I have been devilishly busy lately, doing translations, writing a book (in Italian! Yoinks!) and eating ice cream with my little lad, whose school has broken up for the summer. Luckily for us all, my gifted friends are still writing wonderful guest posts for your entertainment! This gorgeous PHOTO ESSAY is a gift from Rochelle Del…
Author: VDG
31 Mafiosi Arrested in my Town Yesterday
They arrested 31 mafiosi in my little town yesterday, and two of them were neighbours of mine. The newspapers are saying that this has practically demolished the Mafia in this town. Personally I am not so sure. Fighting the Mafia is like trying to eliminate cockroaches. You can stamp on a couple but there are…
QUESTIONNAIRE: Could YOU make the grade as a Sicilian Housewife?
Housewives exist all over the world, but Sicilian Housewives are a unique breed. Are YOU are made of The Right Stuff? Answer a dozen questions to find out! 1. What is the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? A) Have a mug of tea. B) Have a cup of coffee….
Are the Sicilians Africans or Europeans?
The Arabs and Normans ruled Sicily in medieval times, and left a legacy I see all around me in Sicily today. I see Arabs in the girls with big dark eyes and thick black hair, or in the little boys on the beach with nut brown skin. I see Normans too, in the fishermen with…
Sicily v. England
Today’s fabulous guest post is from one of my favourite bloggers, Pecora Nera (which means Black Sheep). I think of him as my male counterpart, as he is an Englishman married to a Sicilian lady, known only as Mrs. Sensible. I sometimes wonder which of us is more bonkers. ***** I received an e mail…
Sicilian “Pupi” – The Soldier Puppets of Charlemagne
Most cultures have a puppet tradition, and the International Museum of Puppets in Palermo probably has a few examples of them all. It houses a truly marvellous collection. I loved their South East Asian section and the beautiful collection from Japan. Their African collection was evocative and haunting. I was highly excited by their Punch…
How Three Hellish Holidays in Sicily led to the Invention of Democracy
As I am having an operation, I am offline for a while. However, I am delighted to have friends who have offered to entertain and educate you with some cracking guest posts. Today’s guest post is written by Thorwald Franke, an expert on Plato, the lost island of Atlantis and many things historical. He has…
Lo Zingaro Nature Reserve, Sicily
Lo Zingaro nature reserve, in San Vito lo capo, was Sicily’s first. We visited recently, and spotted a falcon flying overhead. There are also buzzards, ravens, hooded crows and thrushes. The wild flowers include ferns, cyclamen, hollly bushes, lots of yellow mountain broom and this lovely flower. Does anyone know what it is? There were…
Sicilian Enigmas part 1: Road Signs
Sicilians often complain that their road signs are ridiculous, hopelessly misleading or simply wrong. They are probably just using this as an excuse for their wild driving. Or are they? This one got me so confused I even swerved onto the wrong side of the road. Is there an underground cinema? A tiny weeny cinema…
Happy Easter!
Last week a friend’s little boy was eagerly – indeed passionately – telling me about what he called “the Jewish Easter”. When I realised he meant Passover, it suddenly struck me that the Italian word for Easter – Pasqua – is derived from Pesach, Hebrew for Passover. He had learned about the Jewish flight from…
A sing-song at Segesta
Today, dear readers, I proudly offer you a guest post written by an actual, professional journalist! His own blog, DorsetDaze, features his witty writing and gorgeous photographs. Here, he describes his trip to the ancient Greek temple at Segesta. His day involved the classic Sicilian blend of sublime and ridiculous, in equal measure. ***** ACCORDING…
A new book: SICILIAN CARD GAMES an easy-to-follow guide
‘SICILIAN CARD GAMES an easy-to-follow guide’ gives very clear instructions for twelve Sicilian card games, with photographic illustrations. It is the only book of Sicilian card games in print worldwide. Sicily has its own unique deck of playing cards, and lots of games exclusive to the island. Card games are an indispensable part of the…
Sea Urchins, Anyone?
Sicilians absolutely love sea urchins – as food, rather than as wildlife. They crack them open and eat them raw by scooping their insides out with a piece of bread. This is why, off many parts of the Sicilian coast, sea urchins are becoming rare. We went to the stunning Lo Zingaro nature reserve at the…
Literary Islands: Giuseppe di Lampedusa
This article offers a deeply insightful analysis of the Sicilian character taken from “The Leopard,” Sicily’s most famous novel. This article is by Rochelle Del Borello, a fellow Sicily blogger who writes thought-provoking articles and posts gorgeous photos. If you visit her blog, say Hello from me! Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard (Il gattopardo) is…
Ten ways to tell you’ve been living in Sicily too long
1. You wear an anorak when it is 25 degrees centigrade and you don’t even feel hot. 2. You sometimes give your child an octopus to eat for dinner. 3. Whenever you get in a draught you just KNOW you will have a cervicale the next day. This is an exclusively Italian type of headache…
PHOTO GALLERY: Palermo and other Sicilian towns
I am delighted to have permission to reblog this from dorsetdaze All the pictures, and the article, are by Dave, a talented photographer with an eye for the unusual. Sicily: a land of many faces March 13, 2014 Traffic and graffiti: two of Palermo’s trademarks. SICILY, eh? One minute it can make you smile, the next…
Brain Drain, Sicilian Talent, and the World’s Oldest University
Did you know the world’s oldest university was founded by a Sicilian? It’s in Cairo, and he actually founded the whole city, too. This shows the terrible problem of Brain Drain has existed in Sicily far longer than most people realise. To get a concept of how big an issue this is, consider that there…
Blessed by a Pregnant Nun at Sciacca Carnival
The Carnival of Sciacca in Sicily may not be as famous as the Venice or Rio carnivals, but it is just as much fun. The day started with such heavy rain there was even talk of calling it all off, but in the end the rain stopped and the festivities started. All the children were…
Istanbul, the “Prostitute” City
The Turks say that Istanbul is like a prostitute – beautiful, but dangerous. I decided to portray the intensely stimulating mix of beauty and danger, which so characterises Istanbul, in my novel “Evil Eye.” The day-dreamy heroine, Celeste, is dragged into a mysterious adventure of threats, violence and narrow escapes which makes its way though…
The Ten Commandments of Sicilian Driving
1. Thou shalt not double park if thou can find somewhere to triple park instead. 2. Thou shalt not, never, ever stop to let anyone out of a side road in front of thee, unless thou fancy them a lot. 3. Thou shalt always leave rosary beads dangling distractingly off thine rear view mirror to…
Happy Valentine’s Day with some Kinky Chocolate
Sicilians are a romantic lot and they love St. Valentine’s Day. Rather than give their girlfriend sweets or champagne, most Sicilian men are more likely to take her out for a delicious organic Italian ice-cream. What better way to wish all my readers Happy Valentine’s Day than by sharing this marvellous advertisement I saw in our local…
Sicilian Amber – the Tears of the Sun God’s Daughters
On some of Sicily’s beaches after a big storm, if you’re sharp-eyed and lucky as well, you can find pieces of a rare type of amber called simetite. Some pieces of simetite have recently been found to contain hitherto unknown types of prehistoric insect. It dates from the Miocene, a later period than the more…
Dolce and Gabbana pay tribute to Pope Francis?
The Sicilians adore Pope Francis. This is not just because he once worked as a nightclub bouncer and is way more down-to-earth than any other pontiff in living memory. He is the first pope ever to condemn the Mafia, repeatedly and unequivocally. He rejects the pomp and wealth of the traditional church and genuinely helps…
Eureka! Archimedes the Sicilian Detective
We all know the story of Archimedes flooding his bathroom, leaping out of his bath, and dashing stark naked through the streets shouting “Eureka!” in excitement at his discovery of the Archimedes Principle of water displacement. But exactly which city’s streets did the world’s first flasher actually dash through? For years I thought it was somewhere…
Blog Awards 2013: Part 2 – My first set of Award Winners for 2014
Now it is time to reveal the truth behind my first couple of blog award headlines and then present my first batch of blog award winners! So here it is – the revelation of some terrible things this Sicilian Housewife has done in the past. Scroll down to see the award winners and details of…
Does your child know more than you do?
Mine does. He’s eight. People often comment on how much he knows about animals and their evolution. A few days ago I was watching a film with him in which this bizarre little animal appeared: “That’s a honey badger,” he told me immediately. “They love eating honey but they sometimes attack lions to steal their…
How do you get Edible Salt out of the Sea?
We are so used to being warned not to eat too much salt nowadays that it may be hard to imagine how life in the past involved a constant effort to obtain enough of it. Not only does it render any food tasty, it is a vital nutrient and death is the inevitable consequence of…
Big Brother Is Watching You
Until recently, in my part of Sicily, owning an iPhone was so cutting edge and high-tech that it was basically one step away from being an astronaut. In a culture where speaking is impossible without bilateral full-arm gesticulation, it was fairly obvious that talking to people using just two thumbs would feel far too restrictive….
Multicultural Sicily: The Good, the Bad and the Downright Ridiculous
This afternoon we went for a walk around central Palermo. In Piazza Politeama we saw these fellows. The man at the bottom was sitting cross-legged on a glass tumbler. All along Via Ruggiero Settimo there were buskers playing drums and guitars, there were fire-breathers and jugglers, there were men on stilts making balloon animals for the…
Christmas in Sicily with Santa’s Smallest Elf
We celebrated Christmas this year with roughly forty people. I could not count accurately as they were Sicilian, therefore unable to keep still. There were four different pasta courses. One was spaghetti with olive oil, lemon zest and cheese, served in a bowl carved out of a whole Parmesan cheese. Another pasta course was with…
Blog Awards 2013: Part 1
I have been nominated for various blog awards over the past year. THANK YOU to everyone who nominated me. I have saved them all up, to respond to them all together at the year’s end. This is not part of any great plan. It’s purely the result of faffiness and disorganisation. Right, here they are. The Very…
Dancing in the Street with a Homeless Nigerian
I ended up dancing in the street with a Nigerian tramp yesterday. (Tramp means “homeless person”, in case you’re American.) How does a Sicilian Housewife end up acting so weird? Well, it started with some Christmas shopping. I find this activity traumatic, for three reasons. 1. Almost all toys in Sicily are made in China…
The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife 