Hey Hey, My My outa the blue and... (into the black)

Here you find us today in the Upper reaches of the Okavango delta...

....through the morning mist a rare glimpse of a native hornbill and the eerie haunting call of a young lonely male Orangutan can be heard in the misty distance....

Ho..ho...only joking...not really....high up but still in Umbria. Quite atmospheric with the clouds still hanging about after all the recent rain...it’s been as wet as a tramps vest for the last few days!

As the year starts to close, the wine and the oil has been pressed and bottled, the warm sunshine has retired and the vast woods have started to change to a golden colour, while large flocks of birds gather to fly off for their holidays and we find ourselves winding down with the clock...

It’s quite a change from the summer and sorta feels quite sad....

Still...there’s more to the picture than meets the eye....

But look on the bright side....It’s Black ‘feckin’ Fridey!!.....Whoop, ‘Feckin’ Whoop!!

You can’t escape the Black Fridey madness...it’s gone absolutely crazy here today with unlimited free entry into the mercato in the little piazza for everyone!

Folk have been queued all night, three times around the parcheggio, for a whopping 20% off all porchetta butties, Prosecco under half price, New olive oil at knockdown prices, Massive savings on huge Panetone’s, Unbeatable Deals on great big lumps of Parmigiano, a total mental frenzy on Grappa and Nutella, Amazing one-off, never to be repeated offers on winter logs and cardigans. You like Pizzas?...get this....any size, any topping..half price!....wow!...and that’s not all....Reduced and ‘locally produced’ mozzarella prices are slashed, with fresh celery and parsley discounted and for one day only they are giving away hot-roasted chestnuts and an unbelievable buy one - get one free deal on all incense sticks and candles until Sunday...while stocks last!

Conditions apply and finance available so you can buy everything now and pay for it for the rest of your sad, weary life...sorry, but migrants'. need not apply!

...they give you this but you pay for that....

If you don’t believe me you can check out all the latest offers here....

https://camelcamelcamel.com/

Absolutely no camels were hurt in this gluttonous shopping frenzy...

And remember...a camel is not just for Christmas!

...and once your gone you can’t come back...

It will probably end up being a Black Saturday too here...the Azzurri take on the lesser known team the ‘Nuova Zealanda’ tomorrow in the Olympic Stadium in Rome and I don’t fancy their chances much....still, we once beat them!🔥!

...it’s better to burn out than to fade away....eh Peter?

https://youtu.be/0O1v_7T6p8U

This is quite obviously Neil Young and with his band ‘Crazy Horse’ with a full on guitar fuelled version played with passion as it always should be...always brilliant...enjoy!

Nothing in the way...

Still on my tour of Umbria, today’s destination was the walled medieval town of Montone, a tiny hilltop commune with less than two thousand folk.

It’s getting colder now but it’s lovely visiting these places at the end of the season when all the tourists have gone home! This tiny place was peaceful and quiet and incredibly clean and tidy and nothing in the way of a photo opportunity!

A pleasant morning ramble up the tiny winding streets and a peek over the old walls to the bigger white topped hills in the distance and then back down to the piazza for a coffee.

Today’s blog choice track is ‘Nothing in the Way’....a song by a guy calling himself, Ghostpoet off his 2015 album ‘Shedding Skin’...a great song and a great voice.

Audio only I’m afraid here...enjoy.

https://youtu.be/V0az9TZG9i4

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