Archie takes a bow

There’s an Italian tradition that when a baby is born the proud parents would be presented with a blue or pink fiocco della nascita or coccarda.

Fiocco della nascita roughly translates as a birth bow or ribbon and coccarda mean a cockade or rosette, and this colourful proclamation proudly announces the arrival of a newborn.

My Firenze friends Tania and Giacomo – doting parents of 18-month-old Scots/Italian Seb – tell me it was traditionally the gift of grandparents who would make the decoration and personalise it with the baby’s name.

The ribbon would be pinned to the door of the hospital room during the mother’s recuperation and then follow her home to be attached to the door of the family residence or the entrance to the building, and that’s how I first came across this touching scene one morning wandering the streets of Lucca.

Just off via Fillungo, Lucca’s main shopping street, I spotted a man coming out of a building where a blue coccarda hung and with my basic grasp of Italian I asked “che cosa signfica?” – what does it mean?

As luck would have it, the man explained he was in fact the father of the new born and we exchanged greetings and congratulations.

And so during my last trip to the Tuscan city and with my first grandchild (grandson) due to arrive in August, I decided that my son Liam and daughter-in-law Sarah’s home would almost certainly be unique in Midlothian – with a blue coccarda pinned to the door to mark the happy event.

At first I couldn’t find a traditional birth bow in the shops in Lucca’s centro storico, the ones on offer were a bit modern and twee for my liking. But with Scottish pals and local residents Irene and Neil on the case, they quizzed a friend as we sat outside a bar one evening, and she told me about a place outside the city walls in the Borgo Giannotti district where I could find a birth bow.

The staff at Balloon Express – not very Italian I grant you – spoke little English but they quickly grasped that their ribbon was going to have pride of the place at a Scottish home and the lovely Francesca deftly pulled, twisted, and preened the pale blue material into life.

The Dalkeith fiocco della nascita marked the birth of Archie James Rafferty – and he has already left a huge impression on everyone who has met him since his arrival on 22 August, 2023.

And I am hoping that in the years to come Archie will be walking hand-in-hand with his Papa through the streets of Lucca and Borgo Giannotti.