It's Ferragosto, let's celebrate!

It is Ferragosto today. The feast of the Assumption. (Dormition, if you're Orthodox.) It's getting me down. 

It probably isn't getting you down, tbf. Ferragosto is a big deal in Italy (ciao Francesca!), but you may have managed to avoid caring about it at all. Or you may associate it with lovely firework displays and celebrations. Or the brilliant film Pranzo di Ferragosto (limply known as Mid-August Lunch in English; you can see it on Curzon if you fancy it), which shows how desperate everyone is to get out of the city and have a fab time without caring for their elderly womenfolk.

Salute!

But for me, this is when, as a kid, my dad would usually be able to get leave and we'd head out to my granny's house in Italy. The equivalent of travelling in late December. If lucky, we'd arrive about 12 August and have a fab time. If unlucky we'd arrive in a frantic rush via rammed trains late on 14 August and have to stop off at a supermarket on our way to Nonna's empty house (she never spent the high summer there), juggling our luggage with buying provisions for three days. If really, really unlucky and mum had forgotten why the flights to Italy were so cheap on that day, we'd arrive on actual 15 August (which would always be on a weekend when this happened), struggle with limited trains, and have to buy whatever we could at the 24hr newsagent by Alassio station and live on that for 24 hours or more. One year we didn't get milk. Another year we forgot coffee, and started the holiday with splitting headaches all round. It's a terrible time to start your holiday in Italy. But you can't push it much later, because 15 August is also when the Italian holidays start to end, just as ours were starting. The private beaches start taking away the back row of umbrellas and loungers. There's school stuff in all the shops. All my friends would go holiday when school broke up; we were weird being so late.

Anyway, my point is that 15 August is a bit of a melancholy transition moment in my head, even though Italy was plenty hot enough for my English kidlet self and the emptier beaches were definitely better for us than the high season. This year, of course, all possible moments might have some element of regret or melancholy. We're alive, we're safe, but Stuff remains defiantly Weird and Off, and I feel quite strongly that I've missed the year already. Summer's done.

HOWEVER, I posted earlier in the week about the Little Library Year talking about many, many seasons, not just the four. And I have adopted this. It's not Nearly Autumn yet. Grey, mellow autumn is miles away. We've got weeks and weeks of late summer to come. No beach umbrellas, but still sandals, still endless fruit and ripening produce in the markets. Be of good cheer.

I went to the market with fresh stuff on my list today, but I also gave myself permission to buy lunch there. I've really not had much ready-made stuff this year, but I quite fancied a pie. Or, as it turned out, ravioli with pesto alla rucola. I've got Ferragosto under my skin.

Beetroot ravioli, btw. Aren't they glorious?

Will be around for 7pm cocktails, of course. You can find out what's in my glass...