Another look back while it’s pretty quiet here as I work on the next book – this time some old photos of when Roger and I were staying in Fossa while in our twenties. We didn’t have too much money so often in the afternoons we’d simply go for long walks around the village and surrounding hillsides, all the way up to Castle Ocre’s ruins perched on the mountaintop or down along the meandering, quiet lanes to the valley below.
It was glorious, autumn Abruzzo weather, that time of year there’s a hint of coolness to the air but still some of summer’s warmth. On one walk we happened across a couple of old apple trees growing wild by the roadside and, as you can see, they were abundant with fruit. I tied my shirt into a makeshift bag and Roger picked a few apples and passed them to me. (He had to climb a tree at one stage!)
This was before phone cameras and these three shots were it (to conserve film). Ha! (I’m glad the outskirts of Fossa made it into the background above the tree.) When I later got some rolls of film developed in L’Aquila, it was the first time in my life I haven’t had to spell my surname for a shop assistant. It sounds funny but it was such an amazing feeling of belonging in a place you have ties to, even if you weren’t born there, another aspect of Italian-Australian life, I guess! Buona giornata. Zoe x
PS. I didn’t bite into one of those little apples until I’d carried them all the way back to the kitchen of the Fossa house and, well… they certainly were quite tart! 👀😄
It’s pretty quiet here at present while I work on the next book, so here’s a look back to Italy when I was in Abruzzo and wrote Mezza Italiana. The day I hung the freshly-washed sheets out on the old pulley clothesline at the house in Fossa. It’s such an iconic image in Italy, a busty woman suspended half out a window, hanging her sheets on these pulley lines. However, any romantic notions were quickly quashed!
Mending… so out comes the sewing box Nanna Francesca gave me for my 8th birthday. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to receive this as a present at that age, though I put on a happy face so not to hurt her feelings. Afterwards, I told Mum she could have it and the sewing box sat in her linen press for years. Yet, once I moved into my own house, I went and retrieved it and it has stayed with me.
The Italian saying, ‘Prendere due piccioni con una fava’ – catch two pigeons with one fava bean – sounds slightly kinder than ‘kill two birds with one stone’ but its meaning, ‘achieve two aims at once’ is the same. It’s fave (broad bean) time again here and they’re particularly fresh, sweet and earthy tasting at present.
Still, it’s lovely to look back, especially to see Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni next to me on the front steps the day I arrived as well as beautiful Fossa when there was no hint of the earthquake to come more than a decade later. And I still can’t get over the rich blueness of the sky some days up there in the Apennine Mountains! No filters or tricks on these photos, just nature at its most exquisite. Thank you for taking the Mezza Italiana journey with me and for sharing your stories too. Grazie infinite cari amici! Zoe xx
Walking around Fossa, along lanes that become so steep and narrow they merge into steps or descend into tunnels, I began to notice all the different doors I passed. Some with stylised, door furniture of lion heads or dragons and beautifully varnished wood, others crude, weathered timber, or painted mission brown.
I took this from the tiny balcony of the house in Fossa. As Roger walked along the laneway below on his way to the Boccabella shop and passed someone on their phone, he had no idea I was taking a photograph from above.
Fossa house, Abruzzo, a decade ago… pecorino cheese made by two women on a farm down in the valley, olives from the L’Aquila market, cerasuolo wine from a nearby vineyard, the paisley tablecloth Nanna Francesca purchased from a travelling merchant who drove from village to village in his small truck full of wares, an Italian folk song blaring from speakers to notify buyers he had arrived.
Zoë Boccabella 