A MORNING DRIVE IN TUSCANY!

This morning I had a scheduled visit to my acupuncturist Dr. Fu Man Choo!!, and quite apart from a bad neck I ruminated enroute that I was lucky to be alive and wouldn’t be if the Italian drivers had anything to do with it.

My impression was that Italians were supposed to be good drivers.   Didn’t they sprout Juan Fangio, et al, or were they all Spanish?   Maybe they are better on the race track than on the roads.   You take your life in your hands when you join them on their daily route to and from work.

They believe that Fast is good, Slow is for wimps.   They have just been introduced to roundabouts near here and someone has told them that this traffic hazard has to be entered at a speed no lower than 80 kilometres and it is imperative to carve up anyone either already on it or just about to enter.

This should be done whilst on the telephone to your Mother or texting your girlfriend!   Failure to be doing one or the other will result in a fine.

This is also their mindset when entering a main road from a smaller side road.   They wait until you are dangerously close to their point of entry and pull out like a bullet and immediately slow down to adjust their phone to their ear.   Once comfortably adjusted they increase speed just as a corner approaches and then gun it.   This gives them a quick buzz of adrenaline and they are now ready to scare a few more poor unsuspecting tourists.

When they have caught up the more sedate drivers they see how close they can manoeuvre themselves in order to read the maker of their sunglasses and insert themselves half way up the poor mans exhaust pipe.   At this point it is imperative they flash their headlights several times just to intimidate the poor fool completely.

Their best game is to play, “Guess Which Way I Am Going”.   Someone also told Italian drivers that it is cissy to use your indicator.   Many points are garnered if you enter a roundabout at eighty kilometres an hour and then without warning dart to one side of the road and then the other as if you are about to leave but then change your mind and in doing so, totally confuse everyone around you.

These habits are bad but the one that frightens the life out of me and did this morning on the way to my doctor is their penchant of driving on your side of the road instead of their own.   The guy we bought our car off was leaving and going back to Australia because he said he couldn’t put up with the Italian driving for another year.   He said he had been nearly killed many times and now before they could intimidate him, he just drove straight at them if they had as much as a millimetre of their tyres over on his side of the white line.

I now drive as though in a tactical battle with a whole country full of people trying to kill me.   The roads around here have been designed by someone who has never driven, lined on both sides with billboards that distract even the most cautious of people.   They have put zebra crossings just over the brow of hills, just after a roundabout when one thinks it is safe to accelerate, and in the middle of nowhere when the speed limit is 70 kmh.   I often hear the siren of police and ambulance from the road leading to Arezzo and I think how that accident could have been avoided if only the road had been properly designed.   

It is a deathtrap and is lined with bunches of flowers left by the dearly departed.

Someone should not only improve the roads around here but also the standard of driving.

A MORNING RIDE IN TUSCANY!

Hi Girls,

Suddenly felt an urge to catch up with you all.   I am left here sans friends, sans husband, sans alcohol, sans much food and needed to stretch my arms out to wherever you all are.

So here’s a rather long and boring essay on my lonely Sunday in Tuscany.

It has rained for two days now so this morning with the sun shining Kiwi and I are full of plans for spending the whole day in the sun and fresh air.

Kiwi has found her seat in the sun panting for an 

hour out riding.

Last night we had a beautiful sunset, an 

Almost full moon.

It was beautiful this morning so off we set for an airing and we had an energetic , if eventful ride in the hills below Cortona.   Pure blue sky as you will see and not a breath of wind.   Olive pickers still out and the countryside almost waterlogged after a week of solid rain.   We needed it so no complaints.

The usual idiot drivers out in their hordes.   They never slow down even when they see a horse and a dog in front of them and I take a lot of pleasure of waving them down and telling them how dangerous is their behaviour.   One would think that as men of the land they would foresee the dangers of speeding past a prancing horse, if not to the animal, to their damned car!   

The other thing that makes life unpleasant on a horse are the multitude of dogs that on hearing the clip clop take it into their heads to hurl themselves at the fence of their enclosure and go ballistic for a good five minutes until we are out of earshot.   Luckily Salino is used to noisy dogs from his days at the stables with Paolo so he takes it in his stride but nobody even puts their heads out of a window and tells Fido to shut up.   I suppose if they saw me lying in a pool of blood they would take some notice but even that is debatable!   Not very friendly the folk around the farming community of Camucia.

And don’t get me onto the subject of drivers not tipping their forelocks when you have stopped in your car, backed up for them for hundred yards to find a passing space large enough for them to get by, and then just driving off without a nod or a smile.   If they could hear the invective I throw at them through my half open window, they wouldn’t do it twice!   Did their mothers never tell them to say thank you?

I rode across the big open field behind Villa Sodo.   You will know it from the front as you drive from Sodo on the steep road to Cortona.   A very imposing villa from the front and from the back it’s almost like a village.   Oh for some of their outbuildings, I could even keep a few pigs.   

We were jogging along with not a care in the world when I took out my phone to take some better pics and right at the apex of the field and miles from any large rock I dropped my camera.   After much encouragement to Kiwi to pick it up and give it to me I bit the bullet and dismounted.  Bad idea but necessary.   Could I get my fat body back into the saddle, could I hell.   Salty didn’t help by doing a version of Swan Lake around me as I hopped on one leg with the other stuck in the stirrup.   

I hopped and swore but no luck and had to walk all the way back down to Paolo’s filthy field where he has every clapped out piece of agricultural equipment he has has ever bought and then dumped.   Old hay ricks falling into the ground, tiles, old bathtubs, sinks, tyres, bricks, you get the picture.   The first pallets I balanced on flew up at one end and scared the horse and I was just about to sit down and cry when he took pity on me and behaved long enough for me to hoist my now exhausted body on board.

All the way home I was trying to invent a way of remounting when bereft of anything to stand on.   My best bet would be a rope ladder that hooks over the pommel of the saddle and dangles to just the right height to get ones' foot in, just like the ladder they have on the outside of a speedboat.   Maybe I could make one!   Or buy a jetpack!!!   I might make a fortune out of the invention.   I bet there are a lot of old women riders who once grounded can’t get mounted again!!!

Salty laughing at my antics trying to remount.

The foothills of Cortona.

It’s always a revelation to me as to how much one can see from the back of a horse.   You car bound people don’t know what you are missing.   This morning I saw into several bedroom windows, everyone’s back gardens full of more orange marrows than will ever be consumed, noted what should be showing in my Orto and what I have forgotten to plant.   On a sadder note, I have seen how many little cottages that have become empty and abandoned in places out of the way of roads and milling people.   

There is a beautiful little cottage and a fairly large house just near a delightful bridge up in the hills that used to be full of animals and bustling old people.   Now silent and empty with weeds growing where well tended gardens used to thrive.

It seems it is not only the shops that are failing in Camucia but the countryside is taking on an emptiness I don’t remember before.

Salty insists on practicing emergency halts from time to time and the first time he did it I nearly shot over his head.   I couldn’t see what was alarming him but I am used to him now and know that when he sees an oak tree he is aware the road is covered with acorns and he dearly loves an acorn as they would say in Cornwall.   This morning he did one of his emergency halts and I looked for the tree but saw none.   He had seen something I couldn’t.   There was a chap completely hidden up an olive tree on a ladder.   He wasn’t pleased when I asked him to come down from his ladder while we passed but there was no way Salty believed it wasn’t something that he should be mortally afraid of and to go back would have taken half an hour.

He sometimes throws out the anchors when sunlight turns to shadows or at a large black dustbin but I always put that down to his bullfighting days in Portugal.   I think he sees black bulls coming to get him.

Paolo has spread all his old horse manure over the olive terraces across the river behind our farm and the cingiale have had a fine old time muck spreading!   This morning as we rode by I thought mushrooms had grown all over it.   However, it turned out that someone has spread the muck with old pieces of bread and some corn.   I suppose they are going to ambush the pigs tonight whilst they rootle amongst the manure.   Now I know why Kiwi comes back licking her lips.   Better keep her in tonight.

My spinach is doing well.

Home again after a lovely morning out.   Hay and corn for Salty.   Ribolita for me.

Sorry if I have bored you but wherever you are I hope you have had as life enhancing an hour or two as I have.   

I still wish you would all come back and we could go for a slap up pranzo somewhere.

I send much love,

Thelma.

Xxxxxx

BLOOMING LONDON

INSPIRED BY A BUNCH OF DAFFODILS IN THE FLAT I WENT 

WALKABOUT IN LONDON FOR AN HOUR OR TWO TODAY

DEAR OLD GREY LONDON HAS SPRUNG INTO BLOOM.   SHOPS AND RESTAURANTS HAVE ALL COVERED THEMSELVES IN COLOUR.

  

  

ELIZABETH STREET HAD DONE WONDERFULLY ESPECIALLY A SHOP THAT SELLS CAKES!

  

MY OLD BANK HAD MADE AN EFFORT

ANTIGUA CALLING. FEBRUARY 2019. SOUTHPOINT HOTEL.

Darling Froika,

The silence had become almost deafening but I am just as much to blame as anyone.   Apologies.

It was good to hear all your news and I am pleased that you are all up to no good somewhere on this poor benighted planet.

We are living the life of stranded sailors on a desert island, sun, sea, no drink to speak of, and a lot of tinkling tin drums and drunken yachties who live it up in the bar every night.

The hotel is ideal and right on the water’s edge, the marina in front of us.   You will see from the pics that we look out onto billions of pounds worth of floating gin palaces.   I looked Siren up on the internet the other day out of a morbid sense of nosiness and wondering how long I would have to save my monthly stipend before I could afford a month sailing the high seas in the lap of luxury.

The answer was that not only would I have to sell everything I own, including my body down the sunny side of Jermyn Street, live to be one hundred and fifty,  and even then I would not have enough!   Three hundred and fifty six thousand pounds per week plus 50% on top for tips for the crew, gas, harbour dues, etc. etc.   The irony is that I used to know the owners, the Reuben brothers.   They were scrap metal dealers in their first incarnation.   As mother used to say, “Where there’s muck, there’s money”!

We watch the comings and goings from dawn to dusk and marvel as the captains manoeuvre these behemoths into berths no bigger than a space for a car.   They deserve every penny they get because a collision between two of these mothers would probably cost a cool million to repaint!

Yesterday a Trimaran arrived and as there was no space at the official boom, they grabbed a space on our dock and busily got down to working on some problem they seemed to be having with one of the hulls.   As befits a nosey old broad who thinks she knows a bit about boats I sauntered down to find out about their problem.   The boat was so large it looked as though it might have been an America’s Cup Challenger and had Masserati written all over it.   I didn’t discover much as the crew didn’t speak a word of English but answered me in perfect Italian.   Of course I showed off my language skills and then slunk home.

We have a beautiful, Armani-ish room big enough to play football in.   Needless to say we left our ball in London and just lie around the pool criticising the other fat residents!   Actually we seem to have the whole place to ourselves as everyone goes out and dices with death on the Antiguan roads and the locals high on ganja.   Experience tells me that at our age we are better off frying to a crisp than gathering road rash on the potholes of the island.   The roads are worse than in Italy If that is possible!

On the subject of football Rowie!!!!!

 

We are both well but miss our friends.   We seem to have been away from the farm for far too long.   Our other friends who are animal sitting say the weather is barmy and all is calm and collected so I think I will lean back, have another glug of rum and worry about everything tomorrow.

Turnip, that is a beautiful photograph of you and Rolando.   Could I have a copy please.

You both look like sun kissed teenagers!   Victoria, I don’t like the sound of another ailment.   I will look it up on the net and get back to you.

You will be thrilled to hear that you made me feel so guilty that I have been putting pen to paper, or fingers to computer, for two hours a day and the tome is growing.   All I need now is an editor!!!   It has helped, being back on the island where it all happened.

My only ailment is not being able to keep my mouth closed!!   I make the same promises to myself daily that I will not eat too much and then I go to bed feeling full and guilty.   Maybe at my age I should just give up and eat and enjoy.   For seventy-six years I have been on a constant diet and it has made not one bit of difference to my shape.   I think we are born with the body we are destined to die with whatever we do to keep the pounds under control.

I swim twenty lengths every day, miss breakfast, have a light lunch, no dinner but in between seem to find my way to the chocolate drawer as it calls to me.   Chocolates should be made illegal along with all sugar products, or produced without the ability to speak, then perhaps I would lose weight.   

Anyway who cares what we look like, at my age I am totally invisible whatever my weight!!!   The other day I wrote a letter of some complexity to the general manager of our hotel and at breakfast this morning he accosted Aziz in the restaurant to discuss our problem, with me standing by his side in full view.   He completely ignored me and decided he would sort the problem out man to man.   

Me Too hasn’t reached Antigua yet.

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I send love to all of you and cannot wait for a debrief back at the ranch around mid March.

Kisses,

Jeanx

IN MEMORY OF A DEAR FRIEND

FABIO'S FUNERAL

FABIO’ S FUNERAL.    8TH FEBRUARY, 2015   

PERGO. 11.00 AM

On the drive to our friend’s funeral Aziz dropped the information that he had never been to a funeral before in his life except to our friend Normie’s  in London a couple of months before.   I was in Italy so couldn’t go but probably wouldn’t have gone anyway.   My son and husband represented me and although I felt a little guilty and received the wrong side of a lot of my friend’s tongues, I still like to remember him as he was smiling and telling jokes, not lying dead in a coffin about to be burned.

On thinking about it I had only been to one funeral in 71 years 0f life.   Is it because none of our friends die, or our distaste for the sadness of the occasion!?   

The Fraser family have never been into funerals but tend to like to remember the deceased as they were when upright and breathing, and as we have never been church goers, have always felt it to be a little two-faced to suddenly go to the house of God and call on all his powers to help our loved one through the Pearly Gates.

The one funeral  I did go to was a friend of mine who actually died in my arms.   Larger than life and from the deep South, an American art dealer who had brokered the deal for Alan Bond for The SunFlowers and Irises.   He gave himself the title of Lord, lived in a big house in Chelsea, converted to the Catholic Faith, went to tea with Father Ignacious  head of the Catholic church in London, took drugs, was bi-sexual and who drank himself to death pretending that his tea was made of herbs.   It may have a few herbs in it but they weren’t health giving and the rest was Tanqueray gin.

His funeral lasted two hours, was high camp and full of bells and smells.   I still miss him.

Today, our dear friend Fabio’s funeral took one hour but meant more to me than all the high church rubbish that Billy’s funeral had comprised.

We arrived in Pergo at a small local church and a smattering of  acquaintances in the car park.   We signed the book of condolences, we sobbed on each other’s shoulders and spoke sadly in pidgin English and Italian to the locals we knew.   There was no need for words.   We knew we had just lost one of the best and most loyal of friends.

Close to the hour advertised for the start of the funeral we entered the doors to find the whole church bursting with people and our friends’ coffin covered in white lilies.   

Suddenly I was unable to see anything that wasn’t surrounded with a hazy blur of tears.   My heart ached as I remembered  the fun we had had with this sturdy, strong blacksmith, master barbeque-er and all round wonderful, down to earth man.   If you meet one such person in your life, you are blessed.

After the first introduction by the Priest taking the service, dressed in all his finery, invited people standing in the aisle were to take some seats that were vacant behind the altar, probably where when there is a choir, they would sit.

I found myself walking towards the alter, past my friend in the coffin, and suddenly I had a front row seat, looking back at the assembled friends and family.   I hadn’t planned this but I thank God (!!!), for arranging it.

We had met Fabio through Hessi who had worked for us for some years interpreting and generally helping us to establish ourselves in our new life in Italy and the two had slowly good friends and for me Fabio was my rock while Aziz was away.   The fact that he lived over the hill and had given me his VIP mobile number was enough to make me feel safe at night.

Hessi has been with Fabs for about six years and although he was difficult at times, she loved him and on his death bed had married him.    She married him at seven in the evening in Arezzo hospital and he died at 1.30 the following morning.   That is probably the quickest marriage either the Commune of Arezzo has arranged or any new wife has experienced.   She appeared yesterday to pick something to wear to the funeral and we gave her a wedding ring, something nobody had thought about at the time.

When asked if he would take her hand in marriage, he struggled with his last three words, “Yes, with pleasure”.

Looking back at the congregation that morning I saw a sea of friends painting a heart-rending picture of grief.   Fabio’s mother and father, old, frail and past grief but there to see their only son buried.  Two people Broken by death after fifty years of caring.   

Behind them Hessi, the new Mrs. Fallini with a friend holding her upright.   A monochrome picture of the local community all mourning their lost brother.   His best friend the vet, Antonio, hardly able to speak when I approached him, his posse of girl-hunting friends from his youth, all in a state of shock as the joker of the group lay in front of them cold, no longer able to laugh and joke with them.

The Fat Priest droned on and I prayed (!!!) that he would stop and let this forlorn group go home and cry in peace.

A beautiful young girl with red hair wearing a white surplus and Ugg boots sat in front of me and next to the Priest, picking her nails.   She had heard this ceremony too often for one so young.   From time to time she got up and tinkled a few bells, one of the only pretty moments of the whole ceremony, sat down again and continued fiddling.

I noticed a dog bowl under the alter and wondered where the dog had gone.   Fabio loved dogs and was leaving three of them behind at home.   He would have loved a dog at his funeral.

Looking to my left behind the drapery backing the alter it seemed this was where all the detritus of the last fifty years was kept.   

A friend of Fabio’s on my right put his arm through mine and smiled pulling me upright, we all were crying.   Paolo Artista was openly weeping and put his other arm through mine on the other side.   

I think to steady themselves as much as to comfort me.  

On the Priest droned on.  He lit his handbag and wafted it around causing everyone to start a chorus of coughing, he even read out a list of the future events to be held at the church for the next two weeks!!   

Finally he finished his litany and although I had understood very little of his lengthy speech in Italian, I wished he had felt more compassion for the grieving family and let them go home without putting them on such a lengthy wrack.  

We were let out into the sunshine of the morning to mingle and to say our goodbyes to the coffin and watch as his poor mother held on to the hearse as it drove away.

Heart wrenching.   

Goodbye dear friend.

Sleep well.