Fiftieth Birthdays

We had a great time on our fiftieth birthdays. As our birthdays are only 12 days apart we decided to have a joint celebration, along with Meeno, one of Erminia’s sons who had his 53rd birthday around the same time. The night before we went up the road to Meenos for his birthday party and then the next day we organised lunch for 25 under our new veranda. Meeno and his son, our builder Paolo, turned up in the morning with scaffold poles and netting to rig up more shade and help lay tables and chairs. Sue’s friend and teaching colleague Pat came early to help prepare, as did our friends Claude and Jane. The remaining guests were all members of our neighbours Erminia and Paolo’s family.

I guess the lunch was our way of saying thank you to all these people for their kindness and generosity. Pugliese people have big healthy appetites and are also particular about their food, not generally liking any kind of foreign muck. Not trusting us to cook anything remotely edible we had a number of offers of assistance with the catering. Erminia brought several litres of their home made wine, Palma, Meeno’s wife and Erminia’s daughter in law cooked rabbit and potatoes and Dora, her other daughter in law made trays of foccacia of many different flavours. I barbecued an enormous quantity of meat and Sue made antipasti and a pear cake for desert. It was hard work and more than a little stressful, but after half an hour or so everyone arrived and were happily eating, drinking and talking at the top of their voices.

Chiaro and Milly

We now have two animals. “Chiaro” the cat was in fact a sitting tenant when we arrived. Chiaro originally belonged to a Calabrian family, who rented our house until a couple of years before we bought it, and Chiaro had somehow stayed, fed occasionally on pasta by Erminia, who like so many country people has a love hate relationship with domestic pets, alternately making a fuss of Chiaro then chasing him with a broom. When we arrived and started giving him real cat food he decided to move back to our house pretty much full time, although the rule is he is not allowed inside. Chiaro is a big tomcat and a kind of sandy colour which matches the stonework of the house. I guess he is about five or six and this spring he had trouble coming to terms with the fact that he may no longer be the toughest cat on the block. Every night we would hear blood curdling yowlings and growlings and other signs of feline mayhem and in the morning Chiaro would come limping for his food, bloody and with bits of ear and leg missing. I really thought he wasn’t going to see the summer, but somehow he pulled through and most of his scars have more or less healed.

 In June Sue was working in her vegetable garden when a small sandy coloured terrier like creature with unfeasibly large ears padded up to her and started to make friends. Sue says that she thought the dog belonged to one of our neighbours so she made friends with it, though I am not entirely sure I believe her. It was, of course, a stray and on closer inspection covered in ticks and quite weak. I don’t have a problem with wild dogs, but I do hate to see dogs that have obviously been domesticated, then cast loose to fend for themselves. Anyway we gave it some food and a tick collar and got our friends Claude and Jane to feed it while we were away in the UK for a week in early July. It was still here when we returned so we took it to the vets where we found out that “it” was a bitch of about two years of age, so we had her inoculated and “done”. She is now an intensely loyal and reasonably happy and well-balanced dog who I must admit to enjoy having around. She, like Chiaro, also matches the stonework. She also looks exactly like almost every other dog in this part of Puglia. A long time ago a corgi must have bred with a dingo with enormous ears and produced a virulent local strain of mongrel.