Cellars and Sicily

The name of this blog has temporarily changed from Jos City (reflecting the lesser known Manchester football team). Ok, Mt Jos-na is a pretty poor effort, but it got stuck in my head. But flying into Sicily for the first time on a rather cloudy day, I looked out of the window and saw a sea of white with one ominous black peak looming over the plane. Mt Etna is a mere few hundred kilometres north of where I am now, and it certainly dominates the surrounding landscape. I’m looking forward to visiting it. Although with the sudden spate of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and dust storms around the world, I’ll pick a clear day!

Sometimes there’s a long time between blog entries because nothing much is happening in my life. Sometimes it’s the reverse. Before heading off on holiday in Eastern Europe, I blithely said “sure, why not” when someone at work asked me if they could send my CV off for an assignment in Sicily, not expecting anything to come of it (ha!). As previously mentioned, I had also got cracking, finally, on my cellar.

My house consists of 4 storeys, like all the others in my row of terraces. People in my village say “I can’t believe you live in that massive house all by yourself!” to which I typically respond “But it’s ONE ROOM wide! That is NOT a big house!!!”. Still, if you add up all of the available floor space, it does come to a reasonable amount. I’ll finally take some proper photos next weekend (ironically, just as I’m leaving for a while). But up until now the cellar has been fairly damp, so I didn’t really count it except as somewhere to store my treadmill.

Now however, the cellar has been tanked. (I’ve learnt more about building in the last few weeks than I ever would have thought possible… I know now what caulk is for example.) Picture a cellar, with water leaking in through the walls from the surrounding earth and up through the floor. Now picture a “tank” around the walls and floor – and you have a nice dry cellar. The whole process was very interesting and involved turning my kitchen and front room into a construction site, not to mention all the rubble outside the front door.

I’m looking forward to going home and seeing the final result. However that will be a flying visit to pack some more things before moving permanently to Sicily for 6 months or so, work permit processes permitting (something of a worry – the Italian bureaucracy is not renowned for its speed as you can see here http://www.lifeinitaly.com/flash/default.asp). And just in time, as Manchester’s first autumn tree appeared on my last day at work in the office there. Autumn itself is very brief this far north, and the dreary leaf-less winter seems to drag on forever. Sure, it’s pretty when it snows, but those days are few and far between.

Contrast that if you will with this photo – taken as I lazed on the beach in the burning sun, casually dipping in and out of the water… Although to be honest, the beach (in the middle of a nature reserve) was full of rubbish which was a bit disappointing. Still, it was a lovely day, my first (of hopefully many) exploring Sicily.

By the way, they're not rocks on the beach, they are what I can only describe as fur balls. Little balls of rolled up dried seaweed. Funny.

One thing I noticed coming out of the airport at Catania (north of Siracusa where I will be living) was the number of gum trees everywhere (this picture was taking at the nature reserve). So I should feel right at home here. It’s been amusing to see the locals all getting their jackets out when the temperature dropped below about 25 °C, a balmy summer’s day in Manchester of course. Unfortunately I’ve missed the nice hot weather, but I’m sure winter will be relatively mild compared to what I’ve experienced the last few years.

The work itself is on a power station inside an oil refinery – hardly the most picturesque of work locations. Still, I’ll have this to come home to. This is a sunset over the port from the island of Ortigia, the old part of Siracusa. Of course, I might be living on the east side of the island in which case I’ll be seeing sun rises over the sea! That’s today’s task - flat hunting