‘ha da passare la nottata...' ('the bats have left the bell-tower')

this cropped up in marco d'eramo's trump survival guide in new left review sidecar. 

apparently it is neapolitan dialect and lifted from a play (and later film) napoli milionaria by eduardo de filippo. 

'the night in my opinion was a period of twenty years, thirty years, seventy years, from masaniello to today. a wrong period, a night that was not over. after the tragedy of the war, the deaths, the hunger, we thought at that time that everything would change... so the war is over, but the night has remained.' - eduardo de filippo. 

the sense of it, and it's weight, is that we must survive the night, and it will be a difficult night to survive.the english title of the film was side street story. 

interestingly enough another of eduardo's plays was filmed in english with an english cast as saturday, sunday, monday. 

yesterday an egg delivery, but at the abbey. horsemouth met sylvia there. as horsemouth entered the ringing chamber there was a flight of bats circling above his head in the daylight. horsemouth was mainly there to hand over the eggs but he thought he should stay and help clear up the batpoo as well. (batpoo is like tiny black grains of rice). there's a batman clock up there as well - horsemouth will try and remember to bring a battery to get it going again. 

there was a chart with the tuning of the bells (e-d-c-b-a-g treble to tenor) and when and in which foundry they were made. 

here a beautiful morning. horsemouth has been out to unleash the chickens later he will water the tomatoes/ cucumbers/ peppers in the greenhouse. he took another small bowl of tomatoes from off the bushes.

in the garden he hasn't been watering the marrows - he thinks they will have deeper roots and anyway he wants to slow down the arrival of new young marrows (and catch them when they are at courgette size).  the few beetroot have grown to a decent size.