Walking Man...

I had a walk this morning up to the catholic church at the top of the woods, the unassuming 'Sepoltaglia' with a nice view over to the historic Trasimeno lake.

I then decided to walk the 3 miles up to Cortona later too...as, you guessed it, they were having yet another festival and I wanted to take a look at this one.

So I wish you all a merry Ferrogosto...

Ferrogosto has been celebrated in Italy since 18BC and it's historically a catholic feast following months of hard agricultural labour and to celebrate Mary's Assumption...

So I'm assuming I need to celebrate it too...."Well, if it's good enough for Mary"...

So what in Gods name has this has to do with tackling a massive lump of rare beef steak?

Well, this weekend in the Parterre(public gardens) in Cortona, fourteen metres...yes, quite a long way, of red-hot flaming barbecue has been erected for the 58th 'Sagra Delle Bistecca', T-bone steak festival, set up for celebrating Ferrogosto. It's another mammoth event that I reckon attracts every slavering, Catholic carnivore for miles around to sit and gorge themselves on huge, bloody-rare lumps of prime Chianina bred beef steak. These authentic flame grilled whoppers have been cooked like this here for the last 58 years!

To get my head around it I first visit Molesini, the wine Enoteca that has been squishing the grape since 1937, now in the Piazza Della Republica, and order a bottle of 'Poggetto',  a local red from grapes that have been growing up the road for years and then settle in to drink it slowly, contemplating life while sat in the main Piazza listening to 3 guys playing jazz....

...not being a Jazz aficionado I don't know if they are good or bad but one guy seems to be 'blowing the sax' at the same time as the other bloke 'plucks the guitar' strings so I suppose that's sounds about right to my lugs.....hardly Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince!

At the end of the performance I cleverly chuck all my shrapnel in his battered straw hat and say 'Grat-ci- a' as he collects his beer money and he seems happy enough with the nights takings.

There's something about sitting quietly in medieval squares, drinking nice wine that appeals to me!

God, I was born to do this!

But now I'm beginning to hate tourists.....

If your a tourist, let me give you some free advice if I may....

If your European, look  in the mirror before you go out.....you probably look like a complete cock, with your stupid socks and sandals or daft flowery shirt....and lose that boater hat too as it makes you look even more of a dick!

...and if your American....shut the fuck up, no-one wants to hear your loud Yankee drawl...and the medieval square is NOT the 'City Hall'....

Saturday night is definitely people watchin' night, it's early yet but there are still some interesting souls about, from the Divine Comedy's 'Lady of a Certain Age' to tottering wannabe supermodels but no-one has yet paid for the alterations....I'm on the street so it's perfect for a good nosey while I pretend to write a blog.....

Then, as the light fades....

Am I capturing the evening....??

It's time to head back through the smoke filled park which is now feeding hundreds of guzzling carnivores with enormous sizzling steaks....

Now, under the clear starry sky I watch the annual meteor storm send shooting stars flying across the dark night sky as I walk the return leg, which is thankfully, all down hill...

The 'Walking Man' comes from old hobo Seasick Steve, off an album titled 'I started out with nothing and Iv still got most of it left'. A great live act, playing Dog house boogie blues on only homemade 3 string guitars and a drum box.....great stuff!

Here he is on Jools Holland's show.

https://youtu.be/pC3rzgprN4w

Sent wi' th'ipad

Act of the Apostle...

Now I don't know much about religion being an apiarist, but I had a hankering to go to see Assisi spiritual and sacred and home of the famous Italian patron Saint Francis, and up and till he died in 1226, he was quite the troubadour Friar Tuck of his day.

You see the town sprawling up the hillside as you approach and looking quite impressive and inviting. I arrived at teatime, basically when everyone else had been and gone, in order to have a walk around without all the annoying tourists wandering round gawping at maps trying to find the back passage of St. Benedictus and to avoid an excessive heat rash.  A wise choice as I parked at the far end of the town and walked in along old beautifully kept winding streets and up and down once again many many steps leading to church after church after Catholic church. 

Why did they need so many?

Since old Franny' left, the place seems to have become a haven for sandal wearing monks, nuns, sinners, shrines, crosses, fountains, cherubs, angels, alters and all religious artefacts known to exist in Gods holy kingdom. 

Lost souls now wander the streets trying to find solace, like this woman who no doubt lost her late husband, shot by mistake in the Crimean War, now left to sit, clutching a pewter crucifix, reflecting on her now lonely, suffering existence, gazing expectantly to the lord for spiritual enlightenment and forgiveness before she slowly withers away and slips off this mortal coil and gets pushed into the flames and becomes a pot of ash....well, probably!?

Anyhow, he built a massive house that he named the 'Basilica' on the top of the hill, (a) to keep fit and (b)so he could be near God and chant and pray and invite the Pope and his mates round occasionally to ring bells and feast and rattle off a few 'Hail Mary's' together. He also loved all creatures great and small (No, not the TV show, you idiot!), so he probably kept loads of goats and chickens, camels and bears and I would think he had a massive fish tank and a pet spider monkey?

Well, when you have the room!

And on the way back I found where he kept his bicycles!

 Today's track is brought to u by another favourite band of mine, 'Belle and Sebastian', this time a short song from the 2006 album, The Life Pursuit.

https://youtu.be/vlHbKTYyM-I

Sent wi' th'ipad

Skinny Little Bitch....

In the town the other day I spotted that this poster had gone up....

....and I know what your thinking....I thought the same....

....Jesus, what a bloody awful emaciated specimen to put on a poster to promote a food festival!

....No?, well I did...

It's a 'Sagra', which translates to a festival, they seem to be popular in these parts as there seems to be one every week around here.

Anyhow, it's another event that's on my doorstep, in Pergo on Saturday night so I thought I'd nip up on the pushrod to investigate. But I'm thinking, if we have to eat THAT bloody runt of a Cinghiale then there shouldn't be much to go round! 

It looks like the bugger needs worming!

Ooh, I'm starvin'...I could eat a scabby pig!

As it turned out, there was enough for everyone, all sat on long tables being cooked and served by all the local Cinghiale hunters washed down with copious amount of vino rosso in unlabelled bottles....no wonder the handlebars were playing up on the way home!

Skinny Little Bitch is a great song, so here is a live version, described in the NME as 'a balls out, low-down dirty rock song', Yep, sounds about right and with Courtney Love's lovely gravelly voice it sits in my library quite comfortably. Enjoy 'Hole'.

https://youtu.be/_b8JD2ja1WI

Sent wi' th'ipad

Burn Baby Burn...🔥

Over the past few weeks Iv had my head in the oven a couple of times....well, actually it got so bad I spent quite a few hours completely inside the oven. Yes, it was hot, yes it was a dark lonely place that I found myself in but at the end of the day I knew it was my own choice. I just knew I had to do it!

The oven I sought sanctuary in was a very, very old bread oven. It hadn't been lit probably since the fifties and definitely not in my lifetime. It is built into the side of the house, stylishly round and measuring in at 2 metres in diameter. It is a huge space!

I absolutely love the history to it.

As it had laid redundant for so long, some of the bricks had 'spalled' and needed re-pointing and all of the fire-brick base had crumbled into fragments and needed removing.

We bought a pallet load of new, cut, fire-brick, some heat resistant cement and a fresh load of sand for a base and then it needed someone to get in and do it....

...I looked around and there was no-one here!

...wearing nowt but a pair of shorts and an FFP3 face mask I set to work, during which time I overcame arachnophobia and became totally resistant to malaria from all the winged and hairy-legged creatures that had made this their home over the past few years and obviously hadn't received the eviction notices....and some were bloody angry and enormous!...and incredibly fast!

But I had nerves of steel....I was made of stronger stuff....I convinced myself this during the darker hours, when the sweat and toil was fatiguing my withering body....

But finally, as I emerged, triumphant and looking rather like a Vietnamese POW, the new 'forno' was complete. All the bricks had been individually laid and re-laid until everything was perfectly level and now all that was needed was to see if it all still worked as it should....anyone got a match?

A few trial fires 🔥 and everything seems to be perfect. The fire soon gets the oven hot and the smoke thankfully goes out and up the chimney. The floor of the oven gained a great cooking temperature too.

Time to make a purchase.

Now there are times in your life when you realise that you are only going to do something once and today I had this realisation as I strolled into town to the 'Ferramenta' and quite boldly, in my best Italian, asked for and purchased, a 6' foot long, wooden handled pizza shovel....

I doubt if I will ever do this again!

So...it may historically have been an old bread oven that locals would meet at to bake batches of loaves but for the immediate future and in the summer of 2017 I am going to attempt to make pizza!🍕🇮🇹

Wish me 'Buon Appetito'

A double whammy here, the great track 'Burn Baby Burn' by an old favourite band of mine 'Ash' from their early, 2001 album, 'Free All Angels'...see what I did there?, it's not just thrown together, this blog!...could have had a Biffy Clyro track too if anyone noticed?

https://youtu.be/fNdDKhA_gkk

Sent wi' th'ipad

High and Dry....

Oh, Come on!

Stop sending over all that typical Northern weather!

Today has been incredibly cloudy and it even rained for nearly a full nine minutes!

Thunderstorms are rumbling around the valleys though!

Cloudy Cortona up on the hill.

No, but seriously a bit of rain wouldn't go amiss as we haven't had any for over 3 months now and there are signs that things are starting to suffer. The trees in the forest above us are turning brown and cracks are appearing in the parched earth.

The local wildlife must be suffering too as the other night I caught two badgers on the lawn eating dropped mulberries and this morning two foxes 🦊, as bold as brass, were trotting down the track towards me. Maybe they were looking for a drink?

All the rivers have dried up and many of the local 'Diga's (Dam's) are empty.

The locals tend to be deer 🦌 , porcupines🐾, Cinghiale 🐗foxes 🦊, badgers🐩?, snakes 🐍, tortoises 🐢, frogs 🐸 and lots of lizards 🦎. The lovely Hoopoes that we're here every day seem to have disappeared but the other birds, like the pied wagtails and the house martins still come for drink from the pool every day.

We don't mind the birds and the dragonflies calling in for a sip but you have to draw the line if and when the wild pigs start dropping in....

So at the edge of the woods, on the high ground, in the remains of an old 'pig hole' I built this...

I can fill it with a long hose and it should keep them going for a while!

High and Dry is today's track, not only is it appropriate but it will also annoy the hell out of a certain individual that absolutely hates Radiohead, even more than I hate Phil Collins AND Kanye East ....so will prepare for the backlash!

This is off the fantastic 'The Bends' album, of which I have, for all my life, been addicted to.....sorry BP!

https://youtu.be/7qFfFVSerQo

Sent wi' th'ipad

Looking after Number 1...

Heading back up the hill in the warm evening sunshine to beautiful Cortona in a bright red open jeep wearing only shorts, shades and a Neil Young T shirt to my first live gig on Italian soil....does life get any better?

Cortona is holding a 'Mix Festival' this week so a stage has been erected in the Piazza Signorelli and a mixture of musicians from classical, folk, pop and rock, young and old will play on the stage in the main Piazza all through the week in the evenings.

I came up to the town on Tuesday to get me a hot ticket for tonight's band.......wait for it, 70's/80's rock/pop legends The Boomtown Rats with Live Aid officiano and miserable moaning Irish 🍀 frontman 'Sir Bob Geldof'!

The 'Bobster' was given the 'Chuiso Di La Citta' yesterday, or the key 🔑 of the city to all you non 🇮🇹 Italians, I suppose that means he can wander round being grumpy about humanitarian issues while stuffing his face with pasta while others around the world starve and then not paying a penny or a Euro for it....sounds like a recipe for a fight if u ask me?

Anyway, just time for a proper pre-gig pizza and a Birra Moretti at the 'Groce del Travoglio' trattoria on Via Dardano to get in the mood and then the medieval stage was set for 09.30.

As about 400 folk and a dog (no joke) waited patiently....Enter stage left, a lanky leopard skin suited old fella with long scruffy white hair that strutted and prowled Jagger-esque for 2 hours giving us an energetic rendition of the whole back 

catalogue of hits including Modern Girl, Someone's always looking at you, Like Clockwork, Banana Republic, I don't like Mondays, Mary of the fourth form into a John Lee Hooker medley and ending with 'Looking after Number 1 and finally of course 'Rat Trap' before coming back for an encore with a psychedelic rave fest of a track,  'Boomtown' to end the whole performance......quite amazing!

 It surprised me how many hits they had actually had!

I have to say the energy and the performance of the band great and still good guitarists too. The old fella still has it to put that much into a set.

I'm glad now that I gave you a quid back in 1984.....you're ok, Sir Bob!

At the end of the gig at about midnight I wandered back down the tiny streets while people sat quietly drinking coffee and 🍷, past open jewellery shops and designer footwear, art galleries and chocolate shops watching folk eating cake and gelato with a wry smile of realisation as I wondered to myself why I moved to this place?......Tonight, it's pretty obvious!

I can't bring myself to use the obvious 80's thought provoking child slaughter song as I am still sick to death of hearing it first time round, and I hated it then so Iv gone for a more Clash influenced alternative and first ever Boomtown Rats single from 1977 'Looking after Number One'.....described as 'breakneck sneering selfishness'.

https://youtu.be/qbi3VFR0sU4

Death 💀 on the Stairs...

So it's been a while since the last blog but honestly Iv been far too busy keeping an eye on the guests and keeping up with the daily jobs plus the fact Iv lacked a bit of inspiration for writing but today is different. 

This morning Iv got a good start and headed up to Cortona, my local medieval town for a walk round before it gets too hot and crowded.

I parked the jeep in the lower car park near to where the mysterious Mediterranean Etruscans had very cleverly built a futuristic escalator that takes you up into the town and headed along Via Nazionale into the beating 💗 heart of the town.

Cortona is high on a hill and built by the ancient Etruscan brickies back about 400 years before Jesus started banging on about his book. ....so, historically quite old!

It's a higgledy-piggledy labyrinth that is a great place for a walk round, lots of interesting shops, quite arty and chic with loads of cultural exhibitions, a theatre and bohemian stuff going on all year round in and around the old town. Last time I visited they were shooting crossbows during a medieval jousting weekend!

 Now, a week long music festival is about to begin....more about this later!' 

Im always a sucker for a hill, so with the sun 🌞creeping up the yard-arm(?), i started the lung busting climb up the tiny winding streets, past the church of San Francesco and the quiet, eerie convents, up past numerous defibrillators and to my final destination at the top of the town.

The towering 11th century, Neo-gothic Basilica of SanMargherita, home of the famous Franciscan nun that was also undisputed founder of the cheese and tomato topping!  Unfortunately, the pizza bit must have closed down but the church was still quite a spectacle with the views from the belvedere across the whole of the Valdichiana to Lake Trasimeno.

 

Heading back down from the death zone to a lower altitude I was actually still breathing and it was quite definitely brewtime, so a stop off for a relaxing morning cappuccino at Caffe Vittoria in the main Piazza Signorelli was in order and a great place for people-watchin' and a bit of bloggin' before heading off, as the merry throng of tourists start to arrive and begin to clog up all the pretty streets.

The Libertines bring you today's blog track. When Pete Doherty wasn't high on crack he made some cracking noisy tunes, this off the 2002 'Up the Bracket' album.

https://youtu.be/RyjJ-OrUl44