The idea was to put David Chandler (art tutor, watercolourist and lover of anything that will fit on a plate or in a wine glass) together with Loredana Waters (unsurpassable Sicilian chef, professional enthusiast and lover of all things Italian) in a villa in Sicily and invite a bunch of people to join them for a week of fine art and fine food. What could be more enticing? Painting under the palms by day and supping under the starry sky by night on a Mediterranean isle, saturated with culture, where Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans had left their antique mark...
That's how I found myself heading out of Palermo through rush hour traffic in a little Lancia; Italian rock pounding from the car stereo and gallons of rain water hammering onto the windscreen.
Our destination that first evening was Messina, where we would be staying with friends of Loredana. The only thing between us and a bed for the night? Two hundred and twenty kilometres, fifty tunnels and raindrops the size of baby birds, plonking onto the car roof.
Two things I learned during the first hour of our trip:
1. Road-markings are for decorative purposes only and it's okay to reverse on Sicilian motorways if you are in dire need of a coffee, a doughnut and another CD of Italian rock music.
2. Said coffee, obtained over the counter of a late-night service station shop, will probably be the best you've ever tasted. The doughnut will be pretty good too, but the CD is likely to be quite another matter.
Cefalù, where we planned to stop for supper, was strangely difficult to find. After Taormina and Palermo, it's probably Sicily's most visited town and during the summer, owing to its mediaeval charm and sandy beaches, the population triples. But it seemed to me and even to the Sicilian at the wheel, that any connection between the road signs and the destinations they bore was entirely coincidental. Mercifully, after only one U-turn on a fairly quiet stretch of dual carriageway, we stumbled upon it and splashing downhill through pond-sized puddles, we found the ancient port sparkling in the darkness, its streets glossy with rainwater.
Our restaurant was a faintly chilly and cheerless place and would have been improved by the presence of a few more diners besides us. With the whole of Sicily awash, however, it was no surprise that we should be entirely alone. I looked around the room, counting the vacant chairs and tables and feeling embarrassed for the staff whom, I supposed, were feeling equally embarrassed for us. When my companion became embroiled in a long argument with the waitress who then stalked off, I was convinced that I had discovered the real reason for the restaurant's emptiness. But it turned out that Loredana and the waitress had just been discussing the squid. When I tasted it, I knew exactly why this little envelope of rubbery looking-flesh had aroused such passion. It was fabulously, mouth-meltingly fresh and as with the service station coffee, quite surpassed anything I had ever tasted - caught that morning, apparently; the only condition under which the chef would cook it.
After supper, Loredana announced that no visit to Cefalù would be complete without a visit to the old lavatoio, a kind of mediaeval, stone-built washing machine, which utilises the water that runs from the enormous rock which towers over the town and escapes through vents in the sea wall. So we ventured out into the tipping rain again and after losing our way only a couple of times, found the correct gateway. Descending the steps to the lavatoio, with the waves beating heavily against the old walls, we gazed thoughtfully at the ancient stones upon which equally ancient scrubbers got their clothes only slightly less wet than we were then.
Drying out in the car and back on the road again, we found our way out of Cefalù on our third attempt. We were driving up a mountain in a rain storm, in the wrong direction, but hey, Messina had to be out there somewhere. And we were dry.
Paccamora, as they say in Sicily.
