Oh Here's Summer...

Hot hot hot. This  is so sudden; we had got used to grey skies , showers and coolth. After a burst of gardening activity in the two-week spring in April, we left seedlings and plants which were discouragingly slow growing, in the care of a friend who would come over to water if necessary,  and set off on our long-promised trip to Sicily.
Plan A had been to drive through Italy then island-hop back to France but in the end we thought we couldn't afford the time, so sadly bidding the hopes of an extra week of proper pizza and pasta goodbye we booked a cheap flight from Bordeaux, and the hire car and Agriturismos of Plan B.

After marvelling at some Greek temples in stunning locations and some weird and wonderful B and Bs, we went hunting for Montalbano. A hotel by the Med was a treat as a base, a sheltered  balcony over the sea a luxury. All the time I hummed Joni M, - Carey, 'the wind is in from Africa...'
But there was important tourist business to do so I left my lounger.
A multi-national queue (well, 6 people) politely waited as we all took turns to photograph each other outside Salvo's house at Punta Secca with more arriving as we sat at the café. The house is a B & B, booked up for months ahead, but who would want to sit on that famous breezy terrace whilst privileged Europeans trooped up, snapping away with cameras and phones?  The village had clearly benefited from the film-maker's attentions; it boasted (sorry, I've been reading too many estate agent's prose lately,) a well laid car park, clean streets, and neat houses, mostly shuttered up awaiting the season.
 In Scicli, he and his assistants would struggle to sweep up to the 'Police Station' in his beat up Fiat as the Station is in fact the Town Hall on a pedestrian precinct, busy with café tables and big umbrellas flapping in the Sicilian wind. Colourful tubs of flowers and lush palm trees gave this place, also, an air more prosperous than much of  the rest of Sicily. I expect even that bleak ruined factory on the beach, where so many horrid things seemed to happen, had been glammed up. We didn't seek that location out, although it featured on many postcards along with all the other sites we found, dunno why I bothered taking pictures when I could have bought the card. We didn't find his favourite restaurant where he often ate wonderful seafood in a howling gale either. Shame as the food was variable generally, I kept trying to find the perfect pasta & sardines...  well, it's fun trying.
Before we left for inland mountains and a glimpse of Etna we visited Ragusa and Ragusa Ibla, the town split in two by an earthquake in 1693 and the stunning place shown in the opening titles, crazy Sicilian Baroque tilted along a spine of rock with deep valleys on either side.
ps I can recommend the Camilleri books, as wacky and amusing as you'd expect if you watched the tv series; it captured them well.

Now we are back with nightingales, sudden summer, huge amounts of weeding, planting, and our own glamming up to do. We have a viewing on Friday, people are flying out especially to see the house, we have our fingers crossed that it is what they hope to see.

pps Well now I always thought Grandma's Hands was Gil Scott Heron but found out from a very enjoyable prog. on Bill Withers that I stayed up far too late to watch, after getting in from our Dance group's Soirée, that it isnae.