaw and on my cheeks. Horrible.

From Galluzzo we were able to get the bus into Florence and then the train to Pisa and Lucca where we did whirl wind tours. It was all wonderful, and I felt as though I was walking through a film set half the time. Had to pinch myself and remind myself it was all REAL, that tower really was leaning, that view was not from some film I had seen.

But John made me laugh as we were on the number 37 bus about to cross the Arno, and on a poster was written in big letters, ‘If it’s the tourist season, why can’t we shoot them!!’ Quite.

I knew I would return to Florence one day as I had rubbed the wild boar’s nose in the market place back in 1995.

Then I was studying 16^th C Italian Art, and I had essays to write about Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio.  Who was most influential? Who contributed most? Was it the giant roof on the Duomo? Was it the incredible perspective techniques being introduced, or the sculptures in bronze? After my final exam, I rang my tutor for reassurance only to find she had died in the night. A few days later I sat in the crematorium and listened to the most amazing service in honour of Kitty, whose talents had spread across the world, whose funeral had drawn students and people from all walks, and I thought of what she might have answered. I imagine she might have said that all three had had their voice, their talent and had left their mark.

Here is Massaccio’s wonderful study of the Trinity in Santa Maria Novello. Note the perspective, it is a mural on the left hand side of the church below.

So John and I arrived in Florence and walked along the Arno, a very placid river, but when it gets mean it gets VERY mean. And that night after dinner the thunder roared and the lightening was like a welder’s torch right in our eyes as we scurried back with our Amsterdam umbrella, as the storm decided to swoosh us away in torrents.

The next morning the sun shone, and all was calm.

We wandered down along the river to the Ponte Vecchio, and suddenly our eye was drawn to modern flippant fun art. Just off the main walk way, these sculptures swung their way up like acrobats and for a moment it was just fun to look and smile.

The smile soon left our faces as we were stung for the most expensive coffees of the whole trip in Piazzo della Signoria. We thought it would be fun to view the reproduction of the mighty David and see the Rape of the Sabine Women in the comfort of a nice ring-side seat. Hmmm. We later learnt that the best coffees were the ones taken standing by the bar and cost 1 euro!

So much to see, of course we found ourselves in front of the mighty Duomo that towers up and dominates everything,

but I spent a few minutes rediscovering the Baptistry doors, designed by Ghiberti, which depict in gilded bronze the stories of Jesus and also of those of the old testament.

I stood also for a while in front of the niches in Orsanmichele, bearing statues representing the patron saints of Florence’s many guilds.

We saw the murals by Fra’ Angelico in San Marco,

and then visited San Lorenzo. Poor saint was grilled by the emperor Valerian, who was determined to kill all the Christians. Lorenzo was told he would be spared if he would give over the wealth of the church. Lorenzo agreed, and went away promising that he would return. He did, and he returned next day with the poor and maim of Rome. He told the emperor that this was the church’s wealth and it increases every year. Needless to say the grill was waiting.

We cruised down the street full of leather sellers, until we came to the Central Market. Oh my, it was profuse with colour, smells, and noise. Upstairs we found an amazing array of stalls producing fast, instant food – spaghetti, noodles, sea food and drinks, almost anything you wanted. We chose pasta and a beer, and it was so utterly delicious, and so cheap! (a good thing!)

We did visit the Academia, guided by Antonio who was totally in love with Michelangelo and Gallileo. He said his ideal place to be is in Santa Croce, where both geniuses are buried. He can stand between them, and he is in heaven! He brought life to the tour, life to the sculptures, and somehow we looked at the slaves clambering out of the marble as though they really might spring forth. He told us nothing had changed since the days of The Grand Tour, and we were seeing the same configurations that Byron and Oscar Wilde would have seen. In those days the Academia might have had about 60 visitors a year!

Natasha later sent this photo of Leo…a dead ringer for the mighty David!

We had lunch in a restaurant with a replica of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation,

which we had seen the day before, and it seemed so perfect, eating spaghetti and drinking chianti and the melodious voice of Antonio still in our ears. ‘Dante, Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello…’

And on to the Uffizi. We were zipped through, and heard the stories, saw the pictures, but Grethe was not as inspiring as Antonio, but still she enthused over Botticelli and Caravaggio and da Vinci’s Annunciation.

I was studying a painting in the second to last room when John called me, ‘Come, and see this.’ I was quite impatient, and went back to listening to the commentary, but he persisted, ‘Come, quick!’

I went to see what all the fuss was about.

In the next room, on a red plinth, was a baby. Sitting up and looking about, totally bemused by the people watching her.

I looked. And suddenly realised it was MY baby! It was Bonnie!

Natasha and Leo were sitting on the side of the room. I was just speechless and quite emotional. They had arrived in Florence earlier than expected and knew we were going on the Uffizi tour, so had hoped we would bump into each other. Bonnie needed a break from being held, and so they had put her down for a few minutes and by sheer chance we were in the next room. How amazing was that! Here she is smiling at some passing fans as enthralled as we were to be in a few minutes!

We went to eat, and for me, after that, I couldn’t have cared about any more churches or art! I much preferred watching Bonnie trying to entice Natasha to share her crust!

Florence had been wonderful, but now it was time to get the bus to San Gimignano where we were all going to stay to celebrate my birthday. And the sun shone, and John and I caught the bus and we were off again!