House of Pain...

Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin...

Today was an autumnal stroll up to the monastery at the top of the holy mountain of Monte Corona in Umbria, past an abundance of parasol 🍄 mushrooms in what may be the last of the sunshine with my canine companions. 

In the far distance I could hear the hunters .....

...shooting at the Cinghiale in the dense woods...

we plodded on...

High up on the top of the hill it was built back in 1530 and it was the home of the Camal-toe monks (apparently!) until 1861 

and now it’s become a ‘house of pain’ (apparently!) for the 

monks that now support the brothers of Bethlehem, the Assumption and Frank Bruno!....you couldn’t make it up? But don’t take my word for it, look it up yourself like I had to here....

http://bethleem.org/

Along the way I asked myself some questions....

What is man?

   What is the meaning, the aim of our life?

   Which is the road to true happiness?

   What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence:

   whence do we come, and where are we going? 

                                                                                               NOSTRA ÆTATE §1

I thought that when I got there, I would ask someone who had all these answers and seek enlightenment but I’m afraid it was closed....just silence!....on a bloody Sunday as well!....I ask you!

Anyway, I knew the answer to the last question....I was going back down following the 172 path that led back to the tiny Borgo Santa Giuliana.

On my return and feeling tired I sought solace in drink and enjoyed some retro American hip-hop from the 90’s.....Cheers Monte Corona!

This song was played ‘everywhere’ when I was a lad and when I hear it today it still makes me smile....’Jump Around’ by the ‘House of Pain’.

https://youtu.be/XhzpxjuwZy0

Don’t look back into the sun...

The quintessential image of Tuscany has got to be the fields and fields of beautiful bright yellow 🌻 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻...during July and August this is most definitely a simply wonderful sight.

"A sunflower field is like a sky with a thousand suns." said someone, once...

A Sunflower is the only flower with flower in its name ??....really, does a cauli-flower not count?....and sunflowers 🌻 are the symbol of faith, loyalty and adoration.

Even a beardy, suicidal, ear-less Dutch fella called Vincent Van Gogh liked them, it's just a pity he wasn't any good at painting as his childlike brushwork only managed to create some worthless and terribly horrid impressions on oily canvasses back in the hedonistic late 1880's...probably have turned out better if he had laid off the absinthe a bit too...

I digress....

The scientific name for sunflowers is helianthus. "Helia" means sun and "anthus" is another word for ......Errrr....flower.?....i think that's right?

To be honest, I find the the huge numbers of the large wired heliotropes quite sinister and I don't trust them at all....standing there staring at the sun....plotting....probably....

And it would appear I am not alone...

"Is it normal that I have a fear of things that look oversized, like oversized sunflowers. I like them if they're a normal, but any thing that is overgrown scares the life out of me... my heart beats fast and I feel faint. Two streets away a neighbour has a giant sunflower in her front garden. It has grown to the height of the bedroom windows... freaks me out when I walk past, but most of the time I avoid tht street. Does any one else feel the same way?...." asks some thick, paranoid American...

It's only a bit of Helianthophobia...I tell myself...

..and a quick google search uncovered more fruit loops including this celestial, unhinged individuals phobia which even the Lord Jesus Christ couldn't help...

http://hkristenfrancis.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-sunflowers-scare-me-edited

You guessed it....another American!

But then this one takes it to another level....

....a charming lady who, and I quote "shits her pants" when she sees one...really??... you crazy, irrational fool....American by any chance?

http://theonlythingtofearisfearitself.blogspot.com/2008/12/jen.html

Following this research, I have now developed my own phobia.....Coprophobia

....being trapped in a field of sunflowers 🌻 with a fuckwit that shits herself....

Fear of faeces is termed "coprophobia," a word derived from the Greek "kopros" (dung) and "phobos" (fear).

Get me outa here!!

Don't look back into the sun....a wonderful scratchy guitar track by a favourite indie band 'The Libertines'...turn it up loud!

Wait for it........Yaaaaaaahh!

https://youtu.be/jLYsIESNtUc

Fill in the blank...

Mosquitoes (Zanzari).....or as I like to call them....”Annoying Ba####ds”

(Fill in the blank)....

A topic that I haven’t covered yet but ‘Molto importante’ around these parts.

It would seem from experience that these little ###### sleep for most of the day like students, then when I fancy staying up listening to dudes tunes and drinking vino Rosso they take exception and start attacking and nibbling, very annoyingly at your lower fleshy parts...

What purpose do they serve?...I haven’t met anyone that has a good word to say about them...

Local advice is that you need is to eat copious amounts of home grown garlic combined with fish oil....then various other solutions are banded around and before you know it you have a daily recipe intake of rendering waste, vitamins A-Z, tiger balm, skin O’so so soft, brewers yeast, local honey, caviar, smelly pecorino, FAM30 and then on top of this you start systematically rubbing yourself all over with iodine, calamine, chlorine, histamine, pancetta and peach schnapps....all available from the downtown Farmacia in Camucia.

Ants, praying mantises, moths, lizards, scorpions and even the noisy secada aren't a problem, they just sit up above in the vines, rubbing themselves into a tropical frenzy and keep themselves to themselves, the lowly zanzari are different....the ba###stards....!!

Smoke helps apparently....dope, fags, pipes, pot and fat cigars all deter the little zanzari and give them a lung cancer death but it all takes time....

So I get a ‘Spirali’ vape insecticide burner...a lovely carcinogenic lavender flavour to lull them in with and when you have finally mastered the art of how to split them you can light them and stick the totally Ineffective appliance under the tavola....to burn your toes on!

Citronella, lemon juice, Vimto and elderflowderberry cordial all deter the flying fec##kers but I’m not sure drinking 3 imperial gallons of the stuff everyday is good for the well-being?...il stick to red 🍷 

Iv even tried offensive music... playing Phil collins, BoyZOne and Ugly Kid Joe all on one greatest tw#ats album but even that didn’t stop them biting....

It almost killed me ....So I’m off to bed...

...and if I’m dead in the morning from the Zita virus or West Nile Fever then they have achieved their aim in life...the ############’s....

‘Fill in the blank’ was a wonderful find for me and the first song I had heard by this band ‘Car Seat Headrest’....stupid bloody band name but great catchy song with gritty guitar riffs....enjoy!

https://youtu.be/s_a1hPwXiWw

England....

England....

As I sit by the pool after a lovely week of +30 degrees sunshine, I settle down in a comfy hammock with a cold Moretti in hand and catch up with the news....

Oh Madonna...what a bloody mess!

After a week or so of unprecedented tepid weather, Saddleworth is on fire, Winter Hill’s mast has melted so no doubt the tellys are off?, you can’t get beer to flow out of the pumps, slaughterhouses can’t kill any pigs, Asda have run out of pop and crumpets, the A6 in Cumbria’s has melted and folk can no longer get to Keswick, the national team can’t beat the massive footballing nation of Belgium and to cap it all the bloke who made the clangers has snuffed it....

Still, reading on, the met office has issued a warning ⚠️ for thunderstorms leading to torrential rain, hail, lightning and massive flooding to come soon...

.....so soon be back to normal so stop moaning folks!

I think you all need to get behind Micheal Gove’s Brexit ideal....what a twat!

Salute....

https://youtu.be/xcEwEYrWo6Q

A beautiful song by my favourite band, The National.

To be without you....

Ok, so Iv been a bit lax in the bloggin’ department...have you seen me lately?...yep, Counting Crows...not going with that one though...

I’m still here in downtown Tuscany, Italy doing the same stuff but for some reason I haven’t found the time or the inclination to blog about it....I always said that the blog was for ME so why should I care that I haven’t had anything to say....well I have been busy....massive BELM.....but Iv jumped ship to a small niche website called Facebook....I know, stick the red hot poker as far as it goes but it won’t make me feel any better about it....my choice, and less personal but I’m chucking a few ideas and ramblings into a Facebook page to try to promote the apartments that we are managing here under the Tuscan 🌞 

Sometimes when I’m lying in a hammock by the pool, wondering where it all went wrong and trying to get some shut eye in the afternoon I think I should be writing summat....I’m feeling guilty now...

I’m thinking I should continue blogging, and I miss matching the music to the blogs so I WILL continue but in the meantime if you fancy a few regular updates then try here

https://www.facebook.com/LaCesaApartmentsTuscany/

So tonight, while Saddleworth burns, England take on the massive footballing nation of 🇧🇪 and Alabama3 rock Preston I will sit under the Wysteria with a glass of vino Rosso with Ryan Adams and consider life....

Still return regularly to this guy, he writes and performs some great stuff...the boy is a genius and understated....”Nothing really matters anymore”....

Check out the dude here from a 6Music recording....https://youtu.be/eJ5eaGcwul8

Feed the Tree....

This week I’v had a ‘Masterclass’ in olive pruning with the great olive supremo, Danielle, the go-to-guru when you need anything tree related in or around Cortona.

He’s quite a guy to work with and has kept me entertained all week with the ‘banter di l’olive’.

Lesson 1: You can’t prune in the rain, that’s the first thing I learnt and my god we have had the rain. So we waited for a sunny day and got cracking with the ‘potatura dell ‘olive’...pruning of the olive tree. We have 250 trees in the Olivetti on grass terraces for harvesting olives in November in Tuscany to make the oil. Now in Spring, the trees need to be pruned and completed this needs to be completed by May 1st. 

My mentor told me to get into the middle of the tree and start with the ‘succhioni’s’...the suckers, as the middle needs to be clear and airy and these little fellas suck up all the goodness needed by the tree. The ‘polloni’ need to be removed too, a separate name for the sucker growth on the trunks. In the meantime Danielle has a set of bolt croppers over his shoulder and is getting stuck into the outer branches with his battery powered ‘Cesoie’...secateurs.

All I can hear from the inside 

of the tree is him muttering “Questa Qui’...this one....snip, ....”taglia questo ...cut this...”lashia questo”....leave this.

It’s all about the shape, you need to fashion a vase shape with an evenly distributed canopy and he definitely has the eye and the experience. You also need to remove branches that crowd other branches but without creating holes and your’e always considering what can go and what needs to grow for the next year. The growth of the olive is prolific but don’t be cutting willy-nilly, study the shape to see if all the branch can come out...don’t be cutting halfway if it’s a bit “molto alto”...too high, as this is frowned upon by this man. Branches that are growing the wrong way are history, radical cuts are made to anything that dares to grow too high for the pickers or he refers to as “bruto ”....ugly!...he studies with his eyes and then holds his hands together and moves them up and down with the words “ it’s not beautiful” in English, for my benefit and laughs.

I watch his artwork....it’s impressive!...and I learn a lot!

He cares about the tree, not himself...he wants it to look it’s best, I can see that in him.

The rule is that when you finished, a bird should be able to fly from one side and exit the other without touching a leaf....a nice idea, eh?

At the end we are left with piles and piles and piles of pruning and clippings....

But we haven’t finished....

The next day the extendable Styhl comes out and the trusty ‘Husquavana’ as we tackle the bigger trees, taking overhanging boughs off oaks and generally lopping owt that he doesn’t like the look of, to let more light to the olivetti.

I haven’t been to Syria but when we are finished I probably think it resembles Raqqa!

I now have days and days of clearing up, cutting logs, mulching and bonfires....and the grass is growing fast....!

Next job is to nip down the Consortzio to buy a couple of hundred kilos of fertilizer to feed the trees....

Of course this is a perfectly apt track and a great indie classic from my upbringing from a debut album by ‘Belly’, with the lovely ‘Tanya’ on lead, ex Breeders and Throwing Muses....

“So take your hat off boy when you’re talking to me and be there when I feed the tree!”

The song is a metaphor about commitment and respect, so it’s here for you to enjoy!

https://youtu.be/RQJjUbMrt8w

Rambling Man...

This last week I decided to get some walking in so I have been out daily exploring the abundant tracks and trails that connect the forests around this area that cover the higher ground. I also had a companion to carry out this task, one with experience of all the sights, sounds and smells of the local forests, namely Rosita, a local Jack Russell. 

These forest tracks are used frequently by walkers, Mountain bikers and enduro riders. Mainly though, the local hunters use them for seeking out the Cinghiale and deer and are vehicle wide so make easy hiking routes. Connections can then be made on smaller, interesting paths that climb up and down deeper through the woods frequently used by porcupines and hares....and lions and tigers and bears!...oh my!

With a dog, a stick, a notebook and google maps loaded on th’ipad I set off on my mornings ramble to find and connect the paths. Using coloured spent shotgun cartridges as markers at junctions I traced and re-traced all the paths until I had walked and mapped the whole area by the end of the week.

A strong wind brought snow to the area by the end of the week but we weren’t deterred and my little companion thoroughly enjoyed herself!

Gaining height and finding clearings in the woods gaveus fantastic views below, across the Valdichiana towards Montepulciano, over to lake Trasimeno and up to Cortona.

Oh naive little me
Asking what things you have seen
And you're vulnerable in your head
You'll scream and you'll wail till you're dead

Today’s fabulous track is ‘Rambling man’, the first track I ever heard by British songwriter, Laura Marling and was immediately drawn in by her lovely voice, enchanting lyrics and sultry guitar. Here a hit from her 2010 album. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/1YXKWOTGskY