Cuneesi al rhum

Yesterday, as our Easter holiday, we took a day trip to Cuneo (or Côni as the locals here call it). The train journey took us through Nice, Monaco, Menton and Ventimiglia, where we changed to a tiny boggler with a mighty engine and powerful brakes, and headed up through the vertiginous mountain passes. Very soon there was snow all round. The track is amazing, with spiral tunnel ramps to gain altitude, so that when you finally emerge into sunlight you can see the rails you have just rolled along hundreds of metres below you.

Cuneo is an elegant, small but very monumental town, whose charms had been eloquently catalogued by that pioneering pair, O and S. They also recommended the charming and atmospheric Osteria della Chiocciola, which in addition to a frighteningly good wine selection for sale, does very tasty and reasonably priced meals upstairs. We had starters of spring vegetables and savoy cabbage wrapped in thin pastry, deep fried and served with what I guess was Fontina cheese sauce. Each mouthful was a papillary delight. This was followed by baked kid with Taggiasca olives. Real Easter fare! The desserts lived up to the previous courses, the BH opted for a zuccotto di pere (pear charlotte with hazelnut cream) and I had an apple, pinenut and raisin tart. The wines, by the (enormous) glass were Nebbiolo, very tanniny, and Grignolino, like a light burgundy.

The real reason why people flock to Cuneo is the pilgrimage to San Cioccolato. Cuneo must make the best chocolates in the world (though Brussels may argue the toss). The speciality is the cuneese, a chocolate filled with hazelnut ganache, flavoured traditionally with rum, but now also offered with a range of other, often alcoholic, flavours. When Ernest Hemingway stopped by at the Pasticceria Arione, I'm sure it was the rum content rather than the (elevated) chocolate content which caught his fancy. The shop's celebrated cuneesi leave your mouth in an agreeable state of anaesthesia for a second or two, followed by a flood of subtle aftertastes. Worth a pilgrimage, even on one's knees...

On the way back, we refreshed ourselves at the station refreshment hall, last refurbished around 1910, I would guess, and still the theatre of impossibly animated card games, for derisory stakes, by senior citizens. The clock had stopped, both literally and metaphorically. Good job, too, for on the way back we got stuck in Nice, courtesy of a wildcat SNCF strike.

Gattières

I don't know what the real etymology of the place name Gattières is, but it certainly lives up to its reputation if the folk etymology has anything to do with it. Humans take second place to cats.

Let them eat Mouna

Easter has brought the crowds. Lots of Italians, many of them, I suspect, with second homes here. Another exotic invasion, to be seen in the windows of the patisseries, is Mouna cake, a sort of sugared brioche. Apparently this was a cake from Oran, originally for Spanish exiles, which then spread throughout the European population of North Africa, and came to this part of France with the Pieds Noirs. As far as I can tell, it is only eaten at Easter.

Feeding the five thousand

Though everybody speaks about the ecological crisis of the Mediterranean - chemical dumping, spread of aggressive foreign seaweeds, loss of coral, plagues of jellyfish, collapse of tuna and leatherback turtle populations, the basic fact remains that the sea here never fails to offer surprises.

Down at the slipway in the Port Vauban, near where the volunteer lifeboatmen were knocking back their pastis after a morning's work on the lifeboat, I happened to see what looked like a squall crossing the harbour, but in the wrong direction for the prevailing, quite cold wind.

Closer inspection revealed poutine, whitebait, in biblical quantities, enough for quite a few miracles of the five thousand (John 6: 5-15). Why the normally voracious seagulls and terns weren't wise to this abundance beats me, unless they also, like the five thousand who left behind twelve basketfuls of crumbs, were helplessly replete at 10 am.

Salon Antibes

For the last couple of days little marquees, about ten feet square, have been springing up all along the Boulevard d'Aguillon and in the odd spaces near the ramparts. A gigantic tent - blocking our view of the Alps - has also appeared on the Pré des Pêcheurs, just in front of the town walls, where the car park often gets used as a fairground - you can see it as an enormous white rectangle on GoogleEarth. Why all this (distinctly synthetic) canvas? One of the annual rites to the tutelary deity of Antibes, Mammon, is just about to begin. It is the Salon des Antiquaires, a high class antiques fair, which heralds the harvesting of the first cash crop of the year. It will be followed by others, including a big one for floating gin palaces next week.

The antiques stuff being traded is the usual mix - marquetry veneered period furniture, 'oriental' carpets, dubious, sometimes positively leery statuary, brassware scavenged from ships being broken up, weapons with a convenient patina of 'historic' rust. Everywhere the unsubtle aroma of beeswax trying to mask the violent assault of ammoniacal compounds used to strip previous finishes.

More interesting than the exhibits are the vendors and visitors to the fair. A strange race, snobbish enough to think they have refinement and taste, but grasping enough to discuss prices and haggle with the best of the street traders in the over-sized underwear stalls at the very down-market weekly clothes fair round the corner.

Schiphol Sprint

Back from a brief trip to Edinburgh for the book launch of last year's Lampedusa conference proceedings, superbly edited by Davide Messina. It was Luigino Zecchin's last event as director, a moving moment for us all (and perhaps even for him), and the Istituto di Cultura - his real achievement - was crowded with well-wishers.

Edinburgh was its usual stunning self: dramatic skyline, crisp air and a general air of opulence juxtaposed with misery. It felt strange to be there as a visitor. Luckily, nearly everybody I wanted to meet (barring a couple of EUL and College Admin people) was in, and it was good to renew acquaintances. The personal pleasure was tarnished, however, by a realisation that things have got very tough indeed for those still working in the university.

Tentacular and vast Schiphol airport, on the way back, was the scene of my greatest sporting triumph so far. There was quite a short interval between my incoming and outgoing flights. To cap it all, KLM had put a big aircraft on the Edinburgh run, and it was flying at maximum passenger capacity, with me in one of the seats near the tail. This meant nearly twenty minutes of my precious transfer time were spent trying to get out of the plane. Still, this gave me time to study the layout of the airport on a brochure, and plot the shortest route to my next gate.

Once out of the aircraft, I ran and ran, dodging other passengers and their deadly wheely suitcases like a rugby winger. Nearly there, I thought, with a good chance of catching my flight, but then, lo and behold, a security check and passport barrier, teeming with anxious passengers trying to get their flights and going mental in the forced wait. Welcome to non-Schengen journeys, the only way to travel!

By chance, I heard somebody shout - in English of the continental variety - "Schoort konnektion", at which he was allowed through the posh persons' channel, the kind Blair probably uses. Mustering up my best Eurenglisch, I repeated the magic formula, and was sent to the reserved passport booth, where there was now no policeman. More queue jumpers were now behind me, and we kicked up a row, till finally, taking his time in a very ostentatious way, a mustachioed border guard came up and decided that the two Greeks in front of me were clearly Alqaida operatives and needed grilling. Still, when he saw HM non-Schengen documents in my hand, he waved me through, so as better to concentrate on the sun-tanned. But then came the security check, with whole body scanner, the kind that photographs you naked...

However, my trials were almost at an end: after being manually checked for weapons, I was though; with only an endless corridor to go. Another thousand meters' sprint, and considerable sweat, later, I just made it to my plane. No flash photography, no applause, no medal, but one of the sporting achievements of all time.

Back from Belgistan

Back in Antibes after a longish series of childminding trips to Brussels. Not a city I knew much about before, but which has come to grow on me. It has a slightly tatty, eccentric charm, wonderfully idiosyncratic architecture, a goodly supply of museums and so on, but its main attraction is friendly, talkative people. Definitely a good place to grow up.

The only shock, from somebody now domiciled in the Alpes-Maritimes, is the general winter greyness. Mind you, walking past the Post Office in Antibes yesterday, under a cloudy sky, we heard somebody complain loudly that the weather here was "comme à Bruxelles".