Culture Club

With yet another Friday night round up I’m starting to think I should rename this blog ‘Letter from Italy’ in homage to the late, great Alistair Cooke, whose ‘Letter from America’ was a broadcasting institution and is sorely missed. Who nowadays has such a soporific voice? I loved ‘Letter from America’ though I can honestly say I have no idea what he used to talk about as, no matter how hard I tried to focus, two or three minutes in and I would be in a blissful stupor washed by his gentle mid-Atlantic tones. From which I better take a lesson and get on with things before the same fate befalls us all now (the stupor that is, not speaking like we come from Boston).

Sunday was an important date in the MSP cultural calendar, being the fiera (a word which translates loosely as fair but with the sense of a holiday thrown in) for the town’s patron saint, St Biagio, also known to his friends as St Blaise. Seemingly, he was a healer and bishop who achieved martyrdom when he was beaten, attacked with iron combs and then beheaded. They didn’t mess around in those days. He is now, apart from keeping MSP safe and sound, the patron saint of wool combers. And they say the Catholic Church has no sense of humour. His actual saint’s day was last Wednesday, 3rd February, marked by a half-day holiday with the shops, and those factories that still follow these things, closing at least for the afternoon. This was because in the early evening the statue of the Saint was taken from the church and paraded around the town to general acclamation.

The festivities on Sunday amounted to a street market, which required the closing of the main route through the town causing any motorists foolish enough to want to actually go anywhere to take a circuitous detour. There were plenty of stalls, and some even had things that you might want to buy, but there was a distinct lack of colour and celebration. Most were what you would expect at the average car boot sale these days, and we managed to resist the allure of cheap underwear, 1950s jumpers and amusing t-shirts. We did, though, come away with a carpet beater, a scoop (like a misshaped sieve) to hoik our lunchtime pasta from its cooking water and a bowl to then mix it with the sauce of the day as well as some traditional Carnavale cakes. More importantly, though, was that it turned into a royal walkabout for Stephen, who kept having to stop and chat with various people, asking how they were and bringing them up to date on our house. Even though he may not have seen some of them for months, if not years, they all seemed to know exactly what we had been doing and to think, like us, that he was much better off to be shot of Leaping Luca and the MKP madness.

Monday morning we headed back to Cuore Adriatico, this time to the TIM shop to see about exchanging the sim so it fitted my new smart phone. We’d feared that it would take forever, but in the event it was fixed pretty smartish (get it?) in a matter of minutes. The young man behind the counter said that yes, he could sort it for us and did we want him to cut it to the right size (€5) or buy a new one (€10). Well, if I’d known we could have just taken a pair of nail clippers to it I might have been tempted to have a go myself, being almost adept at such low tech shenanigans. However, working on the basis that I actually want a phone that works efficiently, we plumped for the more expensive, and hopefully more reliable, option. Besides, why would I want to demean my iPhone with hand-me-downs?

If Sunday was an important day for MSP then Tuesday was a monumental one for the whole of Italy, what with it being the start of Sanremo. You can be forgiven if the name means little or nothing to you, other than it being an Italian resort just down the road from Monte Carlo that was once host to such illustrious European holidaymakers as Empress "Sissi" of Austria and Tsar Nicholas II. Since 1951, however, it has been synonymous with the song festival held there annually, and which inspired the creation of the Eurovision Song Contest. Well, we have to blame somebody for it.

The Sanremo Music Festival is, for many Italians, the cultural pinnacle of their year and it dominates the media in a way Simon Cowell can only dream of. Not only is it all over the popular magazines but it also takes up four hours (yes, four hours) of prime time TV on five consecutive nights with an audience share of over 50%. So how can it manage to fill so much time? Well, for one thing, while the songs are of relative importance they have to share space with comic interludes, celebrity guests (Elton John and Nicole Kidman received a reputed €300,000 each for showing their faces – but at least Elton managed to sing a couple of ditties for his pocket money) and a parade of sparkly frocks. The songs themselves are placed into categories depending on who is singing (the one for established stars’ is called ‘The Champions’, though from what I could make out ‘The Botox Brigade’ would be nearer the mark – some of the more elderly ladies seemed to have a great deal of trouble operating their mouths) and are gradually whittled down in a series of telephone and jury votes leaving a field of 16 for the final on Saturday. I can’t wait.

And that is about it for this week, other than Stephen finding out that it’s not a good idea to make a bonfire from rubbish that contains sealed canisters. The sound of them exploding had Bella, Harry and me scurrying to the far side of the garden yesterday when we were outside playing, and while Stephen was dabbling in pyromania, we were engaged in altogether more wholesome activities like chasing after rubber bones.

Oh, and we took a further step in our Italianisation today when our electric cheese grater arrived. No longer will we run the risk of scattering bits of shredded finger as well as Parmesan over our lunchtime pasta from a hand held plane. Now, with the merest squeeze of a button, a deluge of cheese smothers our puttanesca. And no, Mrs Bridge, that isn’t a euphemism.