Punky Reggae Party...

There is something about accepting invites to functions that you know nothing about or why or what they are really for. So filled with trepidation at being the only Englishman since the battle of Flodden in 1513 to be allowed in the heart of Hawick, to help celebrate the ardent Scottish tradition of riding the Borders to keep out the pesky, good-for-nothing English we found ourselves seated at the top table as guests of the newly elected Hawick Cornet.

Now, with the unsuspected enemy secreted within, the night got underway as we were piped in amidst much cheering and clapping by the local drum and fife band and seated as honoured guests of the Cornet and Cornets Lass. 

Being sat on the top table we were entertained vocally with songs of liberation and honour of thwarted heroes of old, described through banner waving laments and tales of valour and bloodshed, twixt the banks of the River Teviot and the Auld toon O' Hawick. All sung passionately by elderly reivers who in turn ignited the fires in the bellies of the gathered parochial crowd encouraging them to start linking arms and swaying back and forth to the rousing rebellious chorus.

Our hospitable hosts had thoughtfully provided bottles of free spIrits to refresh the weary riders and the tipple of the town initially seemed to be dark rum and creamy cold milk cocktail ...?

With a few rum milkshakes under our belt we progressed on to the gin and whisky as the conversation moved at pace through politics and Brexit to the nationalisation of the railways and the state of the NHS....No-one mentioned dear old Blighty or the Conservatives so our cover remained intact.

The MC typically thanked all the wrong people and amusingly made one or two politically incorrect comments before handing over to the 'band' on the stage to move the night on to the next level.

'The band' consisted of one bloke with a guitar that he used to strum along and sing to backing tracks played through a PA of modern classics of yesteryear including 

musical gems by 'The Dooleys', 'Dolly Parton' and most of Neil Diamond's greatest hits circa.1973.

There is something quite charming and amusing about watching 200 wizened old white haired bingo players descend on to a dance floor, leaving their walking sticks and zimmers under the tables to shuffle about energetically, while waving their
scrawny arms about and singing along, word perfect to......the Killers!

The heady mix of alcoholic milk, sanatogen and cheesy disco hits brought more wrinklies up out of their seats to compete in a very poker faced fashion for the serious formation shoop shoop dancing. This had the added highlight of watching, what turned out to be a local fella, who had also quite obviously had more than a few milkshakes, trying to step, jump, hop and turn in time but in totally the opposite direction to everyone else and much to the disgust of the professional elders.

Our parochial crowd now emptied the dance floor in droves as 'The Band' launched mistakenly into Bob Marley's 'No Woman No Cry'. With the only brown face in the place for the last hundred years being a woman who had over done it with the spray tan, the reggae number, I have to say, didn't go down too well with the locals and to get them all back he then had to follow it swiftly with a rendition of "well I would walk a thoosand miles..." a well known ditti by the well endowed Scottish Proclaimer twins!

Towards the end of the night an old lass in a flowery frock that had had one too many Cherry B's and overdid it to Chubby Checker's 'Lets twist again' and landed in a heap and got herself 'rigged' on the dance floor and that was the last thing she would remember...

OMG...what a laugh!

With songs of 'Up Wi Auld Hawick' and the 'Mosstroopers Lament' ringing in our ears we left at a quarter to two in the morning. No-one had tried to chop off my head or string me up in the town square for being an English foeman but it was time to leave them to carry on as we poured ourselves into a waiting taxi for our journey 'hame' having had one of the most amusing and enjoyable nights out for a while.

Cheers to All.

Today's track has to be Bob Marley and the Wailers track, doesn't it?

Doing the Right Thing...

For any newbies to this blog I will explain first that its predominantly for ME and not really for YOU, it's a outlet for my creative juices to flow and congeal. A means to capture memories and thoughts, consisting primarily of my musings interspersed with  blatant lies, odd photo's, inane ramblings, occasional moaning, ruminative thoughts and fatuous observations of life as I erroneously understand it...

I've always travelled and I've always written so a blog seemed the obvious modern progression to previous scribblings, so I shall try to continue until the day comes that I can't and I get shoved in to the flames....

If you choose to read then all well and good!

Each sporadic post I publish will always have the same format - a song title track that I own to title the blog post and then some seamlessly linked creative content within. The music is the important bit and will usually be worth a listen if you have the time.

I must make it clear that at NO point in this blog will there be selfies or pictures of plates of food as these are and have always been pet hates and deemed 'totally inappropriate'. Acronyms and Phil Collins are also 'off topic' and deemed 'toxic'.

As I prepare mentally to leave my narrowboat mooring in Lancashire behind along with thirty plus years of work I question whether I am doing the right thing but who ever knows that?....it feels right so let's start from there.

At the end of the day you only get one shot at life!

Life then, should be about being happy and healthy, always a little challenging and definitely fulfilling so this is exactly what this life changing opportunity is all about!

The concept - Head out to Tuscany, Italy to live and work at La Cesa 

http://www.lacesa-tuscany.co.uk/

to learn how a farmhouse with rental apartments, pool, extensive grounds and olive trees is run as a business and be involved in its future plans.

So let's see what happens, eh?

Doing the Right Thing, a haunting song by UK trio 'Daughter' on an album from 2016

Sent from my iPad

Under the Pressure....

When I first decided to try to teach myself Italian this was the first thing I read:-

'There are four types of REGULAR verbs:

One with infinitives ending in -ARE, one with infinitives ending in -ARE

 and two with infinitives ending in -IRE'

Jesus!, It made absolutely no sense and made me cringe with cranial cramps.

It's like Cryptophasia but your on your own!...(I will wait for you to google it!)

Are you back?.....then Andiamo!

It also made me think back to the poor woman that tried to teach me CSE French and I remember thinking at the time as to why this woman was trying to teach me these ridiculous foreign words as I would NEVER be going that far from home? 

Needless to say I failed, but if the need ever arose I could always tell someone in the Dordogne that had lost their cat that,  ' it was behind the house' in fluent French, albeit with a Lancashire twang!

A few months on and some of it is starting to sink in; my useless suede can now retain a few simple words and even transfer them to speech on occasions. This is how it has to be as there is nothing more important than being able to communicate in the native tongue.

I've been in many places around the world being only able to point at stuff, while making chicken noises and animatedly flapping a pair of pretend wings, stood in the middle of a market trying to hopefully buy some lunch and I can tell you that you feel a right cock!

So, I need to learn the lingo.

But it's damn hard...Molto bloody hard!

Why did the Romans have to make it so screamingly difficult?

What did the Romans ever do for us?

Rules of pronunciation....that's one thing they did, then they threw in Consonants, double consonants, stress, Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, verbs, adverbs, Masculines, feminines, transgender plural Irregularities...to name but a few!

Turning the pages of the basic beginners ladybird book of 'Italian for thick northern chumps' it looked like a big bowl of alphabetti spaghetti had been poured on to the pages to me and after hours and hours of studying, very little was sinking in. My poor brain found itself under pressure and was being overloaded with incomprehensible Aggettivi Possessivi articles and 'Il Passato prossimo'... the past tense, tormenting and taunting me every night.

Slowly, slowly words started to be remembered, with regular sessions being the key.

The numbers, the greetings, then the verbs...what was masculine?, what was feminine?

and soon it was starting to make a little bit more sense.

At least it's a start, at least now it will allow me to order a drink, maybe buy some food and perhaps say ta-ra to someone without sounding like a prize pollock!

But there is a long, long way to go.....

'Under the Pressure' is the title track of a brilliant album called 'Lost in the Dream' by The War on Drugs from 2014 and comes highly recommended.

Sent from my iPad

Blog update coming soon!

Yes, the rumours are true....
The preparations are being made for departure so watch this space and subscribe for future instalments.....
Ciao for Now

Sent from my iPad

Test email to update blog

Experiment 1

We are the Pigs....

Now, getting towards the end of the week it was time to step it up and the Barbierro was the weapon of choice for today, a nice little multi-functional tractor. With the front end mower attached it was a nimble tool for cutting around the olive trees. Later, with the rear roller and mower combination it was time to tackle the big field at the front.

The woods at the rear are extensive, unexplored yet by us, but they continue right over to lake Trasimeno and into Umbria. Walkers and mountain bikers use the paths occasionally. Tuscany, however, has a serious wild pig (cinghiale) problem  and I think the majority of them seem to live here in these woods. They come down at night in large numbers and root around the property, leaving tell tale holes and trotter tracks.

Plans are afoot to curtail the nocturnal activities of the tasty little porkers ....but not just now so we headed up the hill to for our evening meal at trattoria 'La Grotta', hidden down one of the many narrow streets that wind around the old hilltop town.

It's time to leave the farmhouse retreat and head back home, we have eaten too much!

Catching the Saturday morning train the weather has changed today, cooler and cloudy. It was a reminder that we are still in the winter months but the week has been warm and sunny. Many of the Italians are still wrapped up in their familiar 'Puffa' coats and an incredible amount of Norwegian 'Napapijri'!.....not surprised, it's raining!

So much for heading for the marina.....we head for a glass or two instead.

An uplifting 'Suede' song to end on and a fitting end to (a) being around the wild boar and (b) indulging in gastromony far too much.....' We are the Pigs!'

Across a Wire...

Across a Wire....

The outside light, which is the home of an old crow, hasn't worked for ages so the first job of the morning was to take it down and find out why. On inspection, it revealed that the crow was indeed dead, deceased, no longer with us, devoid of life, insentient, departed from this world, passed on etc etc....and the light fitting was not much better!

Off we trolleyed in the pickup into our nearest town, Camucia.

We have got to know Camucia quite well now so it wasn't a problem finding some new fittings in the little electrical shop to make the repair. Being a Thursday we also knew from past experience that Thursday in Camucia was market day and market day meant it was Porchetta day! 

The porchetta man gets through two whole pigs in a morning and sells the speciality cooked meat sliced directly off the pig on the stall, it has been seasoned with garlic, rosemary, fennel and olives and packed into a bun and tastes Buonissimo!

Returning back to finish the light it was then about time the bonfire got started.

 

Cleverly, I've got a double whammy here, the title, 'Across a Wire' for the the light wiring job and the artist being the 'Counting Crows'..... pass the Prosecco!