There’s a small road in Palermo called “Via dei Decollati,” which means “Street of the Beheaded People.” In medieval times, this area was just outside the city and criminals were beheaded here. Unfortunately the Sicilian government was corrupt in those days – not any more, of course! – and many innocent people were beaheaded, too….
Category: About Sicily
What did YOU do with your milk teeth?
One of my little boy’s milk teeth fell out recently. He now has two outsize grown-up size teeth at the centre of his mouth, and a space each side of them. He looks like a rodent. “Do you want to leave it under your pillow for the tooth fairy?” I asked him. “Or do you…
The Mediterranean Diet – how to do it properly
All over the world, there exists the myth of a “Healthy Mediterranean Diet,” which everyone is urged to emulate for the sake of their arteries. The Mayo Clinic (which always makes me think of Mayonnaise, anyone else?) says on its website: “Mediterranean diet: Choose this heart-healthy diet option” A cursory search on the Internet will…
Aztec chocolate is still made in Modica, Sicily – and it’s the best I’ve ever eaten
Have you ever wondered what the very first bar of chocolate, made by the Aztecs, tasted like? I’ve just found out. I bought some chocolate from Modica, in Sicily, yesterday. It was divine. I found it in the 1,000-year-old market called La Vucciria in central Palermo. I am quite a chocolate connoiseur. I’ve visited the…
Riding in a Car made of Sticky Tape
I attended a vehicular funeral last week. My friend Totò, a bright-eyed and sprightly septuagenarian, had a maroon Alfa Romeo which was, basically, made of sticky tape. I don’t mean trashy thin stuff, I mean the top quality wide, brown parcel kind. By the time I had seen his car enter the final, declining years…
Padre Puglisi has been Beatified. Can we PLEASE talk about the Mafia now?
In Sicily, if you open your mouth and say something about the Mafia, if you just pronounce the word Mafia in public, the reaction will be sharp intakes of breath all around you and horrified silence. It is a social gaffe even more hideous than meeting your new mother-in-law with your flies undone whilst going…
Can you smell that pong of broken glass? A really rubbishy blog post
My town has 56,339 inhabitants. This morning, when I opened the window, it smelt as if every single one of them had just farted. The noxious gases billowed in and tinged the kitchen air a mustardy pea green. The whiff was coming from the local sewage works, whose manager feels that complying with health and…
What have the Africans done for Sicily?
Africans are so often portrayed as the underdogs, nowadays, that we sometimes forget they conquered southern Europe twice and ruled it for centuries. The Sicilians don’t forget, though, for the Africans invented pasta as we know it, shaped their language and gave them the word Mafia, and brought them their citrus fruit trees, taught them…
21 Mafia arrests and 2 Mafia murders in my town last week
They arrested 21 Mafiosi in my little backwater of a town last week. All of them had been very high profile players in international organised crime. Along with the 21 arrests, the police also recovered 30 million Euros in cash, buildings, businesses, supermarkets, and other varied loot. The men had been engaged in drug trafficking,…
Would you marry your cousin? All about inbreeding, and very small elephants
A lot of Sicilians would. In fact, a lot of them do. Of course Albert Einstein is the Poster Boy for cousin marriage. Not only were his parents cousins, but he also went ahead and married his own cousin. His wife was either his first cousin or his second cousin, depending which parent you trace…
How did YOU find this blog?
I have been rummaging through the statistics for my blog today. When I was new to this blogging lark, I did it obsessively. Nowadays I just take an occasional look at the search engine terms which have brought new visitors to my blog. One of the strings typed into Google that immediately jumped out at…
International Joke Day
My little boy had a fantastic idea yesterday: We should institute an International Joke Day. This is a day when everyone tells every one else a great joke, to cheer up the whole world. I think he is a genius, and so I officially declare that tomorrow, Monday 22 April, is International Joke Day. IF…
Sicilian Women Are Scrubbers
Honestly. They spend more time scrubbing, washing and generally sanitising things than they do in any other activity, save possibly ironing. This year, I am joining in the spirit of things by spring cleaning early. I didn’t want to, but my Mother-in-law made me. I admit the place has become a little grimy but, frankly,…
Urgent! I need some Ancient Romans to build me an Aqueduct
We have no running water to our house any more. The reason is that some of the other people in our street haven’t paid their water bills for over eight years. So the water board cut off the water to the whole street. One thing I’d first like to say is, thank the Lord this…
The Top 5 causes of Death in the Home: Doing Housework
I electrocuted myself yesterday. I was cleaning the toaster and I forgot to unplug it first. That’s what having a seven-year-old with verbal diarrhoea and real diarrhoea, both at once, can do to your mental faculties. Whilst emptying the equivalent of three whole loaves of bread, transformed into burnt offerings, out of the bottom of…
We Sicilians Want Some Privacy, Capeesh?
Yesterday, someone in Belarus hacked into my Facebook account. What did the Slavonic sod want? What did he find out about me? I have images of him in my head, in his standard-issue East European shell suit trousers, toasting his friends with a bottle of Stolichnaya in one hand and a samovar full of beetroot…
Wildfire, Deaths and Tomato Sauce Everywhere: A day in Lercara Friddi, Sicily
I posted some photos of the hair-raising electrical wiring in Lercara Friddi last week. I feel I should do the place justice by showing a more complete picture… so here goes. Hubby and I went there shortly after the annual festival celebrating the town pie, the pantofola. Pantofola means slipper. They still had some left…
Sicilian Electrical Wiring and other Health and Safety Issues
I’ve been meaning to write about Sicilian electricians for a while. I needed to accumulate a good set of photos, though, as pictures speak louder than words. Sometimes, in fact, they scream while shuddering all over, with their hair standing up on end, fizzing with 240 volts. While I was taking this photo, the resident of…
Hints and Tips on Driving in Sicily: Roads, and other Sicilian Driving Hazards
PART UMPTEEN OF AN OCCASIONAL, HYSTERICAL SERIES We have had torrents of rain for the last week. As a result, driving my son to school has been permanently upgraded from a Level 2 to a Level 1 risk activity. This is because of the new holes that have formed in the road. I do have a…
Sicilian card games
Sicilians have their own unique playing cards. They look like this: The fishermen in my village are always out on the seafront, playing cards on upturned barrels between their fishing excursions. They all shout loud enough to startle the dead at certain card plays. They smack their winning cards down rather like a butcher hacking…
This is Not over: The Befana is Coming!
In England, Christmas and New Year and all that jazz are pretty much over now. People are ready to think about diets and other unpleasant stuff. Not in Italy. Oh no! The 6th of January is La Befana, the festival more religiously known as Epifania or Epiphany. Christmas gluttony ain’t over till she’s been! This…
Is Autumn EVER going to come?
“I can’t wait for the leaves to turn red and golden and purple when Autumn comes” my little boy announced a few days ago. “Er, they won’t go purple” I said. “Yes they will,” he insisted. “We’re doing Autumn at school and we wrote a poem about the leaves going purple.” Upon investigation of his…
Have we got too many immigrants?
Immigration is a hot topic in most developed countries. Apparently the Latino element in the USA turned out to vote for Obama in record numbers and are now asking for immigration policy reforms, to legitimise their not-so-legal relatives as formally recognised US residents. Olé! These people are mainly economic migrants, though. In Sicily, we get…
Photographic talent? …Or maybe not?
In my previous post, I described our weekend visit to Tindari to see the Black Madonna. In compliance with my husband’s Great Economy Drive, a restaurant lunch was forbidden, so we had a picnic here: “This is so romantic!” declared my son, who is 6 years old. He took that photo of the sea (above), and…
The Black Madonna of Tindari
Yesterday we went to Tindari in Eastern Sicily, famous for its statue of a black Madonna with a black baby Jesus. Like most of the “black Madonna” statues from places where the majority of the population is white, she is carved out of wood, and so was originally light-skinned. Wood darkens over time so, eventually,…
God Save us from Hallowe’en!
“My priest said that if I go to a Hallowe’en party I’ll end up in Hell” I was told by a 10-year-old Sicilian girl yesterday. I was helping her put on her ghost costume and apply white make-up to her face, in preparation for the Hallowe’en party that her mother and I were hosting together….
In Praise of America!
1492 was a great year for food. That was the year Native Americans discovered Christopher Columbus lost at sea. They fed him, made him wash his armpits, and gave him tomatoes. He eventually limped off home with the juicy red loot. At last, people all over Italy smacked their taste buds in delight. They named…
Fancy going to a Mafia Wedding?
People sometimes ask me how, and more often why, I became a Sicilian housewife. It is all my husband’s fault. This is the story of how I met him. +++ “Fancy going to a Mafia wedding in Sicily?” my sister asked, one drizzly English afternoon. Who could turn down an invitation like that? Certainly not…
Crony Capitalism: The Sicilian Disease goes Global
The Americans and British are doing a lot of talking about Crony Capitalism. The economic woes of Italy, Spain and Greece are blamed on the cronyism they seem addicted to. Meanwhile the indignant Americans and British are gradually realising that their own politicians and businessmen are chronic cronyists too. In the UK, being one-time Labour…
Is this Racist?
I discovered recently that Dolce & Gabbana have created their Summer 2013 women’s fashion collection with an exuberantly Sicilian theme. It has also come to my attention that American and English journalists are calling it “racist”. Is it racist? Let’s have a look at it first, so we know what we’re talking about. Here’s a dress: The…
The Italian Legal System and How to Evade it
Italians are a bunch of scofflaws. They think the laws apply to everyone else, but they personally are a special exception. All of them think that. Which explains Italy, really. Sicilians take this to a whole new level. For a Sicilian, any rules, in any context, are created purely for you to see how many…
Sicilian Builders and their Bottoms
I have a mild dispute going on with my husband. He wants to get a sun-roof constructed over the open-air roof terrace, so we can have barbecues up there without getting slow-roasted in the sun before our food does, and developing skin cancer before lunch is over. I don’t. My reason is simple: it would…
The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife 