Granny's onomastico

Today is the feast of the Immaculate conception, and Granny Concetta has been cooking to celebrate her saint's day. We had Sicilian lasagne (meat, ham and peas) veal cutlette, meatballs, salad and panattone. Grandad held up his wine glass, made of the variety he calls 'sincero', and which his grandson calls 'ignorant' wine, and said aloud, 'the man who made this is dead now'. We toasted him, not Granny nor her patrona.

Le Cugine, or the cousins, who always sit in a row together, chirp. When the food arrives, they in unison tie their hair back, ready for business. The plates with steaming lasagne come through, they don't wait, they tuck in. Chirping has ceased, and shovelling has begun. An opening for conversation reappears in the small window between courses, where Grandad dominates the conversation with stories about the allied landings in Sicily in 1944. He was 15, and starving, as the only source of food came from a piece of land owned by his relatives.

As with all grandad's stories, I can only understand the first or last 10th, which he tells in Italian that dissolves into Sicilian and back again when he realises I haven't understood a word. So what I got was that the British soldiers gave him an English-Italian dictionary, some meat and biscuits. That was the first fraction, then a solioquy of 'idu idu Ka Ka Ka' followed by 'you British are 100 yrs ahead of us. We were pissing in pots, you had toilets.'

I didn't want to agree with him, but most if the time I do feel like time has stood still in Sicily. The advent of budget airlines and EU subsidies hasn't changed anything. Consider it a tortoise and hare scenario. Where has all our 'progress' (read: hurry) got us? We are running to reach the same point that they will get to after a long siesta. And just what is that point anyway?

Sugo or wine? la nonna stores fresh tomato sauce made in summer the same bottles as the vino sincero