A Caper in Salento

Hallowe'en - All Hallows' Day - All Souls'. This is a major holiday for Italy, ending with the Day of the Dead. The kiosks of the flower sellers you see at the cemetery gates are doing good trade. But this autumnal moment of permeability between two worlds becomes a year-round danse macabre in one very famous song from 2008. Come dance in Puglia, Puglia, Puglia, where it's dark, dark, dark... you begin to get the idea. This is a song full of exactly the kind of comment inaccessible to the foreign visitor here, but which communicates a lot of local sentiment. Its irony is immediately understandable to everyone in the region, but there's a lack of any clear English translation online. No native Italian speaker is likely to volunteer to explain it in detail - and not least because it's full of slang and double meanings. I WILL COME AND REAP The Church of Purgatory, Bitonto. Photo: Fiore Barbato via flickr Here's a side of Puglia that's f...

Spitting out an olive stone, let's imagine its potential - appreciate its origins - and ask what it is that we're nourishing Spring in Italy is olive pruning time. I had a go last Easter, balanced up in the branches with a rusty saw. Its serrations snagged in the heavily knotted wood, and I sweated despite the cool air. It was hard work, but also technical - strategic - planning the shape of a tree which could well live a thousand years longer than I. Easter olive pruning at the  Giardino della Gioia Photo: Sara Marzo The ground ends up covered with clippings and sawed branches. Most go for firewood, or get burnt in situ. But some end up in church. There's a tradition in Italy for Palm Sunday; instead of taking palm branches, farmers bring their olive prunings to be blessed. The lucky sprigs are used as decoration. Why? There's one theory that olive is used because it's simply abundant - but a walk through any southern Italian town will soon put...