Banquet and balderdash...

I'm not quite sure where the last 5 months have gone and I'm even more amazed at how quickly yet another banquet has rolled around again, but on Friday night we boarded a plane and I headed back to the UK for the first time since taking up the new job in Rome.

It was a big night for the Company of Chivalry: for the first time, a woman made the rank of Lady in her own right (equivalent to knight, of which the company has had 6 in 21 years). We are all hugely proud of Hannah, they haven't made it easy for her but after so many years of service and expertise, in the end it was impossible to deny her, so they didn't.

It was a big night on a personal front too - me, Liz, Dawes and Will, all newbies the year before last, were promoted to yeoman; Anthony and our good friends Kate and Steffie made retainer. Liz and Steffers graciously let me take over their kitchen to make honey saffron quiches and roast bunny (or lentils, if you're a vego) in a sweet and sour sauce, and they went down a treat.

It was good to see people and hear their news, and to get about in kit.

The weekend wasn't without drama though... suffice to say we learned that it IS possible to enter the UK without a passport, as long as you have a story so mad it could only be true... in this case: "I had my passport with me when I left Italy but I appear to have left my jacket on the shuttle bus between the departure gate and the aircraft, so to the best of my knowledge it is still in international airspace at Ciampino airport".

So on Monday I'm back at work and Ants is catching a train to London to see how quickly he can get a replacement passport. I'm sworn to secrecy, but you all know I'm writing this months later, right? So cat's outta the bag now...

The power of the human spirit

The Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, came to WFP this week. The UN has a real 'cult of the leader' about it: WFP's own chief needs only wonder about something out loud and courtiers (aka policy boffins) run about making everyone drop everything to look into it. So a visit from "the S-G" is only one step from the presence of Godliness, in local terms.

Part of the reason for the fuss is security. There are people who would love to blow the UN leaders to smithereens. So cars were cleared from the carpark, guards with even shorter hair and crisper shirt creases that our own very classy Italian security team flooded the building with US accents ("ma'am, can I ask you to ensure you display your staff pass please. Thank you ma'am"). The staff filed into the auditorium at 6pm and the thing duly started about 45 minutes later. UN deities run to their own schedule, it seems.

The service, to honour our colleagues in Pakistan, was sombre, gently political with solidarity and politely applauded... There was a video of staff and relatives of the five who died, talking about the departed. Then the head of the Pakistan finance team rose to his feet and talked of his team of 8 staff. As he spoke of the four who died that day (plus one from ICT), the two survivors who are still in hospital (one forever maimed, having lost sight in one eye), many of us were in tears. As he spoke of the 2 staff left, who have valiantly picked up and kept going in temporary offices, we rose as one and applauded. For about 5 minutes. These people didn't ask to be heroes. They would tell you they were just office people, accounts clerks, and IT guy.

But sometimes extraordinary things happen to ordinary people.

Before I joined WFP, I too, managed a team of 8. I look at the people who populate that team, and I cannot imagine the death of one of them, let alone half of them, let alone in one day. To visit colleagues in hospital, to tell them that they will overcome... to hear these stories left me humbled, utterly, by their incredible strength of spirit.

I think perhaps I was not the only one thinking 'I wonder, if it were me there, would I have the courage to be so brave'. I pray I never have to find out. But I hope that if I had to, I would.

Anagni and L...

Anagni is a tiny hilltop village south of Rome, and the home town of Grazia, girlfriend of Anthony's training buddy, Emiliano (I think its rather cool, btw, that after being really not at all sure about this Italian caper, Ants is the first of the two of us to make Italian friends.

They offered to show us around one weekend, and I am once again in awe of the depth of history that permeates this incredible country. Apparently, people having been living on top of this particular hill for about 700,000 years. The towns modern day walls are Roman in construction, and Roman greats from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus used to retreat here from Rome's oppressive summers. But it's the ancient cathedral, begun in the 9th century, and the town's status as birthplace of four medieval popes (Innocent III who approved the first Rule of St Francis, Gregory IX who famously excommunicated Frederick Barbarossa, Alexander IV who canonised Clare of Assisi, and Boniface VIII).

The home of Boniface still stands, intact and in use, across the piazza from the cathedral, in an area that used to be part of the cloister. In 1301 his holiness took refuge there from the french (he'd picked a fight with Phillip The Fair of France, who had started a war - not bright), and when the French had him holed up at home, the townsfolk when mad and secured his release. Gutsy folk then!

Shortly after, however, the papal court moved to Avignon and Anagni became a ruin, depopulated and sacked several times over in the ensuring centuries.

And there are dozens of these places, whose modest size today belies their enormous power in centuries gone by.

Emiliano and Grazia also showed us the newly restored market place and town hall - a reminder if any were needed that Mammon has always worked beside god in the home of the Vatican.

The greatest treat of all, however, was dinner, at a nearby town that starts with L but which I cannot find on any map. Also a hilltop town, heavily fortified with ancient walls, the restaurant we adjourned to is inside a 14th Century stable building. From a tiny kitchen, they serve up a five course set menu of traditional fare that is nothing short of a feast: salume and cheeses, tomato and fagioli soup, pasta, roast meats and amazing desserts. The owners are friends of the re-enactment 'family' in these parts, the chef, just 30, just months into the job, giving up a career in Rome and taking over the reins after the sudden death of his father. The family are obviously still close, and still working through their tears. We felt humbled and privileged to be part of their world for even a few hours.

I can't wait to see more of the Italian countryside. But first, I have to ask Emiliano the name of this amazing place, and we need to go back there in daylight.

, and completed in and amazing dinner, recently widowed, sense of being local and yet special... gorgeous hosts and we must have them over soon...

Remembrance day

This is Italy, so Remembrance day, or Armistice Day to the Brits, doesn't rate much of a mention here. But the war cemetary is in Testaccio, just a few hundred metres from our home and near the foot of the big pile of claypots, so Ants wandered along for the service. It's a peaceful place and I think it does what its meant to with great panache.

On the way there he nearly got bowled over by Amanda Vanstone, who was bustling along in her capacity of Ambassador to Italy. He enjoyed the service anyway - thereìs something familiar and comforting about the military precision of this marking of our countries' coming of age.

For myself, I had a calmer remembrance day than I have in years, and stopped briefly at 11 to mark the moment. Some wise words from my friend Helen from Oxford have stayed with me ever since Florence. Bella, if you're reading this, they are still helping! xo

As fickle as the seasons, as enduring as the earth - that's Italy for you

The nights and even the days are turning chilly now, but Saturday was one of those bright sunny late autumn gems that make you glad to just be alive, walking along the bit of the Aurelian wall that's at the end of our street, past the Pyramide and castle gate, through parkland and the first falling leaves to a new foodstore enroute from the market.

The cooler weather has also brought an end to many of Rome's less savoury odours (dog poo and rubbish - although you still need to watch where you walk, even just after it's rained). These past few days I've felt as if I'm making memories of the Rome I will always love best - the sweet smell of yeast and sugar from the cornetti sold from the cafe at the train station, roasting chestnuts on every other corner in the centro storico, and dark and stormy nights where, even though the roof is three floors above us, and the pavements two below, the rain hammers on every surface it touches and drowns out normal-volume conversations. These are the nights where, snug and smug beneath our blankets, we listen to the long rumbling peals of thunder, that lumber through the sky for up to an unbroken minute, or crash above your roof like falling sheets of corrugated metal and fractured tin.

Wandering around the city, I'm reminded by every weed protruding through neglected paving stones, every subsidence in the bitumen, or eruption of grass in the centre of roundabouts, that despite 2000-plus years of civilisation, Nature is boss here. From the strictly seasonal foodstuffs (you just can't buy out of season veg, even in supermarkets!) to these awe-inspiring storms, there's something about Italian living that seems to deeply respect the laws of nature, no matter how much the Italians flout the laws of the land. And despite the immaculate grooming and pretty face the Italians present constantly (I've met several folk who I would readily describe as 'smiling assassins), I keep wanting to believe that Italian society isn't 'rotten to the core' as some would have you believe. Neglected and a little battered round the edges, and very 'me'-centric for lots of people. But the deeper magic never gets questioned. And I like that about this place.

ranfurly shield

A train strike scotched my ambitions of visiting pisa this weekend ... or even bracciano.. so we settled in for another Saturday of rugby. The Italians really dont know what they're missing, with that silly soccer fetish they seem to have, and I hope rugby's meteoric rise in this country continues. It's amazing enough, that we get a pub that will open early in the morning and puts the telly on, long before standard opening hours. (But meh! It's Italy. Rules here are made to be argued with. Or flagrantly disregarded if they aren't convenient).

But our awesome autumn of Rugby took a whole new turn the other week with news that Southland Stags have taken the Ranfurly Shield for the first time since before St Kilda won the flag. The Stags are based in Anthony's home town of Invercargill, so there were some fairly excited Cundalls in the world this week. The rest of Invers was pretty chuffed too - check out the ticker tape parade given to honour Invercargill's biggest sporting moment in 50 years (with the possible exception of Burt Munro setting a new land speed record on a clapped out but lovingly modified Indian Scout motorcycle in 1962).

My workchum Alastair, who is a Central Otago boy, was effusive in his congratulations... although a pint or two later, he confessed it was because Otago hasnt won the 'log of wood' for even longer than Invercargill, and if the Stags can do it, maybe there's hope for Otago too...

Go Southland!