[making gelato] and the dangers of creativity

There are some very interesting people around and sometimes they’re right beside us all along.

I’d include Welshcakes in this, fluent in French and Italian and with immense knowledge of those cultures as well. Her CV, her early years and later moves have shaped her character and now she’s carved out a niche which is sustainable and it’s where she wants to be, as long as health remains good and bureaucracy allows.

Into this came I, some time back, privileged to share a portion of her life but unable, at that point in time, to put very much back in, to my chagrin, a matter I intend to resolve when I can find my own sustainable base. For two such individual characters of different backgrounds, politics and genders, I don’t think it was total disaster and I hope she doesn’t regret the time spent together [too much].

On the other side of town I’ve come to know a young man, Georgio, who has his own talents in his own modest way and he’s interesting on the topic of cuisine/kuchina, gelato making and pizza design, with his own take on language, culture and many other topics. From another town, he’s carved a niche for himself in both places and lives not far from where I am currently holed up.

I think what I like most about him is that he is solitary, not entirely by choice and at the same time enjoys great warmth from those about him. He’s creative and recognizes and respects that in others. Whilst he’s a humble barman on one level, a person the crass would dismiss out of hand, his solitariness does not exclude others - it’s just that people are wary of someone like that who’s done it his own way and for whom every step forward, every break he gets, is accompanied by an opposite vicissitude.

The net effect though is that he does go forward.

Italy seems to me admirably suited to accommodate human tragedy. Sitting, drinking Nasto Azzurra and nibbling on nibbles, discussing shades of difference in the Italian language, discussing architecture, painting and kuchina on a 40 degree plus day, when virtually the whole population was at the beach enjoying what they saw and we both didn’t as la dolce vita; in the early evening, with the periphery of the northern Italian storms arriving, the umbrellas and awnings flapping wildly in the wind to the point we all had to race outside and batten them down – this was no ordinary experience.

Some people live lives of quiet desperation and wish and hope, in that Walter Mitty way, for some excitement or break from the tedium. Some live from tragedy to tragedy, blow to blow, punctuated by bouts of joy. Some might even be happy and contented, surrounded by family and friends – I wouldn’t know about such people but I wish them well.

Then there are those fey characters we meet, ships out on the sea who come into port for a brief time and then must move on again – think of the experiences they’ve accumulated, like barnacles which can’t be scratched off, not willingly itinerant by any means but ready to meet that someone and to settle down - yet something in the firmament will not allow this to ever happen.

You can’t call such people depressed, as they usually bounce back but they are, ultimately, tragic and a little cold, a little unapproachable until they themselves find a way to interface with others at a personal level. I find such people not sociopathic; there are few skeletons in the cupboard of any consequence – they’re just appreciative of the chance of human warmth though they don’t really know what to do with it once they are extended it. In the end, they’re nice people but will never be part of any circle of friends.

Everyone hopes they find what they’re looking for - normal people always like to demand concrete goals of others - but their goals are just to find a sustainable base and some human warmth, as with “normal” people, yet somehow things manage to get in the way to prevent that, quite rotten luck really, in part a product of their own unusual and interesting lives.

And as they grow older, what was once seen as a life of adventure is now viewed with a jaundiced eye and as they fail to settle into the wife, home, car and two kids life-in-hock, people say, ‘Nice man, kind face,’ but secretly resolve he’ll never marry their daughter. They almost resent his bad luck and think, perhaps with an element of truth, that he brought it all on himself.

These are things I saw in the future yesterday for my young friend and hope to goodness it doesn’t go that way. Fine thing to be creative, to sit on the steps beside limestone churches and admire the baroque period but it hardly puts bread on the table, does it?

Also, he’s not getting any younger but at least he’s in the country of his upbringing.

Could be the last for some time

It is looking increasingly like I shall not be able to post for a week or so. The availability of this computer is running out with a high influx of visitors. I'll try though.

[ave maria] and italian national bell ringing day

The above sketch is a not very good attempt at conveying the scene on this clifftop. In reality, it is far steeper than shown, more crowded, with narrower streets and not as regular. By the way, if Piazza is “square”, then why is it a triangle?

The road is either cobblestone or pitch and where it is the latter, it’s been rubbed smooth and shiny by tyre tracks and oil, so you can imagine the behaviour of the cars. The 25cm x 35cm stones, making up the pathways and squares, have also been worn smooth and one imagines one fall of rain for an ice rink effect, particularly fun as the square has a gradient of about 1 in 10.

Picturesque? Painfully so and the irregular angles are like something out of an art student’s perspective class or else something from Escher.

Last evening, to drown the sorrows, I went down to M. Bassa and sat, for a while, in Santa Maria di Betlem. You want outrageous baroque? There it is inside. If you’re suffering from church fatigue in your travels, this would cure it. I hope no one from Modica is reading this because … shhhhh … don’t tell anyone but SMdiB is better inside than St George’s or any of the others I’ve seen.

Just now, as I write, sitting on the bed, with the pillow up against the bedhead behind and the Mac on one knee, the bloody bell across the narrow street has started its maniacal ringing. Wouldn’t mind if it was playing a tune but someone in there is just bashing the hell out of it, which is probably the general idea.

Actually, it is quite disconcerting popping out for one’s elevenses and coming face to face with a priest in the middle of the slick, pitch, downhill car racetrack. “Guorno,” one says, wondering if an “Ave Maria” should have been tacked on to the end of that.

Speaking of Ave Maria, last evening in Santa Maria on Corso Umberto, with a little bar in the adjoining piazza for those souls who can’t face the whole Mass, there were two offputting things.

Firstly, there was a sign with two bouncers nearby and it read, in Italian [yes, I can read Italian now] that visiting the church is suspended due to a service being in progress, which it was. To their credit, the double doors were still wide open, unlike the church in Modica Sorda. Quick check of the French and yes, “suspended” was certainly the translation.

Fair enough, methought. Wedged between these was the quite nasty English version: ‘Visiting the church is forbidenn during the service.’

Lovely, simply lovely for all the English speakers, of which most would have been American. Simply charming, along with those bouncers. I went down the side road looking for the little door to the curia or wherever the clergy hang out and I was going to have a word about that translation.

That’s my mission in life, you realize – to see cra--y translations and write better ones for them. 

I was also, as an afterthought, going to mention to the priest that there was a heck of a lot of calling on the name of Maria during the service and not a lot of Father, Son and the Santa Espirita [that’s how it sounded to me but I’m sure scholars will correct that]. Then it seemed better not to, as the girl with the guitar was really getting into the Ave Marias and I felt a bit naked without my rosary beads. It does seem a very cross-generational community thing, all in all.

Don’t see what the difficulty with Catholicism is, really. All right, a bit lighter on the Mary presence, if you wouldn’t mind and the rosary beads and bits of the true cross take a bit of getting used to but it could be cathartic sitting in a little box recounting your sins to a padre, as in The Seventh Seal.

Everything else seems above board in there – lots of crosses and an altar, a pleasing nave to sit in and a lot of people reciting the catechism. In Latin or Italian – take your pick. And as a heretic to Protestantism [I believe in Purgatory – please, please let there be one, otherwise I’m damned], there seems to be some middle ground. Plus, if we left it to the Protestant clergy to uphold the Word round the world, there’d be precious little Word still being spread. My denomination, the C of E, hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory these past decades.

So to today and I’m afraid it’s time for elevenses, so off for some more adventures on this Italian National Blaring Car Horns and Lots of Interminable Shouting Outside Your Cave Day. As the barman and I agreed yesterday, when everyone crams into cars and goes down to the beach for their festa, we stay up here in town. When they come back in the cooler months, we go down there.

One last chuckle. Yesterday, I complimented three Sicilians who were sitting, eating a meal, on their Italian speaking, as I’m struggling with it a bit. ‘Italian?’ spake the girl. ‘Non, he speaks Ragusan and this one speaks Modica Altan.’

‘Oh,’ which is better?’ I innocently inquired.

I learnt a lot from the subsequent ‘discussion’, not least that I must learn when to keep the mouth closed – an Italian ‘discussion’ has no use-by date. They are lovely people, the Sicilians of my acquaintance and they do seep into the soul after some time.



The Mount Grace Lady Chapel at Osmotherely

The Mount Grace Lady Chapel at Osmotherely

According to wikipedia: "A Lady chapel is a traditional English term for a chapel inside a cathedral or large church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Most large medieval churches had such a chapel, as Roman Catholic ones still do, and middle-sized churches often had a side-altar dedicated to Mary".

However, we like to be different in Yorkshire.



"The Mount Grace Lady Chapel in North Yorkshire is a long established place of pilgrimage. It is situated on a hillside above Mount Grace Priory and within walking distance from the picturesque village of Osmotherley in the North York Moors National Park".

"The Lady Chapel originated as an outlying chapel of the nearby Carthusian priory of Mount Grace, now belonging to the National Trust but managed and maintained by English Heritage. The Lady Chapel site is close to the route of the Cleveland Way and provides a panoramic view across the Vale of York towards the Yorkshire Dales and beyond to the Pennines".

Prior to my release from prison in 2004, I had the pleasure of doing community work at The Lady Chapel, whilst on day release from Kirklevington Grange resettlement prison at Yarm in Cleveland. I was fascinated to read about the connection between Hull and the Lady Chapel during the rescusant pilgrimage, when bodies would be carried over the North Yorkshire Moors for secret burials.

"Built in the late fifteenth century the Lady Chapel stands close to a Holy Spring to to which steps ascended from the Carthusian priory of Mount Grace, down in the woods below. At one time the residence of a hermit named Hugh, Lady Chapel became, at the Dissolution, the pension home of the last prior, John Wilson.

Unroofed and deserted during the late sixteenth century, it had become a lively centre of recusant pilgrimage in the early years of James I, and evoked the attention of the Ecclesiastical Commission of the Archbishop of York in 1614. In the reign of Charles I Mary Ward, foundress of the IBVM, went there on pilgrimage, and in the reign of Charles II a full restoration was even considered when Lady Juliana Walmsley established the Franciscans in Osmotherley for the help and support of pilgrims. The Titus Oates Plot and the fall of the Stuarts put an end to that.

As a regular visitor to Osmotherley in the 1750s John Wesley records preaching at the Catholic Chapel in Osmotherley and visiting the ruined chapel on the hill-top. And pilgrims continued to visit the holy spring even after the Franciscan finally withdrew in 1832.

The ruin came back into Catholic hands in 1952, and excavation was made of the floor of the chapel with the possibility of finding burials there, one such possibility being that of Margeret Clitherow who had been secretly buried after her execution in York in 1586. Burials were indeed found in the chapel, but their identities remain unknown.

The chapel was restored by the Scrope and Eldon families. The arms of the families involved are shown in stained glass in the west window of the chapel, illustrated on the left. The chapel was blessed in 1961 by Cardinal Godfrey and reopened as a pilgrimage centre. Shortly afterwards the Franciscans returned to help and support pilgrimages until they withdrew in 1994".

Pearson Park 2

Pearson Park 2

C'mon, hurry up, I want to get into the park...

Rocky chewing something in Pearson Park...

Now which one of these ducks shall I have?

Rocky eating ice cream, Lily and me by the ice cream hut in Pearson Park

[exotic views] plum wine and chicken

[Excuse pics 2-4 – they were taken with the Mac portrait cam which decided it was the day for washed-out sepia, so it seems.]

Last evening the edge went off the heat about 11 p.m. and I went for a climb downhill [there’s no such thing as a stroll here] and found a spot stuck out in space, from where the whole valley can be seen in all its twinkling light. To the right was the Church of St George, also lit up.

It’s exotic all right but I see Jailhouse Lawyer has been pretty active too with exotic pictures of Hull. A Sicilian I was speaking with here wants to get out of here at the first opportunity and go to Britain – it’s exotic, he thinks.

I think my cave [pictured right] is also pretty exotic.

Now to food. Welshcakes had given me a bottle of her plum wine the other evening, by the way and it’s superb with some grapes. She should run a restaurant.

I found I could buy a slice of chicken, some beans and tomatoes and put them together with some parsley and pasta, all for under 3 euros and that makes for the meal of the day today and tomorrow. [The result, for what it’s worth, is to the left]. A glass of beer for 1.5 euros does for the evening meal and the trick is to sleep through breakfast.

The Italian National Holiday is upon us this weekend [this afternoon through to Sunday evening] and there threaten to be fireworks, all kinds of festa and a mass flocking to the beachhouses. Should be good back in the old town with only the Palazzo Faillo [pic above doesn’t do it justice, of course] open for piadini and other delights.

This weekend has a special piquancy for me and I hope your weekend is lovely too.