Sicilian Diary

We haven’t even had any hassle from the carabinieri this year – touch wood. They have called in a few times on their beat, but fortunately on both occasions the dj had just stopped so there was no music on. But we can’t really be faulted on that since we have music inside only, while the four other bars within a 100metre radius all have live music outside … which doesn’t go down well with the neighbours. It is completely illegal to play live music at the volume they do, in a residential area, but this hasn’t stopped anyone until now. The mayor called a meeting of all the bar/restaurant owners and said we were to be mindful of the neighbours and keep the music at a lower volume – but it wasn’t a definite prohibition, certainly not enough to prevent any of our competitors from having live music at the weekend. The mayor says he will now be responsible for issuing permits for live music etc, which is as it should be, but we are not convinced he will be attentive to the other borgo issues....

Dare I say it? Things are going well at Pachamama. We have a good team in the kitchen and in the sala and all work more or less in harmony. It is a relief to feel so secure at the start of the busy season – and a novelty, looking back to the previous two years! I can see it in our attitude to potential customers; no longer are we falling over ourselves to explain our menu and ethos, we are assured, friendly and confident in recommending our place. Our aperitivo is the best in town, reflected in the numbers on a Sunday evening and also the increase in party bookings wanting aperitivo-style service. We went to another bar in the centre for a friend’s birthday and after an hour of waiting there was still no sign of the aperitivo. The sangria that my friend had ordered wasn’t ready when we arrived so she asked for a few bottles of wine, but when they emptied there were no waiters around to bring more. At ours we agree a number of bottles beforehand according to the size of the group so the...

Via dei Scopari is legendary in Milazzo, scopare being the verb to have sex, though the street name comes from scopo, which means broom - and Scopari therefore means broom-maker. Apparently teenagers make it their aim to pass this way at least once for their romantic encounters … there is no evidence of this today as I walk the stroller down Broom-maker street. It is one of the oldest streets in the town, running parallel to the fishering port in the Vacarella area, and is an odd jumble of old and new: low town-houses next to ruins, abandoned weed-ridden lots next to four storey 1960s apartment blocks. A couple of buildings are nothing more than the façade with vacant windows revealing long grass and wooden beams hanging dejectedly. One has the stone gargoyles but no balcony, another has the rusty balcony railings, but no bottom to the balcony. A potted nespola plant bearing the small yellow plum-like fruits shows that there is life in the ground floor house below one such derelict hou...

Spacca il silencio – Break the Silence, a threesome from Naples who do Italian singer-Songwriter covers, played last night at ours, after the aperitivo. They arrived two hours late, having got lost on the way, and then need showers and food. But they are not bad, apparently. This morning my suocera phones concerned that there is no sign of them at 10am since they were supposed to see mio suocero at 9am to get their instruments etc from the bar. I go to wake them in the attic space above the restaurant. A smoky voiced tall thin guy comes to the door in response to my Buongiorno. 10 minutes, he says. I bump into them later at the bar having granita and brioche, the Sicilian summer breakfast special. The singer is currently listening to The Virgin Prunes, I am impressed to hear. I intend to recommend him Las Grecas, but forget. Only he works, in Ikea, as well as having the band; the other two are full time musicians, they proudly tell me. They are based in Bologna and came all the way to...

Strolling my bambino along the marina, I reflect that the view encapsulates much of what is bello and brutto of living here: colourful fishing boats bringing in the fresh catch, the Nebrodi mountains and Mount Etna still snow-capped against the blue April sky; we are in short sleeves already, while Spring has hardly registered a change of temperature elsewhere in Europe. But looking past the fishing boats, there is a huge oil tanker in front of the sprawling funnels and smoking chimneys of the oil refinery and the electrical plant – and one is reminded of the pollution. Mio marito remembers clothes on the line covered in ash when he was little. His mother remembers how beautiful Milazzo was before the oil refinery was built in the 60s; the centre was free of the ugly high rise apartment blocks in dirty green and mustard purpose built to house the employees of the new refinery, and so the old 17th century buildings had much more visibility and majesty. But the fact is that Milazzo is on...

Today it rained – typical scirocco weather. Interesting to watch the Sicilians in the unusual weather. I took bambino out for a walk anyway as he was oblivious to the light rain in his sturdy rainproof stroller. My husband’s cugina pulled up in her car – ‘It could only be you, out walking the baby in this weather!’ she says. A light drizzle, nothing to worry about. Warm enough to sit outside under the canopy while I have my cappuccino and bambino sleeps. Four middle-aged men, one shorter than the other, join me but chat among themselves. Some people are well-prepared for the weather – an elderly gentleman in a tweed coat and dapper cap steps carefully. Others hold a magazine over their head and scuttle from A to B (never far as they park as close to their destination as the flexible parking laws allow). Nothing like the bowed-down hunched-shoulders marching against the elements you see on the streets of London or Dublin. There are good things here too. Though an English girl married to...

Yesterday was like summer’s day. Three signorine had granita on the terrace of my local bar and admired bambino while I had my cappuccino. ‘He’s big for his age,’ they nodded wisely, not more than 13 years old. They wanted to know where I was from and what language I spoke to my bambino in and where I had lived. They said their English teacher at school was no good and that they planned to go to stay with their friend’s grandmother in England in the summer to improve their English. I gave them some tips on learning English, feeling the teacher in me respond to this obvious need. Teaching is so old-fashioned here, even these teenagers knew it – we just copy off the blackboard and repeat our teacher’s bad pronunciation, they said! ‘Sei giovanissima, quanti anni hai?’ they asked – ‘You’re so young, how old are you?’ Bold as brass, two of them. The third didn’t say a word, just dipped her brioche into the lemon slush. Like three young ladies out for a chat. The two interviewers remembered ...