Italian Rugger Buggers

On the late afternoon of Christmas Day I went to Mrs Combo's cousins, a house in the country where they still kill things to eat. The house is falling down but they have spent thousands on the outside cooking area which is lavish even by South Florida barbecue installation standards and can easily accommodate hundreds of family members. This is the fill-in bit between Christmas lunch and Christmas dinner. The dish on offer (cooked outside) was bagna cauda, a vicious local sauce made with garlic and anchovies into which are dipped raw vegetables of choice for general munching. It was bitterly cold (everything takes place outside) and all the better for that. There was some serious drinking. The main players were the former stars of the local rugby club, now defunct. Because I am English they all take the piss out of me. I can't imagine why. After this playful interlude I managed two other functions. The ever-patient Mrs Combo drove me home at around one o'clock on Boxing Day morning. Surfacing much later, I found that I had brought the bottle in the accompanying photograph home with me, which is the hard-to-get-hold-of house wine for said (extinct) rugby club. Gosh! Could I now be accepted? I have a horrible feeling 'though that I nicked it.

Xmas Cross Dressing

The tempting little minx on the right is of course Giulio the Singer and the rather severe looking dominatrix on the left is Enrico the Guitarist. The occasion was an Eve of Christmas dinner in a local village hall with five courses and as much wine as you could drink, all for €15. We were roundly entertained by them afterwards, musically speaking of course.
The second shot shows Giulio in a more reflective mood at the end of the evening.
Giulio and Car Dealer Bruno will be performing live in Cardiff on the weekend of the Wales vs Italy international in February.

On the House

I think I can count the free drinks I have had in pubs in Blighty over 30 years of unequivocal and sustained boozing on the fingers of one hand. Just for example, in the second and third years of my period of academic excellence at the City of Leicester Polytechnic I managed to divide my student grant between William Hill and the Huntsman, possibly the least attractive pub in Western Europe. It is almost certainly now a pole dancing joint called Sexx!! with a lot of bedraggled plastic banners hanging outside offering a full Sunday roast for £2.99. I used to drink pints of M&B mild like it was going out of fashion (which it did, shortly afterwards). The poisoned, spavined dwarf who ran the place never once said "this one's on me, Christmas an' all that". The place pictured above is the Cavallino Bianco, the Little White Horse, a local bar. In one memorable evening, with the sainted Doctor Munro, we managed to drink €50 of gin and tonic between us. The problem was that the owner, Enrico, matched us round for round with a free one. And as a G&T (Italian-style, ginned up to the brim) cost €1.50, you can imagine the mayhem. I found the Doctor the next morning upside down in a holly bush. The Little White Horse closed about a year ago and is still up for sale.

Christmas Fun at Genoa

Down to Genoa for the match and the ritual demolition of beer and panini filled with lovely Parma ham beforehand. One of the two good old boys (qv) cheesed up for the shot above. Afterwards it was trebles all round as Genoa won (hence all the flags) so we gave it a right caning in two bars in Genoa, then beer in the car and then rounded off with a marathon red wine session in a bar nearer home.

An Old Bowser

This is the local town's bowser which is often on duty in the summer delivering water to thirsty plant pots and flower borders in the streets and squares. In winter it spends most of its time in the garage but this year there is an ice rink in one of the local car parks so it's there most of the time, helping local children break elbows and twist ankles. The driver doesn't know how old it is exactly but thinks it has about 50 years of service. The make is OM which ceased production in 1968 and was absorbed by Iveco. Bowser, along with beaker, is one of my favourite words.

Never trust a shepherd

They say "red sky at night...", well this was the sunset two nights ago and the next day the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and it snowed. However, the siege mentality induced by inclement weather is always a welcome guest in this household. Consumption today therefore has centred around two bottles of wine and, bizarrely, a cherry liqueur concoction in a label-free Kilner-type jar with an indistinct provenance. I do hope it's not some sort of perfumed lavatory cleaner.

The Fat Bull Festival

There has been the Festa del Bue Grasso for 370 years at Moncalvo near Asti and this is the second year on the trot (hoof?) that I've been. Essentially it's a day dedicated to the consumption of meat and then more meat. In the morning there's a show of prize bulls, when that's out of the way (I didn't see one bull; we were in the bar drinking Prosecco) it's time to make one's way to any of the several excellent restaurants in the village and the gloves come off.
The menu was: raw minced beef (with just a little lemon), then veal in a tuna sauce, then tripe with peppers and garlic, then agnolotti (huge mutant ravioli stuffed with meat and served with a roast meat gravy), then the main course which is seven different cuts of boiled beef, served with three garlic-based sauces. Then there was a pudding (no meat as far as I could taste), coffee and two bottles of grappa on the table amongst eleven of us. We were a little disappointed the cheese board didn't pop its head out. Needless to say we drank industrial quantities of Barbera d'Asti.
The chap in the photo getting the first of his three helpings of agnolotti from the not unattractive waitress is a Real Man. Obviously we swapped stories all afternoon. In the summer he lives in the Alps at 6,700 feet with his goats and cattle. No electricity. And he goes up on foot with the animals. His Mum, together with their supplies, goes up by helicopter (€200 + €22 a minute flight time). In the winter he works for the state electricity company, chopping down trees underneath high voltage power lines. Just before the tripe he started regaling us with his Great Chainsaw Accident stories. His favourite was his friend who had a kickback from a tree trunk (he was working without a helmet like they all do, too hot) and he managed to chainsaw off his right ear, half his cheek and most of his shoulder. The blood squirted out for more than three metres apparently.