Ice-cream, lizards and baby pigeons

Siena in the sunshine.

There are some things that the Italians do very well - architecture for one. Brunelleschi's dome atop the Duomo in Florence is a stunningly beautiful and awe-inspiring piece of engineering. Everywhere you go in Italy, from mediaeval hill-top settlement to city, the ego and status of the patrons of the mediaeval architects hits you in the face - why else are there numerous towers in San Gimignano - it was a case of 'My tower in bigger than yours. Because I have more money than you, my wealth can buy me status and power and I can assert my influence by building the biggest tower in the town.' Pope after Pope built cathedrals, each one more magnificent than the buildings of the Pope before. If he had to fight for power during his reign, he was determined to leave appropriate evidence of his munificence for future generations to venerate him by. Everywhere in Italy, if you walk around looking only at those shops (bikini hunting with daughters, yesterday) and streets at face height, you miss most of the splendour. Always look up.

The architecture in Siena is a fine example of this lofty tourism-

Littlest tired of being told to 'look up' and choosing instead to look down. Ideas for the patio at home?

Another thing that Italians are good at is ice-cream

And Italy has very good lizards. Littlest has spent much of the holiday making "nature pudding" for the lizards -

From lizards to pigeons and a question - do pigeon mums and dads shove the weaker chicks out of their nests? Human babies should maybe take note of nature - twice in our week here, there has been a desperate scrabbling in the guttering high above our apartment and fluttering of immature poorly coordinated wings followed by a sickening thwack as meat and bones impact concrete. Imagine that - eat the food in front of you, work hard, don't complain when mum and dad ask you to do the washing up, do well in your exams or ... it's a no return journey straight into a brick wall. Beats bribery!

But as an evening entertainment the Italian countryside could do better than bear witness to the hard-hearted euthanasia of pigeon chicks.

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

Confetti - noun: small pieces of coloured paper thrown over a bride and groom following their marriage ceremony. Also the bane of church yards and wedding venues - who wants to exit church after their favourite spinster aunt's funeral and slip on the papier mâché mush of last weekend's weddings, or step, in your wedding gown, onto a pink spattered step when your colour theme is lilac? Confetti - derived from the Latin confectum, meaning something prepared. Which suggests that there is something missing from the traditional wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ... something prepared.' How about something shared ... declared ... or ensnared?? Nature's confetti is all over the ground at this time of year - The garden, footpaths, and pavements are covered in blossom snow. And, when he falls asleep beneath the apple tree, it speckles Four-legged-friend's black coat. The confetti we know today - bits of b

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!

Walking The Dog

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