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The tooth fairy is dead. Long live the tooth fairy.

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It’s the end of an era. The tooth fairy is no more. The family myth was foiled yesterday morning by the youngest in the family. An upper tooth had fallen out at school and even though it was lost on the way home, she went ahead and left a book under her pillow (a habit our kids have/had was to leave the tooth inside a book). The only problem was, she didn’t tell us she did it because she wanted to send a signal directly to the tooth fairy. When that magical creature did not show up next morning, the game was up.

My daughter’s distress as the myth crumbled during my pre-breakfast dismal admission of subterfuge caught me by surprise – “so that tooth that fell down the armchair… you really did find it 4 years later didn’t you?”. And her distress made me remember just how young she is. When you’re only nine, why wouldn’t you want to hang on to that kind of belief for a little longer? Indeed how could you, at that age, even get your head around a concept like suspending belief, of not going along with everything your parents tell you about something unseen?

Charlie and Lola discuss the Tooth Fairy

When the real story was revealed to her, it was like a switch – and quite a painful one – from one of those pillars of childhood to an unfamiliar adult one. With no going back.

Many parents choose not to “deceive” their children with modern myths, like this tiny winged creature who takes charge of every baby tooth across the world. (Just do the calculations.)

Watching her be so upset, I wondered if we had done her a disservice. When her father and I chose to take the path of mythical beings – familiar to both of us from our own childhoods – we realised it was all or nothing. And that sometime it would end. When I was a child I remember the truth dawning on me slowly, from hints and comments of friends and older siblings, but it didn’t upset me. And I thought it was worth it.

My husband and I have chosen a mobile, rootless, family life for ourselves. We have adapted and made up some of our own traditions as we’ve moved our children from Canada to Norway to Italy to Ireland. We probably thought that Santa, the Tooth Fairy and just a hint of the Easter bunny would bring some stability from our own family backgrounds. And they have indeed proven to be a constant in our lives as we have moved language, friends, schools and houses.

What has been amazing to watch is how our two intelligent children have managed to go along with their parents’ official version of all these myths, for years, all the time ignoring what their friends around them in whatever country believed.

In Norway, for example, where we lived for most of their early childhood, everyone around us would expect Santa Claus to knock on their door and say “hallo” before handing over the presents – on the evening of December 24th, a full 12 hours earlier than us. But there was never any question in our house that Santa would graciously come, unseen, down the chimney (though we didn’t have one) during the night while we slept. And he certainly wouldn’t have looked like our neighbour in a red suit. What a notion!

Unlike the routines of Christmas, teeth can get lost at any time of the year. Anywhere. And so the tooth fairy has been our constant companion, moving and travelling the world with us.

We came up with a way to ensure the tooth fairy could always find us by explaining that a red light would show outside the window of any child that had lost a tooth that day. A red light that’s invisible to human eyes, of course. 

This fairy has been especially good at currency conversion depending on where the local pickup/drop-off needed to happen. The conversion isn’t totally accurate, but we wouldn’t expect her to carry change. 2 euro does not really equal 2 dollars (Canadian) nor indeed 2 British pounds nor 20 kroner (Norwegian or Danish). But this worked out to be a handy on-going maths and retail exercise for the kids, who always expecting the amount to be rounded up.

The most global adventure we dragged the fairy on was when our elder girl lost a tooth while we were visiting friends in Oxford during one big summer trip. She wanted to hold on to the tooth for longer so it came with us to Dublin – our next stop – and for some reason she wanted to get it all the way to her other grandparents’ house in Canada before finally agreeing to put it under her pillow and to trigger the red light there. She was thrilled to wake up to a two-dollar coin (a Toonie) the next morning and now she always associates that coin with that day.

Our younger, more rational, child (who I had thought was the one more likely to smell a rat) asked questions like: How does she carry all that money? Why only money and not also a present? Why doesn’t she come to grownups? The older sister would tell her that the fairy takes away all the teeth and builds up a great big store of them – but we’ve never figured out why.

A few times during our couple of years living in Italy, it came up that Italian children sometimes expect a tooth mouse, not a fairy, to come and collect their dental indiscretions. But we never heard much talk of it, and it doesn’t seem to have the same superstitious punch as the northern European tooth fairy.

So now, the tooth fairy has made an abrupt departure from our life but our girl has been assured that 4 euro (yes it’s gone up) will still be paid out for each tooth. She has yet to face up to dealing with the Santa issue, but she’s smart – it is only 3 weeks to Christmas and I can see why she’d let that conversation slide.

An old parental-guidance letter is doing the rounds again on social media this Christmas season, which begins with the words “Dear Daniel, you asked a really good question. Are mummy and daddy really Santa?… The answer is no, we are not Santa.” The letter goes on to explain that Santa is the spirit of Christmas, the magic and love and spirit of giving that is kept alive through parents. He lives in our hearts, not at the North Pole, and is there to teach young children how to believe in something they can’t see or touch.

Shall we go along with that advice, and stay close together as a family as we let the hard beliefs of childhood fall behind us and move on? I think we will.

A cartoon Tooth Fairy man in a tutu.

One cup of family baking

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It’s a slow family Saturday morning in Dublin. Our eldest daughter has offered to make one of our favourite breakfasts, waffles. Norwegian waffles.

We have a standard recipe (with its secret ingredient*) but I’ve never written it into my recipe book. Instead it’s bookmarked on the iPad at Norwegian food site Matprat.no. I could of course find one in English but this is more fun and reminds us of our old home in Oslo where we lived for 7 years. Our daughter traces down the list of ingredients and measurements with her finger.

And the questions start.

  • What does ss mean again? (it’s a sugar spoon/dessert spoon)
  • What’s 4dl? Is that the same as millilitres? (It’s 400 ml, use the measuring jug)
  • Should the flour be plain or self-raising? (plain)
  • Can you take over? (sigh)

I’ve lived in a lot of places over the last 20 years (the US, Canada, Norway, Italy, now Ireland) and in each one I’ve been preparing food for myself, the husband and eventually for our kids to eat. Not only does each country have its own cuisine, but also different cooking techniques, tools and measurements.

I am neither a serious foodie nor brilliant at numbers so I feel I’ve done quite well to adjust to all the different methods. I’m a decimal kind of girl. Grams, kilos and litres suit me fine, and the best cookbooks include them as well as pounds and ounces. I would have grown up with both. Moving to the US was my first wake-up call. The American use of cups and spoons for measuring is ingenious and it meant that for a few years I got by without buying a decent weighing scale. But when I’m on this side of the Atlantic and baking from my US days, I still get stuck when I see a recipe call for “2 sticks of butter” as that’s how they package (what they call) butter over there.

Liquid measurements are all over the place. There’s the British (and Canadian) 20oz and American liquid pint (16oz) and little-used dry pint (um, 1/8 of a dry gallon). This makes a difference when you’re working through a recipe like festive rum and liqueur eggnog from your Joy of Cooking, my first cookbook. I’ll just take a litre, or liter, thanks.

My husband is, thankfully, brilliant at numbers (and we’re training up our younger daughter for this level of mental maths) and he’s used to my panicked shouting over the years from the various kitchens we’ve had, for on-the-spot conversions. “How many grams will 6ozs be?” or “If I double the sugar is that 7/8s of a cup?” I have of course been able to Google conversions for the last 10 years but it’s just not the same.

Our usual moving box marked “Kitchen” carries most of the basic tools for international baking: my two basic weighing scales, (the nice digital one is only for good occasions), my trusty nested cup measurements (bought one rushed New York lunchtime away from the office) as well as the plain plastic baking bowls I somehow picked up at the convenience store next to our hotel in Hawaii. I’ve managed to keep the same brownie pan, long hand whisk and the little stone that keeps brown sugar moist in the jar. Electrical aids like blenders have come and gone as we moved from one country’s electrical system to another.

I’ve managed to master all types of cooker (gas, electric, induction or just temperamental), though I still struggle to remember that boiling an egg in sea-level Dublin takes less time than at my in-laws’ house 1km above sea level in Calgary. Or is it more time?

Now that I’m back in Ireland I love to hang around the baking aisles and enjoy the long-missed offerings like caster sugar, golden syrup, several types of brown sugar, self-raising flour, proper oats and other heavy things I couldn’t smuggle back abroad with Ryanair. And let’s not forget the butter! Nothing nowhere compares to the golden taste of Irish butter – the only foodstuff I’ll admit to bringing back to Italy.

There’s also that staple – bicarbonate of soda, poetically called bread soda in Ireland. When I first moved to Norway I needed to find some to make a batch of my (Darina Allen) scones. I was finally enlightened by a woman dressed in 19th century peasant costume. She was doing a live demonstration in a smoke-filled hut at Oslo’s National Folk Park, baking lefse (a delicious potato-based pancake) and she explained that the stuff I really need was hjørnsalt, a traditional Norwegian raising agent which originally was the powder from a deer’s horn. I tried it out but then had to find something resembling like buttermilk to go with it – any Irish baker abroad will sympathise with that ongoing quest.

From country to country my favourite cookbooks have come with me, as well as the orange-coloured notebook I bought at the Bay in Toronto just after my eldest was born. In it I’ve been slowly recording the recipes that work best for us as a family, copied in by hand from books, websites, friends, aunts. And even more useful are the back pages where I’ve written down the party food menu for the kids’ birthdays in three countries: what a gift it’s been to see the names of the friends who came, kids and their parents. Memories we’ll keep for the next chapters – and recipes – in our lives.

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*And The secret waffle ingredient? A good pinch of ground kardemomme, or cardamom.

 

This story was published in the Irish Times on 20th November.  

Cross your arms and eat your pastry

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A Danish pastry shop is one of the world’s great wonders. Especially for travelling families.

Our 9 year old was tired and very grumpy. I knew if we kept walking through this part of Copenhagen we’d find a fantastic bakery. We kept walking. We turned a corner and there was the magical sign.

“See that, that’s the symbol of all Danish bakeries. Trust me, they’ll have goodies”.
“But that’s a pretzel, can I have a pretzel?”
“No they don’t really do those here, it’ll be sweet”
“Okay then”. 

Day saved.


What we call a Danish pastry is a Wienerbrød in Denmark, named after the Viennese style of baking that came in during the 19th century. In 1850 the local bakers went on strike, and new bakers were brought from Vienna, along with their tasty, buttery, puffy pastry (with origins in Persia via Turkey and France). The Danes added their own jams, custard and chocolate to them and aren’t we lucky they did?

The shape is called a Kringle and one theory is that it comes from a 7th century monk who rewarded children with a doughy pretzel for saying their prayers. The crossed part represents folded arms and the three circles represent the Trinity.

A lifetime of needles

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I’ve been scrabbling through old boxes of folders and files, the ones that hold the history of my little family’s health through the years of our peripatetic life. Having moved to a new country three times in as many years, you would think that I – the mother – would have kept tidy the folder of “important family paperwork”.

Never mind the kids’ artwork and sports medals, what I really need to find quickly is their vaccination records. I finally find the random bits of clipped together, each one showing a list of dates, signatures and stamps from doctors and nurses who administered these life-saving injections into the thick skin of my precious babies’ legs and arms.

It seemed a lot simpler for my own mum who would just reach up the bookshelf in the front room of the Dublin house that is still the family home. In the back of her Doctor Spock book she recorded all our vaccinations, episodes of mumps and those other pesky poxes we used to get back in the 1970s.

The first of my own daughters was born 12 years ago in Ontario, Canada, but we moved around to two other provinces in eastern Canada during the first two years of her life. Childhood vaccinations in Canada are done at 2, 4, 6 and 18 months and so her yellow record card has tracked all her different visits, from health clinics in three towns thousands of miles apart from each other. The names and locations of these clinics mark the course of our lives over those two years, triggering memories of places explored, friends made, dinners shared, winters survived. This card is our only record of her early vaccinations – as each province had a slightly different schedule (see below). What’s even more amazing is that I’ve managed to hang onto it.

I don’t remember much from each of her injections, she was a tough baby, except for the last one, in New Brunswick, where I remember being generally fascinated with our impressive, charming GP who was mother to 17-year-old quadruplets: two boys and two girls, the girls becoming our (interchangeable) babysitters.

A few years later we moved to Norway and our younger daughter was born there. Naturally enough, as a country that often tops the top-everything lists, they’re big into public vaccinations. That was totally fine with me. For some reason they run on a different timeframe:  6 weeks, then 3, 5, 12 and 15 months but that wasn’t a problem as we (thankfully) didn’t go anywhere during those years. Not until she was 7 years old and we moved to Italy.

Now, this kid isn’t as tough as her big sister.

A year into our new life in Tuscany we learned there was a local outbreak of meningitis; a nugget of information I might have missed if I didn’t regularly read the local paper, or keep in with other international mums on Facebook. After checking Norway’s vaccination schedule online, and having my old GP there email me our records, I realised that she had never been vaccinated against Meningitis: a slight panic ensued.

Her big sister had had it done, as it’s part of the Canadian schedule at age one. It’s also done in Ireland and the UK – these being of interest as we might plan to move there some day, and I was starting to realise I needed to have all this straight in my head. Our GP in Florence – who we trusted and could easily talk to – advised us to go ahead and get the vaccine done. It wouldn’t be complicated, she said.

This meant I had to order the meningitis vaccine through the village pharmacy, and with so many anxious Tuscan parents doing the same, this took a couple of weeks. Once it came in and I had handed over 90 euro (the one time I’ve had to pay for any of this), I physically carried the vial that contained minute traces of this vile disease which was already killing off several young people around Tuscany up the stairs to the GP’s office next door. The pharmacist had looked at me blankly when I asked for the skin-numbing plaster which had saved this baby many tears for earlier needles. Turns out that was a purely Norwegian invention, and in Italy this was going to be done old-style.

We were the last appointment of the day and being the kind-hearted village doctor she was, la Dottoressa was well past schedule. Her kindness quota already used up, she quickly got tired of waiting for my needle-shy daughter to bare her upper arm. She cajoled and smiled and argued with her until she finally enlightened her in accented English that “if you don’t get this injection you could get a horrible disease which can make your ears fall off”. My daughter was so surprised, the point of the needle slid quietly in, but the tears when they came, were ever greater.

In the car driving home, my girl was untypically quiet. “Mummy, can we please not move country again and not have to get any more needles we missed from last time?”

So now, in 2018 we’re living in Ireland. I gather together all these records and memories to share them with our local health clinic. Hoping that the girls are both on track and haven’t missed out on some major public health issue their peers are already immune to.

Our older baby – who charmed all those Canadian doctors – is now in secondary school. As in many countries, she is getting her HPV vaccine – an amazing, potentially life-saving injection that didn’t even exist when I left Ireland as a young woman 20 years ago. This is not the year to imagine the reality of any woman getting cervical cancer in Ireland, after the scandal of the faulty cervical check programme brought to light a few months ago by some amazing women who are dying of it, and partners of women who already have.

For myself I’ll admit that I’m grateful that my own women’s health issues have been dealt with outside Ireland. And now that my daughter is at the beginning of her journey with women’s health, I’m not going to pass up the chance of her getting a vaccine that has been proven safe and able to reduce the risks of getting this cancer later in life. In an atmosphere of trust misplaced and betrayed I have to take a leap of faith that this is the right step, better prevention than cure (or in current cases) even diagnosis.

——–

If you’re interested, or you’ve lost track of your own vaccination records, there’s a fantastic tool to compare the schedules of different European countries.

https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu

A Neighbour’s Kiss

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We’ve been to lucky to set up our new home just outside Florence, a rental apartment carved out of a beautiful old villa. It’s 15th or 16th century, says our next-door-neighbour who introduced himself on our first day. Cinque o seicento. I’m not sure which. Luciano is in his mid seventies, more of a grumpy charmer than a flirt, good humoured and, soon, ridiculously complimentary of our children who can be a little noisy, even by Italian standards. Think, Walter Matthau with a twinkle in his eye and that’s Luciano.

Our gardens run alongside each other, but his is much neater and with a much-better view of the Duomo, down below us in Florence. We often hear him in his garden, pottering, talking loudly to his wife in a way you soon learn is normal for Italians.

I know that he’s the one responsible for leaving a plastic bag for my daughters on our hallway door. This bag contains some of the little plastic figures that are part of a tokens campaign at the big Florence supermarket. These figures are hot currency at school and our neighbour seems to realise how valuable they might be to an 8 year old.

It’s not surprising he keeps his gesture anonymous — the first time he knocked and delivered his offering in person he was mobbed. It was one of those rare moments when my children were actually shocked with gratitude. They even gave him a hug, un abbraccio, something they wouldn’t normally do— he is an old man, who often smells of too much lunchtime wine.

It’s been a couple of weeks since his last door-handle dropoff, so I suggest to my girls that they bring something over to him as a present. Not necessarily to remind him to clear out his grocery bags; more to thank him for his kindness.

In a rare rush of baking last night (this is Italy, who bakes?), I made a cheesecake. I suggest they give some of it to Luciano. Oh they’re all over this idea and have to be persuaded to give him only a third, not half the cake. They want to go to his apartment together and give it to him, my husband and I are not to come with them. This is their thing.

They also decide to make something for him. They attack some sheets of coloured paper and produce a little origami box and a paper swan. As we write out a card none of us can remember the name of Luciano’s wife. We don’t see so much of her, not as much as we hear over the hedge.

With cake and presents in hand, our daughters head out the door, across the cool terracotta floor, to the older couple’s apartment across the hallway. We stay near our door to listen in as best we can.

The wife — with ultra-red hair and dark mascara, also in her mid-70s, childless — hears the bell and her voice echoes from inside their pristine home. A home which has never — and never will — host a grandchild. Chi è? she asks sharply, who’s there? Siamo noi, the girls voices tumble together, it’s just us. She pauses, then realising they’re genuine, she opens the door. Her voice softens. Buonasera. Then another pause while she goes back inside to get Luciano, who is surely the main recipient of what they hold in their hands. After a few seconds, his deep bass voice joins hers and my girls are swept inside with obvious whirls of hugs and exclamations — che carino! ma che bello! siete cosi gentili!. “You’re so good!”

We can only picture the scene from our side of the hall, our hearts pounding to listen in to this moment of independence.

Just a few minutes later we hear the other door close, and they come back in to us.

Their faces are glowing. Alive from realising how one kind thought and a bit of creativity can spark absolute joy in a surprised, older receiver.

Did you remember to tell him to put the cake in his fridge? No, they smile.

I kiss my younger girl’s head and I can smell the perfume of the older woman. I kiss it again and the smell is gone.

An Old Dictionary

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Our 9 year old needs an Irish dictionary for school. She’s been in school in Dublin for a year now and has managed to catch up really well with learning Irish. All the other kids started when they were about 5. Even if you speak another language, which she does (Italian), Irish is not necessarily a no-brainer. It’s about as un-phonetic as you can get which makes it hard to pronounce, has a complex grammar, and it’s not like you hear it spoken on the streets every day.

We were out at the weekend and wandered into a charity shop in Dun Laoghaire. They had a few dictionaries in their books section and two of them were basic Irish pocket dictionaries like this. They’re meant for school use – sure where else would you be using it? This edition was dated 1993 but I figured that was recent enough, it couldn’t have changed too much since then.

I bring it to the man behind the counter, taking care not to let her start rummaging in the little baskets of plastic jewellery on the countertop. He hands the book back to me, saying there’s no charge. “I always give dictionaries to the kids for free”, he says. “You know, they need them for school, so why should they pay?”

I should have asked him if he knows what ever happened to Sean and Melissa. I wondered what happened there.

 

The Red and the Green

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England and Ireland – they’re different. As a child I’d always grasp this when I looked around a street in Dublin or London and saw a postbox. Irish postboxes are green and in England (and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) they’re red.

To the Irish eye, this English red can seem brash, a show of strength and a reminder of how these boxes were once found all over the British empire, built to work as nodes in a vast web of communication. The green of an Irish postbox – built in the same shapes and sizes, standalone pillars and stuck into walls – seem more humble, bringing a sense of ease, gentleness, nature.

The red of England (thought by some to represent the dragon’s blood of the cross of St George) is everywhere you look in the UK: London buses, phone boxes, Beefeaters, the Red Arrows, Red Ensign, the England jersey, Virgin. Even the Irish Guard – the British Army regiment served by Irish citizens and official guard of the Queen – have bright red uniforms.

Understandably, when Ireland gained independence from Great Britain in 1922, the new Irish government went mad turning things green: postboxes, buses, phone boxes, soldiers’ uniforms, and on to today with St Patricks’ Day* beer and our sport heroes, known as the Boys/Women/Girls in Green.

As for postboxes.

They were introduced in England by Anthony Trollope – novelist and yes, post office worker – after he saw the idea in France. Once penny postage was introduced in England in 1840, the postal service took off and postboxes were put in place in the 1850s for people to avoid trekking to the post office and to take pressure off postal workers.

And here’s the thing. English postboxes started off as green. This was to make them blend “pleasingly” into the landscape. But after a few years it was decided they didn’t stand out enough so red was chosen as a good strong colour and in 1874 someone went around the country (and Ireland) to paint them all red.

Ireland got its first postboxes in 1855 (in Belfast, Ballymena and Dublin) so technically these were green, then red, and then green again after 1922. Many Irish boxes still show the marks of old Empire: ER (Edward Rex), GR (George Rex), VR (Victoria Regina) and the scripts of the Irish P&T and An Post. But look very closely and you might still see a hint of red paint peeking from underneath the green.

 

English postboxes are coloured “pillarbox red” (or RGB 223, 52, 57) and the Irish ones – well they were painted whatever green was available when the paint job was done.

During the 2016 commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising, some postboxes in Dublin were painted red–and people noticed the difference.

My romantic side likes to think how of the many letters and parcels sent back and forth between Ireland and England – catalogues for silk dresses, newspapers, books, and letters between families. But think of how many stories of poverty and loneliness and despair were also communicated.

Inside and out, how much history between two countries can you fit into one old cast-iron box?

*The green is not really connected to St Patrick – for centuries the colour most associated with him was blue, but green has been the dominant colour of Irish nationalism since the late 18th century.

 

The view from the roof

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I took this photo in 2000 from the rooftop of my workplace near the Flatiron building in Manhattan, on 19th Street between 5th and 6th. We worked long hours at our vibrant little web agency, and we’d often pop up to this rooftop for some air, a chat, a look at this view and to remember why we were in New York. Standing on the roof we were 17 stories up, at the level of the water towers and the birds – we were floating high above the streets in this vertical city. Down below us, New York and its people, from all over the world, flowed on through the streets, underground, up and down buildings. Living their lives.

On September 11th 2001, my boyfriend (now-husband) and I stood on another rooftop – 4 stories  up on our apartment building in Brooklyn. We scrambled up the fire escape when we heard that something was going on. We had been listening to the radio while getting ready to go to work but the signal had died: our local NPR was beamed from the twin towers, and this was long before mobile internet. We stood on our rooftop and on the skyline a few miles away we watched another plane calmly, quietly fly straight into the second tower, and soon after, the whole thing collapsed in on itself. It was completely quiet around us on that beautifully sunny morning and I looked down over the edge of the roof to the street below. Instead of scenes of panic, people of all nationalities walked or drove down the street with their groceries. Living their lives. And that continued during the days that followed, people moving forward, not being afraid. And that will never change.

(I shot and printed this photo myself. It’s been hanging on the wall of all the houses we have since lived in, from the US to Canada to Norway to Italy and now in Ireland).

Back to the schoolroom in Ireland

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Arriving back at school last week, our youngest nudged us away from the door on her first day – “I’ll go in by myself”. I took this as a good sign as we start into our second year of school in Ireland.

A big pull for us to move here from Italy a year ago was to settle our daughters into what I’ve long claimed to my Canadian husband is an excellent education system.

With three years of school experience from Norway and two from Italy, has it worked out for us here? For the kids definitely yes, but the system (or lack thereof) has been difficult for us to slot into.

As people told us before we moved, “you can’t go too wrong with any of the Irish primary schools”. They could have added, “if you can get into one”.

Here’s the full story as published last week on the Irish Times.

The ups and downs of returning to school in Ireland from Abroad

 

 

The Irish for Brexit

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“Brexit” is now a universally-known word and it is used as is, with no local translation.  Brexit is Brexit in every language. Every language, but one – Irish.

The word Brexit was first coined in 2012, eight months before David Cameron announced he would be holding a referendum on the UK’s exit from the EU. The word was a natural successor to the word “Grexit” – the suitably-classical sounding name used to describe one solution to Greece’s massive debt issues. It’s not a technical term:   but it’s a nickname – or actually a portmanteau – that has stuck, referring to the whole process of the UK leaving the EU.

“Brexit” won out over some weaker, and unpronounceable, alternatives, like “Ukexit” and the biscuity-flavoured “Brixit”. It was added to the OED in 2016 by which stage offshoot words were appearing: brexiteer, to brexit as well as Bregret, Bremain and remoaners. A child in Germany was even christened with it, according to the Express anyway.

Take note that the term Brexit is not fully accurate – it is not just Britain that plans to leave, but the entire UK (which consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), though some of those individual elements voted to stay. I won’t get into the politics here. Really I won’t.

Names for possible EU-exits by other countries have thrown out some fun word-play. Here are some of my favourites:

  • Nullgaria
  • Fraurevoir
  • Full (for Hungary)
  • Quitaly
  • Luxgettouttahere
  • Forsakia
  • Byerland (for Ireland)

So why haven’t other languages decided to adapt a local version of Brexit? Why didn’t, say, the French come up with their own word , as they usually do? What about languages that don’t typically use an X or where “exit” doesn’t work?

Could it be because Brexit was not meant to be a long-term thing? That it would be done and dusted quickly and easily? Or because only one country is likely to want to really pull out of the EU (even if they are still figuring out how, when, and even why)?

So how about the Irish – why did we bother to translate Brexit? First, some background:

The Irish language is spoken across the island of Ireland, north and south, and the Republic of Ireland is officially a bilingual country. I am far from being a fluent speaker, but I paid my dues and did the 14-odd years of it at school, (and yes I did do honours for the Leaving, to my credit).

As a race, we’re known to be contrary – and as our own language was suppressed for several centuries by the English invader it’s no surprise that we like to adapt concepts to our own linguistic viewpoint. (You could say it’s making a statement, but who would actually notice, except us?)

So in the Irish language, there are in fact two words in use for Brexit.

The main media outlets in Ireland (which are English-speaking) of course use Brexit – and you should be aware that it’s probably more in the news in this country than even Britain, and more Irish people know what’s going on with the latest negotiations (or lack of) than many people in Britain. Why? Because no other country, even the UK itself, will be as directly affected by the exit when/if it happens. (A quick recap: trade, citizens’ rights, education, banking services, and the small matter of the Northern Irish border.)

As a bilingual country, Ireland has a thriving Irish-language media: one dedicated TV station, several radio stations, plenty of print and online publications.

And the Irish-language media chose not to use Brexit but came up with their own word: Breatimeacht.

“Breatimeacht” is the official Irish word used on the Nuacht (News). It’s a clever portmanteau that works well:

“na Breataine” = Britain

“imeacht” = leaving.

Irish-language guru Darach Ó Séaghdha, author of Motherfocloir and founder of the podcast, has written:

“some critics have pointed out that translation offers the opportunity for correction – it’s the UK that’s leaving, not the geographical entity of Britain. This has led to Sasamach being more popular in some quarters (Sasana, England, amach, out).”

This secondary word – Sasamach – is now being used (first coined by @tuigim) and I think it’s quite brilliant. Sasana (which stems from the word Saxon) refers to England, not Britain.

If you’re getting confused at this stage about UK/England/Britain/British Isles, here’s a handy quick guide:

Source: Wikipedia/Terminology of the British Isles

The Irish word for an English person is “sasanach” and it’s a word that has appeared in many songs and poems over hundreds of years, often referring to how said Englishmen should best be booted out of Ireland.

Songs that evoke this kind of carry-on:

So – Sasamach is now doing the rounds to mean Brexit, as “amach” means out, so roughly speaking it’s a more forceful “Brits out”.

(Now, technically speaking “amach” means the process of moving out. Once you’re outside the word is “amuigh”. Maybe the word will need to change, in English too, but at this rate there’s no sign that they ever will be fully out.)

Language problems have started to plague other elements of Brexit in the last couple of weeks: the White Paper published in July was translated by the Foreign Office into 23 languages (including Irish) and the quality of translations was widely criticised, causing more British bemoaning about their level of language learning.

And for the Irish? Does our deliberate transliteration of Brexit mean we want it to happen, or not? Or are we just continuing our centuries-old habit of pushing around the confines of language?

The Child of Prague – Patron Saint of Climate Change?

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Ireland has been going through a heatwave these few couple of weeks. This is, of course, not natural. There have been lots of internet jokes and chatter but the oddest one is people asking the Child of Prague to make the heat stop. I’ll try to explain.

The Infant Child of Prague is a little statue of the infant Jesus holding an orb and it’s a staple of the traditional Irish mantelpiece or wall – placed close to a picture of the Sacred Heart (Christ pulling back his cloak to show his heart) and a photo of JFK (beloved Irish-American president). 

This image of the Christ child has obscure origins but is definitely linked to the Carmelite church in Prague in the 16th century. You can read the whole story on its Wikipedia here. It was hugely popular in Ireland during the Great Famine (1840s) and that tradition might have come from the Spanish Armada washing up (16th century) on Irish shores, mixing it up with their own saint who was the target of food-related prayers, Santo Nino de Atocha.

Whatever its history, nowadays it’s still often the target for Irish prayers for good weather, especially the night before a wedding when the family will stick it out in the garden. If its head falls off that’s good luck. According to this BBC story, even Protestants in the north are partial to hedging their pre-nuptial bets on it.

One Dublin woman made the news with a cake in the shape of the statue, almost as creepy as the original.

So this week on Twitter, people are venting that they’ve had enough of this heatwave and the Child should surely make it stop, ideally before it starts to melt in the heat (its outer coating is of wax).

The Beaches of Dublin

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Dublin, and the whole of Ireland, is currently melting in an amazing heatwave. The beaches are as busy as they ever get, blankets out, old bottles of sun lotion tossed around, feet gingerly dipping into the water to cool off, 99 ice-cream vans at the top of the path.

My family and I actually started to spend time – and fall for the charms – of Dublin’s beaches back at the end of last summer, when we moved here from Italy.

“Like a decent pub, an Irish beach is full of chat: people talk to each other from their picnic blankets, teenagers make a show of not having fun, parents yell at (or shout for) the children they’ve lost track of. Skin tones can vary wildly but with prolonged sunshine such an obviously rare commodity here, you can feel the genuine joy-which is even better with a 99 in your hand.”

Here’s a link to the full piece I wrote in last week’s Irish Times.

The Truth about the British Isles

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It’s a bit of sport for Irish people to watch how a successful Irish person – like Saoirse Ronan – is called British by the media. Over the years I’ve had to explain many times (even to English people), that we are not British, or part of Britain, or the UK. But we are in the British Isles, though not the British Islands. More complicated is Northern Ireland which is part of the UK, but not part of Britain. But it’s also in Ireland but it also depends on your point of view…

This week, the best female chef in the world award went to Clare Smyth. Born in N.Ireland she lives in London, where she got the job to cater the royal wedding (their royals, not ours, though I am also technically Canadian so they are mine too…)

The Guardian, 20 June 2018

In most papers (Irish Times, the Telegraph, Northern papers) she’s “Northern Irish”.
In the Irish Independent she “Irish”.
In the Guardian she’s “a Briton”.
And in other local papers she’s just “Antrim-born”.

(Quick tip – you’ll only offend Irish people if you get things mixed up. Though the Scots might not like it, or the Welsh, or some Manx, or whatever people from Guernsey are called…)

If you’re still confused, here’s a nifty diagram I think is excellent.

And you can read a really detailed explanation on the British Isles in Wikipedia.

With Love for the Women of Ireland

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Mná

That’s the Irish word for women (pronounced with a long awww sound). Women, plural.

When you’re one woman, you’re a bean (pronounced ban). With another bean, you become mná. You become something new, part of a group, and granted a totally different word.

If you’re a tourist in a pub you’ll quickly learn it’s the sign you’re looking for. The Ladies: a word women only use nowadays for the loo.

As a sidenote: the men’s loo is Fir. That’s the plural of man (fear), pronounced “far”, as in “far better off”.

Mná

Ireland to me is about the women. The last place I lived was Italy, where it’s all about the mother, where a woman is still often defined by her relationship to her children, her man (and where about 150 women are murdered every year).

You see the Madonna everywhere in Italy, she’s always beautiful.

But you don’t have to go far in Ireland either, like on a stamp, or as a plaster statue in a grotto of a church,

Like the grotto where 14-year-old Ann Lovett died in childbirth 34 years ago, a story that was recently brought out of the shadows again by a brave female journalist.

Mná na hEireann

The Women of Ireland. This is a thing, a type of rallying cry popular during Mary Robinson’s presidency: who was, FYI, the first of our two women presidents. Some snicker at the phrase, but there’s a lovely song of it (sung here by Kate Bush whose mother was Irish) and it’s a handy moniker:

 

Martin Turner, Irish Times cartoon May 20 2018

Mná na hEireann

Irish women have always seemed strong to me. From the women who reared me, to the ancient queen we named our daughter after.

But it’s astonishing how much Irish women have had to put up with, for so long. And it’s frightening to see just how much we still do, in 2018. Two women murdered in Dublin in the last week, a health system that has been failing to look after us with no sign of being fixed, and of course the abortion issue. Women’s bodies are on full display for everyone to discuss these days.

Art by Lucy Moore (lucymoore93)

Mná na hEireann

But these Irish women are fighting for change, and they will not let up. I’ve been truly amazed by them, saying what they think is true, and fair, on Twitter, on the telly, holding hand-painted posters on street corners, discussing, sharing their stories, showing and asking for compassion.

We’re not going to stay quiet, not with the strength in our numbers. Not a single bean, but mná.

Tá

The word for Yes. It rhymes perfectly with Mná.

Tá for Mná

“Yes for Women”. The Irish version of the Yes that will hopefully, in this week’s abortion referendum, cause a sea change for women’s health.

“If we valued women as full human beings, we would not be having the debate you’re having in Ireland.”

So said the fabulous Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Dublin last week.

Grá

The word for love – how beautifully that fits.

Tá for Grá for Mná

Love for the women, not just the Irish ones. Love among the women for all the women.

I’m just one woman, one bean, but when my daughters grow up the three of us together will be Mná. Among all the other Mná.

Here’s a good overview on the BBC of the Irish abortion debate of the last 30 years.

Ireland’s time of reckoning

Watching the Eurovision back in Ireland

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The week of May 7th saw the lead up to this year’s Eurovision song contest – and Ireland’s strong entry (for once). It suddenly hit me that it would be quite exciting for me and my family of foreigners to watch it here, having followed it before from Italy and Norway – and with my Canadian husband now a big fan. I wrote this piece for publication in the Irish Times the day before the competition final.

After many years abroad, it’s my first year back home in Dublin and Ireland has made it to the final of the Eurovision song contest. Finally! On Saturday I’ll settle down to watch it together with my family of foreigners. We’ve never really followed the X-Factor or TV dance-shows, but every May we more than make up for it, wherever in the world we happen to be living.

This year we’ll have the huge luxury of turning on the telly in the corner and being able to flick back and forth between RTE and BBC. We won’t have to magically conjure up Graham Norton through the laptop, playing his brilliant commentary over the poor-quality picture of our local Norwegian or Italian TV, putting up with a two-second delay.

I loved to watch it as a child, and now it’s even more fun with my own kids, though no-one enjoys it more than my husband: he grew up in Canada and once he finally caught on to it, he’s been boring his nonplussed friends back home with explanations of its appeal.

Read the full story on the Irish Times online.

San Marino’s entry needed robot backing singers – that’s how small the country is

Getting back my vote

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Sometimes I have felt like a citizen of the world. But at the end of the day, I am an Irish citizen. That doesn’t mean I’ve been able to vote there over the last 20-odd years I’ve been away as I’ve simply been gone too long. I have tried to take advantage of any rights I’ve been given to vote in the other places I have lived.

There’s a very important referendum coming up here on May 25th and I’m very happy that I just sent off my form to be added again to the electoral register. My vote is my voice, and it’s only a few years until my children will be able to do the same.

You can read the full story here, in my latest piece for the Irish Times.

 

A very Good Friday

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About 20 years ago today I was home from London for Easter. I was really excited to finally show two friends around Dublin for the weekend, where they had a few days before heading off to the greener west. Obviously the first thing we had to plan was which famous Dublin pub to head to for the evening. And then my mum intervened: “but sure all the pubs are closed, it’s Good Friday”. I’d never noticed this fact before, even though it happened every year. What a backward country, I thought, but my friends had the foresight to see it for what is was – a strong, even charming, tradition. And they insisted they were happy to play pictionary over tea instead.

And now today, in 2018, we have arrived in the modern age. The pubs are open on Good Friday for the first time in 90 years. The government voted on it in January though not everyone is happy about it.

A couple of towns have seen their pubs band together, declaring they will keep the tradition and stay shut, and the locals are fine with that. One pub in Dublin is donating all their proceeds to charity – I would happily have gone there.

We went out for lunch in our local – a very low-key local place that few tourists would venture into but which they would probably adore for its (very) soft couches, quiet hum, community feel, and the well-cooked beef in the carvery. Today it was busier than usual.

I looked at the other punters around to see if they were choosing to abstain anyway. The many old ladies were drinking fizzy orange or tea or water, but maybe they always do. And two young lads near us were drinking full pints of Ribena (blackcurrant squash) while plenty of others were having beer or wine. The pint in the photo was my husband’s, mine was the fizzy water.

When vetted on the issue, our waitress (Maureen, according to my Dad) said she thinks the change feels  strange – “it’s tradition, you know”. She figures the public were pushing for it, though the government liked to say it was for the “tourists”. But either way, there’s expected to be an exodus over the Northern Ireland border today, to the sweet tune of about €20 million. The opening hours there are still quite restricted so they must really need a drink two days before Easter. Perhaps to line the tummies before all that chocolate.

Still, at least the car park at the local church was jam-packed as we passed it on the way home. Or were they all just going to confession?

 

 

Time to quit Facebook?

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Ah Facebook – we love you and we hate you. I’ve been thinking about deleting my account after the creepy revelations over the last couple of weeks. But then I stopped to think about the role.

I wrote this story last week for the Irish Times Abroad section because, like it or not, it has been a lifeline for me while living away from my homeland for over 20 years.

FULL STORY

I have been tempted to join the hordes who are abandoning Facebook this week in fierce protest at the revelations of data leaking in the Cambridge Analytica story. For many people this is the final push to get off the platform they love and hate, and I’ve been considering quitting it for years.

But do I want to totally sever myself from Facebook? I have to pause and really think about that. I try to be a savvy user; I keep tabs on my privacy, never log in anywhere else through Facebook, avoid all quizzes and games, and only become friends with people I have met (and liked) in real life.

I looked at my profile today and after scrolling through many precious photo memories, I discovered I joined in 2007. My husband and I had just moved from Toronto with our brand new baby to eastern Canada. We didn’t know anyone so it’s no wonder I joined up. The very first message I got (according to the archive right there on my account) was from an old London friend saying “Hey! Welcome to the world of Facebook! So glad to be back in touch! How are things??!”

And that’s really the reason I’m still there. To be in touch. Like many people away from home it can be a lifeline for staying in contact with family and friends, watch the lives of those you don’t live near, and meet new people in the place you’re in now.

One of the first photos I posted on FB, during a trip home to Dublin

Facebook has been fundamental for this generation of Irish people abroad and the complicated webs of family and friends in Ireland and elsewhere. An Irish friend who has lived only a few years in Norway says: “As someone who lives abroad, I wouldn’t dream of leaving Facebook. It connects me to home, allows me to keep in touch, and watch the children I knew as babies and toddlers grow up through the photos their parents post.. it’s a diary, a way of seeing where and who I was over the years.”

In many places, Facebook has taken the role of the pub or Irish club for groups of Irish in any one place. The Irish Government has recognised this by providing financial assistance to some diaspora Facebook groups (though not anywhere near where I lived).

There are a hundred things I dislike about Facebook – the lack of useful support, the negativity and bullying, sense of isolation felt by many, addictiveness, the never-ending ads and the sense we all recognise of immense time wasted as we scroll deeper into an infinite rabbit hole. And now this latest news makes us feel rightly used and ticked off.

In fact I think the cons of Facebook in my life might outweigh the pros. But when I have felt the good effects, they are really powerful and they might be enough to keep me on it.

Having lived abroad the site has been my only way to keep in touch with many people in my life, giving me a sense of continued friendship and sense of belonging, a record of the online tribe I have built around myself.

As a young mum raising my kids in foreign countries I was lucky to have my sanity and practical needs met by connecting with other international mums through a local Facebook group – first in Oslo, then in Florence. All of us shared a common bond of being far from family and we all had different issues – I watch from the sidelines the threads on dealing with Italian mothers-in-law but I could join in with opinions on local school issues.

These were two supportive communities where you’d feel free to ask, or share, help, about urgent-but-minor things only we were concerned with, like finding a doctor for a Sunday house call, the local name for a medication, or family-friendly places to visit. I’ve made face-to-face friends who have been a real and positive force in my life. Not everyone needs that kind of online connection, but it has worked for me.

Thanks to Facebook I have gotten to know cousins I hadn’t seen since childhood Christmas parties, somehow my being abroad made these and other Irish connections more special. One old Italian friend tracked me down after a 20-year gap and within a few months we had visited her in Sicily and our kids became real friends.

Through a Facebook friend who has thousands of connections, I recently discovered a Rome-based enterprise that hires refugees to harvest and make juice from unused oranges from the city streets, and within a few minutes I had connected them with an Oslo-based group that does the same for uncollected apples.

Now I’m here in Dublin I was really happy to discover a Facebook group for Italian mums in my area; it may or may not produce some Italian-speaking playmates for my kids but it is a connection to women I have more in common with than some of the mums at the school gate. I’ve also been spending time in some very active groups of returning-Irish emigrants, and I feel some of that general culture shock I’ve had, being among Irish people again, with all those fiery opinions and colourful language.

Maybe all this connecting is not enough to justify sticking with this disgraced and all-powerful platform. Maybe I should pull myself out of the echo chamber I have surely built for myself, download all my data and keep a nice finite record of the last nine years of my life. Maybe I should contact each person I consider a friend and get their email address and go back to group emails. Maybe by even staying friends with them I’m unknowingly compromising their privacy by not being fully on top of my own privacy controls.

But is there an alternative platform out there, one that can continue to give us this sense of connection we’ve had from Facebook, especially for those of us who will always feel abroad?

 

Link to the Story on the Irish Times website.

 

We went to the parade… and no-one died

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Last week I needed to figure out what we should do for our first St Patrick’s Day in Ireland (full story in last Friday’s Irish Times). I asked around for tips and a fellow mum told me she was at the Dublin parade last year and it went fine: “it was busy,” she said “but no-one died”. She was the one who told me that our best bet to avoid the crowds (and their stepladders) was to stand at the beginning or end of the parade.

The parade was due to start at 12pm on Saturday. As is normal for us, we left the house about 10 minutes before that. It was really really cold, almost enough to put you off going out and by the end of Saturday night we had snow in Dublin again. But our Norwegian-raised kids decided to buy an ice cream before catching the bus into town. That caught the eye of the bus driver: “Jaysus girls, it’s soup you need on a day like today, not ice cream”.

It turns out we were well in time. Walking around St Stephen’s Green towards the end-section, town seemed to be free of traffic and strangely quiet. We saw the Lord Mayor’s coach had already finished its run, and the horses were being used for a photoshoot.

We asked one of the (many) gardai standing around if we’d be in time to see the parade. “Sure it’s only half past one, they won’t be down here by now. You’ll probably catch the whole thing.”

And sure enough we did.  And it was brilliant. It had started up at the top of O’Connell Street and that was where the serious crowds were. By the time it had snaked around Dame Street and St Patrick’s Cathedral I thought they’d all be dog-tired and freezing by the time it reached us. But every performer put in a great effort right to the end, with lots of cheering from the crowd.

 

Saint Patrick is a bit different from ones I’ve seen before.

We got to wave to Liam Cunnigham, from Game of Thrones. The main guest of honour – Mark Hamill – had already hopped out of the blue car at this stage. Must have had a good reason to do so.

There were all sorts of creative floats, the type that have been a mainstay of the Irish parades for years now though I’ve never seen any of them before – from arts groups like Spraoi, Dowtcha puppets, Bui Bolg and lots of community associations.

But I was almost more interested in watching the watchers.

These army veterans were charming, waving at the families watching from the flats above.

 

Women cyclists marked 100 years of women’s votes in Britain and Ireland.

I’ve never seen a real US college marching band before and there were 13 bands in this parade, including a few from Ireland and Australia. There’s a two-year waiting period for a band to be admitted to the parade and it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them all here.

 

Family and friends of the band members seemed to be traipsing along beside their bands, all 3km of it.

Everyone around us – whether locals, people up from the country or tourists – was excited and happy, and dressed up in any bit of green. Plenty of people were going about their business and ignoring the parade. And the streets were quieter for a couple of hours while the pubs were packed with the rest of the population that was watching the Ireland-England rugby match. It all felt very relaxed, normal, festive and fun.

And then it was over.

Temperatures were plummeting further as we spent an hour at Merrion Square at the festival’s fun fair – what we call a “mini Tivoli” in our family. Definitely not on the same scale as the Copenhagen experience but great for kids who don’t often get to these things.

We had no drunken encounters, saw lots of green and many smiling faces (Irish and not Irish), felt no sense of panic or worry, the buses kept running. Yes it was really freezing.

But no-one died.

 

Dear Saint Patrick, it’s complicated

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Ah glorious Saint Patrick! Once a year I’ve thought about him, or ignored him, or celebrated his feast day to the hilt, around the world from Hawaii to London, Warsaw to Montreal, Rome to Oslo. And now we’re here as a family in Dublin, and imagining what it’ll be like.

Read the full story – the “before”- in the Irish Times of March 16th. The next post will be the “after”.


 

Like many Irish living abroad I’ve had an on-off relationship with our national holiday. It’s the one day of the year when you can dip into that pool of Irish identity that you always know is there, but which you might choose to disconnect from for the rest of the year.

When I lived in New York, more than 20 years ago, I chose not to dip into the Irish scene. I never went to the St Patrick’s Day parade, perhaps seeing it as a local Irish-American event and somewhat removed from the country I had deliberately left only a few years before. I was actually more curious to watch the others nationalities – like the Poles or Haitians – when they paraded down 5th Avenue and lit up the Empire State Building with their colours…..

Read on

The pipes, the pipes are frozen

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Last week Ireland was hit by a winter storm called Emma. Imagine sharing your name with a storm system, or “severe weather event” as it was strangely referred to in the news.

In all my (six, long) winters in Canada or (seven) winters in Norway I never came across a couple of windy, snowy days that had a name. Sure why would anyone bother? It’s snowing and blowing and freezing all the time in both countries, for months on end. There was no fancy name for the Oslo blizzard that blew while my younger daughter was born one February, or any cute moniker  to describe the Christmas we spent dog-sitting (and dog walking) at a friends’ house located on Toronto’s minus 20 lakefront. Nor is there any way to train your leg muscles to forget the thigh-high piles of snow to be climbed over to get into your downtown office… for days or weeks at a time. Or the snow shovelling, or walking on ice, or keeping pipes unfrozen.

Those long-born habits of mine all faded into one big blur last week when I started picking up on the slightly-panicked warnings about the impending “Beast from the East” and Storm Emma last week. We were warned of “minus 7” degree temperatures, that we should stock up on food because by Wednesday the country was being told to all stay indoors for a couple of days. The entire country. Oh but especially Dublin, because round here we’re not so used to really bad weather. That’s for the folks down the country, the ones who have to deal more regularly with the lambing and the narrow local roads and more likely downing of electricity and Netflix for a few days.

No, all my hard-earned familiarity with snow and ice conditions went out the window. Transport would stop, shops would close. There were red warnings, yellow warnings, the emergency people on the telly were telling us – in plain English and equally clear sign language – that we had to be prepared: we must stay inside. Would we need to await their approval to build a snowman?

I found myself reverting back to the nervous Irish woman who found herself in the thick of a real Canadian prairie winter back in 1998, when her boyfriend first brought her home to his family for Christmas. From my first breath outside Calgary airport – which made my lungs freeze – to the “good sport” who joined in the minus-18 sledding fest after Christmas lunch (see photo) and to the subsequently-invaluable experience of finding my car not stopping properly at a red light, I learned to respect and love the snow. Jump forward several years and I have two kids who grew up in Norway – one of whom spent two winters in a forest kindergarten (they even built their own latrine) – and who go far beyond me in terms of understanding the nature of snow.

By Wednesday the schools were closed. Fair enough, the wind was picking up a bit but I don’t remember many (ahem) snow days in Norway and Canada. The day before, some of us school mums were getting into a bit of a tizz about the shelves emptying out at SuperValu. The bread and milk were, naturally, nearly all gone but also dwindling were the loo paper, the firewood and… the potatoes.

On the radio news the Taoiseach (prime minister) was bombarded with more than the usual questions: “Can you tell us Taoiseach when the snow will be gone?” It hadn’t arrived at that stage.

That night I went outside to look at the snow that had started falling. There was something wrong with it – it was all plasticky, like mushed-up styrofoam. It didn’t melt in my hand.

On Thursday morning we knew this was S-day. I was actually feeling a bit panicky. What if someone needed to get to a doctor? What if the snow didn’t come after all? And then we realised we had no running water in the house. The pipes had frozen during the night. Well even minus 2 is below zero and the pipes are on the roof.

Very luckily for us we could move up the road to my Dad’s house, where we ended up having a cosy few days that were like Christmas without the Christmas part. Stronger together, we’d be snowed in, with sausages and veggies for soup in the fridge and flour in the press.

The weekend was a blur of ipad time, tea and chats, fresh scones, tackling some boxes of old photos, short walks and a couple of hacking coughs. Shovelling snow out on the footpath – a mostly useless job as the car was going nowhere – we met neighbours we’d never gotten around to meeting before.

The kids weren’t too pushed about getting outside and it took us a while to dig out from the attic any of our old Norwegian snow gear (oh, how weeks of my life had centred around drying, mending, finding, swapping, buttoning up that stuff). But for most Irish kids this was clearly a huge event they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and it was lovely to watch them with their homemade sleds made out of trays and rope, plastic bags, or some super-fancy wooden sleds you might see hanging on the wall of a Norwegian cabin

And by the time about 40cm of snow had fallen, the country had shut down. You couldn’t drive or take a bus, or walk to the pub, which was probably closed and you might slip anyway. The island cut itself off as flights were stopped, nurses and doctors slept at hospitals, major events were cancelled. A friend of a friend had been heading from Oslo to the Corofin trad festival and the message went around – “anyone know of any sessions near Heuston station in Dublin?”

There were some nasty stories of looting and stupid behaviour but many, many more stories of communities coming together to help each other out and because there’s never this much snow people went mad for the snowmen – of nuns and tea parties and presidents and also igloos.

And there was the sledding grandmother down in Cork:

I ventured out for a walk to the now-open SuperValu on Saturday. One woman navigating through the slush coming towards us shouted out to the air, “Try Lidl for milk!” As the local supermarket, the place had never seen so much foot traffic: from fancy ski boots more used to Saint Mortiz, to the woman with two rubber bands around her boots: a brilliant idea I’d never seen before.

The news on the telly was fun to watch. So was Twitter and Instagram, where the hashtags were proudly in Irish – #sneachta and #sneachtageddon – presumably to claim this wing of #StormEmma as separate to the bit that must have hit the UK. We didn’t hear much about that. There was far too much to enjoy about this one.

As the country started coming back into operation – first buses were tentatively on the road by Saturday – my kids watched in bewilderment as the news told us that the red line of the Luas (Dublin’s tram) would just be running “from Red Cow to The Point”. They’re real places, I explained. Word went around the internet (no papers were to be had) that the bishops had granted dispensation from Sunday mass.

By Sunday we went out and about, for a change of scene, to the refuge of a museum along with many weary-looking tourists.

School opened, with no big fanfare, on Monday morning. You could see the green grass glowing again. Water shortages were put in place around the country though our own water returned as silently as it had left us. We still have a wonky gutter to fix.

And one thing I really noticed, which I always missed especially in Norway, were the birds. They were everywhere, those Irish robins and thrushes and blackbirds, picking away at the ground, happy to see Spring was there all along.

Dreams of an Irish Dog

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That’s the original title I gave this piece which was just published in today’s Irish Times online. I’m delighted to be getting lots of positive responses to it – I think my thoughts on moving home to Ireland after 23 years abroad hits a nerve with anyone living away from home (and there are a lot of us).

And I’ll be writing a story every few weeks for the Irish Times about how we’re adjusting to life here. A bit like this Turf story I already posted after Christmas.

Here’s a link to today’s Irish Times story.

And here’s how it starts:

“Will there be a school play I can be in? Do they have scouts in Ireland? Can I have my own room? Does this mean we can finally get a dog?”

Our kids were very excited when we told them last spring that we would be leaving Italy and moving to Dublin in the summer. They had visited Irelandmany times, for Christmas, birthdays, funerals; they knew the parks and libraries, and they felt like they could really live there. And when we knew my husband’s contract in Florence was due to end, it seemed like the right time for us to decide to give Ireland a go. Finally.

I left Ireland 23 years ago and I have lived abroad for longer than I lived there. I grew up in Dublin, but I’ve been a “grown up” in other places. Having met my Canadian husband after college in London we moved around with his career (US, Canada, Norway, Italy). So, out of the four of us, I was the only one qualified to know about what life in Ireland would be like. Or thought I was.

“Cause you gotta have turf”

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The turf arrives at our door one Saturday afternoon. By turf, I mean the rough-cut sods of peat that burn pungently and cosily in an Irish hearth – the stuff of dreams for any Irish person far from home. Turf in Ireland does, naturally, also refer to the ground smashed by the hooves of heavy horses, another important trope of the Irish psyche.

We live in semi-suburban Dublin, not in a housing estate but in a little workman’s cottage that is old enough (or at least its chimney is) to be suited, indeed it should be crying out, to have turf burning in it.

(Not actually our house, but similar)

We won the turf in the raffle at the school Christmas fair. We were late getting to the prizes table and I passed over the other option available – a couple of bottles of expensive-looking wine – for this black stuff. We have enough Italian wine at home, I insisted to a surprised husband. Clearly I was subconsciously looking for the chance to indoctrinate my family of foreigners to a very real, pungent Irish experience.

Real Irish Turf

I grew up in Dublin but I’m secretly a bit of a “culchie”, as are many of my generation – our parents moving from the country to Dublin, with various levels of cousins lingering in Monaghan or Clare. Summer holidays in Connemara come back in an instant with the smell of seawater and a smoky turf fire. Sods of peat are still hand-cut out of the bog in some parts of the country, this is serious land-connection stuff here and very Irish.

It’s the smell of turf that does it. Mention a turf fire to anyone and their eyes will drift off. Combine that with a hot whiskey, an uncomfortable seat, a good chat and maybe a slow tune played on a fiddle (well maybe that’s more for the visitors), and that’s the closest you’ll get to Irish hygge.

So our 5 bags of the loose, crumbly black stuff arrive at the door from the school dad, and I let the foreigners in the family deal with the transaction. I keep myself in the kitchen working on the dishes, where the mother of the cottage should be. And then I realise we haven’t told the kids.

– Who’s at the door? – asks the younger daughter

– It’s the people delivering our turf.

– What’s turf?

– It’s for the fire.

– It’s for a fire? I thought we weren’t going to use the fireplace – says the elder child nervously.

– Well your mother won it in the school raffle, it’s here now.

The polite Canadian husband greets the dad with his delivery.

– This is great, thanks a lot. So how do you actually light it, how do you use it? Does it smell a lot?

This stuff is very rough-cut, not the kind you easily find in the… shops, or wherever it comes from in Dublin. We don’t actually find out where he got it from, his peat bog in the back garden? The husband hauls it bag by bag through the narrow hallway out to the back yard and finds space for it in the plastic fuel shed usually used for coal.

– Did you fit it all in? I ask.

– I did, he says. (He’s learning)

And that’s where it stays. Later, I go out alone to have a look and a whiff. It’s ragged stuff alright, very natural, organic even, and untidy looking, guaranteed to stink out the neighbours. Oh but it’ll be worth it.

Photo collection of Maggie Land Blanck

The slight air of contraband that hung over the door-step transaction reappears when we mention the turf delivery to our friend the landlady.

– Oh but you can’t burn real turf in Dublin, she says. Not these days. It’s only supposed to be smokeless coal or briquettes.

This being Ireland we investigate the rules and then the ways in which they are usually interpreted. This little cottage is crying out for an old-fashioned smell and we don’t know the neighbours so well, in fact there’s noone on one side (though a Christmas wreath appeared for a few weeks on the door down the otherwise overgrown path). So where’s the harm?

We call in a chimney sweep called Tim – a surprisingly young man, no cockney accent. He has a look at the fireplace, it’s actually a stove, and he says he can’t get in to clean it fully, it’s not his type of chimney. But he still manages to knock a load of dirt out and doesn’t charge. And he says we can burn the turf, no problem.

Now we just have to give it a go and use it.

There’s no hurry though. Spring is soon here but this being Ireland you can’t beat an old turf fire in the middle of summer.

Winter in Venice

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It’s so obvious that it didn’t even occur to me. Venice is a city for walkers. Visiting it for a few days last December with our two kids, we discovered this was a huge plus: no cars or buses – or even scooters – meant that we could all walk down streets and alleyways together, letting them run ahead, watching out for canals to trip into, though many are walled off.

Visiting in winter it is a little less busy and it really is cold, but Venice sure looks gorgeous and like our experience of Florence in winter, it is definitely more of a local town.

The streets and alleys and bridges are narrow and especially in busy areas you find yourself moving along with the flow of foot traffic. It’s a clichè of Venice but so true: it’s easy to get lost. On my last visit, during Carnival 20 years ago, my friend and I really did get caught up in the side-alley slinking and disappearing of characters dressed in cloaks.

Being a city of walkers means you have to do everything on foot and this influences the fabric of the local society and relationships between people. For one thing, you have to know where you’re going – addresses apparently mean little in Venice, and Google maps has had little success mapping actual street addresses. If you go to someone’s house they often need to come out and meet you at a meeting point. Another point, and this is noted by the writer Donna Leon (in her detective novels and her lovely book of essays on “her” Venice) is that people can shield their identity, and their homes, from acquaintances as they only ever meet in half-way public spaces.

I was fascinated to watch the locals move through this flow of people, you could tell them from their elegant but sensible clothes, fur hats and beautiful gloved hands, and from their more deft, quicker movements (and sighs of impatience). Many pulled along a wheelie bag – for groceries – or had a little rucksack on their back. Supermarkets were small and pokey. People have to shop every day because everything you buy has to then be carried home. If you want a larger item – a washing machine or your christmas tree removed – you have to hire help or get a boat to bring it as close to your house as possible and then of course up all those flights of stairs.

All around this watery city you see delivery men pushing an empty wheely cart one way, or in the other direction full of milk cartons, newly-fixed espresso machines, boxes of fish from the market. Postmen push wheely trollies, the fire brigade whizzes around on the water, there are no bicycles or scooters and even few baby strollers. Where is everyone? Are they all withering old ladies stranded at the top of a palazzo, remembering the golden age?

It reminded me of my four years living in New York, another very public place – whether walking or on the bus or subway you are face to face with your fellow residents and in New York you really do look at each other.

If you don’t feel like walking (or if your fingers freeze off) you can take the bus – it’s a boat of course and it’s not cheap but it definitely gets you around the city, letting you see it from the waterfront views, especially along the Grand Canal. These were the public – i.e. grander – original entrances to the Renaissance palazzi, and worth contrasting to the quieter, more secretive entrances and alleyways you find when exploring on foot.

This is a city with about 50,000 residents – and it’s decreasing every year. More and more locals are priced out by non-locals buying up property in the historic core, much of it as investment or at most temporary acommodation.

In Venice one of the many problems created by the infamous cruise ships is that the visitors don’t spend their money on land-based food and lodgings. Only 20% of these visitors actually get off the ship, the rest presumably enjoying videoing the view of San Marco from the water. Another problem is the increased number of homes owned by non-Venetians, sending prices up to cut out the locals.

Walking through the city you can sense the discarded everything that lies below – beneath the streets, in the water. Most cities do sit on top of their waste (ask any archaeologist) and here you do start to feel it everywhere; crumbling masonry, stained stone and wood, closed-up shopfronts, signs marking high-water or acqua alta – periods when certain areas might be flooded by local floods. But then there’s a surprise bit of art on the street or a glimmer of light through a craftshop window through the fog.

And the magic is there. We got a sense of a different twist of it on a blustery afternoon at the beach, the Lido. A strange choice, but when you’re a kid, a beach is a beach. Wandering through the closed-up beach huts of the Hotel des Bains we found our way to the entrance of this iconic old spot. The hotel is now closed up and according to the guardedly-chatty Polish security guard, the new owners don’t know when it will be cleaned up and reopened.

The Hotel des Bains was the inspiration, and setting, for Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella Death in Venice. When I was about 19 I sat in an arty cinema in Paris and had my first “big film moment” when I was captivated by the lavish Visconti 1971 film of the book: lapping waves, obsessions, melting makeup and bar-perfect Mahler. After our trip here I finally read the book and Mann’s prose captures the sickness of the whole city, even, you might say, of civilization.

“Such was Venice, the wheedling, shady beauty, a city half fairy tale, half tourist trap, in whose foul air the arts had once flourished luxuriantly and which had inspired musicians with undulating, lullingly licentious harmonies. The adventurer felt his eyes drinking in its voluptuousness, his ears being wooed by its melodies; he recalled, too, that the city was diseased and as concealing it out of cupidity, and the look with which he peered out after the gondola floating ahead of him grew more wanton.” (Thomas Mann, Death in Venice)

I ask our 10 year old her how she enjoyed our weekend in Venice. “I really liked it… but I don’t want to go back”. Why not? “Because it’s sinking and I don’t want to make it any worse”.

I tried to reassure her that we did our bit, trying to live as locals: shopping for groceries at supermarket and markets, sampling smaller pastry cafes, restaurants, buying warm hats and gloves from an Italian (chain) store when heading to the Lido, even renting ice skates from the man running the charming temporary ice-rink at Campo San Polo.

La Serenissima – she’s still there, just getting a little older.

Our First Irish Panto

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“Ya eejit!”. So says my eight-year old to anyone she can, whenever she can, since she heard it at the Rapunzel pantomime last week at the Gaiety. This was our first ever family trip to the panto and our knowledge of Irish culture has now shifted up a notch. I’m a Dubliner and I’m sure I went a few times as a child, as you did. But my husband’s non Irish and our two kids have only lived abroad – until this summer, when we moved to Dublin to give it a go, and although we’ve usually come for Christmas we’ve never had time to do the panto before.

About five minutes in, a throwaway remark from the blue-eye-shadowed King allows me, and the rest of the crowd, to let loose with our first “oh no he’s not”. “Shhh”, says my youngest, and on my other side, her father gives me a look. “You’re supposed to do that”, I tell them

Within five minutes they’re at it too, and soon the girls’ faces are glowing some more, fitting in with all the other expectant faces around the balconies and stalls, going with the flow, the silliness and shouting “boo!” to the witch and “oh yes they are!” and by the end of the two-plus hours they’re happily singing and dancing (as do all the mums and dads).

“Is that a man?” they ask about the fabulous, wig-and-multiple-skirts-wearing leading dame, Ninny Nanny Noonah, having no idea that this same actor, Joe Conlon, has been playing more or less the same role, with just different lines, for the last 28 years. During the course of this “drama” involving metres of hair, air-guitar-playing heroes, dopey country fellas, a drunken pub scene and farting rabbits, I have to translate a few Dublin expressions that are new to my family: “have some grub”, “like a Fair City kidnap plot” and “Scarleh I was”.

High up in the second balcony (indeed, last minute tickets) we get a top-down view over the satisfied audience, of the terrific band working hard in the pit, the dancers waiting in the wings, and a head-on view of the family of eight in the balcony across the way who are all wearing Santa hats and jumpers, sharing with them the relief of not sitting in the front rows where you get sprayed by water and have your hairstyle publicly insulted.

During the interval I encourage the kids to explore the nooks and crannies of this beloved old theatre, to peek over the other balconies, look at the old programmes up and down those dark wooden staircases, buy something from the bar beside the glittering Christmas tree. “Sure you might as well get the big popcorn”, says the nice woman behind the bar, telling them to enjoy their first panto. She tells me she has four kids of her own, in their teens and twenties. One of them has a little boy, just 10 months old: “he’s so gorgeous, he just doesn’t know how much joy he brings into our lives”.

As for my husband (who’ll go to see a Shakespeare play at the drop of a hat) he was dead impressed by the Gaiety and his first panto: all that singing and dancing and embarrassment and joking that says nothing more complicated than “we will entertain you”. And that’s what all those hard-working people up on the stage of gaiety did for us.

Our eldest girl is so impressed that she wants to go around the back to the stage door off Grafton Street and try to meet some of the actors. We join one other family huddling in the alley and after about ten minutes she gets to greet the two younger stars, Ciara Lyons and Johnny Ward; I don’t think we’d recognise the older stalwarts out of makeup and costumes. We’re not really sure how famous they are but they were great, and they autograph our programme and give words of encouragement for her own now-bolstered dreams of the stage.

Next to the alley entrance there is a street soup-kitchen, popped up in place for the night once the shops were closed. Needy customers loiter and chat, and the volunteers, dressed in yellow vests, do their darndest to make their evening a bit better. One volunteer comes over to our girls as they’re waiting at the stage door – would they like a hot chocolate? They decline politely, they know who the hot drinks are meant to be for. The woman insists: “they have marshmallows in them”. In their party dresses they are actually freezing so they gratefully accept, and in the two minutes it takes for her to come back with the steaming milky cups, they’ve grown up a bit more. A surprised volunteer takes the few bob I offer him, and we feel very lucky to head off to our warm bus and our warm home, having learnt a bit more about the realities of a Dublin Christmas.

This story was published in the Irish Times on December 26th.

 

Italy in Winter: Syracuse

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Winter is an amazing time to visit Italy, especially to the places that are lower down the tourist must-see list. Here is the first in my series of photo posts from winter trips we’ve done in Italy, when everything can feel more local, more authentic, more glowing and even sometimes more freezing than you might expect.

This week I was working on a translation a website for a hotel in Sicily (“a magical place where you can dive deep into a world of myth” etc etc). One section of text was about Syracuse and I remembered the golden afternoon we spent in that beautiful city a few years ago. It was October which is, fair enough, not quite winter but the sun had that autumnal, almost-winter luminescence. I dug out the photos from our trip and here they are.

Syracuse – or Siracusa. Yes there is a city of the same name in New York state but this one in Sicily is that bit grander. It was founded by the Greeks on the east coast of Sicily and it was actually the capital of Italian Greece (Magna Grecia) for quite a while and at one point was the same size as Athens! A few notable people were born there, like Archimedes (yes, that one) and Santa Lucia/St Lucy who died here around 300 AD in a horrible way: suffice to say she’s the patron saint of eyesight. In fact December 13th, Lucia’s feast day, is celebrated in Syracuse in great style and indeed in many parts of northern Europe too – not least Norway and Sweden. I once found myself celebrating the day while processing with a bunch of Swedish women and girls in white robes in the Florence branch of Ikea, one of the stranger experiences of my life.

I have to admit I didn’t know much of all this history when we visited, I was just absorbing the atmosphere and keeping small people from having tantrums. And now, after living for two years in Tuscany, I’d happily go back and appreciate it better, compare it to the other places I’ve come to know; like many other Italian city centres it’s a UNESCO world heritage site. And I would taste the flavours of the food more carefully (almonds, pistachio, citrus, seafood) and pay closer attention to the dialect.

The historic core is on an island called Ortigia and the centrepiece is the fabulous Duomo (cathedral) and its surrounding area.

The beautiful cathedral is most interesting in its details

And for its history. It was built on a Roman temple to Minerva, acted as a mosque for 200 years – during the fascinating Arab period in Sicilian history – and the Baroque form you see it in today is due to its being rebuilt during the early 18th century after yet another earthquake.

The piazza really is at the heart of Syracuse.

 

This fountain of Diana is worth a visit, it’s early 20th century and nicely modern.

Not unlike Venice, this intriguing city is full of alleyways, strange facades, curious faces.

Golden streets, tobacco shops, lotto-playing dogs? Yes, this could be anywhere in Italy.


We found this amazing sunken garden off the beaten track, on the mainland before you reach the main historic core of Ortigia. Part of the huge archaeological park that’s centred around the 5th century BC Greek theatre, this bit is off to the back and casually called the Latomia del Paradiso, or Quarry of Paradise. This is where the stone to build the city came from and other, later purposes for such a unique space included gladiator bouts, horse races, ox sacrifices and in 413 BC (yes, BC) it housed the 7,000 prisoners of war from the Syracuse-Athens war.   

Like many other experiences in Italy, magical moments are made when you find yourself wandering around a vast, incredibly ancient, barely-signposted or even safety-controlled space. The sharp-eyed man at the ticket office was chatty, warning the girls to put on some mosquito repellent, as if we were heading down, down into a Roald Dahl story.

Some old helmets were conveniently left lying around the stage – last used, who knows when? No-one else was around so we got to try them out, as well as the fabulous acoustics from this modern stage.

In terms of family memories from our day in Syracuse – highlights were the three separate trips to the souvenir shop to replace the snow globe that kept falling on the ground, discovering octopus in the risotto, more gelato, and popping into a pharmacy to get antihistamine for insect bites.

But that’s the great thing about taking lots of photos – you can always conjure up the ideal family day out in hindsight.

Two girls in a tree

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Two old friends climb a tree in an Oslo wood. They’re only 8 years old but these girls are fierce; in their minds anything is possible.

They haven’t seen each since two years ago, when we moved away from Norway to Italy. My girl has moulded herself into a new life and a new language. She has mostly forgotten how to speak Norwegian but she remembers her life here and her best friend from the nature kindergarten that got them out in the woods (and up trees) several times a week, all year round.

They have often talked about each other during the two years, which is a long time at this age: “Mummy when are we going back to Oslo and when can I see her and overnight and watch films on their big screen in the basement?”

And on this visit, (only our second since we left), they’ll see each other. The two mums have made a plan to spend a few hours out in the woods around Oslo, a huge element of Norwegian life that our whole family has missed.

It’s October and the sky is clear but also crisp, so we remember to bring hats and scarves but we don’t need boots. There are big grins and hugs as they see each other in person – a little taller, two years of school behind them but otherwise they’re no different.

We drive a short distance. The car doors open and like a pair of retrievers they jump out and bound off into the woods, just as they were trained to do. Within two minutes, when the rest of us get out, we’ve lost them.

We find them again, yapping away in some language between Norwegian and English. They’ve found part of a swinging rope dangling off a tree at the lake edge. My Norwegian-mother-mode kicks in, overriding my Irish-mother-mode (and well past the nervous Italian-mode that never really took hold) and I stop myself from telling them to “be careful!… forskitig!” They’ve done this more than I have, they’ll know what to do.

Moving countries and travelling with children, I’ve seen many times how children can settle quickly into a mode of play even when they can’t speak to each other.

This Norwegian friend has been learning some English – from travelling with her parents and from school – and it’s fun for her to have a friend she can speak it with.

And my girl? Who lived here from birth until six, who spoke Norwegian every day and yet is today puzzled when I use regular family words like barnehage (kindergarten) or even pølse (hotdog)?

I know her Norwegian is lodged deep inside that powerful little brain – the powers of communication, the memories and associations and feelings that come with speaking certain words, phrasing things in a particular way. When she does say something she remembers – like the phrasebook-like question she pulled out of thin air to impress the passport officer at the airport yesterday, hvem spiser brød? (who eats bread?) – even then, she says it with that perfect pronunciation I never managed after seven years living in this country.

Here up in the tree, she responds to her friend with any scraps of Norwegian that come out – some fundamental phrases like se her (look here) or nei, ikke sånn (no, not like that). But she’s also using English words, and she’s actually doing something I’ve never seen before, something remarkable. She’s speaking English to her really slowly and carefully, like an older person might use with a little child who they think understands no English. “Can… we… go… over… there…and… try… that?” and “This…bit…here…look”.

Where did she get this from? I don’t think she’s ever seen me speak like that to someone on our travels. Did her teachers in Italy speak to her like that after we had just moved there, in a way to help her clearly hear the words? I think not, as they were fast talkers.

By slowing down her English speech, it’s as if a part of her subconscious has kicked in to rationalise and slow down her words, to watch carefully her friend’s face and make sure her point gets across, when the Norwegian words have failed her.

The swing no longer provides amusement – they can’t agree on who does what – and we move on to a treehouse a local kindergarten has made in another part of the forest. Within another hour it’s starting to get darker and colder and we have to say goodbye. But just that small amount of time, and inventive communication, has been sufficient to add a little more glue to this long-distance friendship. That’s good enough for now.

 

 

 

 

That really wasn’t boring – visiting Florence’s museums with kids

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I’ve been writing a monthly column about family life in Florence with tips on making the most of the whole city, not just the obvious attractions.

For the English-language Florentine magazine I was asked to give tips on how we navigate the amazing artistic treasures of the city – amazing but still dusty, old and (let’s face it) boring. I could write a whole book on the subject, and maybe I will, but this is quick starter in less than 600 words.

Some of my tips:

Ask questions

Why does David’s hand look so big? Why do you think this picture is so famous? Is that woman laughing or crying? Why did he paint that snake like that? You will be amazed at what they’ll come out with, and that’s what they will remember. 

Patterns and symbols 

Look for key historic and religious symbols. If you read up on some of the commonly-depicted saints, your tougher-skinned kids might enjoy spotting the torture devices that usually accompany them. 

Read the full story and ideas on the best museums in the October issue of The Florentine.

Penny Farthings

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The Penny Farthing – named after the two coins, one being bigger than the other. These bikes were the speed demons of their time – the 1870s and 80s. Men (mostly) used to whizz around country roads, often keeping their legs over the handlebars so they could fall off more effectively. They were properly known as “ordinaries”, to distinguish them from the “bone shakers” that came before and from the new “safety” bikes that came after them, the ones with rubber tyres and brakes which became modern standard bikes.

This little charmer now sits along the Drumcondra Road on the northside. I passed it a week later and it was facing the other way – that’s just mild vandalism for #Dublin.

Rollerblading in Florence

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I’ve been writing a monthly column about family life in Florence with tips on making the most of the whole city, not just the obvious attractions.

For the September edition of The Florentine I tried to capture the haven we have found in the Cascine park, rollerblading along the (mostly) smooth paths under the wonderful shady trees.

As September afternoons begin to cool down and the evenings shorten, my daughter and I often feel the need to get outside after school. Living up the hill in Fiesole, it’s not easy to go for a quick bike ride here. What we crave is flatness and the only place in Florence to really get that is the Cascine park.

We are drawn to this park all year round to wheel along the straight, smooth paths, enjoying the greenery, the space and the people. From rollerblading men in Lycra to five-year-olds with crooked bike helmets, if a Florentine has wheels to spin this is where they come.

Here is the full story in the Florentine magazine, September edition.

 

 

Pure lykke

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It was a moment of joy – lykke – when I found this old tin of Norwegian skincream in yet another half-opened box from our shipment of stuff in our new house in Dublin. This is the second time we’ve moved country with kids and of course, all our worldly possessions were put into boxes (or last-minute suitcases).

Much of our belongings were shed, some of them was lost along the way (our towels?) and a fair amount is still unsorted rubbish. But when I saw my youngest’s skin starting to react to the damp Irish climate, I really hoped that I had saved this magical lavender-scented cream we used in Norway, the only one of many that actually worked and which was never used during our 2 years in the mild air of Tuscany. “Is that the nice-smelling stuff you’d put on me before I went out to kindergarten?”

It’s so Norwegian, I love it. I read somewhere that the recipe came from some nuns on a remote island in the north, and just the name is such a joy – Lykkelig som liten, Happy as a youngster.

That wasn’t so boring (part 3) – Ytalia sculpture show at Forte Belvedere

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Reflecting balls… smelly sculptures… discussion on life and death… views over Florence… one gigantic skeleton.

This is what you’ll get on a visit with your kids to Ytalia, the contemporary sculpture show at Florence’s Forte Belvedere. It’s only on for until October 1st but now is the perfect time to visit, in this cooler weather and before school gets busy. There’s even a temporary bus service running to it from outside the Pitti Palace.

I was flipping through my photos from our visit there in June and I remembered how much fun we had, all of us! I’ll share below some images and reflections on what the kids enjoyed most about the art.

This is the 3rd in my series on visiting art with kids in Florence – the others were about the Bill Viola show (now closed) at Palazzo Strozzi and tips on visiting the ancient church of San Miniato al Monte.

Forte Belvedere

High up on a hill south of Florence, you can walk here from San Niccolò, over from Piazzale Michelangelo or through the back of the Boboli Gardens.

There’s plenty of trivia to impress your kids child about this old fort along Florence’s city walls:

It was partly designed by Michelangelo and by Buontalenti (inventor of gelato). The Medici used to stash their treasure here. Galileo (whose home and observatory are on the nearby hill of Arcetri) made some discoveries here. It’s full of secret passageways, not many of which you can explore now but you can still feel the atmosphere. And of course, it’s also where Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were married in 2014.

Forte Belvedere

There is a basic bar/café inside, prices are reasonable and the surroundings pretty darn nice.

Safety

Keep a close eye on your kids here: there are some high walls and passageways and a plaque at the west entrance marks where two people fell to their death in recent years.

What is Ytalia?

It’s a show of contemporary Italian sculpture (100 pieces by 12 artists) spread all over Florence, with the main part here at Forte Belvedere.

Forte Belvedere is an ideal location for outdoor sculpture – and for kids. There are indoor and outdoor spaces, a cafe, and lots of space to move around and nooks and crannies to explore.

Ytalia highlights, according to my kids.

“The Big Skeleton”, official name Calamita Cosmica (Cosmic magnet)

How did it get here? How did they put it together again? What’s it made from? Look, there’s dust – like you get from real bones. What’s the pointing thing sticking out of its arm, is it meant to be there? What’s it got to do with a magnet? What does cosmic mean?

As we were looking at it (and at other people trying to catch the perfect angle) we watched one exhibition guard rush up to the other to point out some pigeon poop on it. They call someone on the walkie-talkie to get advice, but no-one seems to know what to do.

Gino de Dominicis – Calamita cosmica (Cosmic magnet)

The artist, Gino de Dominicis was quite a mysterious figure and died in 2007 at the age of just 51. The sculpture is 28 metres long and weighs about 8 tons.

Gino de Dominicis – Calamita cosmica (Cosmic magnet)

Jumping stones

Yes, you can step up on these and jump off them again! That’s what the artist wants you to do. The piece is actually called “Where the stars come a little bit closer” so maybe this is a humble effort to help us all reach the stars.

Once you’ve done that a few times, you’ll probably want to go on to something else. Depending on the ages of your kids.

Me, jumping. Giovanni Anselmo – Dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più

The Marble Benches

We had been watching the guards steer people away from other artworks so one of us was therefore especially preoccupied with these marble benches. They looked inviting to sit on and it was only when we looked down at them from high up inside the Fort, did we see people sitting on them. So if you go, make sure to sit on them.

Domenico Bianchi – Undici Panchine (11 Benches)

Mummy, Mummy, come and see this one!

What is it about kids and balls? Was it the reflections in this one that made it their favourite? The broken glass, the thought that someone else had got a chance to smashing something up?

Giulio Paolini – Dopo la Fine (After the End)

They also loved this coiled steel rope on the floor – called Continuous Infinite Present (though most of the titles didn’t mean that much to them). This reminded us of ropes along a harbour wall, but they’re not coiled up, they’re like rings.

“I’m imagining those biggest rings could be the rings of a giant. Imagine how big that giant would need to be?”

Remo Salvadori – Continuo Infinite Presente (Continuous Infinite Present)

We drifted past various pieces and I let the kids stop at what interested them. Most pieces had long notes beside them in Italian and English, but they were at a pretty high level and best suited to someone with a passing knowledge of art theory.

The daughter whose thumb appears below, had been doing a lot of geometry at school all year (in Italy it’s a separate class to mathematics). I could see she was trying to measure something with her thumb but she didn’t want to explain what it was.

Nunzio – Peristilio

We talked about sculpture

What makes sculpture art? How is it different to drawing or painting? Do you make it before you know how big the exhibition space is going to be? How do you build it?

 

Smelly sculpture

Are you meant to walk around sculpture or touch it or smell it? Actually this piece below did send out a smell as well as a sound – the sound of a frog. I had to read the information plaque to start explaining this one.

 

Marco Bagnoli – Ascolta il flauto di canna (Listen to the reed flute)

Me: Because the artist thinks a frog represents metamorphosis. Hmm, this is getting confusing.

Daughter: But I know what that means, when one thing turns into another. Like a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. 

Both: But what’s that got to do with these stones and the big pointy thing?

Me: But look at that fabulous view over to San Miniato al Monte!

We enjoyed watching these two Frenchmen carefully examining this piece – and the guard shouting at them to leave it alone, in Italian and then in English, while they completely ignored him. Called Zephyr (like the god of wind) we liked how the stone looks so heavy though it’s all about wind and air.

Luciano Fabro – Zefiro (Zephyr)

This piece, a self portrait by artist Alighiero Boetti, was really popular with photographers. We talked about why it was placed right there, as if the man were walking away from the building and not towards it. Where was he going?

Because this part of the fort has the best views, Mum.

I’ve read a few comments that the 12 artists in the show are all men.

Taking photographs

This exhibition is pure Instagram fodder. It’s hard to resist pointing a camera in and around these three-dimensional creative pieces as well as the location with its fabulous views over the city and the countryside to the south. I have to admit I’d much rather see more people look first before they point and shoot, especially kids who already spend enough time with their screens. But it’s hard to deny that the outdoor space is especially good for working on some photo techniques together – light, composition, background, people, waiting for the ideal shot.

If nothing else, have fun!

The Ytalia exhibition runs around Florence until October 1st 2017. Website info here.

There’s something about Elba

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What do you know about the island of Elba? Probably that it’s where Napoleon was exiled and has some nice beaches. Anything else? Well, after a trip there both this summer and a couple of years ago I can gladly tell you that it’s a summer paradise. You might not have known that it’s actually in Tuscany, just off the mainland and one of the most popular holiday spots for the good citizens of Siena, Florence and Pisa. My article in July’s Florentine magazine tells how my own little family went from being beach novices to experts thanks to our first visit to Elba. But I also long to visit in the spring or autumn and enjoy more of the nature, less of the visitors.

Less fancy than the Amalfi coast and quieter than the holiday towns along the Tuscan coast, Elba is a jewel of an island. The waters are clear, with few unwelcome sea creatures, the light is strong and beautiful as it reaches the different types of landscapes. Even though it’s just an hour-long ferry ride from Piombino, it can feel a world away. Some areas have restricted development and many of the villages retain their old atmosphere.

Elba is actually the 3rd largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia and it’s part of the “Tuscan archipelago”, a national park of seven islands. It’s quite cool to spot just over the water the tiny islands of Montecristo (not easy to visit) and Giglio (car-free, beautiful beaches and now famous for the crash of the Costa Concordia in 2012).

As well as arriving by ferry you can fly here (on very tiny planes) from Florence, Pisa, Milan and (oddly) Switzerland – which will explain why staff in shops and restaurants often start speaking to you in German.

East-West

Elba is all blue sea and beaches along the edge and hills on the inside. It doesn’t take more than an hour or so to drive all the way around it. Generally, the western part of the island is quieter, less developed and retains more atmosphere in its villages. Traditionally an agricultural and mining centre, the island started being developed in the 1950s, when the main coastal road was first built. The busier areas are in the centre and eastern parts, around the main towns of Portoferraio, Procchio and Cavo. The big resort beaches (and noisier night-time towns) are Marina di Campo, Lacona, Fetovaia and Porto Azzurro.

Elba’s coastal road winds around many edges of hills and it can be hair-raising for novice drivers not used to Italian driving styles. There are bus services but it’s easier to get around with your own car. Plenty of cyclists seem to enjoy the length and condition of the roads and there are many hiking trails. And as for water-based activities, well lucky you if you have your own yacht! But there are plenty of options for hiring kayaks, diving gear and all sorts of one-day trips.

Bakery in Marciana Marina

Towns

Elba might not offer the same insane abundance of artistic heritage found in the rest of Tuscany, but it has plenty of history – Etruscan, Roman, Medieval, Napoleonic – and some interesting archaeological sites and museums, churches and other spots to explore. The towns are worth spending time in and not just for picking up some beach towels at the markets. Here are a few we’ve enjoyed, away from the beach towns. Bear in mind that you often need to park just outside the centre and walk up, and that the lunch hour (between 1 and 4pm) seems to be strictly enforced.

Marciana Alta is the older, sister town of the seaside spot of Marciana Marina on the north shore. It’s a real Tuscan hilltown with a ridiculously-long history (founded in 32 BC), charming narrow streets, cute boutiques and it has a particularly nice terrace lined with cafes overlooking a fabulous view down to the sea. Follow the road up above to the fortress where they do archery and falconry demonstrations in summer. And if you take the main hike down from the top of Monte Capanne (see below) you’ll end up in the back streets of the town. Not far away is the even cuter town of Poggio.

Marciana Alta

 

Marciana Alta

 

Marciana Alta

Capoliveri

This handsome town dominates the southeastern part of the island and is a very pleasant stop for lunch and shopping. It also has one of the only theatres on the island (which doubles as a cinema) that hosts some interesting festivals. I really liked the dedication written on the outside wall: “to the Elbans around the world”.

Teatro Flamingo, Capoliveri

Pomonte on the west coast is a small village with lots of its old features, and it has all the basics (butcher, market, cafes, excellent pizzeria) and it’s a good location near the popular beaches of Fetovaia, Chiessi and Cavoli.

Pomonte

It also offers a shipwreck beach, called Ogliera. Look out for the crowd of diving boats gathered around the spot of a 1972 wreck, or you can swim the few hundred metres from the beach and touch the boat at 12 metres deep. More info here.

Pomonte/Ogliera

Beaches

With my stubborn Celtic skin and historic curiosity, I am not a natural beach person but Elba’s 40 or so beaches offer such a wonderful variety – sandy to rocky, very-public to almost-hidden – that it’s hard to resist them. It can be smart to ask the locals for their recommendations as some of the best ones are reached only by boat or by leaving your car on the upper road.

All the beaches are free: even if some seem to be taken over by umbrellas and bars, the strip right at the water is free and you will find even a very small public section. Have a look at my Florentine beach article for tips on how Italian beaches work.

Here are a few favourite family-friendly Elba beaches:

Sandy beach – Procchio

Often overlooked for more popular beaches along the north shore, this beach right in the town of Procchio is perfectly nice and great for small kids. In between the bagni (sectioned-off areas) after the sailing club there is a good-sized public beach. The water is clean and shallow and you could easily forget the world during an afternoon here.

Procchio beach

Rocky beach – Palombaia

When driving south along the coast road between Cavoli and Marina di Campo, park the car along the edge where others are parked and down another small road to the right you’ll find some paved steps down to this small but lovely and quiet beach. There are a lot of steps down but unlike other off-the-track beaches, this path really is easy and doesn’t involve brambles, confusion, and a steep uneven path that might put off some kids.

Palombaia

Other beaches to mention are: Patresi, Cavoli, Sant’Andrea, Le Tombe, Capo Bianco, Zuccale.

Drinking Water

When you get thirsty on Elba you can spend money on bottled water from the corner shop. Or you can do like the locals and fill up at the local water source – and some of the fresh spring water here is wonderful. To find the closest fonte, ask the locals or just keep an eye out for cars parked randomly along the road (and people carrying bags of empty plastic bottles).

This is the fountain just outside of Marciana Alta, heading towards the fortress.

Some of the fountains are nicely-decorated, like this one down a path near the pizzeria in Pomonte.

Hiking

There are tons of trails for beginner and serious walkers, there’s an excellent list on the InfoElba website.

Pomonte, trail up towards Monte Capanne

With friends and kids we tackled Monte Capanne which is – at 1,019 metres – the highest point on Elba. The easiest day out would be to take the cableway up and down, but we decided to take it up and then hike back down. With our bunch of kids and hot temperatures it took about 3 hours, but it felt great at the end and was definitely one of the summer’s best-earned ice-creams.

Monte Capanne

 

Monte Capanne

Here’s a link to the cableway/cabinovia which is a standing-only version of a cable car. It’s not for the very faint-hearted and the 8 year olds in our group were nervous as they dangled high up over the mountain, but they were very proud of themselves once they’d gone through the experience.

Napoleon’s Villa

The French emperor – born in Corsica, just over the water from here – was indeed exiled on Elba in 1814, the island having been under French possession since 1801. For the 300 cushy-sounding days he spent here, he lived in this beautiful villa, with a chosen guard of 600 men, and essentially acted as governor of the island. He did a lot of economic and social reforms for the locals (long before the hotel industry took off 150 years later), and is fondly remembered all over the island through statues, cafe names and an annual commemoration and parade in May.

Marciana Alta

Napoleon’s villa is near Procchio and though it is, unsurprisingly, quite rundown, it’s worth visiting for its location and to get a sense of the life he might have led here (and the Demidoff family who lived in the villa later on). Napoleon escaped from Elba, caused more havoc back in France and Waterloo and was eventually exiled more effectively to Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, expiring there in 1821.

According to a contemporary writer: “Though his wife kept away, his Polish mistress visited. He apparently also found comfort in the company of a local girl, Sbarra. According to a contemporary chronicler, he ‘spent many happy hours eating cherries with her.’”

Most of the furnishings are reproductions or equivalent pieces but you can get a sense of the comfort.

Elba Info

Ferries: There are two main ferry companies – Toremar and Moby – which seem to be interchangeable. There are different ways to buy tickets but in my experience the price is the same, either buying online or from the Biglietteria (ticket office) right at the port.

Local specialities: Regular readers know that I don’t claim myself to be a foodie. So for Elba I’ll just say go for fish! Plenty of good options on the menu and fresh fish at the markets. We often passed a cute local hole-in-the-wall place in Marina di Campo but never got to try it – Aclipesca. Wine – the local speciality is rosè and the sweet dessert wine Aleatico goes down nicely. Here’s some more info on Elba wine.

Markets: Each morning from Mon-Sat there is a market in a different town so you might find the same vendors in each place. Procchio also hosts a food market. Here is a list of markets.

Aquarium: There is a small aquarium just east of Marina di Campo and it’s not a bad spot to spend a rainy afternoon with the kids.

Shopping: Prices for basic goods are higher than on the mainland so you could do as many Italians do and stock your car up at a supermarket on the mainland (except for ice cream and chocolate, speaking from experience). That said, it’s good to consider supporting the small local businesses on the island that rely on seasonal business, and there are plenty of food shops, cafes, restaurants and petrol stations. The main towns for nice boutiques are Marciana Marina, Portoferraio, Capoliveri and Marina di Campo.

Other links

Here’s a nice weekend visit described by Georgette at GirlinFlorence.

And the excellent food writer/photographer Emiko Davies has some tips on the Tuscan coast in general.

The day the bomb closed the bus stop

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I was looking through photos from 6 years ago and one from made me stop to catch my breath.

It was taken 6 years ago today, on July 22 2011, on the day of the Oslo attacks. We had been living in Oslo for 3 years and that week happened to be in Dublin visiting my parents. Wherever we’ve lived I’ve still called Dublin home, but then, Oslo was the only home our two girls really knew. That afternoon we were having a rare wander around town, taking goofy photos, climbing on sculptures and at Temple Bar we stopped at a fancy sweet shop. The friendly owner was curious to hear we lived in Oslo, telling us how much he liked the Norwegian tourists, who were always so friendly. I took this photo of our younger daughter up against the silly wall chart. This particular look on her face is the look of a toddler, her look, that doesn’t really show anymore, but the seriousness in her face chills me – this blurry moment in time has become very precious when I remember what happened next.

As we stood outside eating our jelly beans, time briefly stopped when I read the first of many texts on my phone. From my mum “some kind of explosion in Oslo”, and from an Oslo friend “are you okay? we just heard about what’s going on in central Oslo”. This was our first inkling of the horrendous attacks that were just getting started, one lone man who planted a car bomb in the city centre (killing eight) in an effort to distract the security forces while he drove to the island of Utøya where he went on a shooting spree at a political party summer camp where he killed 69. Those are the facts which I’ll quickly remind you of, which still make my stomach turn. The tragedy is usually defined as the worst attack in Norway since World War II but that’s a huge understatement – to me it was one of the most horrible events I could ever have expected to live through.

But all this was still unfolding far from us while we continued our family afternoon out – I didn’t have a roaming plan so I stayed off the news sites and Twitter, and I didn’t think it sounded too serious. Maybe it was an accident or the act of some crazy angry anarchist. We quickly heard back from a neighbour that there was no damage to our street, our building, any shattered windows or general chaos. We had no idea that something much more horrible was already underway.

We had the luxury of distraction and were busy with seeing family and travelling later that weekend. That evening we didn’t want to watch much news – there were reports of the awful attacks on the island and no-one (least of all the police) had any clue as to who was responsible, or what was happening, but there was plenty of speculation online about foreign-born terrorists, about Norway’s generous social system getting its comeuppance. It all still felt at one remove, not my tragedy.

I have only experienced real shock a couple of times in my life. The kind that can take your breath away, where it’s impossible to compehend how something truly awful could happen in our lifetime, while we watch. The morning after the attacks was one of those shocks.

With my cup of tea in hand I read the BBC website and I learned how bad it was – more than 60 teenagers had been shot in cold blood during the shooting spree, probably just one man was responsible and it took almost 2 hours for him to be stopped. And he was not a stranger, he was as Norwegian as they come, from one of the nicer parts of Oslo which we knew quite well. This was in the city we called home, where our two children might grow up.

My mum and I had planned to take the kids to the park that morning. While they played I took a walk and as I sat alone on a bench watching the swans in the pond and listening to the shouts of the football dads nearby, I found myself collapsing inwards with tears, from grief for those families who were still being notified, the overwhelming awfulness of something that was already in the past, that had not been stopped. In the cafe afterwards, I tried to focus on the present. My mum said to a couple at a neighbouring table “my daughter here lives in Oslo, you know, where that terrible attack happened yesterday”. “Oh yes,” they nodded, “we heard about that. Awful wasn’t it?” Yes indeed it was, but what more could they say except that the carrot cake was quite good?

The next week kept us busy, at the beach in Youghal, visiting the giraffes on Fota island, trying to enjoy a normal holiday, but every so often I’d let myself think about Oslo and feel weighed down by it all, unable to help, feeling it was beyond anyone’s grasp. I wanted to be there, with friends, in the city we loved, but it was also good to be away from what I knew would be a difficult and very personal aftermath. Though the bomb had gone off close to our apartment we rationalised that the chances were slim of our being on that street on a Friday afternoon and we realised quickly that no-one we knew was involved. We were very lucky, but still, the place we considered our home had been attacked.

We flew back to Oslo a week after it happened. Things seemed mostly normal, but on the first evening my husband and I took it in turns to go and look at the bomb site a few blocks from our place, to check out the security situation, road blocks, see how safe we might feel. During my turn I rode my bike down to the cathedral where the news had reported that a spontaneous sea of roses had been growing over the week. I didn’t really want to go and see it as it felt too painful and private to look at other people’s pain. But what a sight it was to experience this mass of colour and light, of sympathy and love and refusal to be squashed down. This strong emotion followed into the very public marches and speeches and concerts that followed: brave and strong and normal people who stood up to declare their hope. It was the most powerful possible denial of the evil that had happened among us, especially among those of us who had grown up here and had even less understanding than I did of what caused this to happen here.

We didn’t really talk to our kids about what happened that day. Our older daughter was 5 and we had to tell her something – we told her that a bad, unhappy man had left a bomb outside one of those office buildings nearby and he killed some people, but that we was locked away in prison now, and we were not in any danger. She seemed to accept that and didn’t ask more so we didn’t tell her more.

What affected her most was the fact that the bus we took most days to kindergarten – which went through the government quarter – had to be diverted by the damage, (and it still is, as they have not yet decided how to rebuild that area). She used to get excited when the bus would announce the stop at “Apotekegate” because she would giggle and call it Potato Gate. Over the first few months she would sometimes declare on the bus, “we’re going this way, and not going to Potato gate because that man did that bad thing with the bomb. Why did he do the bad thing mummy?“ I had to tell her I didn’t know, often choking back tears. I still don’t know why, but I was never able to tell her what else that same man had done that day, how many people actually died and how horribly. She still doesn’t know the whole story – and we have never talked to our younger girl about the attacks, following general advice that you should answer childrens’ big-world worries when they raise them and not before – but they will both learn it in time, as part of history, and there are enough other stories going on in the world these days to keep us anxious.

I found that many people just couldn’t bring themselves to talk about it. I find Norwegians to be very pragmatic and even detached, and with work colleagues it felt like something you just didn’t discuss: but there was also an understanding that there was nothing to be said and after the first few months, the tabloid media came in for a lot of flak for finding any reason they could to print the attacker’s name or photo – a prison complaint, some issue with his mother. The ten-week trial was complex and heartbreaking and I often had to pass by the downtown courthouse, a beautiful modern building which was scarred by a huge black security and media tent on its front. I did my best to follow it in the papers, to watch how the rule of law was trying its damndest to deal justly with a guilty man, to find reasons for his actions and teach us what could have been done better to prevent something like it happening again, anywhere in the world.

Apparently, one in four Norwegians knew someone who was injured or killed, as the victims had come from all over the country to this summer camp. The effects lingered and will never really go away. We learned that an acquaintance was actually a dentist and had led the indentification team. A year later, while on a work project I spent an hour interviewing a Sri Lankan-born executive about why she loved her job with that company and I was speechless to learn afterwards that she had lost a daughter on the island. I wondered, how could she function, continue with her working life, not think about it all the time? I would never find that out, that was never for me to know.

Norway was scarred on that day, a sudden, deep and very personal hurt – right at its heart: its children who were meant to go on to shape its future society. Unlike other modern massacres there was no real “movement” to attach to these attacks which might give it some sense of otherness and madness. It was simply senseless, an act of self-absorption by a thoroughly-detached local boy who seems to have spent too much time playing violent video games.

In his excellent 2015 essay, Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote: “That is where we should direct our attention, to the collapse within the human being which these actions represent, and which makes them possible. Killing another person requires a tremendous amount of distance, and the space that makes such distance possible has appeared in the midst of our culture. It has appeared among us, and it exists here, now.”

We left Norway two years ago: after 7 good years it was time for us to leave. We would always be foreigners there, it was just the way it worked out. And it might seem fair to say that July 22 was not, is still not, our tragedy. But it is actually, it’s all of ours. We cannot forget to reflect on how this happened, why it happened. And to watch in amazement how the country managed to move on and absorb its grief, remembering those who are not living and those they left behind.

That wasn’t so boring (part 2) – Video Renaissance

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For a completely different family art experience in Florence – and a perfect way to cool off – check out the Bill Viola show at Palazzo Strozzi. It’s only on for two more weeks, closing on July 23rd.

Hang on, you say. Go to see contemporary video art? By an American (albeit with an Italian name)? In the city of the Renaissance?

This is the 2nd in my series on visiting Florence’s cultural sights with kids. The 1st was on San Miniato al Monte up on the top of the hill.

Why visit an exhibition at the Strozzi?

  • Palazzo Strozzi is literally a cool building which since the 15th century has been one of the most public palazzi in the city with an airy courtyard and a monumental size that kids love.
  • They specialise in interesting exhibitions of contemporary art that usually have a connection to Florence, to the Renaissance and to the building’s spaces.
  • With your ticket you can borrow a Family Kit for free, full of clever ideas to move kids through the show, one piece at a time. It’s in English! You just need to give them a piece of ID.
  • You can also borrow an audio guide, which is usually very good, and portable stool.
  • Each show is carefully designed – the exhibition staff get stylish new locally-tailored outfits and the kit bag is created anew for each show.
  • Check the Strozzi website for other family activities, like group workshops and tours.
  • If the show is popular (like the terrific Ai WeiWei earlier this year) you can buy advance tickets online, like a family ticket, and skip the queue.
  • The main exhibition is upstairs and all the extras are usually downstairs, worth including if you can.
  • Later this year there’ll be a Marina Abramovic show, which is bound to be thought-provoking.

The Family Kit

This is a bag (beautifully made by local leather maker Il Bisonte) usually containing sketchbooks, pencils, props like a flashlight, and other elements to make kids think, invent, and explore the exhibition and the space. Each exhibition has a different kit but it’s always well thought-out and has a lot to offer (and which other Florence museums could really pay attention to).

It’s meant for kids over 3 and the youngest can at least scribble with pencils and paper. There should be something for every age group in it. Boys and girls!

My two girls sketching at the Ai Wei Wei show (it was winter)

I’ll say it again, the kit is free! The kids might not use everything in it but it will be enough to let them see that they can find their own way into enjoying the art on show.

You can actually view the family kit guidebook on the Strozzi website. Useful before or after your visit.

There is also a “Drawing Kit” which the grownups can borrow, and view in advance on the site.

Viewing video art with kids

I’m an art history graduate, but video art has never been at the top of my list. Really… never. Typically at an exhibition you’ll find a video piece mixed in with paintings, sculptures, and other random pieces and when you encounter a video piece, maybe a projection in a tented-off corner, you have to make a conscious choice to stop and take the time to view it: for 3 minutes and 20 seconds, or, God forbid, 30 minutes! And with kids? It probably won’t have any kind of story and who knows what strange and scary images might appear.

But with how this exhibition was presented, I was really impressed by Bill Viola. What I learned here was how the elements of time and movement (and sound) are central to video art, making it a different but complementary art form.

Unlike so much fast-moving imagery that our kids see in animated movies and video games –where patience is not necessary, and parental hovering is often required – I love how a child who can get into this show will see and think about how the same medium, moving images, can be used in a completely different way.

Each room here contains just one artwork – typically the video piece along with its referring Renaissance painting.

Photo Palazzo Strozzi

The Family Kit made all the difference with slowing down our passage from room to room. As well as a notebook and pencils it had a fan to blow wind on your face, a flashlight, textiles to help you feel textures – to be used alongside the relevant artworks.

In the case of this show, I thought the images were all appropriate; there was no obvious violence or sexuality, and even though images included ideas like a person being engulfed by fire, my kids could see right away that it was of a different nature: a visual trick, or a different way of telling an idea. It was only after leaving the show that we noticed many of the figures were nude – but it seemed no more disconcerting that any number of paintings or sculptures at the Uffizi.

There is definitely a historical-religious element, not just the Christianity that is so central to Renaissance art, but other elements of spirituality and expression. You might need to explain or discuss some of the stories, but you’d be surprised what stories the kids have already picked up.

These are big life (and death) issues on show here, and not much that’s funny. But many kids will really relate to that and it can only make them think.

Disclaimer: my younger daughter (8) skipped through most of it with my husband, she was a little unnerved by the darkened rooms and slow-moving images. She had enjoyed the Ai WeiWei show.

Who is Bill Viola?

Bill Viola was born in New York to Italian parents. He lived for a few years in Florence in the 1970s and was involved in avant-garde video and performance art – like invading photos taken by tourists around town: an early photobomber.

Viola was also very taken by how images from the Renaissance permeate not just the museums but also churches, streets and houses. He gives the example of an old woman on his street who would leave flowers every day at a street corner altar with a Madonna, an act that had been happening for hundreds of years.

Photo Quotidiano.net

He’s one of the world’s leading video artist, is practically mainstream, and was described early on as an electronic painter. As I mentioned I’m not a video art fan but I found this work all so relevant to Florence, to our world, and very moving.

“He confronts death and the tragic anguish of life.. with projection rather than representation” – Anna Morettini, Director of Etrillard Foundation

The Strozzi Exhibition

The first thing the Viola show gets right is its size. 14 rooms are devoted to a few more than 14 pieces, making it easier to concentrate. It’s bared-down, simple and easy to see what the main focus should be and to move on. There are other pieces at locations around the city but the Strozzi is the main show.

The second thing is the concept – this show was built around Viola’s relationship to and inspiration from Renaissance art. And the inspiration, if not specific then at least stylistic, is placed in the room beside his piece.

The pictures below were taken by me with my iPhone – they’re like stills and cannot convey the movement and depth from experiencing the video in motion. But they give you a sense of the painterly quality of the works, how they give us room to discuss together how they related to the earlier paintings.

As Martin Holman in the Florentine says:  “Viola does not restage these older images. Instead he demonstrates what happens when they are absorbed and transformed in the mind”

If the kids follow the little guide in the kit, they’ll get a quick background to each work.

Here are the key pieces we enjoyed.

The Visitation

Viola’s piece recreates the meeting of the pregnant Mary with her cousin Elizabeth, slowing it down and making it even more ambiguous.

Bill Viola Studio

When he first saw Pontormo’s painting, Viola wondered what the artist had taken to create such colours.

Pontormo, The Visitation

The Family Kit includes a fan, to let you feel the breeze that you can visibly see in the video version.

Catherine’s Room

The room containing this meditation series is so lovely. Any child can see quickly the visual relationship between the 14th century St Catherine in the lower part of this painting by Andrea di Bartolo going through the motions of her day. In the four separate Viola videos, a woman is shown to us in her own private space, it could be a convent, or a prison, while the seasons changing outside the window.

Andrea di Bartolo, Santa Caterina

Bill Viola Studio

These video pieces open themselves up in a way that painting or photography is not able to, offering another dimension into the subject or the atmosphere or the story around the story.

The Deluge

Talk about knowing the ending in advance. My daughter insisted on sitting out the full 30 minutes of this – watching the people and bustle around this building build up very slowly until the expected flood happened. The last 5 minutes or so did drag as the street and building dried off. But when you think about it, there’s nothing quite like sitting in a room with other people watching flickering images on a screen…

It was interesting to see Paolo Uccello’s wierd but much-loved Flood fresco juxtaposed against it.

Emergence

This is the exhibition’s “brand image”, seen on billboards, bus tickets and airport baggage carousels.

This may or may not be the lifeless body of Christ coming out of the tomb and then lowered to the ground by two emotional women. Or they could be midwives, present at a birth. My kids were mostly amazed by the colour of the man’s skin.

Bill Viola Studio

The slow-motion contortions and positions of the three persons move slowly into recognisable positions from well-known paintings – from Piero della Francesco to David’s Death of Marat. And we talked about how they seemed to dance.

Masolino da Panicale, Pietà

David, the Death of Marat

 

Adam and Eve, Man/Woman

I loved these pieces – first of all because the amazing Lucas Cranach paintings were right there on the wall (borrowed from the Prado) and are so very beautiful in themselves. And around the corner was Viola’s take: two single narrow vertical screens, one of a man and one of a woman, each of them individually evaluating their own mortality, the woman heading towards acceptance and happiness, the man fighting against his ageing body. One could say.

Bill Viola Studio

Just as the man and woman examine themselves with a light, a child visiting the exhibition can pull the flashlight out of the kit and do the same thing.

My daughter didn’t get into this exercise and, not surprisingly, preferred the younger and more perfect Adam and Eve.

Lukas Cranach, Adam and Eve

The Martyrs series

When you read the description of these four pieces, placed on the four walls of one room like a Greek cross, they sound pretty gruesome. Each scene shows a person going through a movement through fire, air, water or earth. But my 10 year old and I were entranced by the four-sided elegiac flow of individual bodies going through what should be ordeals but which were almost a dance.

 

Kids will also enjoy the behind-the-scenes videos downstairs, which show some of the stunts, photography setup and studio “tricks” needed to create the flooded house or a submerged man.

Photo Bill Viola Studio

 

Not everyone in Florence wants to see contemporary art in such an historic city. But I say, bring it on! Those of us living here are happy to show our kids more of the world and of art than golden haloes and marble saints (wonderful as they are) and exhibitions like those put on by the Strozzi and this year’s Ytalia sculpture exhibition around town (upcoming blog post) offer something different.

The show was full of beauty, wonder at the human form and imagination, homage to many artists of the past (not just Renaissance) and an age-old questioning about man’s and woman’s place in the world and the wonder of life. I was also struck by the way women were portrayed in such a positive, human way.

And after all this life and death, you can’t go wrong with a nice cold sweet gelato!