Last weekend was the 6th Olive Festival at Colletta. It is one of the best social events we have and this year was no exception. We spent Friday picking olives in the traditional way. This involves laying down nets under the trees and thrashing them with bamboo cane sticks and if done properly the majority of the olives end up in the net rather than falling in the road or down the hill. Despite various fears of over-zealous pruning, the olives this year were more abundant than ever. I think we reached a record harvest of some 310 kilos in just one and a half days. Perfect sunny weather again and much laughter. We had to stop picking on Saturday morning to make our way down to the frantoio (olive press) in Nasino for lunch - Garello’s.
First we sat down to a home-cooked meal with great food and the local wine. The atmosphere is great and then after lunch all our the olives are ground between two old marble mill stones, then spun in centrifuges in some ancient ritual involving Italian engineering at its best - before being bottled. It is a magic day for everyone young and old.
However all things must come to pass and this year the shadow hanging over the day was the assemblea of the condominium on Sunday. This turned out to be a nightmare for all present. Colletta had fairly much settled down in the previous year to a more or less stable situation in Colletta where things worked, things were fixed if needed and visitors and Collettiani alike were happy. However stable quiet and happy existance seems to be impossible for some people. After 8 hours of unnecessary nonsense I thought we had reached some sort of compromise from all the machinations but I am now having my doubts. There are two proverbs applicable to all this :
“When it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t”
We have just spent most of the week helping install a new sculpture in Colletta. It is a fantastic work consisting of 12 reinforced glass panes each weighing 80 kg. The panes have been laminated with an amber section which together form a 3-D reconstruction of the sculptor’s father. The sculptor is Jonty Horwitz who is the winner of this year’s Bernard Noble Sculpture prize. Jonty conceived the idea and defined each slice in the work which reconstructs a 3-D lidar scan of his own father. The glass has been manufactured to extreme constraints by Michael Baron. It was delivered earlier by truck from Cheltenham to Colletta and I helped unload it and store it initially. This experience made me realise the very tough logistics of transporting and constructing the piece by hand to a lovely glade by the river below Colletta. Firstly a reinforced concrete base had to be sunk underground to hold a combined weight of 1 ton of glass. Giulio and GianPietro worked several days to get this ready.
This Tuesday Jonty and Michael arrived and we started carrying down the glass on Wednesday morning. One single slip or one single crack against the stone walls might have damaged the corners of the glass so it was rather stressful, but Giulio and GianPietro really had the muscle to make it work. They took each end as 2 extra men walked the 200 metre steep path down to the glade. Then the whole of Thursday Jonty and Michael worked without a break, first to fix the base to the concrete, and then they built a wooden rig to exactly position the glass and then raise each one (with Giulio’s help) vertically spaced by exactly 13 cm. Finally the glass was secured with many layers of epoxy resin set into the base. Epoxy resin reaches 150 degrees C while it fixes! On Friday morning the last layer of epoxy was set and the rig removed. As with everything there were a couple of problems as it became clear that the glass spacing needed to be fixed at the top as well. However the first sight of the sculpture standing alone was stunning.
Then on Saturday we had the official presentation of the work. Many of Jonty’s family had flown in specially for it and all present went down to see it for the first time. Overwhelming positive response! It is a stunning work which will surprise people when they come across it walking near Colletta.
The whole of Italy is on holiday for Ferragosto which falls on August 15th. Its origins are religious as it was declared the day when the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven by one of the early popes. It is a public holiday and since it falls in the middle of August coincides with the big exodus from the cities. The main factories are closed for 2-3 weeks over this period. I had a nightmare on Thursday because I had to send a proposal to Nairobi by courier to arrive on the 19th at the latest. So I drove down to the DHL office in Albenga to be met with a big sign stuck proudly on the front door with DHL tape : “Chiuso per ferie”. After some frantic asking around I managed to send it by TNT instead from a local shop.
Ferragosto in Liguria also means there is nowhere to park a car anywhere near a beach, and all bagni are full especially in popular places like Alassio. Bagni are an uniquely Italian feature of beach life here which most visitors are put off by and consequently misunderstand. A bagno is a private concession for a section of beach where you can rent a lettino and an umbrella for the day/week/season. The beach is kept spotless, there is a bar with service, showers, lifeguard etc. and costs between 10-30 euro a day depending on the season. The public section of the beach is crowded, dirty and there is no shade. Once you accept that it’s best to pay then the experience becomes pleasant - although it goes against the grain for Anglo Saxons to pay to go an a beach.
We are here in Colletta which is another world away from the beach. Colletta is peaceful and lively at the same time in August. Even in August it is possible to find complete silence and peace, while if you want to party in the evening that is also possible. For us though this is not fully a holiday as for our sins we became involved in the rentals and village management. This means that we can never completely relax as we are responsible for the economics and the staff in the village. This is not an easy task in Italy as there are always surprises around the corner and I am discovering that the taxes on businesses are horrendous. Still it is a good season and we hope that overall we will more than break even and even clear some debts from last year !
Colletta was an abandoned medieval village before it was restored to top rate accommodation and the apartments sold. Consequently the village life has to be developed from scratch as there are no old inhabitants, bars, shops etc. Currently we have an Osteria/Bar which works well in the summer but which needs to exist also out of season to keep the village alive. Ths is the main challange - to find out of season activities like - walking, art, music, yoga, climbing, cycling activities to attract people to Colletta and thereby sustain the basic amentities.
