Sicily Part I:Palermo, The Golden Dell.

"To have seen Italy without seeing Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything" - Goethe

I'd visited Rome, Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Como, Verona, Genoa, San Gimignano, Lucca, Bergamo, and Monza so I thought I had seen Italy but according to Goethe, clearly a lover of the Med's largest and most populous island, I hadn't at all.

I have now though. My Sicilian adventure began on Thursday when I took the train from Honor Oak Park to Norwood Junction and then, scoffing a bag of Space Raiders and a Crunchie and drinking a Fanta, to Luton Airport Parkway.

Jalapeno poppers, nachos, and a couple of beers in the airport and then a three hour Easyjet flight to Palermo. We flew over Eastbourne, the Seven Sisters, Cuckmere Haven, and Paris and as night fell there was a spectacular blood moon on the horizon for a good hour.

Landed in Palermo, picked up the luggage, and took the train to Vespri from where I lugged my three wheeled trolley to Amico's B&B, was let in by Federico, and fell asleep pretty bloody quickly. The bed was comfy, the Aircon just right. I wasn't sure about the art but I didn't have to look at it for long.

Waking early in the city of Giovanni Falcone, Mario Balotelli, and Luca Guadagnino (born elsewhere in Italy but somehow linked to the Sicilian capital) I headed off to the historic centre and the Quattro Canti.

Where, it seems, you find the heart of Palermo. I found opera singing buskers, a harpist playing The Cranberries' Zombie, and I also found a delightful breakfast.

At Morettino I had a breakfast of focaccia with goat's cheese, walnuts, pear compote, and black bee honey and washed it down with a rather lovely cappuccino Siciliano before I wandered round the beautiful piazzas of Bellini, Pretoria, and Bologni and took in some of the fantastically odd baroque churches. The likes of San Giuseppe de Teatini, Santa Caterina, Il Gesu, and La Martorana. It was turning into a lovely first day in Palermo and a great first day of the holiday.

I had a look around the hectic Piazza Ballaro market in the Albergheria district (lots of dead octopus, lots of loud music, lots of offers on Aperol Spritz) and made my through the delightful, palm tree dotted, Villa Bonano to the enormous Palazza dei Normani. Nearly nine hundred years old with impressive mosaics and a couple of lovely jugs, it wasn't cheap to go in but I think it was worth it and it certainly helped build up my hunger.

So I repaired to Sapore di Sicilia near the Cathedral and had a quattro formaggio pizza and a birra Moretti before wandering back through the market, seeing a lot of cats, and witnessing a skirmish between a street vendor and a smartly dressed local street drinker. In Italy, even the drunks wear natty threads.

I had a good look round the contemporary art museum which featured lots of very impressive local artists as well as work by William Kentridge and Jannis Kounellis and then, after a gelato stracciatella (very tasty, they all are), it was time to retreat to the digs for a siesta (not a nap, a siesta) and a bit of phone charging. 

The evening saw a Paulaner on the terraza of the Monkey bar and then a walk down to the seafront for a sundowner at the Nauto beach bar. A live band did a soundcheck of Lovely Day, Let's Dance, and, er, Alive And Kicking so I thought I'd stick around for the actual set. Cod reggae versions of I'm Not In Love, The Final Countdown, Break My Stride, and Michael Sembello's Maniac didn't really work and their take on The Scorpions' Wind of Change was so bad it almost worked but they turned it round eventually.

Which of course meant another drink. Easy ("like a Sunday morning") isn't really a Friday night tune but it sounded okay but better still were their versions of Rocket Man, Seven Nation Army, and even a bit of Al Green and The Temptations. Even Solomon Burke. Blurred Lines doesn't seem to have the stigma in Italy us Brits attach to it and, most odd of all, the tune that went down best was Morcheeba's Rome Wasn't Built In A Day. Not a song I'd ever given much thought or time to.

As I passed back through the centre of Palermo I noticed bars called George Best, Gascoigne's, and Drunks (hmmm, can you see a theme) and noted the young and beautiful of Sicily's capital having it large to Ini Kamoze. I went back to the B&B and watched The Rest Is Entertainment podcast on my phone!

The next day began with breakfast in I Cucci. Arancini with three cheeses, chocolate brioche, and a cappuccino as well as a Coke Zero (in a glass bottle, always the best) before a visit to the incredible cathedral. The crypt really only of interest to those with a high level of knowledge about sarcophagi design but the rooftop walk was amazing. Views of the mountains on three sides and the sea on the fourth, the architecture is pretty amazing too and speaks of many of the different peoples that have passed through, or even conquered, Sicily.

Even if, primarily, it is an Arab-Norman construction. After that I had a trip to the modern art gallery. I had an idea of making a note of who all the artists were on show but then realised it would take me longer to write this blog than it took me to actually go round the gallery so here's some of my favourite artworks that were on show (quite a few of them) and the artists that stood out for me were Francesco Lojacano, Antonio Leto, and Michele Catti. You'll just have to guess which works are theirs! There were even works by a couple of artists I'd previously heard of:- Gino Severini and Carlo Carra.

All of that culture was pretty thirsty work so I grabbed myself my first ever Sicilian granita (opting for lemon and choosing not to have the added Prosecco) and, golly, it was tasty. So refreshing. It was the best granita I'd ever had and, though I had a few more as the holiday progressed, it remains so now. Made with local lemons (Sicily is big on lemons, I wish I'd worn my 'naughty lemon' shirt) and as an added bonus the vendor thought I was Spanish.

I had a walk around the La Kalsa district in the footsteps of Garibaldi and the murdered anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone and at one church (La Magione) I nearly ended up crashing a wedding. I wish Giovanni and Francesca all the best. I had a look around the gorgeous gardens of Villa Giuluia and then it was time, again, for another siesta.

And why not? That evening I had a beer at Barrel44, a pizza at Appeti, and another couple of beers in the Shelby pub. I'd had fun on my own during the day but it would have been nice to have somebody to chat to in the evening. I felt a bit lonely if truth be told.

On my final day in Palermo I decided to address that in one of the only ways I know how. I went for a big long walk. Eight miles to Mondello and the beach with, initally, just an almond granita to fuel me. It was nowhere nice as the lemon one and, in fact, had the consistency and appearance of the bowls of Ready Brek my mum used to make for me when I was at junior school.

Quite filling though. I walked to the edge of Palermo proper, past the Sexy Shop, and made my way along the huge promontory of Monte Pellegrino (adorned with, as so much is at the moment, a huge Palestinian flag) accompanied by cicadas, lizards, and butterflies.

It was a really beautiful stretch and it took me about three hours before I reached the edge of Mondello and then the beach itself. The beach was beautiful and the water looked lovely although there were two disappointments. (1) Some Italian beaches are dominated by beach clubs, or lidos, in which you have to pay large amounts of money to use the beach - even if smaller areas are given over to free beach use and you can always get in the sea. (2) I was alone so I had nobody to watch my stuff if I wanted to, and I did, get in the hugely inviting water.

So I didn't. Instead I had penne con pomodoro and a Coke Zero at a place called Marino and then got the bus back to Palermo. It dropped me off in a part of the city I didn't know and my phone then died. I couldn't find anyone who spoke English so I couldn't get directions to the centre. I did, at least, manage to score a gelato.

Eventually I found a cafe, ordered a Coke, and charged my phone up to 1% which was enough to work out a route back to the centre which I then took. I stopped at a couple of bars before heading back to the room for an early-ish night. My time in Palermo had been, on the whole, very good but the next morning it would be time to move on and I will, of course, pick up on that story in the second part of my Sicilian travelogue. Thanks to anyone who bothered reading. I know other people's holiday stories can be boring but hopefully at least some of the photos are nice.

Death Is Not The End (But You Might Wish It Was).

Dying doesn't look much fun. No matter how you do it. Alone, surrounded by loved ones, in a hospital, at home, on a battlefield. The act of dying just isn't one that people tend to look forward to. But being dead? That's okay. You don't know anything about. It is, they say, only sad for others. You just get a long long sleep with no dreams.

That's what I reckon anyway. But for some people, famous people more often than not, death is not the end of their story and last night I was at The Bell in Whitechapel for a London Fortean Society talk called Posthumous Indignities of the Famous that looked into exactly that subject. The gleeful and dapper speaker was City of London tour guide and 'cemetery supremo' (there's a job that'll look good on your CV) Rob Stephenson (he works at both Kensal Green and West Norwood among others) and if his talk was more a list of short stories than one all enveloping look at the subject then that's fine. There's not much to link those in his illustrious role call except that they all suffered the aforementioned 'posthumous indignities'.

There was a lot of 'em so I won't go into them all and some I'll only touch on but first a bit of background. You can't own a human body after death. Bodies are not considered property. Often once buried they are disturbed or even defiled. This can be due to vengeance, curiosity, or even veneration. For years the theft of a dead body was considered a minor misdemeanour but that all changed with The Anatomy Act of 1832 which came about at a time when grave robbing was rife and something, it seems, needed to be done. 

Louis XIV of France died in 1750 and was buried, according to French tradition, at St Denis but during the French Revolution his grave was raided and his heart was sold on. More than once. Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland was, famously, beheaded. But he had his head sewn back on afterwards and in 1813, 164 years after his death, his vault - which he shared with the corpses of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was reopened for uncertain reasons.

The wife of Henry V, Charlotte of Valois, managed to, in a way, be unfaithful from beyond the grave when Samuel Pepys gave her a kiss over two hundred years after her death (yeah, I know it's on him and not her, it's just a joke). The poet John Milton had his teeth knocked out with a stone and his hair torn out after his death, Edinburgh graverobber William Burke was hanged for his crimes and his skin used to bind a book, and Tristram Shandy author Laurence Sterne, after dying of pleurisy on Bond Street, ended up on an anatomy slab in Cambridge. He was recognised so they didn't cut him up and in 1969, two centuries after his death, he moved to Yorkshire.

Emanuel Swedenborg was Swedish but he died while visiting the UK so his body was put in Hawksmoor's St George in the East church. Eventually it was sent back to Sweden, as requested by the Swedes, but unfortunately they'd lost his head. It later turned up in an antique shop in Cardiff.

King Mausolus of the Achaemenid Empire was a one. He married his sister and on his death she (his wife/sister) was so upset she built a huge tomb for him, thus giving us the word mausoleum (it's the one that was in Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World). She didn't stop there though. She had his body cremated and used to sit by his tomb eating the cremated remains and washing them down with a nice glass of wine.

When William I, the Conqueror, fell off his horse and died in battle in France his armour and robes were stolen almost immediately and then at his funeral a fire broke out. Then it turned out he was too big to fit in his coffin. Centuries later the Calvinists prised open his grave and tossed his bones around and all that was saved was one thigh bone and that wasn't found again until 1988. If you look at his grave in Normandy now all that's inside it is that thigh bone.

Richard III's case is one of the most famous. He was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and buried in Leicester. As with William I he was stripped naked and, also, his grave was too small for him. When his body was finally found, in 2012 - you'll likely remember it, it became apparent that his skull had suffered post-death damage.

 

Oliver Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey but was later dug up and paraded around London, even spending an evening in a pub on Red Lion Square - fittingly enough home to Conway Hall, the Fortean's other venue, before he was hung and beheaded. Despite already being dead.

After falling out of favour with Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh ended up in the Tower of London but when James I came to power he sent Walter to South America to find gold. En route, he attacked a Spanish galleon (at a rare point when England was not at war with Spain) so received the death penalty. After being beheaded, his wife carried his head around in a red leather bag for twenty-nine years. It must have honked.

There was Geoffrey de Mandeville, a much unloved criminal who had been excommunicated. So after being executed they couldn't find anywhere to bury his lead coffin and he waited in some kind of limbo for twenty years until the pope absolved him.

Popes themselves don't miss out on the fun and the best one has to be Pope Formosus who was head of the Catholic Church from 891 to 896 during a very turbulent era. His successor hated him so had him exhumed and put on trial. Dressed up in vestments and sat on a throne the pope's corpse was found, unsurprisingly, guilty and his papacy declared null.

His body was weighted down and thrown in the Tiber but somehow still washed up on the banks of the river where people started reporting it was responsible for miracles. On this his successor was strangled and the next pope up passed a motion banning dead popes from being put on trial.

John Wycliffe, the theologian, reformer, and master of Bailliol College at Oxford was buried in Leicestershire but after death this works were denounced as heretical and his body was bug up, burnt, and thrown in a river. Alas Wycliffe's corpse couldn't pull off the miracle trick that Formosus had.

The author D. H. Lawrence died in France but the plan was to bury him in New Mexico. Trouble is his body was very heavy to carry so the person tasked with the job had him cremated in Marseille before taking the ashes on to America. Where they were refused entry because Lawrence's books had been banned in the US!

Einstein wished to be cremated and have no grave but a Dr Thomas Harvey was not happy with this. He wanted to keep Einstein's amazing brain so he did. And then he divided it into two hundred separate parts. Some of which ended up in Texas. Most of it is now in Princeton, New Jersey.

Our speaker, who had well and truly warmed to his theme, ended the night with the story of a corpse that was not defiled. But was stolen. Charlie Chaplin was so famous, some say the most famous person in the world at one point, that after he died in 1977 his body was stolen and his wife received a ransom note. £400,000 and she could have the body back.

She said her husband lived in her head and in her memories so they never got their ill earned money and it's a sweet story to end on after all that macabre and ghastly business. The Q&A continued in much the same theme with talk of Rasputin, Jeremy Bentham, Napoleon's knob, Eva Peron, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Gunther von Hagens, Lee Miller (whose new retrospective at Tate Britain I am very much looking forward to), headshrinking, and the difference between being hanged and being hung.

Apparently, you are hanged to death but if you are hung you may not die (or you may already be dead). Thanks to Rob Stephenson, thanks to the LFS and The Bell, thanks to Pizza Union on City Road for food beforehand, and thanks to Jade for keeping me company (as well as Tim, Michael, Veronica, David, and Paula for brief chats and hellos). What a strange, but fan, way to spend an evening.