The Cat Days of August

It's my last chance to write a blog post in August.  It's been a busy old month, dominated by hot but changeable weather, with strong winds wooshing through our pine tree and making doors bang and curtains fly in an unsettling manner.  The last couple of days have by contrast been hot and still like August in Puglia should be.

Sue's sister Julie and her daughters Grace and Alice and son Joe with girlfriend Rachel came in late July and left on 3rd August.  While they were here we celebrated mine, Sue and Mimingo's birthdays along with the Convertini family with a barbecue on our terrace.  Towards the end of their stay there was the added excitement of Rachel discovering she'd lost her passport on the outward journey, resulting in her having to get a coach to Rome to get emergency papers from the British Consulate.

While they were here we all got a lot of entertainment from the antics of two kittens who had been born somewhere near our terrace sometime in June.  Sue has been feeding and keeping an eye on them, but sadly they both died over the last week and I had to dig two little graves.  Their mum is still around crying plaintively for her little ones to come and feed.

After the Iredale's left we got down to making passata and the other late summer activity of drying figs, as the trees sagged under the weight of their plump, syrup dripping fruit.  I also popped across to the UK to do my second wedding and the naming of three children.  Both had an RAF connection as the wedding was in the Officer's Mess of the old RAF Hemswell, where some of the film "the dam busters" was made, and the naming was at RAF Cranwell, just a few hundred metres from the officer's college with it's great facade and parade ground.

This year too we both managed to spend Feragosto hanging around Locorotondo and watching the festivities for the feast of San Rocco, who as far as I can tell was an itinerant nutter who spent his days limping around and pointing to his stigmata - a rather unsightly thigh wound.  Still the roast pork roll at a stall near the funfair was delicious.  Usually we make a desultory attempt to stay awake for the midnight firework competition on 16th August, when the Comune of Locorotondo sponsors a serious attempt to torch the entire Val d'Itrea, but this year we were too Feragosto'd out to even try.

In this summer of catching up for lost time in Puglia we also managed to spend a few days at the beach.  Here are Sue and I in characteristic poses.

We've also been able to get some walking in, exploring places new to us on the ridge that drops down from our limestone plateau, the "Murghe", to the Adriatic.  The monument below is yet another statue of San Oronzo, the man who apparently saved Ostuni, or was it Lecce, or both, from the plague.  And thus another August drifts past ....