Psst... want to live in Santa Marinella?

Am posting this around in appropriate places...

I've got a nice room available in a large and sunny flat near the beach in Santa Marinella. It's suitable for a sensible student or a working person (for someone who doesn't mind a painless train commute). Must be tidy, cat-tolerant, and like good food, good books and friendly company (different languages OK). S. Mar is a very quiet and friendly, pleasant town out of Rome but within shouting distance. Ladies only please. Rent 400 + bills.

S. Marinella in spring.


Our promenade in April

SAW. AN. OCTOPUS!!

BOOYAH!

I had been out snorffeling around the rocks near the far markers, and had seen nothing more interesting than a couple of big red starfish and some brightly coloured fish-fish and was thinking I ought to get back to work, so started back to the shallows. I had interrupted my writing day to go because I could see that it was looking like clouding over, and we're supposed to be in for a couple of days of cooler weather and rain, so I got out there for a quick splash.

Every time I'm out there, I'm always on the lookout for an octopus, which I consider the coolest and perhaps most scary and interesting of all the local fauna. I know there are lots of them out there, and the scubies are always bringing in buckets full to sell to the supermarkets or to put in Mamma's stew pot.

But in all this time, I'd never seen one. I was beginning to think that maybe I was looking in the wrong places, or maybe that they were mostly nocturnal or something. A friend had said, "Oh, you're seeing them, you just don't know it."

Of course, we've all seen that video...

So I figured at some point, I'd just ask one of the divers what they do to find them.

And at the same time, I was kind of scared of seeing one. I mean, they're pretty rugged individuals, and they seem to be very little afraid of the dumb two-flukes.


But for the most part, I was looking for them. I know they hang out in the rocky parts, and that a trick is to look for their caves where there is a cleared space near the opening and a lot of shells and things. I figured that you have to be sneaky, maybe not splash around too much, and just hang out in one spot so they don't notice you're there. Or something.

But anyway, today the swells were a little pushy and I had to get back to work so I was heading back. I had taken a little detour to look at some rocks I hadn't checked out yet. Sure enough, I'd seen a big fish, much bigger and ... more finny than the usual little seaweed grazers I'd been used to seeing up til then. It was just sitting in the shelter of some green reeds, and I snuck up on it, and clapped a couple of times to flush it out so I could get a better look at it. It scooted off a few feet, and settled down again. I did this a couple of times, and then the fish suddenly just took off in the opposite direction, so fast I couldn't follow, so I turned around, figuring I'd got as much as I was going to get out of the day and there it was.

It looked straight at me, and was already bright red all over, with white spots. It curled several of its legs at me in a way that said, "You know, I'm really not interested in eating you right now, but come at me, see what happens."

I didn't move except to reach down and grab a rock to hold myself steady while we sized each other up. We were in water that was no more than three feet at most, but man, I was scared. And elated. And excited. And really just damned impressed.

It scooted off, elongating itself to full length of about three and a half feet long, which is pretty big for these waters, and I followed it for a few yards, but realised that I'd had about as much excitement I wanted for the moment.

It was ...

AWESOME!!!

(And this weekend I am TOTally going to go price underwater cameras!)



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Santa Marinella in summer

Post by Invidio.

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Yesterday, I swam (what I thought of as) way far out from the shore, and sat down on one of the big boulders, all covered in a soft layer of seaweed and sponges, and looked back at the town, with the warm water lapping gently all around me. Now and then it hits me hard, this feeling of utter astonishment.

I live here? Seriously? How did that happen?



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The great outdoors

Where I start my beach-runs. This public beach access is about five minutes away on the bike. It allows you access to a beach that is partly public and partly private, with some pebble and some bedrock beach. I'll get some more pics today.



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I'm hungry

Looks good, huh? It's lentil and root veg mash, that the Romans called ... um, lentil and rootvegmash.

In Rome there are still a few old fashioned (really old fashioned), usually family-owned restaurants that do traditional Roman style cooking. (One of the best ones is v. close to the Campo di Fiori, called Trattoria Der Pallaro, where there is no menu that you choose from, and the sign outside says "You will eat what we want to feed you".) The real Roman menu always has lentils, and they usually just bring it to you in a big bowl, cooked in olive oil, possibly chicken or meat broth and spices and sometimes onions. Often you can get this thing, lentils and salsiccia, which is sausages cooked with lentils.

I've got almost no food in the house. I'm trying this new thing of just buying food in little bits and eating only exactly what I buy, when I buy it. It's working out cheaper and I do a lot less grazing. But it does mean a lot of little trips to the shops. V. old fashioned. Italy still has a housewife-oriented domestic culture, and you are expected to shop early in the morning (ugh!) and often. Traditionally, Roman housewives shopped only for the day, and the idea of keeping food around was, until very recently, considered a sign of bad housekeeping skills. Laziness. Which, I suppose, is simply accurate.

Anyway, there is a cool 'blog out there, Pass the Garum, which I've been looking at for a while, that recreates ancient Roman recipes, mostly from Apicius. And today have decided to try one of their recipes. Lentil and root veg mash.

Apart from all the things we would consider normal in kitchenware, fry pans, soup and stew pots, Dutch ovens, etc, the Romans used one item in the kitchen probably more than any other: a mortar and pestle. You see them in the museums a lot. They used a lot of pastes, ground-together veg and herbs to make sauces. I've got a little brass one that I use just for quick crushing of peppercorns and nutmeg and things, but is too small to use for making sauces, or making my own curry past (which I've always wanted to try). I found a beautiful one at an antique stall in S. Mar during the beach season this year, but the guy wanted 50 Euros. It was bronze, which I admit, was fairly cool. But still! fifty smackers! I'll keep my eyes open.

The other thing you really need to reproduce Roman cooking is Garum and liquamen. The first is a condiment, Roman ketchup, that is added to the food later by the diner. It was very expensive in Roman times, (though the price varied with the quality) and would be considered pretty gross by today's standards. It was made by fermenting fish blood and guts. You can get a modern equivalent of Garum in Italy, but it's hard to find, and pricey.

Liquamen is another kind of fish sauce that is much easier to get, and is more or less exactly the same as Thai fish sauce that you can buy in a lot of supermarkets, and is even available here if you know where the Chinese supermarkets are in Rome (near Termini train station).

Anyway, it's 3:30 and I've done exactly nowt with myself today, so I'm going out to the only shop open in S. Mar on Sundays, the Elite supermarket near the marina, and I'm gonna get me the stuff to make some Roman food. We'll see what kind of root veg they've got in and buy a big bag o' lentils.

I might even try making the spelt-based Lagana, a Roman flatbread that has no gluten, if I can find the spelt flour.



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Summer

One minute, summer vacation and all the promise and hopes and dreams attached to it is a staple of your childhood psyche. The next minute, it's gone. Losing summer is like losing an arm in a battle you don't remember having. Until the day you die, you're going to have phantom twinges of hope for a three-month holiday that is never ever coming.

My solution: move to a beautiful beachside resort town in Italy, where the actual three months of summer are the time when you most want to go somewhere cool and fresh and not crowded with sweaty tourists, and the rest of the year is, basically, like the summer you remember in childhood.

What am I doing today? Fooling about on the internet, when, yes, I really should be doing nearly anything else.

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In other news...

Been giving the second two Narnia films another shot, and been thinking that they're not as bad as I had at first thought. Dawntreader especially can be forgiven for at least some of the crimes. The book is really a series of little vignettes, which would not lend themselves to a complete narrative on film. There really had to be some kind of unifying plotline.


Also, there is one way in which I thought the movie outdid the book: Eustace, while a dragon, sacrifices himself to save the ship from the sea monster and complete the quest by taking the last sword back to Ramandu's Island, an act that very decisively indicates a massive change of his character, much more decisively than Lewis had done.

The green mist was, I'll admit, exceptionally stupid, but Hollywood has done worse things to books. and there is some good character development, and they did to Eustace pretty well.

But I will say, the moment Lord Rhoop, on the Dark Island, tells the Narnians, "Don't let it know what your fears are or it will become them." and Edmund says, "I'm sorry," I really, REALLY expected the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man to appear.

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And about being an introvert...

"I'm not talking about people who are introverts against their will. I'm talking about the millions of us out there who are introverts because we simply prefer our nice, [safe] quiet houses over the jaw-clinching idiocy of public functions."

I've just come home from a lovely trip to Ontario where I spent a great deal more time in the company of other human beings than I normally am used to, and it was fine. It was great, actually. But I can't describe how glad I am to be back in my cave... my lovely, lovely caaaave.

(Especially after nine hours in that sardine tin airplane.)

Other people are OK, I guess, and I'm working hard on dealing with my crippling social anxieties. And you know that I'm totally on board with the whole "don't kill 'em" thing, but as a day-to-day thing, really I'm always glad to be home.

Always.



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Post-Gardone Blues

Just sent this note to Mike Matt at the Remnant:

"So, I was just watching the videos you posted to FB and thinking, 'I feel like I'm still there, and my brain is all confused. Where is everybody? When's the next talk? What am I doing home? Why didn't I get to play any tennis today?' I'm already homesick for it.

"That's the problem with getting to make friends with so many people from so many different places. You spend all your time wishing you were somewhere else."

It was even more wonderful this year. I can't describe. I've got a lot of photos to post, but am still pretty tired from the full-day ride home on Friday; ferry and trains and lugging stuff across the country.

Still mulling over the many, many conversations and often astonishing lectures I was privileged to have with quite simply some of the most interesting and intelligent people I'm ever likely to know. The only conference I ever go to where I try hard to get to all the talks. It's the one place where the lecture will always, every time, teach you something or some way of thinking about something that had never occurred to you before. I have come away full of ideas and must spend some time cogitating and digesting.

But of course, the weather has finally become very hot, so perhaps the thinking will be a little slower than usual.

But I'm home. And Winnie is fine, and all my lovely friends are here. So, that's good, anyway.



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Spring in Rome

Last Angelus... not a dry eye in the Piazza.


"You are Peter, stay."




Conclave adventures: Vatican's media centre


The only clear shot I got of the white smoke.


Rather a large crowd.


The long, weird pause where he just stood there.
"Pssst... buddy, you're supposed to wave..."

For the first five minutes, I just called him Pope New Guy, then someone with a smartphone got it from the interwebs. Yes, standing in the Piazza listening to the announcement in person, we still needed the internet to tell us what was going on.


Santa Marinella in the spring... April is best in Italy.


Roman Acanthus Spinosus. I was going to dig some up and put it in a pot on the balcony, but had second thoughts when I saw how huge they get.


Close up of the purple flowers on that tree. Cercis siliquastrum.


Fibonacci was here... lots of spiky Mediterranean things around.


"I live here. I really live here." Sometimes I have to say it out loud because it just seems unreal.


Pink Oxalis


Flowering crabapple


April, definitely Italy's best month.




Some relative of the Yucca plant, they grow long strands of pointy leaves in a bunch then this flower spike comes up. V. beautiful.


This stuff grows all over the hills, but I haven't found it in any of my wildflower books.




Freesias growing wild in a cow field.


Also still working on this one. Square stem and purple bract flowers on a single spike with opposed toothed leaves and furry surface. A bunch of taxonomic characteristics that would put it in the mint family, but no minty scent.



Santa Marinella is built on the teeny little strip of flattish land between the beach and the base of the hills. In about five minutes walking, you find yourself at the base of a very steep hill that takes about 1/2 an hour or 45 minutes to climb. At the top is a plateau of rolling countryside leading off into the Etruscan hills. All farmland up there.

It's my favourite walk. (I think that's a volcano in the far background).


I love the zoom on my camera.


One of the older farms... typical Lazio stone construction.


Looking positively English, it's so green and pleasant. The yellow stuff blooms all through the spring, turning the fields golden. It's wild mustard.


Borage, useful medicinal plant, and you can candy the blossoms. Watch out for the prickles though.


On the Via Marguta in Wisteria season.






I gatti di Roma...






I make a joke about modern "art" - that it's the "school of nailing chairs to walls". And here they are in a gallery.


At the Santa Marinella train station. Some people see weeds, I see flowers and a lovely natural garden.


Lots of thistle-like spiky Mediterannean things. Anyone?


Greater Plantain. I know how to make them into projectiles. Do you?


People vastly underestimate the beauty of grasses. So elegant.


Dramatic cat.

Batty

Sometimes my brain gets so clogged up with things to think about that I don't sleep. It's OK, as long as I can get caught up later. But as a result, I've become quite familiar with the sounds and habits of the night hunting animals, particularly the bats. It's just about six thirty, and the birds have just this minute started twittering, but I noticed that just a couple of minutes before they did, I was hearing quite a different sound. A chirping noise that was quite unbirdlike.


It was the bats who live in the pine trees. The noise was exactly the same as in the video.

They have just this moment stopped, as if there is some kind of Nature Rule that the birds have to have their turn now. It had been quite quiet out there for several hours, no chirping bats, not even cicadas. But really just moments before the birds started, there was quite a loud flurry of chirps. As if the bats were telling each other that their shift is over and it's time to go to bed before it gets light out.

Time to put the tea on and start getting ready for class. Day 2 of Bozetti portrait painting class.



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Out for lunch

with a friend the other day at our new favourite place in Santa Marinella. So lovely. What a great place to live!

About a block from our castle in our tiny Old Town. Most of Sta. Marinella is new, but the one piazza was the original centre of the village attached to the castle and goes back to the 17th century. The restaurant terrace looks over a slope down towards the sea, all covered in palm and olive trees, then a cliff, then the glittering Tyrhennian, with the little sail boats and a few yachts. We had all the seafood we could stuff into ourselves, and downed a half litre of prosecco between us.

One of those memorably great lunches where we just sat and sat and didn't want to move, under the umbrellas surrounded by blooming bougainvillea, feeding the restaurant's cat under the table.

All you can want, grilled gamberoni, fifty kinds of little fishy things for antipasto, and good prosecco on tap. On TAP!!

Oh yeah.

The food in this town is far superior to Rome. We have a farmer's market every Thursday. We are right in the middle of a huge agricultural area, and right next door to one of Italy's biggest fishing fleets. I've gone a bit nuts in the markets now and then. The tables piled high with fruit and veg, the fresh fish on ice, the home made cheese and every type of pig product you've ever heard of (except bacon). One time I came home with fresh peas in the pods, a bag of spinach, those weird Italian alien-looking fibonacci broccoli, fresh artichokes. During the season, they pile up the strawberries in a kind of mountain and you buy it by the scoopful. Local clementines, apples, fresh octopus, giant shrimp and mackerel, fresh peccorino from the cheese maker, incredibly sweet carrots, so good it's a shame to cook them. And everything served up by the nicest, friendliest rural Italians central casting ever imagined.

Seriously, I go every week and feel like I've fallen into one of those soft-focus movies about the uptight middle aged English woman who moves to Italy and at last learns to relax, drink wine under the olive trees and find true luuuuurve.

After The Heat is over in August, the temp drops down to what I consider normal summer range, about 26-28 degrees. You go out on market day and it's like living in a movie: the mothers all pushing prams, the nonnas in their sensible shoes all standing in the middle of the way, oblivious to the crowds trying to shove past them, gossiping away. There are a lot of other kinds of stalls, clothes, household goods, the tackiest curtains you've ever seen. One place was selling new feather duvets and pillows for ten Euros each. I don't know what truck they fell off the back of, but I didn't question the guy who sold me two feather pilows for the guest room for 13 Euros. All I could think of was how much I felt like I really lived here. Everyone calling me "bellissima" and "la signorina Inglese".

Seriously, living here is really starting to turn into one of those films. I still get very badly worn out if I go to Rome for the day, shopping or appointments or whatever. Some time ago, after a day in town, I called Santa Marinella's one and only taxi driver, Gianni, to ask if he could pick me up from the train station and drive me home. He has been driving me back and forth to hospital, doctor appointments, he has even picked up prescriptions from the drug store for us. He speaks not a single word of English. He was waiting for me when I got off the train, took my bags and offered his arm to walk me to the taxi, took down the plastic step and handed me into the seat like a Victorian princess. I didn't have to tell him the address, he just took me home.

There was one night we were in dire straights trying to get an expensive prescription after normal hours. The hospital had released me at five pm on a Friday, but in Santa Marinella, there is no doctor office open until Monday morning, and I had to have the drug within 24 hours of the last chemo treatment. So we phoned the on-call volunteer oncology nurse, who called the dispensary in Civitavecchia, and arranged for the hospital dispensary to have the drug waiting for us. Gianni drove us to Civi, then when we couldn't find the dispensary, spent about 1/2 an hour on the phone sorting it out between the nurse and the hospital, then drove us there and back home again. I think at some point in Civi he just turned the meter off.

After the response I've got from having cancer just from the local people, Gianni the taxi driver; the fat, kindly pharmacy lady who always told me how nice I looked without hair; Rosetta the real estate agency lady who gave me a freezer from out of her garage when my own freezer died, the gelato place guy who gave me a free gelato when I was looking like I was going to faint one day in the heat, the hardware store guy who fixed my bike for nothing; the bike shop guy who fixed up the wheelchair we borrowed from the parish; the mad old lady who lives upstairs who drops her cigarette ashes on my flower pots, but always lets me in when I've forgotten my keys...

This is starting to be more home than anywhere I've lived since I was a kid.



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Yes, it's true,

I got legs.

Here is a photo of me wearing trousers in public.

It was kind of a weird day. (That is Kevin Murphy, lately of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and current owner and chef of the Najadi hotel here in town, teaching me to open French oysters with a proper oyster knife.)

That day started badly, had a doctor's visit in the middle, but ended like this,


with an oyster party on the belvedere at the Pink Villa,

which is to say, well.

The boys are moving out of that villa this week, and taking a much cheaper and more practical flat in town "next year" (the real new year in Santa Marinella is when everyone gets back from summer vacations in the US).


We'll be sad to see the end of the Belvedere parties.

They were as good as they looked. A balm and uplift to everyone.



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