Outside it’s hot enough to squint in the sun; inside it’s cold enough to warrant cuddling up to the gas heater. Houses down here don’t have piped gas, I’m not sure why but I have a suspicion it’s something to do with the risk of earthquakes. Instead gas comes in big metal bottle called bombolas, which translates as ‘bombs’.
New Year here is pretty explosive all round. At midnight each village launches itself determinedly into a fireworks war. Looking out from the balcony you can see the whole bay popping with colour and it sounds as if you’re in a replay of World War Two. You can identify each distant village from the posy of sparkles that shoots up from its site on the velvet-black mountain. The snaps and pops and depth-charges trickle off over the first few days of January as boys on new bikes let off the last of the firecrackers and grown-up boys blow things up in secret corners of the evening. I had a childhood fear of bursting balloons so this time of year is very taxing for me.
Our own new year involved zampone (a traditional meal of pig’s trotter which looks unsettlingly like a baby’s arm), bongoes, a guitar and a wooden flute. One thing I’ll say for people here, they can party. They don’t go out till 11 pm at the earliest, which until recently was the time that English pubs shut. This particular group of friends have caused me to go to bed at 3, 4.30 in the morning several nights running, which I thought was all behind me now that I am well into my thirties. They aren’t drunk by the end of it, either. People here certainly do drink and get tipsy – it’s not like ten years ago, when I and a student friend marvelled at the twenty year olds who fuelled bar-hopping nights on ice-cream and coffee – but it’s nothing like English drinking. It’s the kind of drinking you’d want your teenage daughter to do. The contrast with the average Brit, who needs a vat of indifferent lager poured into him before he can bring himself to say hello to a stranger, is striking.
Last night we went for a drive up to Santa Maria di Castellabate. Everyone was out, strolling in loose friendly groups up and down the main street past all the shut shops. Every now and then in the distance, something went boom.
Italy: the incredible exploding country
italy by mistake 