Small town life is always insidious, the reality in Sicily is ever more so. Not only do you find everyone knows about everyone else’s business but they have been sticking in their noses for generations and so if you are a newcomer you will be a target for gossip. I’ve been living here for a…
Continue reading ➞ Political intrigue in small town Sicily
I stumbled upon Vitaliano Brancati quite by accident in a bookstore at Messina. I was attracted by the title of one his books, I discovered after he was quite a prolific novelist and later his most famous novel Il Bel Antonio was developed into a movie starring Marcello Mastroianni, which became a classic of Italian…
Continue reading ➞ Literary Islands: Vitaliano Brancati
The reflective and somewhat haunting Swan River, near my native home in Perth, Western Australia seems a world away. This time of year always makes me homesick ...
Dear Father Christmas, As you know every Christmas I experience away from my family and friends is always tinged with guilt and melancholy. Even if the blessings of my children and new friends distract me from dwelling on negativity. Such is the life of an expat. I don’t particularly want any…
Continue reading ➞ An Expat’s Open Letter to Babbo Natale
It's that time of year again. Getting into the Christmas spirit with a ceramic nativity from Santo Stefano di Camastra.
It is common in Sicily to see people living in unfinished houses or apartments with exposed bricks, cement and reinforced steel poking out dangerously like rusty modern sculptures on roofs left behind as it to say: ‘I could build a second storey if I feel like it, ora vediamo ...' Yes, the quintessential loitering phrase…
Continue reading ➞ The Sicilian art of the incomplete
I’ve been wanting to post about my visits to Etna and how the volcano has always been a rich source of inspiration for me. Her latest eruptions have given me the motivation to get to writing about her. Yes to the Sicilian’s Etna, is very much a ‘she,’ a strong female symbol of…
Continue reading ➞ The inspiration of Etna
I’ve never been a green thumb, actually I’m the direct polar opposite. If you name a plant I’ve probably killed it. One time I even managed to liquidate two cacti whom I had named Iglesias and Beniamino, they strangely rotted to death after I over watered them (yes I managed to over water a…
Continue reading ➞ This month in the garden: the Kiwi
I’ve always been a coffee drinker. I started off with instant stuff, then graduated to frothy cappuccino, milky latte and now I live in Italy it’s one hundred percent hardcore espresso. I briefly flirted with tea drinking in my youth, in the anglo saxon tradition of taking afternoon tea, so common in England loving Australia…
Continue reading ➞ A coffee temptation
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