9559 A lyrical moment

well I sure ain't English but (several glasses of wine not withstanding) a bit of passion is always to be applauded & I know what you mean. No matter how wonderful I think Italy is, I adore my own country too. Nothing wrong with that! All I'd say to bring you back down with a bump is tht it's relatively easy to wax lyrical about nature wherever you are; less so about society etc ....

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower, -
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Mind you at the moment it is beautiful in Abruzzo too. The Acacia trees are festooned in sweetly scented blossom, the hillsides are ablaze with meadow flowers, cherries are ripening on the trees and my last water bill was €3.90:laughs:

[quote=Nielo;89556]...and my last water bill was €3.90:laughs:[/quote]
Ha! Our last water bill was [B]–[/B]€0.10. (But we were away for a couple months.)

It always seemed to me that the most wonderful thing about May in Britain (and especially in Scotland) is seeing a few signs that yet another long, dark, soggy Winter might – just might – be coming to an end.

We've had a fair amount of sogginess here in the last six months (for which we're grateful after last year's drought), but the first sign of Spring here was a flush of violas, Veronica and other wildflowers in February. They faded, but before their season had completely passed, other flowers appeared, including narcisi and lots of fruit tree blossom. That procession has continued and now, as Nielo says, the false acacia trees are litterally covered with white flowers and there's a profusion of other wildflowers in bloom.

I'm pleased you (like Robert Browning) enjoy the transient and subtle pleasures of an English Spring, but it seems to me vastly over-rated and only wonderful when compared with the misery that came before. You won't be surprised if I say that I set my sights on Italy one particularly dismal Scottish January day; as what little daylight there had been under the heavy cloudcover faded away at 3pm, I decided that there had to be a more climatically convivial place to spend my final decades.

Al

The poem is called [B]home thoughts, from abroad[/B]........and I think it was written whilst he was living in Italy...........cant see his name in the members list......strange that .:no:

patriotism on an ex-pat forum, now theres a novelty!
I think the wildlife here are much more friendly than in UK, I love sharing my garden with snakes and wild boars, when I leave my door unlocked they never steal my dvd player, and they have never attacked me with a knife or gun.
I know there is crime here in Italy and I am spoilt as I live in a rural area, so dont experience any violence or fear.
Then I put English tv on and watch the news. sorry but there is nothing great about Britain anymore, it should be pushed out into the ocean, its already sunk!

none of us should worry too much about a bit of rain .... I saw yesterday that barcelona has just taken delivery of the first of 18 tankers of water (23Million litres per shipment) as, at the onset of the 'dry season', the city reservoirs are already critically low following several years with little rain.

In a few more years - when water is the new oil and it's being traded @ 200$ a barrel - the Scottish Parliament may consider sending you some of our liquid gold under our foreign aid program :-)

[quote=pigro;89573]In a few more years - when water is the new oil and it's being traded @ 200$ a barrel - the Scottish Parliament may consider sending you some of our liquid gold under our foreign aid program :-)[/quote]
Here's something not many people know: [URL="http://www.choose-tuscany.com/"]annual precipitation in Toscana[/URL] is just about the same as [URL="http://www.cityguide.travel-guides.com/city/50/statistics/Europe/Glasgow.html"]that in Glasgow[/URL].

Rainfall is good: it stops places from becoming a desert. The nice thing about rain in Italy is that it generally rains for a few days (at most) and then stops, while in Scotland, the norm is clouds and rain interspersed with a few days of sunshine.

That does, I know, make the sunshine all the more appreciated when it comes, but the grey and drizzle does get on one's wick after a while.

Al

Just on the rainfall front, although Tuscany gets as much preciptation as Glasgow (suspension of disbelief for a moment, but I'm not going to argue with Allan's statistics) it isn't as easy to manage or collect and store water in Italy as it is in Scotland. It is about the nature of the soil, the nature of the rainfall, and the underlying geology - (coupled with the probabililty that Scotland has invested more money more usefully).

Spring is lovely everywhere!

fair points well made Allan, but Glasgow's rainfall occurs in terrain which allows the water to collect and remain rather than evaporate in the heat?

The population of 1.2M in greater Glasgow area also benefit from Scotland as a whole (5.5M people in 79000 km2, or 63 people per km2) having an average of 1900mm/year rainfall ... whilst the 3.5M Tuscans are less well served by italy as a whole (58M people in 300,000 km2, or 192 people per km2) having 650mm/year on average.

I think that pretty well establishes that we have a relative abundance of water over here per km and per capita; as we all know, you can prove anything with statistics :-)

I do however agree with your point that it's much more pleasant right now to fiddle (in a Tuscan tower, under big blue skies) whilst Rome burns ... than to lament (from a Gorbals tower block, under constant drizzle) while Glasgow drowns.

I think the difference in the amount of water available to humans is partly down to terrain (Italy having basically limestone underpinnings which are permeable, while Scotland's geology is more watertight), but it's also due to the precipitation patterns. Scotland's rainfall is normally a steady trickle for days on end across the whole year, while in Italy rain tends to come in brief bursts, and very few of those during the Summer.

Thinking about this, I was reminded that I first arrived in Scotland in early 1977 while the country was recovering from a drought. A quick Google just now turned up statistics citing a maximum of 45 days without rain across the whole of Britain during that period, but that was enough to cause very serious difficulties for the country. I wasn't keeping track, but I think there must have been several periods last year in Italy where it went for at least that long between any sort of rainfall. Problems were caused by that, but only after a very extended period.

Al

I think we went about three months with no significant rain at all and we never had our water cut off - admittedly we do have a potso for watering the garden.

What amazes me is that if Glasgow has such a good water supply in comparison to Italy why do the water bills differ so much. Over the last year we have paid less than €20 total, how much does it cost in Glasgow?

There is a fundamental difference between how much falls and how efficiently it is stored, moved and consumed :-) Once it's 200$ a barrel, we'll be more careful to patch up all the leaks in our network!

water & sewerage charges were approx. £180 & £200 respectively for my city centre flat (Band 'D'). But bear in mind the cost of preserving, maintaining and replacing largely Victorian infrastructure in a densely populated area and the quaintly outmoded concept of flat rate (as opposed to metered) charging that persists here.

I'm not sure, but I'd guess that your 20€ bill is for consumption, and the true cost of providing the inrastructure through which your supply flows may be being met out of the many other taxes collected by Italian central govt?

To Pigro, thankyou for understanding.
To Nielo, poem made me feel quite homesick (even though I'm at home)
To AllanMason, the pleasures of an English Spring may be transient but not subtle, at least not in the Peak District in May when they are totally intoxicating.
To Herealready, maybe I'm not used to the wildlife enough to not feel nervous.
To everyone else, a poem by Wendy Cope
English Weather

January's grey and slushy,
February's chill and drear,
March is wild and wet and windy,
April seldom brings much cheer.
In May, a day or two of sunshine,
Three or four in June, perhaps.
July is usually filthy,
August skies are open taps.
In September things start dying,
Then comes cold October mist.
November we make plans to spend
The best part of December p....d ( Not sure if I would be allowed to write the last word)

Actually I'm glad that Ligurian weather can be pretty unpredictable too, at least in the hills. I love seeing the mist swirling round the mountains before the sun comes out. (And the sun sometimes stays in).
I found another poem called " Everyone Hates The English" but my partner persuaded me that it was unsuitable!
ciao
pam

Shame on you Alma for having been persuaded by your partner that "Everyone Hates The English" does not deserve publishing here. Go on ... you know you want to do it!

I jsut tried to find the poem using Everyone hates the english and got the following from yahoo
[FONT="Book Antiqua"]1 - 10 of about 7,290,000 for Everyone Hates The English (About this page) - 0.39 sec.[/FONT]

Tried the same thing with Everyone hates the French..........and the WWW crashed ....:laughs:

[quote=deborahandricky;89642]I jsut tried to find the poem using Everyone hates the english and got the following from yahoo
[FONT="Book Antiqua"]1 - 10 of about 7,290,000 for Everyone Hates The English (About this page) - 0.39 sec.[/FONT]:[/quote]

Try using inverted commas! For "everyone hates the English" plus 'poem', only 127 returns, headed by Italy Mag forum.

Everyone Hates the English

Everyone hates the English,
Including the English. They sneer
At each other for being so English,
So what are they doing here,
The English? It's thick with the English,
All over the country. Why?
Anyone ever born English
Should shut up, or **** off, or die.

Anyone ever born English
Should hold their extraction in scorn
And apologise all over England
For ever at all being born,
For that's how it is, being English;
Fodder for any old scoff
That England might be a nice country
If only the English ****ed off!

Interesting. I never knew this forum had a built-in censor. The version I posted did NOT include asterisks.

Take a guess who wrote this. [B]No cheating.[/B]

Le fonti si confondono col fiume
i fiumi con l'Oceano
i venti del Cielo sempre
in dolci moti si uniscono
niente al mondo e' celibe
e tutto per divina legge
in una forza si incontra e si confonde.
Perche' non io con te ?

Vedi che le montagne baciano l'alto
del Cielo, e che le onde una per una
si abbracciano. Nessun fiore-sorella
vivrebbe piu' ritroso verso il fratello-fiore.
E il chiarore del sole abbraccia la terra
e i raggi della luna baciano il mare.
Per che cosa tutto questo lavoro tenero
se tu non vuoi baciarmi ?

Sounds like something from that fat bint called Jade who had an autobiography ghosted by somebody, but I doubt if either of them spoke even pig Italian...so it's probably Ovid or something like...over to Sancho the banned!

For the oldies who remember Flanders and Swan and for the youngsters who should discover them, here is their version of English weather:
January brings the snow
Makes your feet and fingers glow
February's Ice and sleet
Freeze the toes right off your feet
Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wer't not so unkind
April brings the sweet spring showers
On and on for hours and hours
Farmers fear unkindly May
Frost by night and hail by day
June just rains and never stops
Thirty days and spoils the crops
In July the sun is hot
Is it shining? No, it's not
August cold, and dank, and wet
Brings more rain than any yet
Bleak September's mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood
Then October adds a gale
Wind and slush and rain and hail
Dark November brings the fog
Should not do it to a dog
Freezing wet December then:
Bloody January again!

-- Michael Flanders

[quote=juliancoll;89650]Take a guess who wrote this. [B]No cheating.[/B]
[/quote]

well, clearly you did :-)

Actually, I share Charles' dim view (a bit too corny for my tastes). I don't suppose it was Mick Hucknall (the ginger whinger from Simply Red)? ... I heard him on italian Radio a couple of weeks ago and he was speaking very good Italian, perhaps he's producing italian lyrics in addition to Italian vino rosso?

Getting back to lyrical moments I watched Francesco's Venice the other night and for me - despite loving Britain and Italy - I couldn't help but draw the conclusion that the Italians sure have a way with words.

Having stopped one of the road sweepers in St Marks Square early in the morning Francesco made some comment about how he must get used to such a lovely sight after all these years to which the road sweeper replied something along the lines of " to me every day it is like seeing a beautiful women for the first time"

I'm not sure you would get such a "lyrical" response from our local road sweeper here in Wales bless him!

Jackie

I think it's the language that I'm most in love with in Italy. Just hearing someone say the most ordinary thing makes me melt. I think (with my very limited knowledge of Italian poetry) that it must be hard to write something that doesn't sound romantic or wistful with all those vowels. Does anyone know a much harsher Italian poem?
PS RAIN by Des Dillon

A million sardines
flapping insane on
the wet-velvet tarmac.

ciao
pam

[quote=pigro;89667]well, clearly you did :-)

Actually, I share Charles' dim view (a bit too corny for my tastes). I don't suppose it was Mick Hucknall (the ginger whinger from Simply Red)? ... I heard him on italian Radio a couple of weeks ago and he was speaking very good Italian, perhaps he's producing italian lyrics in addition to Italian vino rosso?[/quote]

How could I have cheated? I know what it is because I posted the poem, which meant I knew where to look for it. :bigergrin: Il Cantante should speak decent Italian by now, he has lived in Milan for quite a while, but he doesn't go to Sicily that much.

BTW, the poem is a translation of Shelleys "Love's Philosophy"

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

I meant that clearly you wrote it (it's there in black & white), not that you cheated :-)
... schoolboy humour, wasted on the grown ups!

[quote=Nielo;89556]
Mind you at the moment it is beautiful in Abruzzo too. The Acacia trees are festooned in sweetly scented blossom, [/quote]
Acacia trees are also very pretty at this time of year in Le Marche...I am however assuming that they are the same variety as in Abruzzo: imported and a national pest!!! Busy spreading and killing the natural woodland. They spread by runners in a scary manner, outgrow and smother natural woodland and have thorns that are big enough to hang your kitchen shelves on!!!
Death to Acacia trees!!!

[quote=jowilliams;89757]Acacia trees are also very pretty at this time of year in Le Marche...I am however assuming that they are the same variety as in Abruzzo: imported and a national pest!!! Busy spreading and killing the natural woodland. They spread by runners in a scary manner, outgrow and smother natural woodland and have thorns that are big enough to hang your kitchen shelves on!!!
Death to Acacia trees!!![/quote]
They will be the same sort of trees: False Acacia or [I]Robinia pseudoacacia[/I], a native of southeastern USA where it's known as Black Locust.

It's clearly a tree that's very happy in the Italian climate as well one that produces a huge number of seeds every year and spreads easily (although I wasn't aware it did so by runners). I don't know when it was introduced into Italy, but Kew Garden has one dating back to 1640, so it seems reasonable to assume there must have been some in Italy within a couple of centuries of that. If that's so, then it's had at least 150 years to take over the forests and hasn't managed to do so yet.

The thorns on young trees are vicious and the ones that remain imbedded in the trunks of older trees can be a very unpleasant surprise, but the tree does have positive qualities.

First, its wood is highly resistant to rot and it should last at least ten years in contact with the soil. Italian country folk are well aware that branches or sections of young trees can be used as fenceposts and tree supports without the need of any nasty preservatives.

Second, its wood has a high heat content and burns slowly with little smoke. In the States, locust is considered as desirable as oak, maple and cherry in the woodpile.

Finally, a mature tree covered in flowers produces a huge amount of nectar which bees love and use to make wonderful honey.

I don't feel at all guilty about chopping down Acacia trees (where they aren't doing a good job holding a hillside together), but they're not evil and they're good for a lot more than looking pretty and smelling nice when in bloom.

Al

Continuing theme of blossom + May. I forgot the bluebells. Great swathes of scented flowers truly carpeting the woods now. England does have most of the world's bluebells. It's just May that does this to me. In June I'm off to Italy to get my fix of fireflies (see next thread)
ciao
pam

Just to pick up on the differences. We have an acacia near the house here in the UK and the leaves are only just breaking bud - flowers will be a while yet - even longer if we have more of this damp cool snap!!