THREE WEEKS IN LONDON

We just made it out of Cortona by the skin of our teeth before The Beast From The East arrived!!

(Finland just call it Wednesday)!!

But we never have been prepared for snow in this country.  Half the fun is grumbling about the inconvenience.

Snow had been forecast for the days ahead but nobody expected temperatures of minus 14C!   London almost came to a standstill and life proved to be quite difficult as we had a raft of appointments set up for the days ahead. 

I will never forget a trip to the doctors in a wool coat which is normally just a ten minute walk to Sloane Street which turned into being akin to an expedition to the North Pole.   I arrived at my destination and asked to take off my boots in case I ruined their new carpets.   As I sat in the waiting room I slowly became aware that I was not only cold but that I was getting colder!   The heater in the corner was blowing freezing air at the patients.

Everyone's boilers burst, the main water pipes under the pavements were gushing thousands of gallons of water onto the roads and freezing instantly.   We had freezing rain and very soon the country ground to a halt.   The television told stories of people sleeping in their cars for up to twenty four hours with even helicopters were unable to help as the traffic jams were miles long.   Some good hearted local farmers were helping out and taking blankets and hot drinks to the stranded drivers but I couldn't imagine sitting in a freezing car for that length of time without petrol or heating!

Our boiler did hang in there but started making extraordinary noises in the night and the flat took about ten days to heat up after a long stretch of being empty even though the heating had been on for a week before our arrival.

I don't remember a colder spell in London.   As someone said to me, "Putin and his damned country never send us anything pleasant!"

My white camellias in the little garden in front of the house were just beginning to open and have now turned a nasty shade of brown.   Ditto everything else with any bodily feelings!

All the snow has now disappeared and we are left with very dirty roads and pavements.   Photos from Italy show that they faired somewhat less harshly but a couple of days ago they had a horrendous hail storm which has damaged the main road outside the gate and will have knocked seven bells of hell out of any blossom that had the temerity to appear.   No almonds or apricots this year!!!




We have seen James and Jude a couple of times for lunch and although we are all very sad about James and Lisa's divorce the little boy appeared to be in good spirits and had grown about a foot in height.   We ate a lot of chocolate in lieu of Easter and Shelley Anne, and Annie Cleland joined us.  The rest of the party were either stuck in Scotland unable to fly due to the snow, or unable to stand up on the snow covered pavements.

IT'S AND ILL WIND!

The kids who have never seen snow in this country have had a ball.


Putin has sent us another sign that he is stalking us!   For months now his jets have been flying over British territory and Russian ships have been using the English Channel.   Now he is sending bunches of flowers laced with Sarin nerve gas to kill off his ex-spies and their relations.   They are even boasting about it on Russian television.

The sleepy southern town of Salisbury has been turned upside down by the suspected gassing of Sergei Skripal and his daughter during or after a lunch they had a few days ago.   The news is full of highly trained nerve gas specialists in amazing protective clothing and breathing apparatus and the policeman who went to their assistance who gave them CPR is now on the danger list in hospital.

My father hated the Russians and was always predicting the end of western civilisation during the Cold War years.   We had a lot of tin mines on our property in Cornwall and I distinctly remember him often telling our mother that she ought to be storing tinned food in them to assist our survival when the Russians finally arrived!   I think he was only half joking.

Lunch yesterday in Beckenham with Aziz' parents.   They are nearly ninety years of age but still have more vigour and verve than a couple half their age.   Long may it last.







Today we are taking our friend and partner of Mike Wilson for lunch.   Mike died last week and will be sorely missed by his many friends.

Sophie lives a few doors down in Eaton Place and will need all the help she deserves to mitigate the loss of her partner of twenty years.

MOTHER'S DAY.   And I still miss her!

My card from James.   Quite beautiful and will last a lot longer than a bunch of flowers.





As seen on a trip to The Brompton Heart Hospital the other day!!!   When I arrived two young nurses stood brazenly beneath this sign openly smoking.   I didn't want to get into a fight so when I came out and they had gone I thought it worth a photograph!

One more week to go and then back to Italy and my kitchen garden.   Spring is around the corner and I have bought hundreds of packets of seeds.   Goodness knows who is going to eat all the produce but it's such fun I cannot resist the urge.

XMAS 2013 - TUSCANY

We spent our second Xmas in succession at the farm and had a wonderful holiday.

Sally came to join us for ten days and the tree she had designed in silver and white looked wonderful

GLADIOLI!

Spring

TAXI DRIVERS-LONDON'S WIKIPEDIA!!

My first visit to London this summer and I fly into London City airport.   Small, compact and beautifully formed, unlike all other airports around our city.

My first driver greets me with the words, "Here's a customer who looks as though she enjoys life", I confirm I do and have many bad habits which seems to open the floodgates of my hippy-ish looking chauffeur.   He asks if I have ever smoked weed!!!

I say yes, many years ago and from City to Eaton Place I take notes on how to buy the Female seeds online, the best time to buy, how to plant, how to water, and when to harvest.   I thought I might try to grow a few plants in my greenhouse in Italy and I gladly lap up all the information.   I have since thrown away the back of my landing card and so am none the wiser but it was a fascinating interlude and I didn't begrudge the arm and leg it had cost me to take my forty-five minute trip home.   I also realised this form of gardening was probably illegal!

This man should be a teacher and I tell him so.   His final words are, "Have a good harvest!

My time here has been taken up with visits to doctors, dentists, hair colourists, and the usual people one has to visit when one is an ex-pat and therefore taxi drivers have become part of my daily life and they have not let me down.   Each one is a law and a story unto himself.

I usually try to find a non black taxi, red, white, anything but black because the drivers of other colours are usually more fun.   Black taxi drivers can be moody, old, smelly and generally bad company.

I always smile as they stop and if I get a cheery hello I know I am in for fun.   The old drivers merely say, "Get in", or nothing at all and whatever conversation one begins is met with silence.   Sometimes I even bang on the glass if I really feel like talking and very often receive a scowl.   These are the people who I only give a twenty pence as a tip.   You know they would like to throw it at you but dare not.    The smiley, fun ones get at least fifty!   I gave my hashish driver three pounds!

The last three taxi drivers have all picked me up in Oxford Street outside Marks and Spencers and brought me home and have all been characters.

Immediately I have told them where to go they have asked if, "That actress lady still lives at Number 15", and I have confirmed yes she does.

The first informed me that he had picked up her daughter and driven to actress-lady's front door and the poor girl was in a state because she was late.   Actress lady comes out dressed up to the nines, ignores my driver and slams the taxi door lams into poor late daughter.   Taxi Man informs me she has a mouth like a dustbin and that he taught his fellow drivers several new swear words over lunch.

My second driver informs me he has collected her on several occasions and that she is definitely Older Than God and why do the papers keep saying she looks 45  and isn't she wonderful for her age.   I tell him she probably uses two kilos of cement on her face every day!

My third says that at 8.30 in the morning without her wig and make-up she looks a little like Cliff Richard and why do the papers keep saying he looks wonderful.   He also looks like Old God without his wig and sun tan!

I have known this lady for about forty years and agree with everything they say and the last finishes off by saying I look good but when I was young I must have been a Looker.   Meaning I also look as Old as Methusela.

I knew actress lady when I worked in the film business and then ran into her again in Antigua where we had just opened a hotel.

THIS YEAR IN TUSCANY-2014

PONIES GETTING READY FOR WORK!

My New Year's resolution to write ONE blog a week went out of the window after about a month, so here is a précis of the year with pics!

Not a year to remember weather wise, some nice weather in early spring but then a downpour that lasted for the rest of the summer!!!   We read of England basking in its warmest summer since records began while we listened to crashing torrents of water coming down our normally dry river beds.   The grass never stopped growing only to be overtaken by the weeds.

The ponies got fatter and fatter and hay I had bought for the summer months went uneaten.

SALINO

Salty has behaved like the perfect gentleman and not thrown me off once this year.   He has tried a few times but failed.   I keep thinking I should send him off for cat food but then think that the day I give up taking risks is the day I will lie down and pull the sheets over my head.

AZIZ SAYS THIS IS THE BEST PHOTOGRAPH HE HAS EVER SEEN OF ME!

Paulo our gardener found a Bambi asleep under a pile of leaves so brought him down to see if I would like to add it to our growing collection of animals but Fabio told us in no uncertain terms to return it to its leaves as soon as possible and its Mum would come to feed it.   Probably one of the most endearing of young animals but a bottle every two hours would not have appealed to me.  Worse than having another child!!!

We had Liesle's daughter's, boyfriend's donkeys to stay whilst they went to chant in Thailand.   Not only did they pull me face down in a very dirty ditch and drag me for half a mile but they ate everything in sight.   Not just the grass but the olive trees, bark and all, my cypress trees, two cherry trees and various other things I would rather they had not eaten.   

No good deed goes unpunished.   I open my mouth and out come words I wish I could have eaten.   Words like, of course you can leave the donkeys with me for a couple of months, no problem.  Ponies do not behave so ungratefully and I am sure Jesus did not teach them such bad habits.

COUNTRY LIFE ARTICLE ABOUT PESTS!

CASA LORETO

BOCENA 398

SAN MARTINO

CORTONA

AREZZO 52044

+39 0575 612683

Dear Ed,             (The Editor of Country Life in England).

I eagerly await my weekly copy of COUNTRY LIFE here in Tuscany and smile at your articles and readers letters about their attempts to save wild life from the onward march of civilisation!

Having been brought up on a farm in Cornwall and then living for forty odd years in central London, we decided fourteen years ago to find somewhere less noisy and polluted.   My husband wanted a flat in Portofino but we ended up with an olive farm in central Tuscany!   Something to do with my argument about not living with people around me but animals instead.

He has never let me forget his wants as I grumble about the complexities of a life in a foreign country, running a thousand olive trees, large orchard, lake, horses, dogs, chickens, doves, ducks and a pair of Emperor geese!

Add to that the fact that Italian men do not like taking instructions from a female of the species, thinking they are only good for one thing and that at seventy this woman is not even useful for that pastime!   Also the difficulty of learning a completely new language when one had failed O level French fifty five years ago, plus the fact that men here do not like to keep appointments and when they do turn up they do not feel a need to apologise for their tardiness.   Especially as you know that it will take another five visits before they fix what they had originally been invited to mend in the first place!

Take it from me, it could fill a book but that has already been done, several times, and made into films and still they haven’t really shown Italy as it is living here and trying to stay sane on a day to day basis.   You have top live here and been baptised by fire to truly understand.   

Having said all that, I wouldn’t have changed the last years for all the boat trips in Portofino with film stars for the world.

What really makes me smile about your letters page is the wonderful, kind hearted people who diligently try to save wild life from humans who seem to be trying to kill off the planet.   Here, I am trying to save the humans from the wildlife!!

Let me start with the pigs.   Our property is way off the beaten track edging onto the forest which is where the cingali or wild boar live.   Before we had any electric fences or gardens to speak of, we would think their visitations every evening of families of up to thirty pigs rootling around in the orchard was sort of wonderful.   Now that we have rescued acres of wild ground, built kitchen gardens, etc., we think of them as a wretched nuisance and they have cost us thousands of pounds over the years building barricades to keep the buggers out!   The big ones are wary now but the little ones in striped jumpers, squeeze underneath any electrified wire and dig around to their hearts content especially around the irrigated shrubs and lawns.

The hunters do kill them off in the winter but another solution has been found by the Commune, our local government.   They have introduced wolves.  I haven’t seen or heard one yet but a couple of years ago the local bar proudly pinned a dodgy photograph of a large wolf-like animal to the bar wall and we have been waiting for more hard evidence of their whereabouts ever since.  

Now the stories are legion.   One neighbour’s donkey foaled in her field quite close to the house in the nighttime and by morning just four baby hooves were found scattered around.   A taxi driver’s wife kept half a dozen sheep in a paddock close to our town of Cortona.   They were all killed.  She replaced them and they were again killed and half eaten.

The thinking behind introducing wolves is that they will predate on the wild boar and give the farmers a break from the mayhem the pigs make of their fields.   They may have just introduced another, more costly nightmare for the locals.

Added to this, we had a very nervous making clue that they were in our midst when our friend up the hill walking her elderly labrador one morning was stopped in her tracks by a growling and bristling of hair from her dog who was glaring at something up ahead.   Three wolves, equally aggressively barred their way in the middle of the track.   She hasn’t walked in the woods since!

Next, the deer.   Well, everyone knows what deer do.   They just eat everything, and kill poor young boys riding to work on their mopeds early in the morning by leaping over roads unexpectedly.   So sad for both rider and deer.

Next, the porcupines!!!   Big, black and bristling.   

We are in the middle of a drought at the moment and all of nature’s creatures are descending from the hills in search of water.   Of course a nicely irrigated farm with green lawns and a kitchen garden full of plump, ripening produce is a natural draw for any hungry animal.

I have caught a couple of porcupines in the past who have been causing trouble, and have taken them on a scenic drive to another desirable part of the countryside, but now we have a rogue monster who will not be deterred.  

First he waited until my corn on the cob was just ready for eating and he pounced the day before I did.   Mayhem!   He didn’t even finish each cob but went for as many as he could ruin in one night.  How did he get over the wall into the garden.   Did you know that porcupines live up trees, or at least can climb as well as any cat?   Well, we didn’t until my husband found videos on Utube to that effect.   

We had also been told that they shoot their quills at any chasing dog or human.   They don’t.   They run ahead and then stop dead in front of the following assailant which then runs into the back of its prey and bingo, a pincushion!

When he returned he decimated the peas.   Then the tomatoes the following night.  For breakfast he ate my water melons and dug up my prize irises and ate them as a sweet.   They love irises and I knew this so kept them in the walled garden for safety.   They must be able to smell out the tubers.

He’s not too keen on potatoes.   Too mundane.   He likes something with a bit of sugar in it.   Who doesn’t.   

He has avoided all of my traps which have been baited with goodies and just shimmies in and out at will.   He does leave me a few quills every night for my hats and when I go back to our flat in London I will take them to Philip Treacey for use in his millinery for the fine ladies of Belgravia.

Next the raptors!!!   They have taken all of my doves.   Returning from London a few weeks ago I couldn’t think what was missing.   A silent dove house, normally humming with life and a joy to behold as ten white doves dove in and out feeding their young or sitting on eggs.   Now it stands silent and empty.   Ghostly almost.   The gardener said he thought that falcons had been visiting whilst the house was empty.   I immediately visited the market the following week and bought a new pair of sparkling white birds and put them in a holding pen until I could introduce them to their new loft.   The next morning was a scene of utter ghastliness.   Three birds with their heads bitten off.   Not eaten, just killed for the sake of killing.   I suppose the guilty animal was a stoat or weasel.   The empty house remains empty as I see a family of falcons visiting daily for breakfast.

I discovered they had also taken two baby chickens from the hen compound and two wonderful little Mandarin ducklings just three weeks old from the lake.

That will teach me to leave my animals to fend for themselves.

Frogs are the next pest we have.   You notice that as I relive all this carnage that the local wildlife are now described as pests!!!

Frogs are protected the world over but these noisy amphibians have blighted our lives for five months of the year ever since we arrived.

I remember saying to the Swiss lady who sold us the property as we walked around, Oh good, you have frogs, remembering my youth of fishing around for frogspawn in our stream in Cornwall.   I wondered why she gave me a sideways glance of horror.

When we finally moved in and prepared for sleep a slow croak became a cacophony of raucous mating cries which continued for the rest of the night.   And the next night, and for fourteen years thereafter.   It is impossible to sleep with windows open and we wouldn’t mind if the croaking was pleasant on the ears, but this is a downright ugly, rasping sound.   Finger nails on blackboards type of sound.   Spine chilling.

I won’t tell what we do to lighten our load as we would probably be prosecuted!!!   Humans fight back against nature.

Did I mention the Rooks.   Actually, probably Crows because there are a lot of them suddenly in our neck of the woods.

“If it’s a crow on it’s own, it’s a rook.

If its a rook with friends, they are crows”.

Every one of our mosquito nets covering the windows both in the house and in the cottage have been ripped to shreds by crows attacking their mirror images in the window panes.   The woodpeckers have taken care of the wooden window surrounds so to cut it short, we need new windows and new mosquito nets!!!   

The crows also have an upsetting, discordant cry.   They are almost worse than the frogs.

Am I beginning to sound like a witch with grudge against nature?

Not for a minute am I against nature, I just wish it would give us humans a chance to live and breathe on their planet without such a grudge against us.

There a many nice animals and birds here but that is for another day.   However, as I gathered the duck eggs this morning I happened to stand admiring the lake and out of nowhere flew a dagger of turquoise feathers.   This little missile flew headfirst into the water and out again clasping a little piece of silver in its beak which it proceeded to bash the living daylights out of on the back of a bench.

He did this twice and his colourful image is still copied into my brain as I think of him.

By the way, have I mentioned the ants, snakes, mosquitoes, wild, farm bred cats, rats, et al?

Well, okay I will stop here.

Jean Fraser-Cami

20th July, 2017

Cortona.

Photographs to be added.

OCTOBER, 2015.

VIEW FROM MY BATH!

I am trying again to post a blog and as it is October and autumn is closing in I thought I would blog some thoughts and colours that strike me at this time of the year.

Normally I begin to feel slightly depressed as summer draws to a close but this summer was far too hot for any human in their senses so the beautiful but cooler days are most welcome.    Now that summer is over, friends are departing to homes in the Northern Hemisphere, only colder days and possibly snow to look forward to, but this year October has been so beautiful and bountiful that I thought I would try again to understand the complication of Blogging.

So far, so good.

Yesterday as I sat on my own at lunch looking out of the big windows onto the four ponies in the field in front, a fascinating display of symbiosis was my cabaret.    The Shetland ponies, heads constantly down munching away at whatever they can find in the way of fodder, and two families of grey wagtails using their backs as landing strips.

These delightful birds are known as ballerinas in Italy and they certainly deserve their name.   They dance around the ponies using them as a draw for the flies they need.   Ponies eat, flies attack the ponies,  ballerinas dance into action and catch the offending nuisance and two tummies are filled at the same time.   Perfect all round.

Except the little birds are not fussy where they stick their little feet or where they deposit their usual daily habits so they go onto the ponies backs.   As I watched a myriad of little offenders run down Knickers' back and take off at the tail end and then use it as a runway, she finally felt that she needed to have a scratch and tipped them all off and rolled as best she could as she is rather rotund, and then once up on her feet again, head down munching, the whole ballet continued.   It is a joy to behold.

BLACK FIG TURNING YELLOW

This tree produces so many enormous, lusciously sweet, black figs every year that I give most of them away.   If we ate them all we would do ourselves a serious damage!  Sad to see it go to sleep again but God willing we will all be here to see it burst into life again in 2016.   The lime trees down the main drive this year were ablaze with colour.

The last few days of October this year have been the most beautiful I can remember in the last twelve years of living here.   Colours, hot sun, bountiful harvest and of course the most important harvest of all, our olives.

KEITH AND HIS TEAM

Last year there was no olive oil in Tuscany.   The Fly descimated the whole harvest.   We had just handed over our terraces to an American who very cleverly realised that olive oil was the new gold dust and who had taken over most of the terraces owned by expats who didn't have the energy to pick their olives and in return give them as much oil as their needs required.

They are picking ours as I write and tomorrow I will receive the first green gold dust to try on my bruschetta.   Heaven.

Keith sends the oil after bottling to America and more or less charges what he likes.   He says, the smaller the bottles and the grander the labels, the more you can charge for it.   It really is the only oil that you will ever taste that is 100% virgin olive oil as most of what we buy in our supermarkets is adulterated with all sorts of inferior oils.

I must go and feed the ducks, ponies, put Salty to bed and generally close up shop for the evening but as Blogger seems to have simplified things for its users, then I might continue to blog!

Here are some pictures of mellow fruitfulness.

QUINCE AND TURKS BONNET

The four legged friends also help in the picking of fruit at this time of the year!!

Cannot get the photograph to register of four ever-hungry ponies eating the fallen Kaki fruit.   Hope they have a very bad stomach ache this evening.