venta

Continuing my rather attenuated effort to write up my weekend... we already did Friday.

Saturday began with some actual being tourists, we went off to a nearby Roman town for a quick potter round. Acqui Terme (it's worth going to that Wikipedia page just to see the truly bizarre town coat of arms) is a spa town, complete with bubbling boiling springs. There's a rather imposing stone edifice built round the main outpouring of the springs, with water diverted through little pipes to make it easier for the ailing to drink the highly therapeutic waters. Where therapeutic is, as it so often is, a euphemism for "tasting strongly of rotten eggs". I had a small sip, and decided that I'd take my chance with digestive and respiratory complaints instead (serves me right: I was afflicted with the most atrocious sneezing fits and blocked nose for the rest of the weekend).

We popped into a local church; its interior was stark, white, and empty. "This is what northern Italian churches are like", said someone in the party. "Very plain."

Huh ? My memory of Italian churches from my only other trip to Italy is that they had gilding on their gilding, and more death iconography than you could possibly want. No, I was told, plain is where it's at.

Then we went to Acqui Terme's cathedral. Oh boy. I so won. They only stopped with the gilding when they wanted to put an enormous chandelier up. Or add a bit of light oil-painting (probably of someone's death). I've never seen such enormous censors, or such incredibly tall altar candlesticks. The cathedral is staffed by tame nuns and one of them asked if we would like to see into the crypt. We would.

The crypt was beautiful; plain, pale stonework with patterns painted on the vaulted ceiling in bright, matte colours and cheerful saints portraits on some of the pillars. It was friendly and approachable in a way the cathedral really wasn't.

Afterwards, Guido (our friendly guide, loaned by La Lachera for the morning) told us the nun had opened the crypt because she thought our Tommy[*] was a visiting Vatican dignitary. I hope he was winding us up.

[*] The Tommy acts as MC, compere, coverer-up-of-mistakes, comedy sidekick and barker for a rapper team. Ours is called Ian. He was, because we were all in costume, wearing evening dress at 10 in the morning.

Once we'd had a couple of hours of wandering, it was back onto the bus to rejoin the begging train. La Lachera had been racing round minor farms all morning, and were now ready for us to join them for the larger affairs. Back to wine and salami and dancing in ankle-deep gravel.

La Lachera's dancing is quite interesting in its own right; it's a sort of dance-play. Unusually for the tradition, women play the women's parts - in this case the central character is Di Sposa (the bride). The dance-play alledgedly celebrates a revolt by the local people against the practice of jus prima nocte. So the various dances show the bride on her way to the wedding, and her being carted away by two of the local lord's soldiers. The character of the local lord is present, though he doesn't dance. There's also a husband, and some miscellaneous soldiers, and a mysterious devil character called Bebe (I never quite worked out where he fitted into the story). In fact, to be honest, I didn't make a whole lot of sense of the story beyond the dance where the soldiers try to steal the bride. I'm assured it's all very traditional, though.

So, we did that in someone's courtyard with staggering mountain views (chickpea casserole, bread, salami, strange rolled chicken stuffed with ham, egg and salami, and wine) ... and off we went again.

The second stop seemed to be in a sort of community centre, and after the dancing a paper bag was strung from the rafters. A child was blindfolded and given a long stick to hit the bag with - he remarkably swiftly split the contents of confetti[**] and sweets onto the floor (later children, attacking later bags, were much less effective and nearly brained a few spectators).

Incidentally, I should remark on the incredibly high standards of child fancy-dress throughout. Princesses, soldiers, animals, superheros, you name it. Soon everyone was hip-deep in confetti and tigers were attempting to shove it down the necks of mutant ninja turtles.

The most notable thing about this stand was that, following some rapid scrabbling around to find a driver, a car turned up... bringing us Mike-the-musician off his standby flight. While we were incredibly grateful to the La Lachera musicians and la giga, Mike's return was triumphantly celebrated by dancing at full-speed for the first time of the weekend. Within about two seconds of arriving he was already getting up to speed on the wine and salami.

While there, Mike-the-other-Mike came over carrying plates of food. He didn't really have enough hands, and gestured at one plate. "Can you check this is vegetarian before I give it to Mel ? I think it's panna cotta with cream on it." I chomped a big forkful.

My first reaction was "ewwww! that's disgusting", followed by "no it's not, it's just odd", followed by "and it's vaguely familiar" and "oh yes, in fact, it's nice". It wasn't panna cotta with cream. It was polenta with melted gorgonzola. If you've ever drunk a cup of tea which turned out to be coffee, you might appreciate the mental disorientation caused.

[**] I was very surprised to find out the Italian for confetti isn't "confetti" (I forget what it is). Though not quite as confused as the Italian who asked me the English word for salami. Later she asked me the English word for ravioli, and I don't think she believed me about that, either.

Saturday night is the Grand Ball - really more of a ceilidh in the hall near the mask museum. A bonfire is lit outside, with an effigy of one of the La Lachera characters on it (apparently they decide each year which it will be). There was a splendid deluge of fireworks as the character burned - only slighly marred by the rain of spent cardboard discs which seemed to want to land in my eyes every time I looked skywards.

Indoors there was masses of wine and salami, and a fantastic band playing Italian folk music. We tried to find out their name, but all anyone could tell us was that they weren't really a band, just a bunch of friends who happened to be on stage at the same time that night.

They danced bourrés (strangely hypnotic, simple dances which I always think of as French) and waltzes and schottishes and - rather bizarrely - the Gay Gordons. It seems that given an open space and a musician, Italians will at the whim of a hat break out into Gay Gordons and the Circassian Circle - dances I think of as being very much British.

At midnight we wussed out and went back to our B&Bs, once again followed by threats that we must walk down the hillside to the main road and be ready to hop on the bus the following morning.