"PILOÑA" Piloña by AsturArcadia

Piloña is a municipality, not a town or village. For once I was able to cock a snoot at the VT place-name database, which seems to be mainly settlement name-orientated. A ‘Pilona’, without the ‘tilde’ on the ‘n’, does in fact exist – a hamlet a few kilometres to the east of Elbląg, on the main road to Ostróda and Olsztyn, in northeast Poland. The landscapes of Pilona and Piloña are in stark contrast – one flat, lying a metre or so below sea level in places, the other with mountain peaks rising to close on two thousand metres.

I shamelessly admit that, in some respects, this page and the eight Travelogues that follow serve as ‘overflow’ for my Borines pages. But why not indulge a little? Why, if you live in a district as beautiful as this, should you be ashamed to boast about it?

Many of these photos were taken during my morning and early evening rambles with my young daughter, Tamara, strapped on my back. Tam is a super little walking companion, even at the tender age of one (and a little bit over). She contentedly endures up to two hours spent exploring the local footpaths, with never a murmur of objection or protest. She has learned to recognise certain types of bird – swallows, buzzards and wagtails being her current favourites. She in intrigued by slugs, butterflies and frogs. Spiders’ webs fascinate her. So do the ancient little Pasquali tractors still used by some of the local farmers (and she has had a ride on one). She has visited a pigeon loft and a cider ‘llagar’. She protests vociferously if I do not ‘ring a knell on the funeral bell’ (sorry about the misquote, dearest WSG) at the cemetery. She has learned how to play ‘Pooh Sticks’ at the footpath bridge over the infant Río Borines, below the local bar.

Let me indulge a little more, prompted by a scene at the end of the Sunday morning procession in mid-August during the local Fiesta de San Roque. The quoted extracts come from a song in Act Two of W. S. Gilbert’s superb operetta ‘Princess Ida’ (1884, music of course by the brilliant Sir Arthur Sullivan).

‘Would you know the kind of maid
Sets my heart a-flame-a?
Eyes must be downcast and staid,
Cheeks must flush for shame-a!
She may neither dance nor sing,
But, demure in everything,
Hang her head in modest way,
With pouting lips that seem to say,
‘Oh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,
Though I die of shame-a!’
Please you, that’s the kind of maid
Sets my heart a-flame-a!’

Not exactly sunflowers gay, or hollyhocks.

‘Sunflower gay and hollyhock
Never shall my garden stock . . . ‘

Blushing, weeping rose of August.

‘Mine the blushing rose of May,
With pouting lips that seem to say, . . . .’

Well, sunflowers and hollyhocks are in short supply in our valley, so I had to make do with a photo of some remarkably flamboyant but short-lived floral beauties that bloom from mid-August to early September (they grow from bulbs). As for roses, they are fairly abundant all year round, and not only in May.

These pages I dedicate to 'blushing roses of May', in this brutal, conformist. pragmatic and materialistic dawn of the second millennium a rare and dwindling species, though hopefully not on the road to extinction.