CORTONA IN THE MISTS

CORTONA IN THE MISTS

I was going to write a nice long, newsy blog but Dashboard have changed all their systems since my last teach-in.  This picture has taken me over half an hour to retrieve and add!!!

If I live long enough I think this will be just a photo-blog, I will not have time to compose anything.

We have lost a few notable people this week.

Mandela.   I have nothing to add to what the Good and the Great have had to say this week except that he gave me faith that perhaps human nature was not as bad as it seems to be when one listens to the media.   What I wonder is, if nature can fashion one such unimpeachable human being, why on earth are there not more of them around.

Perhaps there are and they just don't get their chance in history to make their mark.   But, a lot of them seem to try, and here I speak mainly of our politicians, and they fail dismally.   Why.   Greed for power and wealth I suppose.

Perhaps they will take note and try to emulate.   As for Cameron, Obama and the Danish Prime Minister taking Selfies, enough said.   Would have loved a C.U. of Mugabi during Obama's speech.   What a cheek even turning up.   

PONIES IN THE MIST

We also lost one of our best English actors when Peter O'Toole died last Saturday.   

Who hasn't watched Lawrence of Arabia and wondered at his beauty?   I didn't know him well but met him on numerous occasions with Sian his wife, usually at the home of Jack Hawkins and Dee.  The time I remember most vividly was on driving to our country cottage in Hampshire after a hard weeks work in London to find our drive filled with grand chauffeur driven cars, an Iso Bifo Batserini, a fancy Ferrari type sports car belonging to Jeremy Lloyd, and a lot of noise.

It was the perfect summer evening, full of atmosphere, blackbirds singing, the smell of summer Phlox and an unmistakeable hint of alcohol in the air.

Jack was working on Goodbye Mr. Chips in a boys school, Sherborne in Dorset with Peter, Jeremy Lloyd and another handful of great actors and they had been hijacked by Jack to finish up the week having a drink at the cottage on their way back to London!

I walked in on a picture of eight highly inebriated men all howling with laughter, wine bottles on every surface.   I became the butt of this humour as soon as I entered the fray.   I was young, not totally at ease with these quick thinking jokesters and immediately probably showed how inappropriate I thought their behaviour was.   What would the locals think?  You could hear them a mile away.

I only had to look up the drive to find out.   The whole village had come out to watch as soon as the news spread that Peter O'Toole was in town.   

I think he won an Oscar Nomination for Mr. Chips.   He was nominated six or seven times but never won.   He asked the nomination committee not give him a Lifetime Award until he was ninety because he wanted to try to win an Oscar fair and square.   He should have had seven by the time he died.

His performance on stage in Jeffrey Barnard Is Unwell is never to be forgotten.   Never has anyone played drunk for that long on a heavily raked stage, clutching a lit cigarette without crashing into the orchestra pit.   He spoke continuously for three hours and never forgot one word of his lines.   His performance was probably not all acting if the truth was known!   Wonderful but life-threatening.

He was as beautiful in real life as he was on screen and one of the best and funniest raconteurs one could ever meet.   He and Richard Harris would put to shame any comedian today.   

Until ten that night in Binley one after the other of these thesps took it in turn to tell stories and if I had that evening on tape it would be worth a million today.   I just wish I could remember one tale to tell.   I do know that I was furious when he said he had peed in the kitchen sink because he couldn't find the loo!!!!

Every time I used that sink for ever after I thought of Peter!!!

PRETTY BUTTERFLIES, UGLY CHILDREN!

COULDN'T FIND A CABBAGE WHITE

I THOUGHT I COULD EAT A LOT!

CABBAGE WHITE EGGS

Eggs no longer.   The caterpillars have eaten all of my winter greens!!!

AFTERNOON SUNBATHING

I also lost two of my precious baby doves to the blasted cats that roam the countryside here.   Nobody has their farm cats neutered here and therefore we are overrun with very hungry wild animals who would take your hand off for a bit of second hand pasta!   Mum Dove had spent three weeks diligently bringing up twins and the first time they flew to the ground to explore the outside of their rather smelly shelter, they were breakfast.   

Funnily, I found an egg kicked out of one of the nest boxes and lying on the floor this morning.   It must have been frozen jelly and I really do not understand why they are still laying at Xmas time.   Perhaps Mum was so disgusted after her last effort that she decided children were not worth the effort.   

I thought birds only laid one or two clutches in the spring time.   These doves have produced nest after nest of young, most of which have been eaten by cats.   I am going to find a way of keeping them healthy until they can fly.   Their home is high-rise and if you cannot fly off the ground again when you come of age, you are dead meat.  

  

Cats beware.   I am after you.    Give me a dog any day.   

OR PREFERABLY, A HORSE!

I am also after the heron who visits every morning before I am awake and enjoys breakfasting on one or two fat goldfish in the lago.   I have trained Lamu to chase him off even before she has had a comfort break!!

My kitchen garden is finally being upgraded but no pictures to publish of flowers.   Except one of my pines has suddenly burst into flower.   I thought they grew in hot climes.   Here it is 4C or 5 below at night at the moment.   Strange.

DON'T KNOW ITS NAME

PICS OF THE YEAR:

I SEE NO SHIPS

BET THEY CAN'T SEE ME?

Am going to bed now, this has taken me hours!

Beautiful sunset.

SWALLOWS & AMAZONS!

WRITTEN IN THE SUMMER BUT NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN!

Amongst my early morning listening I caught an article on BBC 4 which was an article on the world-wide disappearance of insects, butterflies and moths necessary to fertilize our crops in the fields and gardens.

Bees are dying of varroa, insecticides kill wild bumblebees, moths, hover flies, ladybirds and a myriad of others I would not even recognize, nor would a large number of the green conservationists.

I have suffered severely from the loss of bees from my beehives not only in Cornwall but here in Tuscany and on trying to refill my colony this year have been told that my friend has just lost 65 hives full of bees. Not all through infestation of mites but the length and low temperatures of our past winter.

So no bees this year (2010), well not in my hives.

Our spring has been no better than our winter and in June by now we would expect uninterrupted sunshine. Instead we have two or three days of sweltering heat, upon which we switch on all cooling possible within the house and then three days of cold when all fires are lit again!

Today, on walking up the driveway I was stopped in my tracks beneath the lime trees by the sound of bees and a myriad of other insects sucking the lime flowers dry of pollen and nectar. This is not a sound, it is a loud noise! Something one would not expect from something so small but multiplied by one hundred thousand, is really quite loud.

I stood and examined our hungry visitors. The list, if I had known half of their names, would have filled a foolscap page. Insects of every size, colour, and uglieness were filling their tummies with food either for themselves or their young. Butterflies covered the trees, proboscis rampant! Probably moths will join their throng at dusk, together with the fire-flies. So here in Italy, apparently the farmers will have their crops pollinated this year.

In England, only common sense tells us that as more and more hedgerows are grubbed out and more herbicides are used, then more of our wildlife will suffer. Nobody, least of all the government seem to care. They will when it is too late and even then they will blame somebody else.

Insects have more than their fair share of predators as well as mankind and this was proven by one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. Something I will remember when I lie on my couch preparing myself to meet my Maker.

Following my walk beneath the lime trees to mow the olive terraces, mulling over the extraordinary amount of wild life non extant in our area of farmland in Italy, I climbed onto my tractor.

Out of a clear blue sky I was hit by an avalanche of fifty black javelins giving an aerobatic display that could be described as showing off.

My tractor was surrounded, dive-bombed, hassled, skimmed, frightened, stopped, startled, its safety endangered, by a black cloud of the most beautiful, chattering, streamlined blue-black spitfires.

Something I was doing by cutting the long grass had signaled a mid day feast to these heavenly creatures and that, together with teaching their newly flying young how to hunt had led to a feeding frenzy of extraordinary proportions.

I had not taken my camera, I was not expecting anything unusual to happen.  When I found it it was an impossible sight to catch on film. They were just too fast.

The birds would come hand in hand in a straight line, five abreast towards the tractor and at the last moment having caught whatever the tractor was putting up, peel off on either side to feed again. I swear one or two were so close they were taking a fly off my nose.

They made hand-break turns, barrel rolls and gave a display that could only be beaten by one of their own kind.

The Red Arrows had nothing on them.   Totally Brilliant!

Bottling Tomatoes

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IS IT WORTH THE AGGRAVATION TO GROW YOUR OWN?

When we moved to Italy I had thought one of the major pluses would be to grow our own vegetables and to know that they were completely clear of any of the ugly sprays that are supposed to kill us.

We built one of the more impressive vegetable gardens in our neck of the woods and have for the past five years tried to be as self-sufficient as possible.

PIC OF VEG GARDEN.

The first year was a disaster as the soil we had dug into was once an olive grove, and was bed-rock. It took three or four years of compost heaps, bought in cow-dung, every bit of fibrous material we could muster to even garner five inches of top soil.

That said we had a fairly good response from our plants last year and I began to believe I could live through the winter months on our own frozen green vegetables, soups made from carrots and parsnips, raspberries melded into ice cream and puddings, apples bottled, pears pureed, and peas to rival Birdseye!

 

Since those early years of my building the heaven in my mind of frozen vegetables,  I have come to the conclusion that after the cost of buying the seeds, most of which become too hot in the greenhouse and die, those that aren’t planted in the correct month die, and a million other reasons why ones little seeds do not sprout, I then turned to the local nursery and bought their small plants. 

That said I thought it might amuse to share the complications of just one method of saving the feast of one’s own tomatoes!!!!

Every time I plant the seedlings I hear my dear mother’s voice saying, “All bought tomatoes taste of nothing but mud”, but only recently have realized that this today is not true. Our supermarket sells wonderful fruit year round that tastes of the real thing.

So why do I go on growing them?

 

Well it has to be for the fun of bottling the remains of a summers’ planting, pruning, pricking, and training etc., of the little red, roundly annoying fruit, doesn't it?

PIC OF FIRST DISASTER OF BOTTLING TOMATOES.

Summer visitors have now left and have barely eaten an eighth of our crop so out comes the tomato puree machine and I set to work to bottle their remains.

 

Not being a local and not really knowing what I should be doing, the first batch after processing in my new plastic machine I bottled and left over night as I was going out for dinner. The following morning I picked up a bottle to check that the top was firmly shut.   I had not had time to put all the bottles into boiling water to seal them and as I tested the lid it exploded and pebble-dashed the whole kitchen in a fetching orangey-pink lumpy colour.

The extreme noise alerted our daily and the look of horror on her face as she came upon the scene was good enough for a cartoon. I was covered from head to foot in a bloody pastiche of a murder and every single wall and flat surface heaved with a bubbling mass of red vegetable.

We were both frozen to the spot for a good minute before we dared move and start the clean up.

 

She advised I should chuck the whole lot out but as it had taken me the best part of a morning to produce four bottles of pulp I was damned if I was going to give the whole lot to the chickens.

After boiling, rebottling, and boiling again I think the day was saved.

PICTURE OF FELICE CLEANING UP BOTTLES OUTSIDE.

My second attempt was just as dramatic. My new plastic machine for machinating was about as efficient of my salami slicer! In my opinion nothing that has moving parts and is made of plastic is any good and the bits that should attach and stay attached, do not.

 

Ten minutes into reducing half a ton of what was left of my crop, the machine bunged up, the nozzle shot off, the machine did a back flip and the kitchen had a second coat of tomato paint!!!

PIC OF MACHINE.

Having cleaned up for a second time which took longer than growing the entire crop I decided that it would probably be much less trouble to go to the Co-op and buy a dozen tins of chopped tomatoes.

I wonder if anyone could tell the difference when mixed with onions, herbs, etc., and poured over a pasta and covered with cheese?

I think not, but I will continue with my Tuscan adventure even if it kills me, which may be on the cards at this rate of experience.

A WILDLIFE YEAR AT CASA LORETO. 2010.

TRAULING FOR FRUIT

The new addition to the pony family has grown exponentially and has already learned all her parents bad habits.

As I type from the kitchen table I see SKIPPY is breaking down the bank between one terrace of olive trees to the lower by sliding down at a full gallop having baited her Babo (DAD in Italy!), to follow in order to chastise her or just join in the fun. Only a few weeks ago she was gingerly taking her first steps on uneven surfaces.

At this time of the year they are either in their stable out of the way of flesh-eating flies or trauling for fruit! This starts in the spring by standing beneath the cherry trees with their mouths wide open and progresses through the arrival of plums (two colours), apples, apricots, pears, peaches, with a rather more than a few figs (two colours), thrown in.

 

Actually, sucked in!!!

When Skippy was born I asked the vet if her parents were too fat and he said they looked ‘fully formed’ but okay and would probably loose weight as the sun burned the grass. 

He did look askance at the almost extinct box of apples donated by the greengrocer that stood outside their field and said they should only be allowed two each per day in order to guarantee against laminitus, a painful affliction most Thelwell ponies suffer in later life.

Little chance of this as their campo is dotted with all of the above fruit trees. What they need is a bit more exercise, apart from sex.

More of this later but am preparing to buy Mum and Dad a little pony cart in order to get around. All in the interests of low carbon emission of course!!

OTHER GUESTS

From our position below Cortona with its wonderful skyline and our vista across the valley between ourselves and Mount Amiata, I suppose the most memorable times in the summer are in the early sunset hours.

 

To sit either up at the pool or outside the house and watch the hills turn pink could make your gin curdle with its beauty. To watch the evening news is almost too painful realizing how lucky one is and how little we care about our fellow man.

I have nothing to say here about this but it pains me every day worrying about ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’! Even watching an animal programe called Animal Precinct can so depress me now about Man’s inhumanity to Animals or to Anything that I tend to play Solitaire or Backgammon on my Ipad rather than turn the set on.

One is ambushed from all sides and made to face the total annihilation of the world. I have just experienced the wonderment of my first grandchild and already this is another thing to not only enjoy but to ponder what the world will represent when he is my age, or long before, possibly when he is in his early teens.

THE BIRDS AND THE BEES!

My early morning listening on BBC 4 had an article on the world-wide disappearance of insects butterflies and moths necessary to fertilize our crops in the fields and gardens.

Bees dying of varroa, insecticides killing wild bumblebees, moths, hover flies, ladybirds and a myriad others I would not even recognize, nor would a large number of the green conservationists.

I have suffered severely from the loss of bees from my hives, not only in Cornwall but here in Tuscany and on trying to refill my colony this year have been told that my supplier has just lost 65 hives from the bee mite. Not all through infestation of mites but the length and low temperatures of our past winter.

So no bees, or so I thought this year, well not for me anyway.

Our spring has been no better than our winter and in June by now we would expect uninterrupted sunshine. Instead we have two or three days of sweltering heat, upon which we switch on all cooling effects possible within the house and then three days of cold when all fires are lit!

Today, on my way to my Ferrari tractor walking up the driveway I was stopped in my tracks beneath the lime trees by the sound of bees and a myriad of other insects sucking the lime flowers dry of pollen and nectar. This is not a sound, it is a loud noise. Something one would not expect from something so small but multiplied by one hundred thousand, is really quite overpowering.

I stood and examined our hungry visitors. The list, if I had known half of their names, would have filled a foolscap page. Insects of every size, colour and uglieness were filling their tummies with food either for themselves or their young. Butterflies covered the trees, proboscis rampant! Probably moths will join their throng at dusk, together with the fire-flies. So here in Italy, no problem.

In England, only common sense tells us that as more and more hedgerows go and extra herbicides are used, then more wild insects are going to suffer. When will somebody do something in the government to stop this idiocy?

Insects have more than their fair share of predators which was proven by one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. Something I will remember when I lie on my couch preparing myself to meet my Maker.

Following my walk beneath the lime trees to mow the olive terrace to the side of the house mulling over the extraordinary amount of wild life non extant in our area of farmland in Italy, I began mowing.

Out of a clear blue sky I was hit by an avalanche of fifty black javelins giving an aerobatic display that would be described as showing off.

My tractor was surrounded, dive-bombed, hassled, skimmed, frightened, stopped, startled, its safety endangered, by a black cloud of the most beautiful, chattering, streamlined blue-black spitfires.

Something I was doing when cutting the long grass had signaled a mid day feast to these heavenly creatures and that, together with teaching their newly flying young how to hunt had led to a feeding frenzy of extraordinary proportions.

I had not taken my camera as I was not expecting anything unusual to happen to me but when I did get it I found it an impossible sight to catch on film. They were just too fast.

The birds would come hand in hand in a straight line, five abreast towards the tractor and at the last moment having caught whatever the tractor was scaring, peel off on either side to feed again. I swear one or two were so close they were taking a fly off my nose. 

They made hand-break turns, barrel rolls and a display that could only be beaten by one of their own kind.  Nothing mankind could make could come close to the brilliance of their flight.

It confused but delighted me.

MY LAST BLOG WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED. SORRY.

I LOVE MY HORSE IS A POTTED HISTORY I AM WRITING FOR MY GRANDCHILD'S BOOK.

I DID NOT MEAN TO BORE YOU ALL WITH MY EARLY CHILDHOOD.

ALSO THE LAST THREE OR FOUR POSTS I FOUND ON MY BLOG WHICH WERE UNPUBLISHED.  SO I PUBLISHED THEM REALLY FOR MYSELF.

EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED IN THE BLOGGING WORLD AND I HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO USE IT AGAIN.

COMPLICATO!

JEAN

I LOVE MYI HORSE!

I was lofted up onto Blind Rosy at the age of four at our little farm near Feock in Cornwall and she became my best friend in real and imaginary life. So began my love of anything four-legged and smelling horsey. Rosy's best friend was sadly an enormous carthorse with whom she shared a field.

Catching Rosy became difficult as Carthorse decided if she was not to be included in any fun going on outside the field, then we were not separating her from her friend. I can still hear those enormous thudding feet chasing Rosy into a corner of the field to be guarded from capture!

Our farm lad used to have to come to our aid with a bucket of corn and just occasionally we caught the pony and I got my ride. I can still feel the earth shake as Carthorse thundered past me kicking his heels high in the air and snorting. From my two feet six viewpoint he seemed and I suppose was, as high as a mountain and just as intimidating.

Rosy did not resemble her namesake and in fact was quite ugly and her manners were no better. I was lucky if I got her to leave the gate where her friend was hanging out and if I did get her fifty yards up the road at a dragged out walk, then our return was at a half gallop as she bellowed her return to the gate.

Luckily we moved soon after to a new farm in a new location and having mourned my first meeting with the four legged brigade and started school, one day a commotion began as up the drive appeared a little white pony pulling a flat bed cart which carried a gypsy looking women wearing a turban, dirty green wellies and pulling any number of beautiful dogs and a couple of stunning arab horses.

Mother met Miss Stevens who became one of our most valued friends in Cornwall. We never discovered her parentage but learned that she lived less than fifteen minutes from us and bred Arab horses and the beautiful breed of dog, the Saluki. The sight of ten horses galloping around the outside of a field with ten salukies following them all with mains and tails flowing in the wind will remain with me for ever.

Miss Stevens lived with her elderly Mother in an old farm The Pelere Stud just above Penryn. When we visited we entered through the kitchen where several piglets had made their home, a couple of chickens were clucking having laid their eggs and a sickly cat and dog were being nursed.

The smell as you entered immediately made you want to turn tail and leave before unconsciousness took over. Miss Stevens Mother was called and we were shown into the front parlor and served tea in formal grandeur from an elegant tea service. This room was for the elegant side of life and obviously its owners came from one of the finest families in the land.

The smell however followed one wherever you sat.

The biggest surprise was the art that surrounded us. We heard later that the family owned much land in Penryn, the old Nunnery, many acres surrounding the peninsular and that Miss Stevens was a famous artist. Her front parlor was full of her porcelain figurines and horse sculptures sponsored by the Saudi Royal Family and Royal Doulton. They had also asked her to sculpt the Beatrice Potter figurines so highly regarded and purchased for years to come.

She however had said she did not have the time as her animals took up her life. Mother always said what a terrible waste of such an enormous talent. I still have a picture she sent me on my birthday which I think is a lino cut of an Arab horse's head. Quite simple but quite beautiful.

Outside of the house the smell and the dirt were no better. Her beautiful horses were kept in stables so overloaded with dirty straw that they had to bend their heads to leave through the door. She kept three or four Jersey cows that stood feet deep in manure which she milked every day sitting on a stool surrounded with the same filth.

My mother begged her to accept all the commisions for her art but to no avail, she kept going with her animals, knee deep in filth, whilst teaching me to ride her beautiful Arab stallion Darky and taking me to Carnivals dressed as a Burbah in bright blue swathed from head to foot. We walked all the way there with four or five other scared children on very dangerous horses and all the way back and enjoyed every minute.

Dina, the pony who had pulled Miss Stevens up the lane of our farm had in the meantime been lent to me as my next pony. She was fine except she kicked from behind and bit from the front. In between, once caught very often with a pitchfork as she was so nasty, she then refused to budge. It did great things for my thigh muscles but not much for my temper.

Tommy was my next pony and he was the BEST. One very snowy cold morning around Xmas time my father told me to put on my riding gear as we were going to see a friend who owned ponies. It turned out that the friend was a horse-trader called Capt. Micklam of Scorrier. I faintly remember arriving and being introduced to a pony of no particular character who was dragged out of his stall by his tail and who was then presented as my Xmas present!!!!

The joy of owning my first own pony still stays with me and the ride home on very slippery roads and down Frog Hill in the snow is one I will never forget. Tommy taught me how to ride and never once behaved badly. I am sure that could not be said of me but he just was a joy and we explored the whole of our world in Cornwall together. I never wore a dress or skirt, just rubber boots and trousers. In fact my toe nails were so worn down at one side by the boots that to this day they still do not grow to the satisfaction of my manicurist.

However, he did win me the title of Most Improved Junior Rider of the Year at the local hunt pony club and to this day I have a photograph of me being presented with a cup by John Williams, master of the Forburrow Hunt in the Headland Hotel in Newquay. I was wearing short white socks and black velvet flat shoes to my eternal dismay while everyone else wore heels and stockings.

Of course Tommy could not progress at the speed I wanted and with the crassness of youth he was put out to grass and a new faster, sleeker model was introduced. Father announced that we were going to see a friend of Miss Stevens who was selling a fast cob who could jump the moon. I had forgotten to tell him that I couldn't and was terrified.

We arrived at the address, someone got on and indeed proceeded to jump everything in sight including every hedge between every field, at the speed of light.

I shrank into the bushes and decided this was a hedge too far but Rhythm was duly bought for the grand price of thirty pounds and delivered to the Pelham Stud, the grand name for the rather dirty farm of my teacher.

She took great care to introduce horse to rider and by the time I left and took my new posh horse to our farm, I had fallen head over heels in love with this equine Ferrari.

She and I jumped our way over everything in the county and out hunting she was even asked to give the lead over a hedge by the aforementioned John Williams whose horse had refused a rather large bank.

Rhythm pulled like a train and even if he hadn't signalled me through I don't think I would have stopped her anyway. She had no fear and when faced with a mountain of wall would scramble up one side of it, look to see what was the other side, if not liking what she saw, sidle along the top and drop down when it looked safe. She saved my life many times and was as affectionate as she was agile.

Everyone loved her including Mother but she did have a habit of rearing on to her hind legs at the drop of a hat and this alarmed most who met her. Only she and I knew it was a bit of showing off and the more we did it the more people thought we were good at our job!

I loved her for ten years but boys gradually entered my life and several followed us to the local gymkhanas around Cornwall. We jumped for joy but we were unaware that she was suffering from some form of cancer and soon after I left Cornwall at eighteen to work in London, she was found by my mum dead in the field.

I think Mother was as upset as me. Rhythm loved Mother's kitchen garden and was often found with her face dripping with blood red saliva. She had broken in and eaten all of the beetroot!

While I was in London Mother used to bring her in at night in the winter and horse and eighty year old would walk quietly one after the other to the stable, no halter necessary!

In London Misty Haford was bought off the Spanish Ambassador who kept falling off in Richmond Park.



Next came



Later I truly learned to ride on her fabul

TWO YEARS CATCH-UP TO THE DAY. 5TH DECEMBER, 2013.

HELLO AGAIN...

Two years ago to the very day I posted my last blog.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the date, 5th December, 2010.  I had been meaning to restart blogging and to have selected the very day after two years seemed serendipity!

I suppose a lot has happened in the last two years but I really cannot remember anything terribly important.   We carry on our wonderful lives on a Tuscan olive farm together with my ponies, doves, fish, chickens, etc., AC flies back and forth to London to work and oversee the complete renovation of our flat, and I eat and get fat in blissful ignorance of any problems in the outside world.   (Not quite true).

Long may it last!   I won't be getting fatter (I hope), having found a personal fitness trainer and the gym is finally paying for itself.   Lucia, a perfectly wonderful young lady with the flatest stomach I have ever met, comes to torture Susie Russell and myself twice a week.   Which reminds me, I must share this:

EMAIL FROM ELIZABETH TAYLOR:  (Not that one, this one is far prettier).


My wife bought me a week with a personal trainer at the local , very chic,  gym for my 40th birthday, so I thought I would share my diary for the week with you. My personal trainer is apparently a 26 year old aerobics instructor called Vanessa who models swimwear.

Monday

My day starts at 6 a.m.  and it’s hard to get going but everything changes when I get to the gym to find Vanessa waiting for me.
She looks like a Greek goddess, tall, blonde, blue eyes, incredible breasts and a big smile from amazingly full lips.
Vanessa shows me around the different machines and takes my pulse after five minutes on the static bike.
She is slightly alarmed at my pulse rate but I am sure it is entirely due to the way her lycra pants nestle between her buttocks!  I really enjoyed watching her give her aerobic class after finishing my inspirational day of exercise. Vanessa really motivated me by watching me do my abs even though my stomach hurts from pulling it in (my stomach) every time she walked past.

Tuesday

A strong coffee and off to the gym.

Vanessa makes me lift quite a heavy bar and then she even goes as far as to hang weights onto it.
My legs are a bit weakened by the treadmill but I manage to walk a whole kilometre!!!!  Vanessa’s approving smile and the conspiratorial wink made everything worthwhile.
I feel amazing…this is my new life!

Wednesday
The only way I can  wash my teeth is by putting my toothbrush on the side of the sink and moving my head from side to side on top of it.
I think I have herniated my pectorals.
Driving is not easy, just braking and turning the steering wheel is so painful that even my hair aches. I park on top of a motorbike.
Vanessa is a bit impatient with me.  She says my howls  are bothering  other members of the club.
In all truth, her voice is a bit screechy at this time of the morning. When she shouts she’s  bit nasal and v irritating.
 I cannot run on the treadmill  because my balls hurt so much so Vanessa makes me do steps instead and now my arse hurts too
She tells me she will help me get into shape and enjoy my life…another of her f’ing stupid promises.
Thursday

 Vanessa’s waiting for me with her vampire teeth and “joker” smile. I arrive half an hour late because that’s how long it took me to put my shoes on.
The bloody bitch makes me work on the rings but when she’s not looking I escape to hide in the men’s room.
She sends another trainer to find me and as a punishment I am put on a rowing machine…where of course I collapse.

Friday
I hate that f’ing bitch Vanessa more than anyone else I have ever hated on this planet.
Stupid anorexic, anemic , brainless bimbo.
If there was any part of my body which I could move without unbelievably awful pain, I would break every bone in her body…bloody cow!
She goes and tells me to move my Ticeps…”BUT I DON’T HAVE FUCKING TRICEPS”
Anyway if she doesn’t want me to collapse on the floor  she shouldn’t pass me  f’ing bars or anything else that weighs more than a sheet of paper.
I faint on the bicycle and wake up on a stretcher in the nutritionist’s office. A skinny ugly bitch who gives me the third degree on healthy eating…
So obvious that this cretin has not a single idea as to what it means to die of hunger…  Why couldn’t I have been left with a dress designer or a hair stylist?

Saturday
 She who cannot be named, leaves a message on my voice mail with her repugnant little voice asking why I haven’t gone to the gym.

Just listening to her makes me want to throw the phone at the wall but I haven’t  got enough energy to lift neither it nor the television remote which means I have been stuck here for the last 11 hours watching the f’ing National Geographic channel.

Sunday

Today I go to church to thank God that the week is over.  I kneel down and of course am unable to get up so I take the opportunity to beg  God to ensure that next year my wife gives me something really enjoyable for a present…a prostate transplant, colonoscope, catheterism, endodontia…whatever!






NOW YOU KNOW HOW I AM FEELING.


The summer was hotter than Hell after a terrible, wet spring and we have just experienced a long, warm, beautiful autumn which was recently punctuated by a mini cyclone.   Proof that it was windy....

Our pergola has been flattened!!!

Five minutes earlier I was inside rescuing the chairs and felt a chill creep over me as I imagined what could happen if the whole thing came down.   I walked into the kitchen and one hell of a gust picked the whole thing up and threw it into the field.   Looking at the stantions I found that they had only been buried into the earth by about two inches.   Bloody builders.   If you don't stand over them here they take the quickest and cheapest way out of a situation, but I suppose that is true the world over.

Today one would not know we had had any weather problems except that a few trees have been uprooted and piles of late foliage lie everywhere.   The lake is full of branches and the pigeons are just out of their loft after a week of winds they couldn't battle.   The sun is shining and there is not a breath of air.   Dashed cold though.   Still patches of white frost where the sun has yet not reached.

I went up to see the ponies to give them some of the grapes which were still mouldering on the vine and to check on their water for ice and they greeted me like a long lost friend as they could not drink from a frozen trough.

Several of us are nursing a hangover this morning as we went up to Cortona for dinner.   Christy and David Williams had invited me for dinner alone as AC was back in London.   Rowan Russell joined us and we went to dinner at the newly revamped Cory's.   On arriving we were told it was a "Magic
Evening"

They were right.   I will never forget it as long as I live.   Here are some images...



.

She reminded me of a magician we used to employ at the St. James's Club in London back in the 80's who was an ex-truckdriver who was a fella!   I think that is why I am looking at her skirt so closely!!!!

Anyway if anyone gets a chance to go to one of their evenings, for God's sake go.   You will never forget it.   Amazing tricks.

Today I wish I hadn't enjoyed myself so much and if David Williams is reading this, please do not let me order one of your Negronis EVER AGAIN!   Followed by white, red, Oh yes and a prosecco and apple liqueur to welcome us to the restaurant.

Serves me right but I did enjoy myself.    Which reminds me, it's lunch time and maybe a glass of red would make me feel better!!