JANUARY 1ST. A NOTE

 A NOTE:

The old year was seen out by a noise everyone in Ukraine must be waking up to every day!   The whole valley of the Val Dorcia was lit up with colourful missiles which exploded in the same fashion as the drones that the ugly Russian so generously fired at Kyiv this morning with a cheery message saying, “Happy New Year”.

Every four legged animal in the entire district must have been cowering in their darkest corners with their paws covering their ears just as the poor people of Kyiv.   Nobody should be lobbing anything explosive into the already polluted air whether in celebration or in anger.   Think of the expense and the poor starving people of this benighted planet.

No wonder we woke this morning to a pall of fog.   More pollutants were hurled around last night both in Ukraine and in the environs of Cortona and Camucia to compare with one of our world wars.   This burning of money certainly in the case of war should be stopped.   This will prove difficult in the case of the asshole Russians but certainly the Commune will be receiving a letter of complaint from me and my four legged friends who looked worn out this morning from galloping in fear with their coats smeared with dried sweat from the effort of running scared.   

I am not a pessimist and have always thought of myself as a bottle half full sort of person but this January 1st fills me with a gloom I don’t remember experiencing since my divorce days.   It will take a lot of happy news to clear away the taste of strikes and money troubles in our beloved little island in the coming year.   

I have just woken up to the thought that what we all need is a good dose of COMMON SENSE.   Politicians seem to have become more stupid and conniving than in the past, the populace less caring of others, our children expecting everything before they have contributed and our elderly being sidelined instead of being revered.  

If we all woke this morning with a Resolution to speak truth and common sense to power maybe things would slowly improve but if we go on voting for crooks (Trump), and liars (Johnson), our woes will remain and the world will go the way of all flesh.  

I know I have not written above anything that is new to any of you but it has made my gloom a little lighter by the fact that I have thought about our plight and tried to put my feelings into words but I am not hanging by my false fingernails until we see things changing.   They haven’t for centuries so why should they now?

Answers on a postcard please!

Jx

HOW TO SURVIVE THE VIRUS!

Hi Escapees!

I took this to show you the sky!   For the past three days a cloud has not dared enter our air space!

It is warmer outside this morning than in our overheated casa.   Observe the weeping willows.  These are always early but not this early, the daffodils are nearly over, I have mown the lawn already and it feels like May weather.

Apart from that I have no good news and even the above makes me feel as though some awful doom is about to befall the human race.

If you are into the media you would be forgiven for believing it has already fallen but we are being typically British.   Stiff upper lip and still buggering on!   

As of yesterday we cannot take our cars out of Cortona airspace unless we download a form, fill it in and prove that we have some life or death situation that needs our presence.   The fact that there is not a police force large enough to enforce this law leaves me feeling ambivalent towards the whole shut-down situation.

Aziz went to London against my superior advice and now finds that all his meetings have been cancelled as they don’t want anything to do with a gypsy Albanian from Italy so now he is trying to return on the last flight out of Stansted on Friday, if its not cancelled by Ryanair due to lack of passengers!

The pluses outweigh the minuses.   I know he is entering a no-go area but the alternative is worse.  He is worrying about us out here, he doesn’t know where the kitchen is in London, he boils eggs in the electric kettle and food is something that you get in restaurants or served by an aged retainer called a wife!

He is coming from a country with only a few cases and as long as he is lucky on the aeroplane and wears a boiler suit and gas mask he will be okay once he is on the farm.   We have signed a form for Agostino to go and pick him up in Perugia so what can go wrong!!!?

I will be lucky if I don’t catch something as I have been surrounded by workmen dressed up like Aliens fixing the alarm system and yet another three mechanics trying to fix the boiler.   I am getting used to cold water swimming every morning in my bathroom and the sooner Mirko fixes my kitchen and buys us a new boiler the better.

We bump elbows every morning!  

   

The garden is bursting into bloom and is the only thing to celebrate at the moment.

Came in handy for Ladies Day.

I was hanging on to the fact that you were all coming home soon to cheer up this panic ridden part of paradise but now I hear that Susie and Rowan cannot get flights, Christy and David are holed up in San Francisco, Coco is not coming to see the improvements to her villa and so the few of us left to fight the good fight will just have to hunker down for the next two months and hope we all survive.

It reminds me of conversations with my Mother who lived in central London during the 2nd W.W. blitz.  Hitler was getting ever closer on the other side of the channel, the Zeppelins were hovering, the Doodlebugs were flying overhead and wantonly killing her neighbours and yet she and my father calmly walked to the local cinema twice a week to see the latest release and the Pathe News!

She did carry a stainless steel pan over her head to stop the shrapnel from ruining her hairdo!

I know our predicament is not as serious but it is quite weird looking out our valley and wondering what is to come.   Not sure why Italy is so badly hit.  

I send love to you all and as soon as this scare is over please come back as you are all missed.

JANUARY IN VENICE

TIS BETTER TO TRAVEL HOPEFULLY THAN TO ARRIVE?

VENICE IN WINTER

Undoubtedly, if you are heading for Magaluf or one of the Costas and you are young and awaiting all sorts of new conquests and sensations then this old adage holds water, but could not be further from the truth if one is travelling after a long year at home in the Italian countryside where winter is in the dead of its awfulness and you are heading for Venice by the sea!

I was really not looking forward to digging myself out of our comfortable daily routine sitting by roaring open fires at the farm to head out into the cold and watery world of Venice in Flood and London in Pollution but Venice proved as staggeringly beautiful as ever, if not more so.

KIWI SAYING GOODBYE

We had spent our Xmas at the farm and a dreary New Year as a gruesome twosome and then planned for a month in London after a few hedonistic days inVenice.   I had somehow put Venice in the far distant North in my mind's eye but within four hours and two trains later we were swishing into a very smart railway station just yards from the Grand Canal.

Friends had gathered several days before Xmas in Venice in order to push Harry's Bar over the record of bilinis sold in a set number of days, and we were organised to join them in the Hotel Monarco to enhance on those consumed over the new year.

Coincidentally, Harry's Bar entrance abutted the main entrance to our hotel!   Not such a coincidence in my opinion but this did avoid a long walk home after another wonderful meal and as the gondoliers had usually gone to bed long before we were ready to hit the sack.

We could tell by the rather muted greeting from the younger members of our party that New Year's Eve had been celebrated in wondrous fashion.   Half smiles, half grimaces welcomed us as we alighted from our water taxi and the celebrations began all over again.   Apparently Venice had put on the most amazing display of fireworks the night before and our doughty youngsters had taken a boat out into the middle of the fray.   It all looked highly dangerous to me with so many boats manoeuvring into the best viewing positions but the resulting photographs were stunning.

                               




































We, by the way had been on the wagon for four months prior to this jaunt and were a little timid as to our limit before falling over drunk and disorderly. However,  I hate bilinis and so does AC, so this proved not a problem.  Why our hotel ran out of our favourite white wine is a fact that remains a mystery.

I had forgotten how utterly beautiful Venice was.   How can one forget the magic of that city when it's so close to home?   It is probably the most energising city in the world and coming from an olive farm surrounded by greenery from the opening of one's windows in the morning to a landscape of pink volcanoes, to suddenly opening one's shutters to see one's feet are literally sitting in water, is quite a shock.

            

We were met by a uniformed porter who grabbed our bags at the train station, gave me his arm to alight to the platform, trundled for a five minute walk to the landing stage on the canal and there after  a five minute wait a beautiful polished Riva swept us down the Grand Canal to our hotel.   It was all quite dramatic and quite beautiful and my camera was out and flashing in a truly crass touristy fashion even before we where sea born.   The sudden beauty even brought a tear to my eye.

   

    

Everything was suddenly such a shock  to the senses that it took all of our five days to come to terms with the change of scene.   We are used to warm light, green trees,  low farm houses, bridges across valleys, people milling around shops on terre firma, but from the moment we arrived at the landing stage all these everyday sensations and expectations were turned on their head.   We were suddenly living our lives in history, beauty, art, and I felt I was inhabiting a painting where time had stood still.

My first shock as we sailed down the Grand Canal was to see new history being made.   On a decrepit but rather beautiful palazzo was a child holding a burning flare, inches from the water but placed in the perfect space to catch the eye of everyone passing.   Banksy had struck again.   Making the perfect statement for Children in Crisis and probably leaving his legacy in euro terms far exceeding a small Canelleto!

Very moving.   Quite shocking to be even more graffiti in a country ruined by graffiti but so Right and so Should be There.

BANKSY!

Our legs led us from firm to unfirm.   From train to boat.   From usual to unusual.   From prosaic architecture to images from coffee table art books.   Caneletto paintings for as far as the eye could see.   Disbelief as to the beauty man had created.   Crumbling beauty.   Beauty which has only improved with age and usage.




WE LUNCHED ON THE SUN DRENCHED TERRACE IN JANUARY!

This boat ride had me streaming with tears even before we had begun our holiday or even seen our hotel.   Not like me but a release from a land locked life for so long.




A PHOTOGRAPHER'S PARADISE.

Our motor-launch sluiced up to the terrace of our hotel and we were greeted like royalty.   Quite right too when you realise how much they are charging you for the right to stay in their premises.   You have to be close to royalty to be able to afford their bilinis, or even white wine!!   I jest, but you get the gist.



 

We have been upgraded.   Words that ring with a sort of glittery, high velocity that one does not hear too often.   I had booked a Junior and they had given us a Senior suite and it was just under the Italian flag on the front of the hotel overlooking the Grand Canal.   Bliss with an extra SS attached to it.

Interior design brought a few laughs from my minimalist husband and the pink marble, backlit bathroom almost brought an out and out lie on the floor histerical outburst, but overall the suite was to my taste, just perfect.   Even the bowl of fruit and bottle of Prosecco was beautiful!!!  A STILL LIFE WITH A CANELLETTO BACKGROUND.


Couldn't find the gin.





LIZZIE B WITH HER DELIGHTFUL CHILDREN.   LIZZIE TOOK THOSE WONDERFUL FIREWORK PHOTOGRAPHS.

We were swept up into a wonderful family celebration of many grown ups and even more grown up children and ate and drank as one only can in Venice and everything we had intended to do and see had to be shoe-horned into what time we would meet for yet another ice-cold bottle of something wonderful, or another ten star dinner.




What I didn't realise was how much shopping was part of a Venice holiday.   Every top name from Chanel to Hermes.   Needless to say we didn't darken any serious doors but I did buy another hat at  Borcelino.   Well, it just has to be done in that city.   What I really don't need is any more hats, just more heads.





We walked for miles and kilometres and rekindled old memories of St Marks Square, The Tetrarks, The Horses, The Gondolers, The Over Charging Cafes, The Awful Expense of putting one foot outside ones backdoors nowadays but we loved every minute of our trip and now knowing how quickly I can get there I am going back on a regular basis.   It is a shot in the arm to live in that city for just two days.   AND I still haven't been to Murano.

I am not complaining and looking back although I didn't get to see any of Venice's art treasures I came away with some images far more beautiful and life enhancing of Today than  a lot of religious impressions of how things might have been in the past.






I
AC, David McAlpine AND ROMILLY HOBBS/MCALPINE.




A FRIEND I PICKED UP BEGGING FOR HIS ARTIST

I loved our short trip to the land watery beauty and will be going back on my own just to see some art!   And to buy some glass.

It's just like Cornwall really!

Jx

A WALK IN THE PARK

After too many Xmas extravagances, New Year and a trip to Venizia the time had come!!

10,000 steps per day I am advised will turn me from an elephant into a gazelle!   So, Az bought me a stepometre?   Totally unnecessary I was later to discover because Shelley-Anne announced that the iPhone I was carrying in my pocket apparently under HEART will, and has been ever since I owned it, been counting every step I have taken and left rude remarks when I have taken insufficient!    Who knew?

This tree could do with a bit more walking.

The only way to prove that elephants do not turn into gazelles was to start the ten thousand torture almost immediately so headed for Hyde Park on Sunday morning at roughly 8.30 am having become disturbed by the weight of not only myself but of my Sunday newspapers.  

What greeted me was a very windswept scene of hundreds of migrant fowl sitting on the edges of the Serpentine waiting for the tourists to come out with their bags of food.   Wonderful cloudscapes and the sun, or the rain arriving for the morning.

 

The Sunday Mail has done 16 pages on why Meghan is an idiot and how the Monarchy are fighting to stave off anhilation after one of the younger sons of Diana chooses to become pussy whipped and want to lead a life of being Woke with all those awful Hollywood money-makers whilst using their royal titles but not doing any of the slog that our 93 year old Queen does every day.  

Had a quick word with Diana about her son not behaving too well and mourned the fact she wasn’t still around to maybe have some influence.   Sadly she probably is missed by Harry and her death is the reason for his looking for a strong woman to tell him how to lead his life.   Mind you, she would be the last person he should ask, she was even more off the wall than his new wife.

 Two geese surveying the new snowdrops.  Spring is not far away.

Didn’t particularly want to plod off into a windswept and very grey morning but what greeted me once out and about with the joggers and wildlife just about one kilometre from our flat in Belgravia I realised how much time I waste on bed and newspapers.

Don’t think these boys will get quite as many customers today as our Gondoliers did in Venice!

 

Knightsbridge Barracks seen from bridge opposite Serpentine Gallery.

Great clouds.

Beautiful Grey Legged Geese came honking in from the estuary East of London.

I could have picked them up and put them in my handbag.

They know their reputation has gone before them and also that the Queen will defend them if necessary.

Mahonia scent filled the whole park.

Looking from Hyde Park up to the Serpentine Gallery.

As I walked I remembered that one of my friends regularly swam in the lake and did so almost every day of the year, winter and summer.

Pulled out my mobile and just as I was opposite the swimming club I called her and ten minutes later she called and said, “Where are you?”   I waved and stupid as it might sound, she waved back from the other side of the water!

I had not planned this but when it happened it lifted my newly invigorated heart, full of about six thousand paces, and we walked and talked for the next hour about her maybe new job in Italy and her swimming in open water, etc. etc.

SA has a house in Todi and may be coming to live close by in Tuscany to work opening a new hotel.   She is one of the most highly regarded PR ladies in England and if she accepts this new assignment it will be a great feather in the cap of her new associates.

A couple of years ago she competed in a race across the open Straits of the Bosphorus  and came Second.   What a woman.   She asked me if I would like to join the Serpentine club but I think I will wait until the weather improves!!

Here she is.   Shelly-Anne and Otis.   It costs twenty-pounds a year to join the Serpentine Swimming Club and SA swims most days.   As we walked everyone in the park seemed to know each other and it has opened a whole new picture of life back in London should it become necessary!!!

Gardener’s des res.

 This will be more colourful in two months time.   Full of spring flowers.

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