Happy birthday??

I was 56 on Friday and it’s more or less a year since I started this blog. When I began I was unsure what I was writing for. Looking at the stuff I’ve written since I find much of it seems self-satisfied and self-justificatory. Actually, paging at random through the blogs of others, the majority of whom seem to be female christians of various ages from the mid west of the United States, I am clearly not alone.

In my case I guess it comes with the territory. Brought up by a controlling Mother who used her anxiety to keep me constantly accountable, it’s like a part of me is for ever engaged in the process of answering the question “where have you been, I’ve been worried sick about you.” Over time, the process of creating a bland and positive narrative becomes ingrained.

So, as I approach a second year of blogging about myself, I think it’s time to become a bit more real and a bit more interesting, if I can. Starting with the question “why am I writing this blog?” The answer is bleeding obvious – for it to be read, of course.

Brindisi now and then

Sue and I took a day trip to Brindisi last week to fulfil a promise we made five years ago to visit the Archeological Museum.  There were only a handful of people there, all foreigners, wandering around the pottery shards and broken statues.  You are left with the impression that Brindisi was less a Roman town, than a Roman occupied town, building on Greek civilisations that were many centuries older.  Also one gets a feel for the tremendous strategic importance of this natural galley harbour, which was the gateway to Greece and the Eastern Mediteranean.

When we first came to the Museum five years ago, on a similarly hot Summer day, it was shut for renovation.  If I'm honest I was in a bad way at the time, in the grip of depression, struggling to see anything good in anything, more interested in the shade than the light.  Now life seems a lot better, if a bit uncertain.  Sue has finished work for the Summer and is now casting around for what to do next.  I too am looking for work, although increasingly pessimistic about finding any.  This seems to be becoming our pattern of the last few years, trying to ensure that we don't become so preoccupied with earning a living that the Summer slips past almost without our noticing or having enjoyed it to the full.  We should have such problems!

After the Museum we wandered around the sleepy old town in the height of midday sun, then went for lunch.  The grilled cuttlefish I had were so pretty Sue insisted I take a photo of them.

HOT

High summer has arrived and it's hot, hot, hot here in Puglia - pushing forty centigrade on our terrace at lunchtime.  Too hot to do much during the middle of the day except try to sleep.

For a few days we had a sirocco, the wind out of the south that blows from the deserts of North Africa.  Everyone here hates the sirocco - in the winter it brings humid air that feels muggy and unpleasant and breeds mould and in the summer it's like living in a fan oven, cooking the poor tomatoes and aubergines on the vine and making the lettuces wilt and flop onto the parched earth.  The only defence is to shut all the doors and windows in the middle of the day to stop the heat invading the house.  Then all one can do is lie down next to a fan feeling the sweat congeal on one's skin and look anxiously at the thermometer, hoping is doesn't climb above thirty, when things start to get really unbearable.

But now the sirocco has ceased blowing and conditions are hot, still and dry.  Good weather for the beach or for a cycle expedition, post siesta.  Yesterday I rode to Ostuni - the White City, while most people were still asleep.  Very little was stirring in the countryside except the cicadas.  Even in the late afternoon I could feel my knees burning under a sky bleached almost white by the flaring sun which turned the shadows an intense black.  This is the time of year when the South of Italy is most at home with itself, quiet as the grave, brooding in the sultry atmosphere.  In Italian the South of Italy is called the "mezzogiorno", literally the "midday", where nothing happens or ever can.

Dad's typewriter

Dad asked me to take his typewriter to the local hospice charity shop yesterday.  It’s a fairly new electric one.  Lifting it from his desk made me feel sad this morning.  Writing carefully crafted letters to authority about this and that has always been such a part of him and his sense of himself and now he seems happy to casually cast this tool away.  “Are you sure you want me to take it?” I asked a couple of times and “yes” he was quite sure.   He told me to take its PVC dustcover as well – “I made that myself” he said proudly.  I could tell he had, he has always been a dedicated adapter of his possessions to make them more “practical” as he might say.

The charity shop is in a little row in the local shopping centre, dominated by a Coop, a chippy and a Mobility shop with a line of electric buggies outside.  The man at the counter looked at me blankly as I handed over the machine, “the manageress said yesterday I should bring it in” I said and he nodded as I set it down in front of him.  I wanted to say “it’s my Dad’s you know, he’s written a lot of letters on it, but now he doesn’t have the dexterity in his fingers.  I hope it goes to a good home.”  But I didn’t, I knew this would be too much information for the retired chap at the counter who had clients to deal with.  And so this milestone in Dad’s life disappeared quickly from the rear view mirror in his accelerating journey into oblivion.  It’s funny how a cheap electric typewriter can make one so inexpressibly sad.