In Search of Perfect Gelato-Serious Business

I love ice cream. Chocolate. Dark. Sweet. Rich. I love ice cream so much that I never buy it at home. I wait for special occasions. How special? Trips back to Jamaica or to Italy. And I say this not to insult any other countries and their ice cream offerings but to give myself boundaries. I have a simple rule of thumb. If I am going to ingest 1000 calories at one go they had better be worth it. Of course I could have ice cream from the store and it will be adequate but the real question is will it be worth it? When I have to tack on an extra three kilometers to my morning run Brand X does not qualify.

Until I went to Italy I thought the best ice cream in the world could be found at Devon House, Kingston Jamaica. I am a patriot but Italian gelato in Italy is a world of wonder. I try the gelato in every Italian city or town. I have to. And I am going to rank my top five. In doing this I rely on two criteria; taste and did it warrant a repeat visit. I ignored the brusqueness or friendliness of service, the miserliness of portions or whether I was offered a taste beforehand.

Number 5. Perugia. Simple and lovely.

Number 4. Bologna. I walked for what felt like miles. Castiglione is a long road and this was almost at the end. Always a good sign when Bolognese are breaking the queue to get at this goodness.

Number 3. Verona. The city was so hot that anything cool would do but somehow the gelato makers of Verona take their jobs seriously.

Number 2. Positano. The little tabacchi at the bus stop on the main road. Every mid-morning for five mornings = five pounds. But worth it.

Number 1. Parma Per Sempre. I could write reams about the goodness of the gelato sold in a chain called Emilia. As fortune would have it not more than 30 feet across the street from my hotel was my personal branch. These people are so beautiful, they allow you to choose between light and dark chocolate sauce to go down the funnel of your cone before they scoop and serve. They serve with such care and precision and I for one am grateful.

Someone tried to explain to me why the gelato is so good. Something about air whipped in and cream and blah, blah, blah. I have no questions, just hand me another cone this time with dark chocolate in the tip.

Where's your favourite ice cream? Are you a gelato purist? Tell me.

A Simple Mangia 876 Vision

When I was a child my world was books. We were poor but my mother always made sure I had books. Books by the score. I loved books so much that I would sometimes lay them out like a giant puzzle and look at their colourful covers. This happened more often than not after assorted major or minor flooding catastrophes which forced me to take them outside to get sun-dried. I lived Andrew Salkey's Hurricane on those days.

In this world of books there were other worlds, other countries, other lives. Rarely were there other little girls like me. And somewhere in that young me a kernel formed which would eventually push me out of Jamaica and into those worlds of imagination.I had seen the world ofJjean DaCosta's Escape to Last Man's Peak and I knew all about Miguel Street and Cricket in the Road, I lived them. I wanted to see those other worlds, the heaths the Famous Five solved mysteries on ( avoiding coves for fear of smugglers though). Tea, scones, jam, treacle were familiar tastes for me long before I had my first cream tea in Kensington. The Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers made France a must, Dickens' London, Shakespeare's Italy. I had to see them all and be there. I had to be the little girl that looked like me that I never saw in those landscapes.

Seeing real the places in my imagination have changed me. Walking along roads  on which gods would have rained down vengeance have made me different. I see the wide expanse of humanity and I feel my connection to it. I am Jamaican, always will be but I am also

more. I am human and that is who I am first and last.

With Mangia 876 I want to have a chance to help other children see more, so that they can be more. See more worlds through books and opportunity. Through travel and cultural connection. To know that their own worlds are never as small as they think they are and that anything and every thing is possible for you. Your only bar is your imagination. And if you broaden your imagination exploration is the natural result. That they are a part of this wonderful, crazy sea of humanity, they are connected and no less important than any one else.

Mangia 876 will grow because it has an imagination which is many times the size of mine. It will grow with more support, more supporters and as it grows it will help others grow.  Mangia will grow because it is not about me, it is about a community which recognises that there is nothing greater than the community and nothing works unless everybody gets it.

There is no accounting for the impact of one act, one book, one trip, one shared interaction, one discussion, one meal. It can change the course of a life. And with the recognition of that responsibility I consider it Mangia's duty to make all actions acts of truth and integrity.

Always.

Positano By Bus

Positano is magnificent.

Literally magnificent. Since it is on the lower reaches of a mountain. And the only way to get there is by sea, air or torturous road. Since I have neither helicopter nor jetfoil the choice of Positano by bus was made for me. All the better to behold its majesty.

When my train pulled into Sorrento I thought getting to Positano would be more of same. It wasn't.

It started with asking a man near the information kiosk where to find the bus stop, having already bought my ticket. This lead to a great opportunity for him to try to arrange for me to hire a car. A car is so much nicer and easier he said. "Why you take the bus?" he said scrunching up his shoulders, his eyebrows and every other visible part capable of being scrunched. "You will get a better ride this way" he said. Until I said "Cuanto?" Only 60 euros. To be clear, this was almost a 600% markup on the price of the bus ticket. But when I said "The bus is cheaper." He shrugged and said "Well come with other people" and started looking around for other people to make it a group outing. I kept smiling until he yielded and pointed to the bus stop which was just across the street. No harm meant.

Coming as I was from London where the culture of queuing has been spliced onto my DNA I assessed the direction of the line and joined it. I soon realised this wasn't that kind of queue. This was more the get yourself in position when the bus comes to get on first and Devil take the hindmost version. And here is what I love about being an international citizen with basic Jamaican wiring. I was able to override London queue command and call on my first two decades of Spanish Town/Portmore/Kingston bus taking. This means elbows out and hold your ground. For by this point two things were clear, the Positano buses were not frequent and I was getting on the next one.

Leaving aside the gorier details I was soon Positano bound. And there are two ways of viewing the almost hour long ride the the town. All views are either the best you have ever seen or the worst. These perspectives differ depending entirely on your feelings about height, mortality and cliff diving magnificence. I found myself coming to terms with myself on all three and it seems I am not the moderate I pretend to be. Heights terrify me and I am not ready to die. Being on that large bus as it navigates the narrow roads on its descent into Positano was scary.

And in a bus mixed with tourists and Italians it seemed from the tight, tense silence I wasn't the only one. There was a reverential silence on these buses ( I had to take it again when I went to Pompeii and to leave on the last day)  that I have never heard on public transportation anywhere. Conversation when it commences is hushed and just a way to escape looking down the cliff face to death.Your inner voice questions the floss like barriers on the side of the road I like to call the Naked Fear. But one other tourist drily pointed out that you don't see wrecks or other evidence of accidents on these roads and I concede while comforting myself that the driver is in no sooner hurry to meet his Maker than I.

In the end it is magnificent. It is majestic. The town honey combed into the rock face. Looking up and seeing the top of the mountain wreathed in clouds. Positano is breathtaking but I am going to have to find another way to get there. Possibly sedated.

Praiano On A Prayer

Some days dawn, grey and grim. And no I don't mean every day in London. Nope sunny Positano can have a bad day too. Saturday was such a one. Angry clouds and spitting sky did not make for holiday bonhomie. So I did what I would never have done in Kingston. I went for a walk, then I got on a bus. As I waited for the bus I had flashbacks.

Not wake up sweaty, trembling, on the verge of an anxiety attack flashback. Just a "man I remember when I used to wait forty-five minutes for the bus", then get on and it would be full, then find a place to lean until a seat frees up kind of reverie reminiscent of almost twenty years ago in my pre-car owning days. Even London where I am a firm supporter and active cheerleader for mass transit doesn't have the same earthiness to its public transportation that I have found in Jamaica and Italy.

On the way to Praiano just to see what's there was to see more of what was Positano, high cliffs, narrow winding roads, endless kilometers of unbroken white lines and dizzying views not for the faint hearted. These drivers are my heroes. There is no grinding of gears as they engage their transmissions for precipitious climbs and nose-bleed inducing descents. They drive with an equanimity which is unshaken by nerveless drivers overtaking on hairpin corners while myself and fellow passengers look at each other, look back at the road behind us and the car ahead to make sure that our eyes really saw what our brains are saying that some crazy fool just came around the bus as if we are on a flat stretch of highway.

My only meal for the day was 66 cubic litres of Peroni and perhaps it was just as well. I was as mellow as I had ever been.

The drive there and back was more exciting than the contents of the village but I am glad I did it. I had another reminder that Jamaica's reach far extends its grasp. Seven years ago on my first visit, my hosts took me up a mountain into a national park and I bumped into someone who had recently been there. Then it was all about Bob Marley. Now I cannot open my mouth before they remind me of Usain Bolt or call us the country of runners. I didn't have a problem with Bob and I certainly don't have one with Bolt. I just love being reminded that we are not as far apart as we like to pretend we are, music, physical achievement, awesome views and beer that tastes just like Red Stripe are just a few of the things that unite us.

Italy is Never Too Much

Italy does it to me everytime. And each time it is no different. I want to do everything, go everywhere. However until the vision of reality as embodied in Star Trek  Next Generation ( hey Picard's my man, bald trumps Kirk's brylcreemed barnet any day of the time space-continuum) actually becomes real I am stuck with the inability to teleport myself from Sorrento, to Sicily with stop-overs in Capri and Naples and so here is the analog version I have fashioned.

My cousin is getting married in Positano. So ever clever I am flying into Naples first and this seeing Naples and dying is not a part of my plan. I am just trying to get to the source of pizza to see whether the original is still the best Then bus, boat, train or donkey along the Amalfi. That promises to be epic. Likely to be epic too are the celebrations of his nuptials since we all seem to feel compelled to top the fantastic time we had at his sister's wedding some 13 years ago.

Positano to Pompeii and all points in between is all well and good but what about Capri & Sicily and do you think it's going to be too hard to do all that then come back across and up the shin of Italy's boot to Florence? At 1 a.m. when I have eight tabs open showing me momondo.com, the man in seat61, British Airways and last minute.com plus my Lonely Planet Italy guide book cracked at the spine I realise it is too much and it might be too late in more ways than one. So I settle it and my sanity at 1:22. Let's stay in the South and exit via Rome. Click. Confirmed. Done.

And seriously you would not believe this but I haven't even packed yet.