RESTAURANT BY LAKE TRASIMENO
The four days before the great arrival were the culmination of FOUR YEARS of preparation. Buying, renovating, planting, pruning, fertilizing, building, falling out, etc., and there I was with no husband to help!
I am sort of used to this as he has to travel a lot but this was a bridge too far. My wonderful gardener, his wife, Hessie, the dog, the only cat left after the poisoning, and myself were flat out not knowing how our new home was going to be received.
AC's last words were, "Don't worry about cooking". "Just take them out".
The first couple arrived from St. Tropez were they live, and had a dreadful drive through all those awful tunnels down from Liguria, which had taken eight and a half hours, arrived at drinks time. Which is just what we did. Have a drink. Sadly nobody wanted my one bottle of elderberry champagne!!!
The second couple had flown from Gloucestershire to Pisa and had driven for about three hours in the dark. We were quite jolly when they arrived and sailed past our front gate and disappeared into the woods with the pigs, but when asked to back for about half a mile in the dark, were fairly colourful in their language!
Dinner was finished at about two o'clock in the morning with the St. Tropez husband, who happened to be Italian, saying my pasta was too dry. Normally I am in bed by eight in the evening so getting up to lay for breakfast and finding one of my guests already at the table at six thirty was a shock.
Christopher I knew was a famous screenwriter and producer (Don't Look Now, The Young Catherine, etc), but was not aware he had also been a stand-up comic. The next five days were to prove some of the funniest any of us can remember. We didn't "Go Out" much but we certainly laughed. I can now cook wet pasta sauce, whilst laying the table, crying with laughter and feeding the dog at the same time.
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