Hugo had mended the puncture in my bike, the helmets were charged. Time for a bike ride. We had been promised days of glorious sunshine, albeit with a bit of a blow, and then thunderstorms.

After a quick coffee and cornetto in our local bar we set off. Some wispy clouds, thin as cobwebs, floated in the crevices where the river plains meet the Pisan mountains.

It was an idyllic late April day in our corner of Tuscany -china blue skies, jasmine and roses in full bloom, all the wild birds at maximum tweet, with a gusty cold wind.

We headed off on a gravel road which flanked the Serchio. It was wonderful, fields of poppies in the wild meadows, nightingales in the trees hiding the river, the fava beans are in full production, globe artichokes rose on stalks, washing was flapping outside the little houses. I tried to catch a picture looking back at the mountains. A plume of white smoke arose in the corner. It looked rather a big plume.

We turned off a tiny side shoot. Entangled weeds knitted together so we passed through a tunnel to the river Serchio, luminous and almost jade was on its last stretch to the sea. Clumps of pollen floated through the air catching the light, dandelion stars spinning in the air. Tiny shoals of fish fry picked around at a small launching jetty.

‘Paradise Found’ I said to Hugo.

Little did we know that behind us Dante’s inferno was taking root.

We cycled on another bar, the 1912 bar, in an old Tenuta, an off-shoot up a no entry road far from the crowd. Swifts, fast as arrows, dived back and forth to mud nests under the eves. There was the smell of coffee and Jasmin with perhaps the faintest hint of wood smoke. There we met Sandro, a lovely man who told us proudly that he wasn’t there all day as he swapped with his daughter so she could take over and he look after his grandchildren. What a lovely thing to have your children so close that you can see them every day and gather up grandchildren as they spill from arms and toddle towards childhood.

We pointed the bikes in the direction of home cycling away from the sea and back towards the Pisan mountains. Now we can look at the hills and know the villages. We know which hill harbours our favourite coffee bars, where to go for a summer night wine tasting lit by strings of fairy lights. The white smoke looked more billowy and powerful. But we thought nothing of it. It is too early in the year for a bush fire.

The padded shorts had stopped functioning and my little legs were starting to tingle with tiredness.

‘Artichokes’ said Hugo through the static on the intercom

‘What? Yes I saw the artichoke’s on the way’ I said

‘Not artichokes’ bellowed Hugo the intercom suddenly working properly ‘my arse hurts!’

By the time we got home, the blue skies were obscured by a blanket of white that stretched out to the coast. Yes, but it is too early and cold for a bush fire.

The next day we went for a lunch with friends in the mountains in the Garfagnana. On the way back, a good half an hour from home, we suddenly saw that there was an enormous cloud of smoke. It looked like a volcano. Getting back the smoke was belching out, and somehow stained with orange. It was blowing a hoolie, so blowy that my washing had been clean blown off the line.

Our friends, veterans of the Camaiore inferno of the few years ago called.

‘Is it safe?’

‘It’s fine, it can’t jump the river Serchio’ I said. But the smoke did seem awfully close from the window and there was a lot of it.

The next day, day three of the fire, we retraced our route this time cycling with our Camaiore friends. We stopped to talk to other cyclists as we watched the Canadairs fly by.

The firemen and pilots that go into fight fires are rightly considered the bravest of heroes. One cyclists told us of a Canadair accident above Forte di Marmi. The smoke had obscured electrical cables strung between pylons. The pilots hit a cable causing damage to the plane and a fire. Despite losing control they almost made it back to the sea where they have could landed, but tragicaly crashed into a house.

Lines of Canadair planes filled the sky dropping water over the fire. Helicopters circled.

We got back to find that villages had been evacuated. We could only guess at the horrors up there in the hillside crematorium. Mont Faeta, Fairy Mountain, was an inferno. 800 hectares burnt. 3000 people evacuated. Houses lost. Apparently from windows in Lucca the trees were silhouetted in red flames. One of the fires had jumped the River Serchio to our side.

The absolute ban on open fires starts in July and ends in August. The time for cutting the olive branches is in winter. I now know that a typical May day celebration is to burn off the twigs reducing the risk of a bush fire in the hot dry summers. Even as the clouds of smoke hung in the sky, as Canadairs flew back and forth, trying to tame the jumping flames we cycled past people setting up BBQs in the open as part of this tradition.

The next day we went for coffee in quaint San Guiliano Terme. Everything was eerily normal and picturesque. Not even a hint of the smoke that still lingered near us.

Today the fourth day we think the fire is out. Thin tendrils of smoke curl up from charred hillsides but the Canadair heros and the firefighters can rest. The thunderstorms will do the rest and then it will take years for the forest to recover.

Facebook is full of emotion. The people who used to greet the day opening window to Monte Faeta, topped with snow, capped with a black cloud for rain, dressed in autumn or spring colours, lament. The red dancing flames at night have stopped. The skies have returned to blue, neither the sun nor moon are veiled with the guaze of smoke. The smell of woodfire has lifted. Instead there are the charred smoking ruins of a magical mountain.

Two men have come forward. This was no arson. The fire got away from them. They have been told to instruct lawyers.

I feel so sorry for them. They were just doing their job, tidying up an olive grove and woof, the fire has torn away from them blown by a cold, eager wind.

I feel sorry for all the wildlife, the wolves, the boars, the deer, the porcupines, the lizards, the snakes, the birds, the insects, the farm animals everything consumed by the fire.

I feel sorry for those who went out and found themselves evacuated, unable to go home, hoping for the best for house and animals. They are being allowed back now.

On the news a man, a fireman himself, stands in tears, choked with emotion, barely able to speak describing what parts of his house were burnt.

‘A volte dai tutto, ma non basta’ Sometimes you give everything but it is not enough.

So we are back in Italy. Right now I can hear a Hoopoe in the garden. (We used to think this was the sound of a vehicle reversing). We’ve tiptoed around the hot-tub and not been accosted by any two meter snakes. The wisteria is cascading over the pergola, the lemon trees starting to flower. Last night the fire flies started to flicker in the long grass on the back hill. In a few days the nightingales will start to sing, the scent of jasmine will hang heavy in warming air and I will start quoting Keats. The sun is warm, the breeze cool, the dappled shade a perfect compromise. It’s lunches of beef tomatoes and just peeled fava beans. It is spring time in Tuscany.

We have been playing the usual game of ‘spot the difference’ on return.

As I ran out of Schengen days last time and went (UK) home, Hugo was (Italy) home alone. He had invited his expert decorator from the rowing club to do a bit of decorating, with the gardener as back up for moral support. To be fair Hugo had flicked the colour chart at me before I left. I had protested loudly with the dangerous caveat that I’m all for expressing ones creativity, and to compromise is always bland.

Perhaps I should identify as bland. Afterall I’m a wishy- washy, tread-lightly, wild flowers, shades of white and light, dreamy, classical string music, not-quite-there kind of girl, easy on the spice and no onions, or peppers. Hugo, on the other hand, never does things by halves. He is the sort of chap who orders madras curries, when he cooks he adds our ‘teargas’ chilli flakes, laughs loudly, loves heavy rock and is the life and soul of a party and beloved by everyone.

Anyway. The gym has been painted in hell red. The downstairs loo has been painted in nightclub dark grey. The dining room is now in terracotta. I had forgotten that he had done our beloved bathroom (formerly a delicate shade of primrose) On first sight I reeled backwards with an ‘Oh my God’ as I was hit by an expanse of egg yolk yellow. I’m sure the shock will wear off in time.

Yesterday we went to visit the accountant to be roughed up. It’s safety in numbers, with me under strict instructions not to hijack the meeting.

Our accountants office has a wonderful work-life balance. On one side of her office is a caddy of golf clubs, sofa, and sculpture. We aren’t allowed in that bit. At the other end a couple of hard plastic chairs (for us) and a desk adorned with eclectic desk paraphernalia. I have never seen a gold plated paper punch. She was wearing a bright green jacket with oversized power-dressing jewellery, the sort of power jewellery that is intended to shock and awe so you don’t dare interrupt. If you do there is a risk she will stuff one of those plastic ornaments in your mouth like an adult pacifier. She doesn’t usually pause to draw breath but talks like a machine gun.

Visiting the accountant is always like being hauled in front of the headmistress for a right good berating but this time was worse than ever (we weren’t offered water let alone coffee). This was because in a moment of madness Hugo had threatened to instruct another accountant who had a differing view on his tax liability. It was a rash decision as accountant 2, whilst more favourable, can’t be reached and if you can reach him, speaks so fast there is no chance of understanding a single thing. This did not endear Accountant 1 to us.

Now, I’m a retired litigation solicitor and Hugo a successful businessman with an accountancy qualification in the mix so we don’t scare easily. But this does not command any respect from our assailant- accountant. Armed with case law, anecdote and the other accountant’s view we attempted to fight our corner to no avail. An hour later she put it in simple terms she thought even we numbskulls could understand.

‘Are you prepared to fight this in court?’

‘We’d rather not, but .. yes.’

‘What do you want me to say in your defence on- that you are stupid or that you did not understand?’

So, tails between our legs, we slunk out to lick our wounds. To save you a hauling from the accountant; no you cannot be resident in Italy, but tax resident in the UK even if you only spend a few days in Italy.

*

We have visitors arriving this afternoon at tea time. What to do? We decided on posh nibbles and pop so went off to the local supermarket for supplies. I thought it would be quite nice to have some local sheep’s cheese drizzled with honey. Our gardener’s squeeze has beehives so we have local honey, and there a shepherd who takes his goat-sheep beasts around so we were hoping to get his cheese. Of course my Italian completely let me down. There are three words which are similar- sheep (pecora), peaches (pesche), and fishermen (pescatori)

Suffice to say, I accidentally asked at the cheese counter if they had a local fisherman, meaning to ask for local goat-sheep cheese, rather than a hot date with a fisherman’s friend. They said no, he comes on Thursday’s and called the manager. Realising my mistake I tried to remember the word for sheep and failed. I then had to say, in my best Italian, I didn’t mean fisherman or fish, I meant sheep except I couldn’t remember the word for sheep so mimed small cows that were white and made a noise. Unfortunately my attempt at bleating was more of a strangled honk.

We were telling our now arrived guests this story with other anecdotes like when Hugo told the garden centre owner that his squid needed trimming (the words for squid and hedge being similar) and the time I confidently sent Hugo to the supermarket to ask for chicken tits, but they came up with the best one. A formal friend of theirs sent stiffy invitations for ‘Drinks and nipples’ What fun.

Finally, a few weeks ago we went skiing in Val d’Isere. Well, I didn’t as I was doing edits and am way too scaredy cat to go skiing with Hugo’s former partner who is a world championship skier twice over. But I joined the ski party to go to La Follie Deux, the après ski place with live shows and dancing on tables. There I finally succumbed to the Italian thing of having a puffa jacket. Unusually for me I bought it in jewel colours – green and yellow.

I wore it to collect my daughter from the airport.

‘What do you think?’ I said sashaying over with rare sartorial pride.

‘ You look like the Very Hungry Caterpillar’ she said

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So goose pimple moments for you

Pisa

So before we came home, and I got buried in infinite edits, Hugo and I went off on a bus ride to Pisa. The plan was to ‘do’ some museums but we only got as far as Piazza dei Miracoli. Gorgeous, too early in the year for it to be heaving, blue, blue skies with distant snow capped mountains.

Now, I worship at the altar of all things Roman, and in Rome my very favourite place is the Pantheon. I was lucky enough to see this first in the early hours of the morning in moonlight, deserted, just the sound of the fountain, in the company of ghosts (and a new friend that we won’t dwell on). Just wonderful. I always brace myself for Rome, I know that it will hit me below the ribs with longing and nostalgia that even a Teflon jacket could not protect me from.

I have never been into the baptistry in Pisa. But I walked in, and the space immediately whacked me as being reminiscent of the Pantheon, but without the opportunity to prepare for the impact first. Whack. Arrested to a stop. Whack. A thousand happy memories of Rome incoming. Whack.

And then, because why not, this chap started a duet with the echo. Honestly the hairs stood up on my neck and goose pimples shivered down my arms.

More exploring revealed an amphora sitting atop a column in the Duomo. Turned out it was from the wedding at Cana where Jesus converted water to wine - who knew? Hugo stared at it with intense longing, wondering whether it still worked.

Plus enough skulls and bones playing macrabre peepo in reliquaries to send Tim Burton into raptures of inspiration.

Somewhat cultured out we found the best ever café with the most incredible view and later, hark the herald angels, just behind the bus stop a fabulous bar- great vibe and lots of recently graduated students with laurel wreaths on their heads accompanied by proud parents.

I don’t give up my secrets readily but if you are about to visit Pisa, I will whisper the location of the café and bar to subscribers. (You may even find us there)

Visit to Jane Austen’s house

Back in Blighty for 3 weeks we had two days sunshine (I chewed up 3/4s of the lawn with the mower before I got fed up). I was thinking it was approaching Pimm’s o’clock but then it was back to howling winds and rains. I have been absolutely buried in edits for my tome Shiksa but Hugo and I thought we would head out to somewhere I had always wanted to visit, but never quite made it to- Jane Austen’s house.

It was that or Birdworld. But we basically live in bird world. I take credit for feeding the birds, that is lobbing rock hard sour dough loaves from the backdoor like an Olympian shot-putter. They have blunted the teeth of the local foxes but after a few downpours I assume the sharpened beak can make an indent. The blue tits have dug a hole in the bathroom eves (and slam against the window), the starlings are in the corner in our bedroom (I no longer leave the bedroom window open after one made a navigational error and ended up on the wardrobe. I didn’t realise for two days) and the crows have levered out a tile next to the chimney above my daughter’s room. Having pushed out a cement roof tile, and bent back the lead flashing they are currently taking logs up to make a nest the size of a beaver lodge. The neighbour drew our attention to the crows nest. There was the crow standing on one leg (why?) with a construction sized beam in its beak. I understand that cranes are making a comeback (two meter wingspan). It is only a matter of time.

The avian determination and industry has shamed the Thames Water ‘workmen’ who have barricaded our lane for a month. We live in peace compared to the neighbouring skinny roads which are now compressed rat runs with irate drivers shimmying past parked cars. The hallowed ‘workmen’ arrive in immaculate untarnished orange high vis. They then take a heavy plant machine each and sleep. All day. Everyday. It’s rather ironic. I sit in my PJs and dressing gown slaving over edits, they arrive in their orange and do absolutely nothing. We have taken to tiptoeing in the garden lest we wake them. I digress.

We arrived half an hour early for our appointment at Jane Austen’ s house. (more fairly Cassandra’s house, given that she lived there so much longer) There was a moment of great jeopardy as opposite is a pub and a quaint teashop. Pubs are Hugo’s natural habitat and to try and walk past one is to defy gravity. I jostled Hugo into the teashop like an all black rugby player. Mrs Teashop, who is not mad keen on customers, HATES Jane Austen with a vengeance. She prides herself on NEVER having been to her house, but does a remarkably good chicken and avocado baguette.

Jane Austen’s home was a rambling cottage in a truly unspoilt village. You sense that she has barely left- they have carefully curated the cottage, and even pipe the sound effects of steam trains subtly through the garden.

We went into the breakfast room where apparently Jane was tasked with making breakfast (tea and toast, coffee for special occasions) and there in the corner was this tiny table (‘wine table’ said Hugo) where she wrote her books. I was already having an attack of the goosies when Hugo, reading the exhibits on the wall said,

‘This wall paper is called ‘Dead Nettles’ it’s not ‘Crushing Nettles’ but it’s close’

That was the full fat goose pimples moment- the debut which I am just about to query is entitled Crushing Nettles.

I quite like Jane Austen. The PSTD symptoms of studying her at school forty years ago have begun to abate thanks to the intervention of Colin Firth. Plus I have to admit that I struggle with (presumed) virgins writing about ‘love’ when it is societal commentary (is that wrong?)

But I admire Jane Austen, her works and her resilience and empathised with rudeness of ‘declined by return of first post’ .To be in Jane Austen’s, a great writer’s house, looking at her wall paper and discover its name, well, for me it was oddly inspirational, a kinship reaching across the centuries, a Dr Who moment. Goose pimples indeed.

'Very nice’ was Hugo’s verdict, ‘But not exactly Blenheim palace’

Gate crashers

We are about to return to Italy, in the meantime we got this.

You’ve guessed it- goose pimples. Because nothing says luxury holiday in the Tuscan hill like partying snakes gate crashing the hot tub.

Is it safe to come out yet? Has the rain stopped?

So we have broken cover from the rains twice over the last few weeks and been rewarded with spectacular glimpses of spring. Today I’m writing about our little village and the three very different towns which triangulate around us.

Our villa sits behind its walls in a lively little village/town. If you were driving through your concentration would be focused on tackling the speed limiting obstacle course installed by the local commune. The passenger might see low rise ugly modern buildings. I often wonder if holiday guests hearts sink, frantically jab at satnav’s praying for a mistake and the villa is somewhere, anywhere, else.

They soon discover that behind the protective shield of ugliness lies the delightful old heart of this village. Every time I check the history or the origin of its name there is a different answer. Was it founded in the bronze age? Or by Romans, pausing on their march up the Aurelia (the Roman road which clings to the west coast of Italy) no doubt tempted to sojourn a while with the ‘fireflies’, the lovely ladies of the night whose cultural ancestors still haunt the nearby routes? Is its name derived from the Greek word for ‘Control’ given its proximity to the Serchio river which thunders past? Is it the name of a Roman legionnaire who stayed behind? Or is it an old bastardisation of a word for Happiness?

It nestles at the crease where the flat lands become rocky olive groves hills that buttress against ancient lost volcanoes. The modern sprawl is on the flat part. The historic heart rises gently rises sitting in the sheltered lee of the mountain. On one hill we have a thousand year old castle. Its fortifications are clear from afar, but nearby it looks like a wall of pastel painted houses. The next hill over is a Bishop’s palace with a double apex baroque staircase that descends to the old church whose clock is permanently painted 3 o’clock and whose bells strike three minutes early.

Then, behind creaking gates is our villa which basks in the Tuscan sun at the foot of hill three. Here is the constant sound of water from the fountains, and birdsong. This time of year that means wooing birds. In the day this is melodic songbirds. At night the screech owls sow terror.

So many of the picturesque villages have become mere backdrops for the Instagramati. Our village though still has its beating heart, children scamper around, neighbours gather at the Circolino in the village for a coffee and pastry, to jostle at the supermarket or bakery. The year is peppered by street processions, be it the Virgin Mary on one of her airings around the village, the Befania witch chasing screaming children and delivering stockings of sweets, or as this week, Carnevale.

Our village sits in the middle of a triangle between Pisa, Lucca and Viareggio. We sit close to a vast lake, the thundering Serchio within a bike ride to the sea. The town are as different as the water they sit beside.

To my mind Cinderella Pisa is an underrated gem hiding in plain sight. Tourists stream out of the airport/railway tick off the tower and depart. In doing so they miss the beauty of a Medici built town straddling the Arno, miss a student town with all the energy to be found in the clash of restless youth and congealing wisdom. I’m actually quite glad they do, I do not want to share Pisa, for she has a taken a chunk of my heart. She reminds me of the Rome I once knew.

Before I was torn away from Rome, I almost had SPQR tattooed across my heart so I could declare forever my love for this place beloved by so many. SPQR translates to ‘The senate, the people of Rome’ That is all very well, but it is dry, with meaning, but without heart.

Pisa is beautiful too. A bit tatty it bubbles with the vitality of youth and adventure, rammed with history and stories, so old it doesn’t care. And yet it does and that it is in its vulnerability that Pisa has stolen my heart.

Pisa’s mottos are more wistful. There is something unhealed, haunting in the mottos of the city, distant injuries hide in the words.

‘Urbis me dignum pisane noscite signum’ – ‘Know that I am worthy of the city’

‘Oltre di silenzio’ -‘Beyond the silence’

‘Magis aspera hora magis animosa voluntas’ – ‘The harder the hour, the stronger the will’

Pisa is real and chaotic, raw, scarred, with battered nobility, romantic, wistful, musical. And on the first day after the rains, when the sun was warm and the sky an infinity of blue we found everyone spilling on the streets, peeling off jumpers, turning their faces to the sun, eating sweet pastries and Carnevale biscuits, chatting and watching toddlers dance to street musicians.

Pisa’s arch enemy Lucca is elegant, Medici, musical- operatic, big name bands musical. A sleepy offshoot of the Serchio passes through the town, contained and walled, a pretty bubbling ornamental curated canal. That is the epitome of Lucca. Examine Lucca from above and it has order, definition, discipline and distinction. Its Renaissance fortress structure intact. Its Roman amphitheatre lives on too bordered by a lumpy skyline of different building heights. Buildings whose balconies peer over spilling geraniums to umbrellas below. These in turn shade the tourists and Instagramati who nurse expensive Aperols and clutching wallets out of reach of the ‘Lookie-Lookie’ desparados. I like to think I am a bohemian romantic, but I think to the Lucchese eye I am a scruff.

Lucca’s motto is as simple and refined as the town. ‘Libertas’ – Freedom.

But freedom from what?

Expats are readily available in Lucca. They gather to walk the walls, do yoga, sip apperitives and complain about Brexit and Trump.

Viareggio is standalone bonkers and I say that as someone that hails from Brighton. I am used to seaside resorts; more, I love them. For the first few years our attempts to visit were thwarted by not being able to park. Trawling the streets for gaps, we had noticed that Viareggians have their own sartorial style, clownlike. Look out for red trousers, coloured hair and large footwear. But Italians are like cats, they don’t go out in the rain, so to assess ones chances of finding parking check the weather report.

Viareggio is wide sands backed by the distant haze of Cinque Terre cliffs to the north, by snow covered mountains to the east. The west is Ligurian blue, a sea that churns or laps depending on its quickly changing mood. These are the sands where Shelley’s body was washed ashore and burned, apart from his heart which resisted the flames. It was (finally) given to his widow and she kept it wrapped in silk and a copy of his poem Adonais. It is a heartbreaking read. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45112/adonais-an-elegy-on-the-death-of-john-keats

Then, after a fire in 1917, Viareggio was rebuilt in the Stile Liberty (Art Nouveau) It is hard to imagine that such beautiful buildings arose on a tide of fascism. But none the less it is a joy to turn a blind eye and enjoy a pot of Whittington’s tea sitting in a light an airy hall with views over an orangery, listening to the chatter of Viareggians and the chirp of sparrows who have somehow got in. Here the expats are travellers with one eye on the Maritime horizon - sailors, divers, international NGO peeps coming into roost with Italian wives.

On a dry run a couple of weeks before we met an Italian gentleman. He refused to give his name saying that he wore at least five different hats, one of which was as a publisher of academic works out of the Villa Blu museum in Pisa. He said to call him Il Professore.

That is so Viareggio- living life behind switching masks of identity.

The locals wouldn’t dream of going to the Viareggio Carnevale, they rub shoulders with the locals at the Darsena carnevale, a short stroll across one of the canals. But we have never been to Viareggio Carnevale, so we, and some friends did it like tourists.

It was crazy. The nearest thing to this in the UK would be the Notting Hill carnival. I went in the 1980s, it was dangerous even then. Viareggio was entirely devoid of any undercurrent- everyone was dressed up, from tots on shoulders, to people being pushed in wheelchairs, there was no argy-bargy, no sense of pickpockets, just everyone out dancing under the bluest sky possible.

Vast, scary, grotesque floats preceded by squadrons of brightly costumed dancers inched slowly past. So many videos and photographs taken that my phone battery died. After a couple of hours my neck hurt from craning up, my ears were pounding along with my ribs from too loud music. We moved up into a narrowing street- a bad decision. Hordes of teenagers becoming lubricated in mating rituals blocked the path, the music contained by the building became louder, I wasn’t sure if the sound of demonic screaming was in my head or the next float. It was time to escape the mounting claustrophobia and break out for the sand and sea.

After a restorative stroll buffeted by on shore breezes we stopped for tea and apperitivi in the wonderful Café Margherita, browsed the bookstore and then mooched back to the Molo, the jetty, where three boats plied freshly fried fish and chips. There is something wonderful about scorching hot just fried fish and chips eaten with the boats bobbing around in front of you and sharing the moment with our Tuscan friends.

Viareggio, doesn’t have a motto which is somehow both funny and completely apt. It is a mysterious place of switching masks, it is anti-establishment, it can no more be pinned down by a few words than a wave pinned to its sand.

Until next time.

Thank you for reading. I do hope you have enjoyed my little bloglet. Do subscribe for vignettes about life between Tuscany and Surrey and follow for more everyday chat.

No AI was used (apart from spellcheck)

Last Christmas the kiddies were called away to the Ex’s grandparents so we had an early Christmas together then they left us for a romantic Christmas a deux.

Decomposing green duck wasn’t our favourite Christmas lunch ever, but soon Hugo and I were curled up together on the sofa and Hugo found this app Suno app that could make up songs for you. We quickly cobbled together some lyrics and then Hugo asked if it could be set to music in the style of Maria Carey. The A1 misheard and set to to a mariachi band. We rolled around with laughter as it went circling around the world. (I used to refer to Hugo as Gianni. Gianni Stranieri or Jonny Foreigner, but in the end Hugo was more convenient as a pseudonym)

This year we can’t have the kiddies either as their own parents want them back, the ex’s having taken our turn, so we are having the fam together the weekend before.

I am so excited as more by accident than design this means that we will be celebrating Christmas on the Winter Solstice. I was brought up Catholic but became atheist in my mid teens but have always felt a witchy connection to woods and country so this is much more my cup of tea. The winter solstice traditions are aligned with how we celebrated Christmas when the kiddies were little and we were first back in Surrey, creating our own traditions and Christmas magic.

We are tweaking things this year. Back way they were little Christmas and birthdays basically set the kiddies budgets for the year, they relied on the big presents or big purchases. But now they are earning, (apart from the youngest who are on their masters so they do not rely on the same cash injection) but on the other hand, they are at that stage of life where there are many calls on their finances. Plus we are still trying to absorb everything from downsizing and the thought of more stuff brings me out in hives. There are two things that instantly kill the Christmas spirit- worrying about the cost and the counting calories.

[Oh and we are attemting (another) weight loss streak, but just not over Christmas. Hugo and I are on a 100 day race to 1^stApril to see how much weight we can lose in that time. We are aiming for big losses and haven’t yet decided on the winning prize to make it worthwhile but watch this space]

So, in August, when the Christmas plans were discussed we suggested bringing things back, taking out the cost but keeping the feasting the fun and our evolving family traditions. We set a budget of £5 maximum and everyone encouraged to do a craft so if the gift is £0, then so much the better. What it achieves is moving the emphasis from presents to the gathering, feasting and family which I rather love.

My attempt at papier mache could have put me in the runnings for a Turner Prize.

So I thought I’d share what our traditional Christmas celebrations are going to look like. You have to imagine that half will take place at our house, which basically looks like a childrens doll’s house, and half at a tall, quirky medieval house complete with witches marks cut into the wooden beams where our son and his girlfriend live within walking distance.

Winter’s Solstice Eve

· Gather at the dolls house

· Wellies morning walk to the magic woods up to the King’s seat to collect greenery and berries to deck the halls.

· Lunch at The Sun Inn (medieval pub) in front of the log fire

· Digestive snooze

· Fill the houses with stolen greenery, berries, and light candles everywhere (in lanterns)

· Party nibbles with Snowball, Baileys, Mulled wine and Rum with hot apple juice at the Witches cottage.

· Last minute present wrapping

· Creatively adapted carols

· Bets taken on who will see in the winter solstice dawn

Winters Solstice

· See in the winter solstice dawn (or not)

· Coffee, bacon sandwiches, and Bucks Fizz at Witches Cottage

· Father Christmas hands out presents! HO HO HO!

· Ye Old Pub crawl back to the Doll’s House

o The Star with cockles

o The Charterhouse Arms

o The Cricks

· Interpretative dancing to Fairy Tale of New York

· Top posh Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, oink the pig and yule log

· The Great Family Quiz

· Each person to produce 8 vaguely family related questions (no Greek mythology) For example, this legendary family favourite pudding, you could call it flambed pears, we call it slugs in tutus, will definitely be in the quiz.

· Games

Charades, Pictionary, but absolutely no scrabble.

I actually think that Winter Solstice may be my preference going forward. I can’t wait.

https://truegrace.co.uk/blogs/the-journal/in-the-bleak-midwinter-celebrating-the-winter-solstice

I’m skidding in with a late post for November, just before we go full bonkas into Christmas.

Now I usually love November for its quiet misty stillness, drenching rains and all over introspection. For me that makes it the perfect ‘Month of the Dead’ welcomed in by Halloween celebrations. But this year, blow me down with a feather, it has turned out to be the month of growth, rejuvenation and unnatural practices.

So firstly growth. No, not a magical new way to get new subscribers. In spring I grew some extra bone in my shoulder which caused problems that cortisone injections magically resolved. Not to be thwarted, the extra-bone making activities went to my feet. Initially I thought I had eaten myself into grout, but X rays revealed that I have been growing spurs on my big toe joint. It’s called Hellux Rigidus (shouldn’t that be a character in Asterix?) or, as I prefer to describe it- toe antlers. These are going to have to be removed with a chisel and hammer (which is far too biblical to contemplate.) In the meantime I am Pia, with knobs on, the human stalagmite. Here is a photograph of my medical condition.

The surgeon, who had been comparing my foot to a squeaky gate, laughed when I said ‘but we are going skiing’ and recommended Sole Bliss shoes, solebliss.com as worn by Oprah and Princess Kate (apparently.) They do extra wide, extra comfy shoes which you have to get in huge sizes. So my entire collection of treasured boots and high shoes are now going to my lovely daughter whilst I get a new collection of very expensive clown shoes.

Whilst I bristle with good intentions which occasionally manifest into a guilt-driven cycle adventure or lurch around the tennis courts, my commitment to the discipline of writing- rather than any form of exercise or dietary restraint- sees me sat at my desk/ sofa/ chaise longue with the only exercise lifting the kettle and tracking a path to the fridge. With a dodgy shoulder and limpy foot inhibiting the exercise options I am at an all time…er… greatness. Only Ozempic can save me now.

Anyway Hugo and I had been honoured to be invited to a very exclusive and intimate 70^th birthday - a masked dinner at a wonderfully atmospheric villa above Lucca in the Tuscan hills.

But what to wear? Lucca had nothing and the clock was ticking. I found an outlet store (theoutnet.com) for my favourite designer Camilla Franks (floaty silk specialist), found a gold and black floaty frock, albeit in the size above, and after byzantine complications it was winging its way to me. When I say it was on the big side, it was more marquee than robe and would have fitted Demis Roussos -with shoulder pads straight out of Rivals. I tried squeezing my hoof into shoes with a heel but it was like the ugly sisters trying to ram a pedis into a glass orifice. With the Sole Bliss merchandise stuck in Italian customs there was no choice but to wear a pair of black flat loafers I had bought in a moment of sensibleness when Zsa-Zsa graduated in Rome in March- cobbles are a nightmare for walking on, but these shoes are virtually orthopaedic.

The party villa was spectacularly glamourous, the company scintillating, no one mentioned Trump, the table was breathtaking, the food delicious, the cocktails chilled, the speeches funny and intimate and I didn’t knowingly faux pas for England.

All the other ladies looked spectacular – 70 is the new 40. Everyone else there was fit as a flea. When the ladies aren’t skiing, they are horse-riding, cycling , exhausting dogs, designing houses or curating art. They were in glamourous short sparkly on-trend dresses, rocking out on chunky high heels. Me, I didn’t realise until the photographs came back that I looked like a tanker clad in black and gold silk wearing nun’s shoes.

We then went to another 70^th birthday party- wonderful people, homemade delicious food to die for, poetry recitals. It was held at a gothic banqueting hall in the Cotswolds. Between the rain, the sodden misty ground, and getting lost in the grave yard it was very Bram Stoker.

Another bloody expensive dress, but the Sole Bliss shoes had arrived, although I would call them Sole Agony, as it turns out that antler feet can’t be bent into heels. Then to add insult to injury Sole Bliss then refused a refund as they said they had been worn.

The Cotswolds are also a bit Rivals. The medieval stone architecture is very pretty. We think our part of Surrey leans towards posh – we are God(alming)s chosen people after all, but the Cotswolds think themselves a cut above. Honestly, I know they are historic wool towns but I have never seen so much tweed. One woman pushed passed, head to toe in Bruer with riding boots that had only ever seen the inside of a new range rover.

‘Did you see her?’ I whispered to Hugo as we slunk past

‘Did you see her dogs? He responded, ‘they were ….snooty!’

That’s the Cotswolds- stone, swanky and snooty bitches.

And so to unnatural practices. My MacBook Air had been refusing to recharge. We think it has become a socialist. We bought it a new recharging cable. It weakly accepted a small amount of charge for a couple of weeks then went full Scargill, 3 day weeks but then, as soon as we got to Italy and it would be impossible to get stuff, it went full black out, thou shalt not pass.

Hugo and I went to the new commercial centre near us- Euronics. The very helpful lady said that it was too old (I think it has reached the ripe old age of 3 years)

Then she did something which borders obscenity. She stuck a recharger IN THE WRONG HOLE!

And it worked! Well, bugger me, my MAC had been born again. Who’d have thought it?

My children’s illustrated book is now available. Wholesome, charming good night bedtime stories. Buy copies, everyone will love it, especially me! https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/picture-books/lavender-pots

Is truth a defence for the writer?

I don’t mean – is truth a defence for defamation? It is, in the UK at least.

I don’t mean- if you stray the wrong side of the line are you going to be the victim of tarring and feathering along the line of Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path.

What I mean is – if you are writing from life, is truth a defence to offence? And what is now mandatory for any book?

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I recently published an illustrated children’s book Lavender Pots. I write memoir and this is no exception, even if it is a children’s illustrated book – it is based on actual events which happened in real life. Here is the story:

Back in the mid 2000s I was a single mum with two toddlers. I went away for the weekend to stay with another mum (whose husband worked abroad) for my birthday. Before doing so I bought a tray of lavender pots which I flung onto the rocking chair in my haste to leave. At my friend’s house the children played together before a midnight feast while we drank ‘grape juice’. After breakfast birthday pancakes we drove home, I collapsed into the rocking chair only to find that an escaped slug was on the TV remote control. I called for my little son to come to the rescue, the slug was removed outside and a home of petals constructed which s/he/they (not sure of the slug’s preferred pronouns) then ate.

As minority groups go, single mums don’t get much of a look in. (Neither do slugs.) To my mind one of the strengths of this book was that a single mum would identify with the difficulty of coping alone and bringing up boys without a man to role model. (Not necessarily modelling gender norm behaviour, but just decent, kind behaviour)

And creepy crawlies would benefit from being represented as just as scared of us giants as we are of them.

Now I have had some lovely reviews for which I am very grateful:

‘An enchanting and funny little story that will delight young children and families alike…’

‘It’s gorgeous! So charming and lovely. Ticks all the boxes’

‘ADORABLE book!’

‘…heartwarming and funny story. Pia’s writing is warm, like buttered toast or sitting together with the family in front of the fire.’

‘Wonderful book that your family will love’

‘heartwarming and charming picture book that effectively teaches children about overcoming fears…sweet and relatable’

You get the vibe. I’ve also had some observations which make fair points and unfair points. (One being held to account for not having the wonderful illustrator credited on the front cover- which I wanted but was thwarted by the publishers who said it was not technically possible and after a few back and forths insisting I was forced to concede)

But one lady reviewer on Netgalley (I’ve since googled Netgalley and they have a reputation for harsh reviews) went full wokerati at the boys dressing up and playing with swords, the girls as princesses. She says

‘I do not care for the ways the text reinforces gender norms. .. I don’t think there is anything wrong with boys enjoying stereotypically boy things and girls enjoying stereotypically girl things but I hate seeing it as the only option in 2025…having the illustrator be one whose style harkens back to the picture books of previous decades makes sense… as this text belongs in previous decades’

I think she speaks with a forked tongue and very definitely thinks there is something wrong with text and images ‘reinforcing’ gender norms although I think reinforce is strong, the book ‘represents’ it doesn’t ‘reinforce’. All of the children are playing with the swords, both boys and girls, and both boys and girls are depicted with cuddly toys.

This is the offending image and text:

She lost the plot at this page which was intended as a joke to any single mums reading it:

So, to my two questions, firstly is truth a defence? This is a kind loving book with children being represented as they are in real life. They were turned out to play, they did what they wanted to do which was to raid the dressing up box, dress the dog up as a dragon and themselves as (fully armed) knights and princesses. No one instructed them what to wear, or who should have swords. If they had swopped gender roles that would have been fine but they followed gender norms. One gender norm being that boys and girls can equally seize and play with swords should they wish. They did what was and is normal.

If I google the meaning of ‘normal’ it is defined as ‘physically and mentally healthy.’ It should be possible to write a book which depicts normal, that is physically and mentally healthy behaviour, without being slated for it. That is not to say that books cannot and should not deviate from ‘gender norms’ and include minorities but is it mandatory that all books must include these issues whatever the circumstances or story- or else?

As it is Lavender Pots is one of the few books on the market which champions a little celebrated minority - struggling single mums. The book depicts a single mum surviving and instinctively giving her son, the baby of the family, the chance to find courage whilst learning to protect small frightened creatures and his family. Aren’t we supposed to teach our children- whether boys or not- to look after their siblings, mother and treat little creatures with kindness?

It’s based on a real life, has messages of love, kindness and survival- of mum, kiddies and Sluggy. It has no political agenda and follows gender norms.

So, is truth a defence or should all stories based on real life, memoir or children’s books, be written to appease a political agenda whether or not that departs from reality, or normality ie physically and mentally healthy behaviour?

Am I alone in seeing no harm in following gender norms and who thinks either way truth (and reality) are always a defence to offence?

Meanwhile for those made of sterner stuff, if you are looking for a stocking filler that sticks to gender norms and reality without any political message; a book to read aloud whilst cuddling up little ones, and inviting them to be kind to creepy crawlies and invertebrates please do consider Lavender Pots, available from any good book stores or online from this website.

https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/picture-books/lavender-pots

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When we left the villa in late May, the weather was balanced on the cusp of summer. In the six weeks we have been away Tuscany has quivered in extreme heat. The bathroom display of orchids of which I was so proud are gone. I didn’t even have twigs to revive but came back to an empty vase. The potted geraniums dangle twigs with shrivelled leaves. Even the cacti are turning to dust.

The villa has been working hard with summer guests -themselves grumpy with the insufferable heat. We arrived with the last days of extreme heat. Now the dial is turning down. We can have the villa back, treat the old lady that is the villa not as a work horse to be flogged but with the tenderness and love she deserves, coax her back into the glory we left her in.

The first thing I did was get out the fireman’s hose and drench everything. Next we played the usual game of hide and seek. Last year the guests had moved all the plugs to one bathroom, a bed into the study, glasses to the shed and we can only assume they were playing Frisby with the toilet seats on the lawn. This year they hid all the chopping boards and the tea towels.

We love having the villa back as we can populate it with old friends. Eight were arriving whom we had met when we were members of the Foxhills country club. (https://www.foxhills.co.uk) Sadly, in the years since we have moved house, we haven’t settled to a new gym and whilst they have remained svelte and fit, we have piled on the kilos. I now have the physique of a spinning top.

The plan was to toast around the pool, take them to our favourite little restaurants, play tennis, and cycle and, over a few nights kick back and catch up over infusions of local wine.

On Sunday they began to arrive most coming by late flights so first stop was pizza at our favourite new haunt Il Circolino in Avane,( https://www.facebook.com/CIRC0LIN0/) a spot tucked away in a tiny village near us. By the time we got home and luggage had been clinked to their rooms, drinks on the terrace were late. The crickets were rasping, the air warm, the drinks cool and strong. Everyone was excited at our holibobs. Eleven o’clock came and went and with it the music had to be turned down (mandatory hours for quiet in Italy are 11pm-7am and 1pm-5pm) The appearance of a banksyesque hanging man on the convent wall came as a surprise.

At that time we realised that there was a hornets nest in the chimney. Pillows had already been stuffed up the chimney from below following the sight of a chunk of collapsed nest and two dead hornets. I was adamant that we should like a fire and smoke them out.

I abandoned our guests at 1.30am (Hugo says I am a dormouse that sleeps in a teapot) but fuelled by limoncello the laughter and loud hushes continued outside.

The next morning everyone was up early for a planned trip to my favourite place- tiny, picturesque fishing village Tellaro. We didn’t get far before things began to unravel- the garage doors are so temperamental that they are electric in name only. There is a bit of a knack to shutting them as they slot together. I pulled to slam them shut. The doors took offence bounced back and attempted to sever my thumb in the hinge. I was hopping around like a demented imp on hot coals clutching my blackening thumb when I realised I was beside gentle giant Mike. Mike had a new hip and then cycled from Land’s end to John O’Groats so I had to pretend it didn’t hurt at all (but I did complain incessantly for the next few days)

First coffee in Vecchiano to wait for Hugo to complete his residency but he forgot his photos so back tomorrow. Then with teeth gritted and a throbbing thumb we set off in convoy destination Tellaro. We made it to the motorway and joined the ‘re-entro coda’ i.e. the post holiday re entry tailback which lasted three days. We endured three hours of near stationary movement, and then with the shimmering mountains above Tellaro in sight were obliged to fly the white flag and go back.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my pest control credential were being shredded as our chef’s heroic husband advised against smoking the hornets out by lighting the fire suggesting their nest would explode, causing a chimney fire that will set fire to the house. Instead he went out onto the four story high roof, shimmied over to the hornet’s nest, tied a bin liner around the chimney and squirted four cans of killer inside.

Not to be undone by his manly endeavours the boys were racing inflatable chairs in the pool and practicing reverse dives.

It was dinner at home night, so with everyone basking by the pool our lovely local chef arrived to prepare Death by Bruschetta, followed by melon stuffed with cheesy rice and the tenderest steaks ever. Cristina does medieval feast portions and by the early morning (the last courses came out after midnight) we were groaning like foie-gras geese and the fridge was rammed to bursting with leftovers.

We weren’t the only ones being fed, as the mossies had selected their victim and one of our guests was starting to look like a plague victim from Game of Thrones and washing down histamines with limoncelli. Sounding somewhat unintentionally smug and cruelly strategic, I was saying that its best to stay covered up until they have selected their victim and that I didn’t have a bite on me as my bete noir is not mosquitoes but bastard horse flies. Given the amount of homemade local wine, beer and limoncelli in everyones blood stream I am amazed the mossies could fly at all.

The next morning, my waistline inflated to full girth, I was determined to make amends. No cornetti breakfast for me. Instead I shoehorned myself into obscenely tight cycling shorts, carefully put on my cycling gloves, and despite it being in the high 20’s declared defiantly that I was cycling to Vecchiano. Hugo and I had both brought mountain bikes over this time but happily for him, his had got bent in transit so he was excused. After a moments stunned silence heroic Fi-Fi, former tennis partner and bestie volunteered to come with me.

A good host/friend would have insisted that she ride my just imported stump-jumper mountain bike but rotter that I am it was Fi-fi that got my old sit up, no gears but now with brakes, bike.

(This bike starred in an earlier blog. https://www.whitmartlet.com/p/idyllic-cycling-in-the-tuscan-hills?r=2fieve&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=fals)

I made it slightly further than the garage this time, but not much. It turned out that no, my bike could not vault over the chain barrier to the church. I hit the deck.

Then I got us lost which was a problem as the heat was building. I led us confidently over a field, had a change of heart and decided to turn the bike around on a lush patch of grass realising only at the last second that it was not a patch of grass but a ditch and I couldn’t vault ditches either. Splat on the ground… Again.

By now, dented, bruised, covered in dust and regretting not having a coffee before we left, we arrived in Vecchiano and limped to our usual coffee bar. Luckily Hugo was in Vecchiano to give the council his photographs tracking our progress on google maps. With the bikes safely disassembled in the boot, he drove us home.

Having been thwarted in Tellaro, the call of the sea was still strong so we headed for our local beach Marina di Vecchiano for a sunset swim.

It was idyllic, wine, beers and crisps on the sand. Everyone swimming as the sun began to dip. Us all waving from the sea as if in the midst of a mass drowning.

Afterwards it was over to the beach bar; fairy lights, lit up octopus balloons, leis and 80s anthems for a birthday, the smell of fish and chips divine! But we were headed to another of our favourite restaurants, nicknamed the Cello restaurant on account of the complimentary limoncelli selection which follows dinner.

Hugo loves tuna. Pink. The menu was complicated as they offered two types of tuna, one with balsamic vinegar, one not. Fi-fi ordered the sauce on the side. Hugo did not. Hugo does not like anything soupy unless it is actual soup.

A while later Fi-fi’s tuna arrived- all fine, Hugo’s tuna arrived, a sloppy grey puddle sloshing over hidden tuna. There was silence. His bottom lip trembled. He struggled but was overcome.

‘It’s an- ABOMINATION!’

In that moment the Group whatapp name became The Abomindation Tour, the tuna was replaced and we forfeited our trays of limoncello. But no worries as we had a freezer full of limoncelli at home…

The next day the weather was capricious. If summer arrives carried aloft on a wave of wild flowers, jasmine scented nights and fire flies summer leaves to a chorus of rasping crickets and the rolling timpani of thunder and pelting rain. I love the end of summer storms, there is nothing so ferocious or fast as an Italian end of summer storm. But it was not ideal weather for a shopping expedition to Lucca.

The skies blackened. Clouds burst and our shoppers returned home drenched and cold. The hot tub beckoned even though Tom said I made it so hot it was boiling his danglies.

There was however a dark black cloud, spots of rain landed on my skin, and the pool began to ripple in tiny wavelets. Like a toothless soothsayer I warned against it, you could see the clouds racing towards them. As I went to take a photograph of the lads in the hot tub so there was a flash of white, the hot tub motor flinched and almost immediately a low growl of thunder reverberated. The lads hopped out. Hugo thought maybe he should put the umbrella down.

The next minute an a half was high drama as it went from spotting to full squall and back again.

That night we went to dinner at Las Vegas a nearby rustic restaurant. The hills were black, the night black occasionally split by forks of lighting or frequent flashes. Meanwhile in the kitchen there were fights and shouting as if Punch and Judy were the cooks. Our orders came out all wrong, but no one died.

I have long thought that I could cycle to the sea. Take the strada bianca to the lake then turn left, through the pine forests and then El dorado, the golden tops waves of the deep blue Ligurian sea The next day, I set out alone but with my new helmet piping music into my head.

The first part was known and idyllic- wide, white car-free paths through fields of sunflowers against a backdrop of silvery olive groves and blue mountains. Then I turned west to the sea. I was all alone, so jacked up the volume to sing along. I was mid singing ‘Doctor Kiss-Kiss’ at top lung capacity when I was surprised to be overtaken by a cyclist. Thereafter he kept ahead of me but never so far that I was completely out of sight like one of those wild animals that wants you to follow them. I was happy to follow him, as I presumed he would know the way as between me and the waves of the sea were two motorways and a railway.

Still the sunflowers kept me company. Their heads were bowed with the weight of their fecundity and they had been battered and refreshed in equal parts by the storm. I meant to take photos but thought I would on the way back. Piles of discarded rubbish began to appear next to the sunflowers which illustrated the philosophical question of what people chose to see.

The first motorway was easy – a bridge. Then the road narrowed into a path with white gravel replaced by broken glass and old bottles. The second motorway I dismounted as I had to make a dash between lorries that honked in greeting.

Once on the other side it got rougher. At the side sitting on white plastic chairs African women sat patiently. I said ‘Good day’ as I cycled past, we are all prostitutes plying our wares to survive. It was no longer an idyllic pastoral Tuscan scene but I had that in the wrong place feeling. The cyclist stayed ahead, keeping me just in his line of sight.

I came to the raised stone levy of the railway track. By now the path was barely a footpath. It looked like one of those scenes from a second world war movie. I met Luigi, a man in a vest with two bikes, one with wheels, one without. After he had practiced his English politely enquiring about England and Italy he said that there wasn’t a tunnel or bridge but to cross at the yellow bollards.

At the graffitied yellow concret bollards I looked up over the railway. I didn’t think I’d get up the levy, didn’t trust whether or not there was a live rail and wasn’t sure I could carry my bike over anyway.

My guardian angle cyclist had already crossed. He spoke to three men, glanced back at me and started away. I faced two burly men and an African man who were looking at me square on as if I had landed from outer space.

‘Which is the way to the sea?’ I shouted. They jerked behind them on their side of the tracks

‘Is there was a tunnel or bridge?’

‘Is it safe to cross?’ The phrase ‘I don’t want to be run over by a train’ hasn’t cropped up in Duolingo.

They shouted back in accented Italian that I would say was possibly Romanian or Albanian which suggested to me that they might have a financial arrangement with the aforementioned ladies. However it would appear that they had misunderstood my reticence to cross and interpreted it as a call for assistance. As they strode confidently over the railway line, I baulked a little worried in case there might be a niche market for old broilers starved of HRT but luckily they picked up my bike and escorted me to the other side.

I set off in pursuit of my phantom escort. I had imagined the pine forests on the other side to be fragrant with butterflies and the odd glimpse of a porcupine or boar with humbug boarlets cavorting in dappled shade. Instead it was Indiana Jones with litter and broken glass on a bed of sand with intermittent puddles. Worse- it was infested with horseflies. Cloud upon cloud of horsefly attacked me- in my helmet, on any part of exposed skin. The only thing I could do was try to out cycle them. I got bitten to buggery.

I emerged the forest of hell just shy of Viareggio and stumbled dizzily into a bar where I wolfed two glasses of ice cold café latte and a cornetto. Hugo to the rescue.

Near home we pulled in the shack on the side of the road next to an orchard. The old farmer was sat in the shade. We bought from him sun ripened tomatoes the size of nectarines intense with flavour, and juicy nectarines the size of melons. A car honked in greeting, our local barber saying hello.

Our final night we manage to persuade the owner of Villa Corliano, Count Augustus Augustini of the silk, to let us have aperocena in the beautiful fairy light lit gardens of his romantic villa from 1448. https://www.villadicorliano.it/en/home-english/

The clouds burst so we enjoyed his cellars too. Then from the sublime to the ridiculous, it was back to Avane for a night of drunken karaoke. Manic Mondays will never be the same again.

The last morning we finally made it to the tennis courts and I wished we had done so every morning. Perfect blue skies, hint of a breeze and clay courts, the bells of St Quidditch and vespas, for breakfast or double breakfast in our case, at our favourite Bar Centrale in Quisea.

Wonderful!

It’s been the gathering of the clans for us with two important events, Hugo’s birthday and Will’s graduation.

Last Friday was Hugo’s birthday. It was great because given our various locations it was the first time that all eight of the family have been together at the same time. It was a bit of a shock having a full house. This is a wonky character full cottage where everything is in a trembling state of near collapse and Hugo and I have got used to it mostly being us and the cat.

On Hugo’s birthday eve, we went to the pub, came home for a BBQ and jugs of Pimms. Then the kids wanted to play games. Hugo loves crosswords but gets into a rage if Scrabble is even mentioned but the kiddies love games not withstanding unintended consequences. In one game Wills girlfriend had to give clues for ‘bedroom’ and said it was ‘necessary but boring’ which led to Wills being ribbed for hours. Although our worst family games incident happened a few years ago when during a particularly vigorous game of Christmas charades Hugo dangled Wills upside down. Poor Wills complained of stomach pains, Hugo announced that that a good fart would sort it out and went to bed. By the time he awoke the next morning Wills was just coming out of surgery for a burst appendix.

At a certain point on Hugo’s birthday eve Tiger the cat came out and disappeared down the garden. There was a feline yelp which I deduce was a poke up the rear with a grass straw then he nonchalantly wandered back up the garden followed by a drift of eau de cat poo. Next second everyone had their noses buried into their tops and then decided that on balance it was time for bed. Mac and his girlfriend walked back to their house, whilst Zsa-Zsa and Wills and their loved ones retired upstairs.

Lulled asleep by the white noise of the portable air conditioner I awoke to see a shadowy figure in the door.

‘Mum! Mum!’ hissed Will

‘Shush- you’ll wake Hugo- what?’

‘The key’s broken in the lock’

‘What????’

‘I’ve got a text from Mads in the bathroom saying, ‘We’re in big trouble’ and a photograph of the key broken in half’

‘You’re joking’

The kiddies know never to lock the bathroom door. You can get stuck in there even when the door is just shut on the latch. They grew up with this, it is so engrained that we forget to tell visitors. I crept out of bed to find the bathroom door firmly locked, with Mads giggling nervously on the inside. We tried staring at the door and willing it to open. We tried poking it with a knife. We tried sellotaping the key back together. We tried telephoned all the 24/7 emergency locksmiths none of whom picked up their phone. Then, with no choice at 1am we did the most dangerous thing known to man - we woke up Hugo.

My hero.

‘We are going to get you out!’ said Hugo, his manly voice belying the paisley Noel Coward dressing gown belted around his Father Christmas physique. Then, armed with a hammer, he went the full Jack Nicolson. Our maiden in distress was rescued. However, the door and door frame are a complete write-off.

Next day was Birthday celebrations, then Boxing day birthday celebrations and sartorial panics as it was Wills and Mads graduations. I had said that I would get Wills a graduation/interview suit but had forgotten about it as he has not been here all summer. In the meantime I have splashed out on my new Specialized StumpJumper bike. Uh-oh.

A dark green woollen elegant double-breasted vintage Saville row suit arrived the next day. Wills looked great, student from the neck up –unshaven with unkempt hair but ready for a career from the neck down. I remembered all the other times similar moments had pulled at my heart strings – his nursery toddler uniform, prep school and finally boarding school suff. And I thought ahead of the interviews that will come up, and, if all goes to plan, the moment when he wears a barrister’s gown over it. This is so much more than a suit, it is a passport through the gateway into a new phase of his life.

There was a last-minute search for the family graduation tie. In the olden days when the kiddies were groaning about homework and the stress of exams Hugo used to lean back in his chair and say that he had never worked at university. At first this led to a bit of eye rolling but our family never let the chance of a ribbing to go by. So in no time we started doing Jazz Hands and praising the Lord for the knowledge that was beamed from the heavens straight into him. Then we decorated his life-size graduation portrait with a golden star, flower leis and candles and started humming Handel’s Messiah when he started talking about university.

During this process much was made of his 1980’s paisley tie. It is now, family history and The Graduation Tie essential wear for graduations. Hugo was able to put his hands on it and with the suit and tie safe, Will’s graduation could now take place.

The next day we finally loaded into the car for The Long Drive Up North. I was by then tired and grumpy from three nights sleep deprivation, several worn off jugs of Pimms and big bike, suit and hotel holes in the bank balance.

‘Shall I check the maps?’

‘Noooooo, it’s Sunday’ says Hugo

‘but –‘

‘Noooo’ Famous last words…

Many, many hours later, we made it to Newcastle and gingerly approached the Tyne Bridge. Last time we failed to notice the tiny sign in brail mentioning the fee hidden by the tunnel entrance. By the time we knew about it had exploded into hundreds of pounds and bailiffs were being threatened.

Graduation eve we went to a Lebanese restaurant for dinner. It was Keto heaven. A banquet of roasted body parts arrived in a brass coffin accompanied by flaming lamb stew. Wow.

Then it was back to the hotel (which had definite Shining Overlook Hotel vibes) for night caps before bed and retiring. We couldn’t sleep on account of 1) having the profile of a boa that has eaten an antelope 2) no aircon in stifling heat and 3) a selection of pillows made for the Flintstones family.

The next day we were in our finery to watch the Pufflings graduate. The strapping young men, no longer the boys that had arrived, wore suits. The girls wore dresses on a spectrum somewhere between bum-and-boobie pole dancing outfits and understated elegance. Radient, beautiful Mads looked like a mini Audrey Hepburn in Fuchsia silk, Wills her handsome, young Viking.

At one point there was a cloud burst which threatened to flood one of the halls. The next, our proud families filed into an old hall, or maybe it doubled up as a church as it had a wall to ceiling organ too. Its high walls hung with portraits of important people in old garb. Ranks of students in their regalia looked nervous and queasy to the right. Puffed with pride families to the left.

The next second there was an ethereal wheezing . There is something eerie , haunting, melancholy about bagpipes. The Northumbrian piper is not weapons grade sound like its Scottish cousin but has just as much impact.

The piper led a procession of dignitaries dressed in various historic academic regalia to the stage. Suddenly this was a moment of time. The students stood on the cusp of their lives. Their academic past was over (well, ish), their professional futures yet to begin. Somehow the piper seemed to knit together the past and the present. Our students were the next layer of a lamination of graduates that went back centuries. It felt as if we were at once witnessing a historic ceremony, which was somehow also acutely personal to everyone there; whether student, or family

I was so proud. Proud of him, of us, of them, of our family and of every single day it had taken to get to this point. Wills and Mads had done the work. The achievement was all theirs, every step of the way from when they had first held pencils. But, it had taken families to back them for all those years. With that first bagpipe wheeze my eyes pricked. By the time they had processed to the stage a fat tear had rolled down my cheek.

The speeches by the dignitaries were kind and personal, with no sense of the students being processed through the sausage factory. Then they lined up, each new graduate applauded individually as their name was read out.

There was a last speech and saddest, the longest applause for a boy who had suddenly died in the first year who degree was posthumously awarded and received by his sister.

Then we were out and it was thousands of photographs before our family joined Mads’s family for a celebration dinner. We went to a wonderful old Friary for a tasting menu supper. It was great, an odd room, but one that worked. At first glance it looked like somewhere they conducted dissections in the past; oval with two rows of seating but, for our party of 13 it was perfect. I delighted in hearing about how Mads’s family had rescued a peacock that was being bullied and got him a peahen. And how the loved-up Peas were now eloping across the hills of Herefordshire raiding strawberry patches with Mads’ brothers in hot pursuit with a peacock net.

I gave a little speech and tripped up over my words and missed things out. I tried to say how mystified I had been when Wills had correlated me being proud of him graduating with getting a new suit - (crossed wires as it turned out.) I said how proud I was of him getting a degree in Hockey and drinking and swerving an ASBO for having too much fun, but really that I was proud of him, and been proud of him every day since I first held him in my arms, for everything – for his art and creativity, for his kindness, and happiness, for every time he had sat down and studied when life, football, hockey and fun was calling him out the window, for when he was a daring rogue - and for nothing because my heart bursts with love and pride just because he lives and breaths and the kids light up our worlds and bring meaning to our lives.

Dinner over, the kiddies wanted to go out for ‘Prees’ and then head out for live music. Hugo and I instead slunk to bed exhausted.

The next day we gathered for breakfast. I followed a woman down the stairs carrying a silk pillow.

‘ I wish I’d bought my own pillow’ I said darkly

‘Ha’ she said, ‘ I’ve stayed here before’

The breakfast location had been moved from the previous morning so a lot of guests were following anyone with a tray of food in a slight panic that they had got down too late. We caught up in the new location. It was rammed with various generations of families.

Hugo followed the blind person as he tapped his way to the breakfast buffet.

‘He didn’t have any problems finding the sausages’ he muttered on return, then cast a look around at our fellow diners. Most had been ravaged by time or wrestling the stone pillows and were in various states of disrepair, leaning on sticks or wobbling up and down the steps. Hugo leant in

‘It’s how I imagine breakfast would be at a hotel in Lourdes’ he said.

We were surprised to then see Mads younger brother. The hotel offered free breakfasts to students, but, cunningly, they had to be taken before 9am.

‘You are up early!’

‘I haven’t been to bed yet. Everyone went to Tynemouth to see the sunrise’

And then as we munched breakfast the pictures started to trickle in over the WhatsApp fam chat. Dawn breaking over a still summer morning sea. Swimmers in their boxer shorts, less brave paddlers, then barefoot dancing, singing and football in the sand.

A new beginning, a bathing in the first dawn of a new era.

We have been bouncing all over the place.

Firstly, whilst sad to leave Italy, we seem to have got out in the nick of time. It has been El Scorchio in England but I understand that shops in Lucca have put up notices that they are not open as it is too hot for tourists, whilst in Rome the tarmac is melting. Back in Blighty the heat has turned the cat louche. He lies around, legs akimber, nipples on show through balding stomach hair like a Roman emperor at a feast. Hugo has been the same. He’s such a hottie.

I have to say, our corner of England has been absolutely wonderful. We have been out with family and friends - walking to beer and live music festivals in town admiring the hollyhocks (‘weeds’ says Hugo), evening picnics to jazz sessions in the scented gardens of a near by Tudor mansion. We have played dress up posh being treated to wonderful cocktail and dinners at private clubs in Mayfair. (I survived the wobbly ejector seat bar stool with my dignity intact, and cringed when I recalled that that cocktail I like is a Pornstar Martini which gallant Hugo had to order on my behalf. I loved the alabaster loos so much they had been sat down by the time I returned and no doubt they thought I had been constipated.) I don’t dress up that much these days- well, we do- but it is wonderful to waft around in a bit of bling and silk. I also calmed down a recent infestation of ghosts and, in an unrelated episode, attempted to finally eat the remains of our Covid tin stash. Refried beans? Warm dog farts. Carrots in water anyone? Plus I started to embrace a bit more cycling to the extent that (drum roll) I have lost 100grams in weight and several hundred pounds in kit.

Plus it’s been Henley Regatta week which Hugo absolutely loves- beer, boats, old friends and dressing up in stripes of every hue. Plus this year he broke into a quaint old pub to rescue an ancient old dodderer he was looking after and set off all the alarms which tickled him for a week, and on a separate occasion was nibbled by a Morris Dancers Pantomime horse.

Followers may recall that in Italy I started going out on a brakeless, gearless vintage bike rides. Eventually I was able to persuade Hugo to join me and indeed the flat lands which border the Pisan mountains near us proved idyllic even if the bikes were challenging. River turtles, capybara, egrets, coffee and cornetto, shoulder tans. It’s always more fun to do things with Hugo plus last time I went out alone, I ended up on a steep and horrible wild Pisan mountain last occupied by dinosaurs and had to be rescued. As I watch him disappear as a speck of peddling energy over the horizon I like to kid myself that should I fall off he may eventually come back to find my broken body sprawled on the ground (assuming the pubs aren’t open or there is no chance)

I was waiting for the blistering temperature to subside before dragging my UK bike out. But then one morning I read Tino Masecchia’s substack on walking the Via Francigena and that was it. I pinged out of bed (Hugo was on a sleepover, Friday is rowers drinking and curry night), strapped on my helmet and went off in search of the Pilgrim’s Way. The Pilgrim’s way goes to Canterbury which is the starting point of the Via Francigena route. The Via Francigena is the ancient early medieval (my guess before) route from Canterbury to Rome. Later, a bit was added to Brindisi so that Crusaders could reach the Holy Land. The idea of cycling where Romans, and medieval pilgrims (plus Vikings probably, assuming they didn’t go everywhere by boat) have walked fills me with awe.

The lanes and pathways of Surrey are chocolate box pretty and a delight to mooch around on a bone shaker even if my woo-woo was on fire despite the padded shorts. I did indeed find the Pilgrims way. It was a narrow footpath with deep banks of nettles either side. Where the path widened into an unmade road near a golf course there was also a lot of distracting house porn; cottages with gardens full of tractors and flowers, other houses all glass and metal with scooping driveways of gravel.

Back in the woods, I spotted the huge tree stump in the middle of the path, I also spotted the roots creeping to the edge. What I didn’t spot was the root hidden by fallen leaves (highlighted in pink) If I had been going faster maybe I’d have clunked over it, if I’d have gone slower maybe I would have stopped but I was in the Cinderella flying zone- I sailed through the air as if shot out of a circus canon, and -missing the holly bush – landed with a flumph in the leaves with a slightly rattled head and a dented pride.

Since then I have been a bit nervous of my bike and don’t go out alone. I brake at every leaf and then the back end slews out. This adds up to a lot of waiting around while I catch up without denting my ambitions for us to cycle everywhere- pilgrims way, via Francigena, Land’s End to John O’Groats or LEJOG as us mounties like to call it.

So, yesterday I bought a ‘stumpjumper’ mountain bike. Hugo says it could go up a ski lift and come down a bike and will only be limited by what I want to do, which is great. Honestly it has more bounce than a saucepan of popcorn. Like an enthusiastic thoroughbred horse, it heads off on its springy seat before you are even on. It’s brakes? smoking hot- touch them and they virtually amputate the wheel, so its all very gently zoom zoom. On its first outing, today as I get used to it, I admit it almost pinged me down a woman’s top (there were various groups huddling under the bridge to get out of a thunder storm) and it almost flicked me into the river on several occasions, but I love it. It all got a bit slippery when there was a cloud break and the track turned into puddles but the bike didn’t care two hoots. But the best thing? Mud.

I loved getting dressed up for Mayfair and Henley, I even wear flat bejewelled sandals so going out posh doesn’t require the bloodied feet of my youth but I’d forgotten how fun much fun it is to be splattered head to toe in mud. When I was young and feral we used to fling Frisby cow pats at each other. Or lob chunks of horse poo having stolen the horses molasses and feed aka muesli. Sigh, those were the days.

Honestly, as Hugo hosed off the bikes, I trooped upstairs to float in a bath made fragrant with orange and geranium oil. As chunks of mud and bits of grass fell into the water, I felt deeply profoundly happy as if I had found a portal back to the tomboy days of my early teens. And , of course you can have a guilt free glass of wine as guess what – it counts as exercise even though its bags of fun!

Soon, our gang are off on an e-bike treasure hunt sleepover thing, Then Hugo and I are pencilling in a trip to tour Cornwall cycling. I’ve never been to Cornwall, I understand it is windy and hilly, full of wild seas, history and legend. And maybe a bit of bodice ripping. Hugo is my Poldark.

It is Hugo’s birthday this week so our lovely kiddies are headed to us so we can all annoy the neighbours by discussing things loudly at 9.30pm on a week day whilst having our garden fairy lights on as per a complaint by Anon to the Facebook community board (We know who you are. We see you trying to look into our bathroom. Just sayin’)

As we are now going big on cycling Hugo’s present is a flash helmet. I have bought us matching helmets with intercom systems so when we go out cycling the whole of Surrey doesn’t reverberate to my screeching his name.

‘We’ll be able to talk to each other- maybe you should wear it in the house!’

‘Does it have an on/off switch?’ he asked. He’s such a kidder.

We were comparing initials after our names. He has an entire scramble board of letters behind his name.

‘I’ve just got BA and maybe Sol for solicitor’ I said

‘Do you put an R in front of that?’ he asked as quick as a flash, his face a picture of innocence, waiting for the penny to drop.

Anyway I must away. I’m off to forage for mushroom for dinner. I thought we could try Oz Beef Wellington with mash and beans….

There seem to be a slew of articles attempting to debunk La Dolce Vita so I thought I would wade in with my own tuppence worth

There is no photo which encapsulates Italy. This is one of literally thousands of tiny moments which together make up La Dolce Vita for me.

Am I qualified to speak on things Italian?

Well, no. Always as an expat/immigrant as I do not believe you become Italian by virtue of living there. So I speak as an outsider.

That said, my ‘qualifications’ if you like for an opinion on Italy are - a life long love of the country its people, art and culture. After studying the Italian Renaissance at Uni it took me a decade to get a job in Rome. In the meantime I did everything to learn Italian from the UK at a time when that meant dry Italian text books or having an Italian Au Pair living in (even though I had no children.) I lived in Rome for a decade, and have ever since spent half a year in Italy, until now when with the kids education complete we can finally complete our move to Italy.

In that time we have experienced a life time of real life in Italy. We have had broken wrists, spines, burst appendix, given birth, had several burglaries, two cars and a vespa stolen, taken on the mafia and lost, attended weddings, baptisms and funerals and all the other little things that make up everyday life. When it comes to Italy my heart might be full of love but my feet are on the ground and my head is clear.

My bloglet is all about the things that make up my version of La Dolce Vita. In my La Dolce Vita posts which may have contributed to this ire, I always and only talk about things that are free and where finances are not a bar to entry.

I rarely give restaurant recommendations for entirely selfish reasons- they are my secret discoveries and precious as truly Italian secrets that I am not willing to share. Also because who am I to know if someone likes elegant or rustic food, white table clothes or to sit on bales of straw?

I have never been paid a word for anything I write or endorse - I write for pleasure, not profit. That said, I think it is a bit below the belt to imply that writers who are paid for their opinions should be treated as false- that payment taints and devalues what they say. I am not an influencer but I imagine that normal market forces apply – if you give unreliable information then your brand credibility is impacted. Trust is built on integrity. I imagine most influencers want to protect the integrity of their brand above all else since it is the only thing they own.

People are entitled to experience and judge Italy entirely as they find it. New comers are entitled to be excited and see the country with eyes full of wonder. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth if people, who like Italy enough to make it their permanent home, tread on other people’s dreams, directly or indirectly putting them off coming. Let others, the young and inexperienced enjoy the wonder of a country even if old hacks have now become jaded and take things which were once wonderful for granted.

It is not just about whose reality is right. Attempting to explode myths, stamping on a wonder for the simple sweet things in life drains the world of hope.

I spent my 20’s was slogging away in a soul destroying job in the city that paid well but that I loathed. I have a poem I wrote back then. It’s called 9.40 am (to allow for the commute city hours started at 9.30am) It begins – ‘in my head I scream and keep on screaming’

I was unhappy for years with no way out and believe me I exhausted every avenue. The only hope I had was that I would in the end find a way, anyway, if I had to dig a tunnel I would, to get to Italy. If someone had taken that hope away I’d have been one of those standing on Waterloo bridge waiting to plunge into the oblivion of the Thames. It seemed particularly egregious to me that those who are ‘living the dream’ even if they perceive it as a nightmare, seek to poison, or stamp on the fragile dreams of others, somehow acting as Cerberus hounds refusing admission to a country they, despite not liking it, call home.

There are generations of people who have fallen in love with Italy and La Dolce Vita. I doubt they were all wrong.

First define your terms. The literal translation of La Dolce Vita is The sweet life. The sweetness of living, of being alive. I am only interested in the Italian words not the American corruption of ‘sweet’ into luxurious or somehow depraved.

What is La Dolce Vita?

It’s a sense of wonder, and a sense of conscious appreciation. It is a state of mind, it is appreciating flashes of happiness in the joy of every day life. Here a list of examples of La Dolce Vita found in Italy (and elsewhere, no doubt)

A cacophony of a dawn chorus;

sunshine/ferocious thunderstorms/fresh fallen snow;

walks/cycle rides/first and last swims of summer;

clouds of jasmine, rose, orange blossom scented air;

fireflies and nightingales;

full rose moons, fountains by moonlight, skinny dipping;

the sound of vespas and the smell of fresh coffee

neighbours with open arms and kisses;

… with trays full of tomatoes or apricots and strawberries;

the shop keeper whispering his own recipe for limocello;

falling in love to the background of the bridges or fountains of Rome, of Florence, of Venice.

Saying La Dolce Vita doesn’t exist is not the same as saying for example there is no Father Christmas. It is the equivalent of saying, love does not exist, nor happiness. It is true some people do not find love and happiness or the other abstract nouns in their life, but this does not mean they do not exist.

And perhaps La Dolce Vita is hidden in the wonder of youth and perhaps the sad truth is that as we get old and jaded, and seen-it-all, been-there-done-it, no longer fall in love, perhaps when we say there is no Dolce Vita, we are actually saying we have got old and grumpy. Well, I say do not go quietly into the night.

For as long as I have my senses- and Italy explodes the senses- I will enjoy La Dolce Vita and as long as blood runs to my heart, I will love and appreciate transient beauty and experience. To shutter down ones capacity to find simple pleasures in life, is not only to grow jaded and old but to begin to die, fade away, and dissolve. If you don’t appreciate life, you are no longer living it. My mother is rotting from the inside out, riddled with dementia in an old peoples home. What wouldn’t she and I give, for her to wander around a twilight evening with bats sweeping overhead, and fireflies lighting heavy scented roses one last time?

What La Dolce Vita is not.

You cannot buy La Dolce Vita. Money does not bring happiness-ask any wage slave with a mortgage around their neck. Riches do not give an appreciate of simple pleasures. All money does is give a choice. Riches and a prestigious job are not the keys to La Dolce Vita. In fact, they get in the way.

La Dolce Vita is not a measure of how well the Italian economy is performing. It is not a measure of the extent to which to which the government is aligned to one’s political views. It is not a measure of how easy it is to get a job, or how tedious the paperwork is. It is not a measure of how inconvenient it is not to have brought the right clothes for the climate for which the fault lies squarely in ignorance. It is not a comparison of the pros and cons of your home country.

Brigadoon is not found on a Tuscan hillside, Roman via or in the bottle green glassy seas of the Amalfi coast. La Dolce Vita is not heaven. If you want perfection, gamble on a religion, die and fingers crossed you’ll go to the heaven of your choice. I have no expectation of finding heaven on earth anymore than I expect to love to be rose tints and chocolates, and not farts and compromise. You cannot look for La Dolce Vita on a map because it is within you (or not)

I think that La Dolce Vita is actually a reflection of the Italian spirit which says DESPITE the economy/ the politics/ frustrations of every day life DESPITE that there is joy to be found in sweet simple things. La Dolce Vita is found in adversity not in wealth and privilege.

La Dolce Vita’s sister expression is ‘La Dolce Fare Niente’ the joy of indolence, of doing nothing. But that joy can only be experienced as a contrast, as a break from doing something. Again, my mother, bedridden and curled up cannot move, but that is not La Dolce Fare Niente, it is a slow slide to death.

But it is all a matter of perspective. When I first went down to Rome in the mid 90’s there was a fashionable ‘ennuie’ People were standing drinking cocktails on a roof top in Trastevere in the twilight of a glorious sunset, in a city that seeps with history and legend. I was so incredibly grateful to have finally got there. Yet all they did was look beautiful as if they had slipped from the pages of Vogue only to moan and complain. We are social animals, the ennuie was contagious. I was appalled. I think the expression is along the lines of ‘some people make you happy when you arrive, others when they leave’ These beautiful butterflies sucked the oxygen, the joy out of life, I couldn’t bare them nor was I prepared to effect ennuie to fit in. Ennuie, in Rome?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or perhaps more pertinently as Anais Nin said ‘we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are’

I found my tribe, the ones with wonder, and appreciation and – joie de vivre. I was working in humanitarian aid, in and out of refugee camps and war zones. I had the contrast, and an appreciation of the fragility of life and we definitely, but definitely went full throttle on La Dolce Vita.

La Dolce Vita is alive and kicking. But it’s not a place, it’s an abstract noun, in ones head, or rather in ones heart and the spirit of youth.

Here it’s a black armband day. It’s that Sunday evening feeling when you have to go back to work, ready or not, like it or not. We are almost ready now, the villa shiny and clean and we all packed. We are in mourning, we have to leave beloved Italy for a couple of months.

The washing is flapping on the line and given that we are stark naked there is a certain amount of flappery of body parts too. The two are linked. We are on the final preparations for our temporary exodus to England so that the villa can welcome holiday guests. Rather than come back to mouldy towels etc I rammed them all for an hour wash and with any luck all will be sun dried and toasted by the time we leave for the airport.

Hugo’s swimming shorts and budgie smugglers and my bikoni star on the washing line. Yes, I have invented a new word- The Bikoni.

In the distant past, when the Pisan Mountains echoed to the sound of a dawn chorus sung by dinosaurs (who’s to say dinosaurs didn’t sing, birds are directly descended from dinosaurs?) I too was young and nubile.

I recall summer days cavorting in a La Perla bright pink feather bikini that cost a month’s salary. To be fair, feather bikinis aren’t practical. Mine looked like a drowned parrot when I made the mistake of going swimming in it (once) and I had to regularly retrieve it from my Siamese cats who couldn’t resist stalking and pouncing on it before chewing and spitting out the feathers. The bikini honour now passes to my lovely nubile daughter who dances around in a dainty bikini flaunting the body of Venus and swims the length of the pool like a living David Hockney painting.

Meanwhile I’m in my Decathlon black and white gingham bikoni which was clearly inspired by a mattress. It is part sail to cover my expanding backside and, as Hugo so delicately puts it, part hoist. As for swimming underwater my ear/jaw seem to have got water in them and spend a lot of time with my head on one side, batting my ear to chase out the demons like a cat with ear mites.

I meant to get my toenails done in the last six weeks but somehow never got around to it. A few years ago Hugo and I stayed in Santa Margherita which is small town very close to Portofino. (The staff were just lovely- I forgot to empty a drawer and they sent an entire package of underwear to me.) Anyway, I had left Hugo for about six hours while my locks were cut, tamed and coloured and my hands and toe nails attended to.

By way of background I perhaps don’t spend the time on my feet that I should. Partly, because they have become as inaccessible as the jungles of Borneo since my belly grew squidgy and my legs less bendy and partly because once when I went to a pedologist (I think it was a case of mistaken identity) this whiskery old man in a doctor’s coat (without even the courtesy of a massage chair), scrutinised my feet, told me I had to do foot exercises balancing off the stairs and then said the immortal words

‘You don’t have feet, you have hooves’

Any back in Santa Margherita my feet were tackled by a trained farrier (or perhaps stone mason). I assume that my feet in their natural state are either so rough that they are like Velcro or have some sort of suckers on them (if my toes accidentally brush Hugo’s leg in the night he shrieks) But resistance was futile -chunks of my feet were flying past this woman’s head and a mountain of skin shards piling up underneath as if my feet had an active case of woodworm. The end product was filed, moisturised feet with toe nails glistening with va-va-voom shiny red polish.

Hugo didn’t recognise me but his eye brows uncoiled and pinged with appreciation of the new me (which as compliments go is a bit of a wolf in sheep’s’ clothing. In fact I must go back to that hairdresser. These days I have to fight them not to give me a blue rinse and even then they coif and spray me into looking like Queen Camila)

Anyway we went back our room which had a terrace looking out to sunset over the sea. Time for a romantic aperitivo. I seductively kicked off my shoes and attempted to sashay like a 1950’s movie star towards Hugo. It turned out that that combination of having feet as slippery as eels and polished stone had turned our floor into an ice rink. As Hugo poured a glass of pop with a seductive look I tried to save myself with a couple of striking poses reminiscent of a baby giraffe trying to stand and then splatted flat on my back like an upside-down beetle. Sadly my attempts at being sexy usually end in tears with a health warning. More about that later.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we have spent the last six weeks hosting fabulous friends and family, dining in and out and going on outings under the guise of faffing around to get the villa ready.

We have emptied Ikea of glasses, cutlery and ovenware as otherwise we were going to need shares in Emma Bridgwater and Sophia Allport. It turns out that Hugo’s jealousy of others touching his socks or pants is matched only by my ferocity of sniffiness if anyone uses my mug.

We have bought three new toilet lids to replace those broken by last year’s guests presumably playing toilet seat frisbee in the garden. We have also bought new toilet brushes and scores of new pillows in different plumpness.

We have, reluctantly, killed all the ants because whilst strictly speaking they live in the garden and in my view that’s where ants should live, some of the little buggers had snuck into the kitchen and eaten all the bread whilst their big cousins have eaten most of the hot tub.

We avoided the annual cause celebre, as the olive grove about the house was left to the wild flowers and grasses which has made the fire flies and me very happy. Otherwise I would have to lie down in front of the strimmer in protest.

The topiary in the formal gardens has however had been trimmed into balls and knots, one horrible dead palm has been removed despite being covered with vicious thorns. We went to the dump with clippings so many times that we had a resident lizard in the car eating the escapees. It’s very strange- in Italy if you go to the dump your car is weighed on the way in and out and then they send you an email with your statistics. ‘At least they don’t send you an email when you use the loo’ says Hugo.

Anyway, we are never ready to leave and we never want to. But we know that dear friends and the glory of an English summer awaits.

So for anyone coming to a villa in Tuscany this summer; who knows it may be ours, and we are so happy to have you and so hope that you love this corner of Tuscany as much as we do, it’s wonderful- the people, history, architecture, cuisine, wildlife, jewelled lizards, wind whispering trees, Garden of Eden dawns…

Relish, be inspired, enjoy.

But if your child does a poo in the swimming pool please don’t call us.

Our day out in the 5T or Cinque Terre - the Five Lands (actually villages) as they are known in language of Shakespeare.

Spicy La Spezia

We have been getting the villa ready for this years holiday guests. This means huge amounts of washing, buying stuff for them to break and- somewhat ambituously- armed with secateurs and a saw, chopping down the diseased palm tree and ramming it in the back of the car. I have to say the palm tree is vicious. It might have plaited fans for leaves which delightfully clatter in a breeze but it turns out that these sit atop stalks that are more heavily armed than a sword fish snout. We wouldn’t normally be doing gardening in flip-flops and shorts but one friend-gardener is scared of heights and the other fell out of a tree (and is thankfully out of hospital) As an aside let me mention that recycling centres in Tuscany are straight up weird. The car is weighed on arrival and departure and then they send you an email detailing how much you have dropped off. Bizarre.

Anyway, we took a day off and went out on a jolly. The original plan was to get a train from Pisa to Monterosso, but that simple, fool proof plan was shelved when Hugo courageously agreed to drive us, a party of ladies of assorted ages and nationalities to the Monterosso Lemon Festival.

On the appointed morning, having been collected from various locations the ladies arranged themselves in the back according to degrees of familiarity, deafness and hat space and off we set.

Since collecting them had meant we were up at the crack of 8am, the first essential pitstop was an emergency coffee and cornetti refuel. The benefits of that that had worn off by half way up the Aurelia and with cordial formalities done I was planning to sleep. Attempts to nod off were however intermittently thwarted by one of the ladies bouts of enthusiasm which translated into surprise seizure of my shoulders at random intervals. Being British, and southern, I was of course hermetically sealed in ice at birth. If anyone touches me I assume I am being mugged or there is a threat to life. (Hugo is the same, should one of my toenails accidentally graze a hair on his leg in the night he screams like a girl.) Accordingly, the frequent explosions caused me to jolt awake with a yelp.

This is a cultural thing- British aloofness colliding with American informality. Despite having worked internationally I can still get this wrong. Last week we invited some newly met Americans around for a BBQ. They politely but firmly declined. Hugo then scrutinised my texts and sagely advised that perhaps they had interpreted my attempt at American friendly informality somewhat unfortunately. I shall no longer invite people we have just met ‘bring your swimmies and we can all hot tub together’ lest a misunderstanding ensue. For the avoidance of doubt, there is no pampas grass in our garden.

An hour later, in need of sleep, coffee we swung off the motorway and into La Spezia

The only problem with our cunning and devious plan to park at La Spezia and get the train to 5T was that everyone else had nicked all the spaces. We queued up next to the ‘Do Not Queue here when the car park is full’ sign until the car overheated. Plan B - we sneak to another carpark entrance and attempt to break in the back way- failed. Plan C- bribe a nearby hotel to let us use their carpark for the day- also failed. There was no alternative but to embrace Plan D- attempt to find street parking La Spezia. This is easier said than done.

If the Cinque Terre is Tuscany’s answer to the Amalfi coast, then La Spezia is Liguria’s answer to Naples. It’s a bustling port/naval/university/historic town.

There is a word missing in the language or at least my lexicon. You can describe the countryside as having a ‘rustic charm’, but what is the equivalent in town? What word describes a town that is busy, that works, that has an unapologetic flawed beauty that it proudly wears chin up? What word captures this and its grit, the heartbeat, the pulse in its energy? Rome has it, but Venice doesn’t. Pisa has it, but Lucca doesn’t. Naples has it but Sorrento doesn’t. La Spezia has it. The name La Spezia comes from an ‘Old Italian word - Spezia ‘meaning spice; medicinal plant’ So maybe I can bend this word to say what I am trying to capture- where the countryside has its ‘rustic charm,’ certain towns have their ..‘spice’.

La Spezia has spicey raw charm. Picturesque but slightly tatty, palazzos line its streets. Some are embellished by trompe d’oeil under the eves, others with graffitti at street level. I loved the rows of orange trees cut into leafy cubes dotted with oranges. It’s definitely more a working town that a touristy/retired one though. Gone were the assorted curly furred handbag pooches we usually see in panting in Lucca. The dogs being walked by body builders were big canine brutes with chunky chains last seen fighting gladiators. As we kerb-crawled looking for a space, within the safety of the car, the prospective daughter-in-law in the big hat swivelled her 3-4 carat diamond solitaire visible-from-space so that it faced the palm of her hand.

I was just thinking that we should just abandon the Badlands which always surround a major railway terminus when Holy Gods, we spied a space behind another car! But it appeared that another car was attempting to get into it- or was it? It reversed into the front of parked car. Then it manoeuvred again.

‘What on earth?’ said Hugo as the car lined up to slam into the side of the parked car. Hugo honked lest the driver was clinically blind, possessed or dead. I gently laid a hand on Hugo’s.

‘Darling heart- I wouldn’t honk’ I soothed ‘Is he attempting to park? (the car was lining up for another direct collision) Or is this a mafia hit? ’

Faced with a honking car on UK plates containing a cargo of assorted over heating middle aged, (and a nubile one) women slippery with suncream and sporting various hats, Johny MacMafiaface, aka The La Spezia Car Rammer made the wise decision to bugger orf. Somewhat uneasy we decided on balance to find another space.

Shortly afterwards we abandoned the car in a faint blue lined spot, crossed ourselves a few times in the hope it wouldn’t be nicked, and shuffled off to bustling La Spezia station. Three rounds of ‘change the platform’ later, we were on the train to Milan, which is also the fast train to Monterosso. We went first class because it cost 40p more than economy.

Rhapsody in Lemon- Monterosso

In a blink of an eye we stepped out into summer, wealth and La Dolce Vita.

The sea was glass bottle green. The sunbathers dark brown with itsy-bitsy bikini’s. The waves swished below, the sea was transparent. I regretted leaving my swimmies in the car- this could have been the first swim of summer.

The little boutiques that lined the seafront promenade were clad in every shade of lemon. Boxes of lemons, festoons of lemons, lemon patterned tea towels, bath towels, table clothes, short dresses, jackets, shorts in lemon or lemon print. Limoncello stands, lemon spritz stands, lemon cake. You name it, it had a lemon on it. Monterossini’s sold their lovely lemons whilst the Instagramati preened, posed and pouted. For a people watcher, it was fabulous. White Lotus? Eat your heart out.

Once through the tunnel that cuts through the headland and into Monterosso proper refreshments were in order. We spotted a table free in a bustling, packed bar just off the main square and ordered a round of lemon spritz – limoncello, prosecco and a dash of tonic water along with a platter of bruschetta topped with salty anchovies. Yummy.

It was all idyllic except for one little thing. There was but one loo. In front of it a queue of cross legged spritz sippers hopped from one leg to the other defying medical science. I thought blows would be struck when one of our party, not spotting the queue that snaked around the inside, inadvertently jumped the line. When she realised she was sent to the back of the queue and gone for about an hour. By then bladders were so full that from a distance it was starting to look like a River Dance rehearsal.

Newly refreshed we mooched from boutique to boutique and church to church. We bought a lemon patterned bucket hat for tennis for me, a fish spoon rest for Hugo, a lemon patterned table cloth for the villa. We bought bits and pieces that the kiddies might like tucked in their Christmas stockings. Hugo then spoilt me, he’d already bought me a beautiful orchid the day before so I am on a roll (and I like it). I’d been admiring a pretty bracelet with stones representing the planets in the universe and he bought it for me, and then a St Lucia shell pendant. How lovely! I was chuffed to bits.

(And even better, the shop keeper whispered his own recipe for Limoncello, which I promptly wrote down on a post-it. Taps nose. This will be the winning entry in our September limoncello challenge)

The chiming of church bells announced that it was later afternoon. A jazz band started walking around, pausing to play in the tiny piazzas.

It was then time for another drink. The innocenti braved the neat lemon juice. I’ve been fooled before and know not to believe anyone who says that freshly squeezed lemon juice is just like orange juice.

One sip of freshly squeezed lemon over ice and Hugo’s face was a picture. His cheeks sucked in, his eyes bulging as the enamel was stripped off his teeth. We combined my orange with his lemon, but even then in barely took the edge off it.

Gradually we mooched back to the station, on our way encountering the quintessential Italian town band in procession. Behind two little girls held hands and danced. I cooed. I love these moments of culture, of innocence, of celebration all things Italian. There is something about it which seems at the same time deeply rooted in Italian culture yet so fragile and transient.

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So we are in Tuscany to prepare the house for the next season, picking off the tasks one by one. Sweep up dead stink bugs?- done. Put ski stuff and woollies in the garage?-done. Feasting like kings? -always, Exercise?- crickets and tumble weed.

Before we left, Surrey was in the full throes of spring. GS and I had dusted off our bikes for idyllic country rides from village to village along the disused railways and rivers i.e. from pub to pub. In our village, with the train station 5 mins walk away, and my bike tied to the magnolia tree, I rarely drive anywhere.

We ummed and arhed about whether we would fly our bikes out with us. It’s costly to fly them around but bikes in Tuscany are stupidly expensive. We decided against as we will need them for the foreseeable future back in the UK. But, on landing at Pisa, we did detour to Decathlon to browse. I got a new helmet, some extra-large shorts and top with a telephone pocket. My new purchases have been sitting on top of the chest of drawers gathering dust for days. I have been trying to drink tea in bed and read the paper in peace but they have been emitting reproachful vibes.

We have been ticking off errands mostly in Vecchiano where we quickly colonised a local bar. One was the momentous moment when GS, newly minted with an Irish passport, presented it to our local commune and da-da became a resident of Italy. So, hence forth he will no longer be referred to as GS – Gianni Stranieri (Jonnie Foreigner) but Hugo.

Meanwhile, a week in and we have slugged around doing nothing but stuff ourselves silly; a wonderful dinner as always with friends, taking guests for the tasting menu at Termi di Massacuiccoli, making homemade pizzas. And in perpetual celebration at the joy of waking up under Italian skies have eaten our body weight in pastries and coffee.

Homemade pizza

It’s really difficult for us to exercise- there are far too many bars with delicious pastries, plus there is no one for me to play tennis with and Hugo doesn’t like going for walks (when we move I am hoping to sneak in a puppy. And some chickens, beehive and a pair of donkeys). But the weighing scales were starting to groan.

Then we went to another favourite restaurant – at the Osteria Antica di Meati whose onion soup is the standard by which all onion soups in our family are judged. Not wishing to be outdone in the flatulence stakes, I risked the cannelloni with salted meat starter before we both savaged slices of tender steak encrusted with aromatic herbs like blood thirsty vampires. GS, opps Hugo, quaffed a fighting young red wine which he tamed with a local amaro digestive. This had the collateral benefit of knocking him into a comatose sleep so and he slept through my impression of a human popcorn machine.

We awoke to another day of birdsong under blue skies. The morning weigh-in was groan and a doom call to exercise.

‘Let’s go out cycling’ I said

‘I keep telling you we don’t have bikes’

We have a number of bikes at the villa. There is the orange bike, Hugo’s pride and joy, which never leaves its altar behind the sofa. In the garage is an assortment of less exalted bikes.

There is the beautiful classic Raleigh one Hugo bought for my birthday years ago. I insisted on it even though he said it was far too heavy to be ridden. It turns out he was right, so that one has flowers tied to the basket and only goes to the village bakery and back on special occasions. There are a couple of other bikes. One is the one Hugo apparently had as a teenager, and another one, both of which had masculine horizontal bars, and then a black girlie one.

I love the black girlie one. It was in the garage when Hugo bought the villa back in 2012. He keeps threatening to throw it out but I save it each time. Originally we leant it on the outside walls of the villa as it had that quaint, vintage perfect-for- insta look. But the holiday guests actually tried to ride it, failed and complained so it went to live in the garage.

It is a sit up and beg bike with a comfy seat. But it is old. If it could talk it would probably tell of resistance escapades or trysts from the second world war. We know that the Germans were here as they massacred youths in the olive groves behind the house. The nuns are revered in the village as they bravely begged the bastard Germans to let them bury the decomposing bodies. The old archbishops palace on the top of the hill next to ours housed the SS. Our villa was requisitioned too, but as the party house- the Nazis stole all the crockery from local houses and dragged in a grand piano.

Perhaps I should mention the local topography/ geology at this point. It is mountains and flat land that used to be marshland and before that was the sea. Our villa sits at the exact point where the mountain hits the flat lands- the front garden is flat, the back garden a steep hillside.

The surrounding mountains are steep and densely forested. Some of the sides have been cultivated into narrow olive terraces, or their sides hacked out into now disused quarries. The flat bits are criss-crossed by strada bianca- white stone roads and canals attended by solitary purple herons and flocks of snowy egrets. The Serchio river, a jade river with banks of reeds and occasional low level waterfalls, skirts the mountains through the valleys on its way to the sea. In spring it roars fed with snow melt, but at this time of year it moves with still determination, its banks deep with lush vegetation. It only just has enough gradient to keep it moving. The two rivers which cross here - the Arno and the Auser (as the Serchio used to be called in ancient times) are heavy with sediment. The sister rivers have dropped their cargo of silt over millennia and pushed the sea out. The river is sluggish, heavy, slow and lazy - perfect for me. Squinting at google maps it appeared there was an overgrown path alongside the river to Vecchiano 3.5 miles away. Reckoning that was a half hour I didn’t bother with suncream or water even though it was already a toasty 25 degrees.

Well, the new cycling shorts were a bit of a revelation. I imagine this is how it feels to stuff a loaf a Mother’s pride down your knickers. I waddled out, clicking my helmet under the chin. Hugo pumped up my tires.

‘I’m going to try to make it to Vecchiano’ said I, the last of the heroic explorers.

‘If it’s too tough, I’ll double back. If I make it, maybe we can meet for a coffee in case (likely) I don’t want to cycle back?’

Hugo made non committal noises.

Off I set. The start was a bit hair raising. When I say the bike does not have brakes, what I mean is that you can squeeze the handle bars as hard as you like but absolutely nothing will happen which meant that the toes of my tennis shoes got destroyed. And because it has no gears whatsoever faced with a road made of slabs of rock you have to dismount. I found out fairly quickly that this was best from a side saddle position- and having flung oneself off you then have to push the old girl along roads made of rock slabs. The bell chinked happily as I accidentally hit slabs of rock whilst a admiring the environs.

The Serchio was …idyllic. A river the colour of transparent jade in the sun, moss in the over hang of trees, rustling reeds, everything scaled large, tall, verdant and wild. I and my Merlin app recorded five birds in 15 seconds- Golden Oriole, Cettis warbler, Serin, Blackbird, Nightingale. A few jewelled lizards dashed out of my way, butterflies flitted by. Mostly it was complete wilderness but occasional ortes – vegetable garden- were full of fruit trees and neat rows of vegetables. I said ‘Buon Giorno’ to the chap mowing daisies and to a lady out walking but otherwise I was alone. The path narrowed, at first wide enough for an Ape, (three wheeled trucky- thing, not primate) then just about wide enough for a boar, and then even the boars gave up and it was just the thought of a path. The grasses bent high, flowers brushed my legs, I thought if it got any higher or the grass turned to brambles or nettles I would have to go back. But the next second I was on the last of the main road to Vecchiano. This was actually much hairier on account that I forgot that braking at the roundabout wasn’t an option. Pulling over at a junction I called Hugo jubilant at my success. I’d done 45 minutes in my bone rattler and that was enough.

‘Fancy a coffee? I’m a bit tired now, can you come and get me? I’ll be at our bar in a couple of minutes’

‘No’ he said ‘ I’m doing the jet-washing and the lorry is parked behind the car’ (Our friend and gardener has truck) I put the somewhat uncharitable thought ‘then ask him to move it’ down to my gasping for my morning coffee.

At our bar, where after a week of visits they now recognise me, they knew how to do my coffee (without foam, boiling, although an Italian just cannot bring themselves to make coffee hot) and my teeth were soon imbedded in apple turnover. My veins flowed with caffeine and sugar and a short flat peddle back seemed fine.

All I had to do to get home was take a flat tarmacked track between the flat fields and flat canals and hey presto, one gentle freewheel and I’d be back at the villa. To do that all I needed to do was navigate around the looming mountain/cliff faces and stick to the valley.

Off I pedalled. I followed ‘Lover’s walk’ how romantic. Surely that couldn’t be too difficult.

It was just as beautiful as the river route had been, but less of a bone rattler. At one point I cycled beneath a fig tree. There were figs all over the ground and as I passed them so I was treated to the scent of figs stronger than any bottled fragrance. Then I came to a junction of unknown places.

I knew, as the crow flew, the direction I was headed so I took that choosing to ignore the huge mountain with sheer cliffs in that direction. Surely the path wasn’t going there, for the simple reason that the only way off that mountain was by microlight or hand-glider presumably having approached it by the dip slope. Except this wasn’t a surrey hill or a Sussex down made of gentle dip slope and steep scarp slope. It was proper part quarried deeply forested Tuscan mountain. These mountains are nothing like the downs. They are ancient, even for Italy, full of fossils and dinosaur footprints from when the world was young, a garden of Eden of swamp, forest and toothy beasts. As it turns out, they haven’t changed much in the last 450 million years.

I ignored the looming mountain. BAD IDEA.

The problem with hope is that it is misleading. Up I climbed hoping that it would suddenly level out and go around and who would want to go up a mountain if you didn’t have to? Up and up. I was always hoping for a breakthrough that suddenly our village would spring into sight. Did it hell. Up I climbed, up, up relentlessly. In the absence of gears that meant pushing the bike the whole way. It was not a road nor a track but slabs of rock whether bedrock or placed there I have no idea. I didn’t look for fossils as I didn’t know about the dinosaur thing until I got back. I thought I saw cart marks at one point and felt sorry for the ghost horses before me. But they had four legs and muscle. I had two legs supporting a barrel of fat, and an old bike to push.

Up I climbed, breathless. Up and Up. I attempted to go back down, but without brakes that was as bad as going up as I had to hold the bike back.

UP and UP. Firstly Vecchiano unfolded beneath me, then as I got higher the distance mirage formed itself into Pisa. I turned a corner- another mirage this time Lucca. Up and up. Every now and again the bike hit a slab of rock and objected with a ping of the bell, or was it a ping of encouragement- and would it deter the wolves, bears and boars – or alert them that dinner was on its way, that and the heavy breathing and swearing? I was in a forest but the mountainside was so, so steep. Up and up, forks in the road – mountain to the left? Mountain to the right? Signposts barely legible pointing to hermitages, signposts no longer legible pointing to God knows where. I didn’t want to go to a wilderness hermitage to be alone, I wanted to be back in the 21^stcentury in a town with people and bars. Peeping through the trees, a long way down was a white twisty track. All I had to do was cross the olive grove before I was savaged by a porcupine or tortoise in the woods where no one would hear you scream or find your body.

But god knows how the olive grove was clinging to the sheer slopes. I’ve seen that grove before, clinging impossibly to the side of a terraced cliff. I’m scared of heights. I was trying to reassure myself that I couldn’t spontaneously fall down the sheer slope but my bike was bouncing and slipping as it was, even with my pushing it. Trying to self-comfort didn’t work so I did what any self-respecting girlie would do. I burst into tears. I then checked google maps and from what I could gather the route was taking me directly to the top of quarry cliffs. I could get back but I’d have to leap over a cliff four or five hundred meters up.

I turned around, quickly realised that attempting to cycle down the hill without brakes would be fatal and threw myself off the bike again. My hands were ripped to shreds from pushing it up the hill and squeezing the brakes to no avail. I looked down and saw a black and bloated dead toad, the size of a plate lying on its back, stone dead. It was an omen.

Surely Hugo would be worried where I was? It was two and a half hours since I had left home.

At first the phone rang out, then a jaunty and totally unworried Hugo answered the phone.

‘Can you come and get me from Vecchiano please’

‘Why, where are you, I thought you were at a bar?’ (our daughter had posted a picture of a bar. By the sea. In the south of France) I’m just having a coffee with the gardener…’

‘Well’ I said, darkly and somewhat growly, ‘ I suggest that you stop having coffee with him and come and get me’

And so Hugo, finding his inner knight in shining armour decided to come and get his damsel in distress.

Which was wise, as, between you and I, I have found the perfect place should I ever need to hide a body…

A very steep olive grove.

Since the world appears to be in the midst of a global pissing contest/ being flushed down the toilet, perhaps the time has come for me to write something highbrow and profound, relevant even? Well sort off. Let’s talk about public conveniences and wild weeing.

The Romans of course, took public loos to standard that mere mortals can only aspire to. Sigh, everything is always better in Rome.

When I was a tot my father used to take me down the steps in the lavatory bowels of Victorian London. I remember the stink of urine, shining dark green tiles, troughs over which I was suspended in order to wee despite the intimidating stares of full grown men in stripped city suits.

If we were out in the wilds then the order was ‘Tootie down’. I always thought that was a baby word, that we grew out of, but actually it’s a Welsh word meaning to crouch down. We didn’t grow out it, we moved to the south of England. (The other Welsh word left over from my babyhood is to cwtch up, or cuddle up; a lovely word.)

Undoubtedly, my worst experiences of public loos was whilst backpacking around India in the mid-1980s. At the time, question three on the etiquette list when meeting other travellers, after your name and country of origin, was to enquire ‘solid?’ Usually the answer was a knowing painful shake of the head to which the sympathetic response was to offer an Imodium- the equivalent of a cork up one’s bottom.

They say travel broadens the mind. My mind got broadened to sights I never want to see again.

One sight, on a particularly long bus trip between Delhi and Goa, was a loo stop. The toilets had long been filled to over flowing so everyone was having to overcome the effects of dysentery plugged by industrial strength Imodium whilst squatting over an openair concrete slab. There was very little space left on the concrete slab. It was decorated with dollops in various shades and consistency, each with a small flags of loo paper that fluttered in the wind and threatened to blow up and stick to your face.

The other recalled moment was on another bus trip through some featureless shrub in Rajestan, somewhere between Udaipur and the Thar desert. The bus broke down with a burst tyre. I went off into the flat shrub for a few moments alone.

The bus had emptied and a line of men, some travellers, some locals, stood along side watching me attempt to disappear in the flat terrain. By then it was dusk, and all plunged into darkness except for my bum. I hadn’t yet realised that sari’s or skirts were far better for discretion when outdoor weeing than trousers. Who knew that stone white English bottoms reflect the light of the moon like high vis jackets?

I was somewhat disgruntled by the attention of the line of men who were following my progress with unhealthy interest. They had even drawn my travelling partner into conversation.

I went further and further into the desert bemoaning the lack of cover, bush or even a ditch or something. Rather than look the other way discreetly I could see the men peering further, hands over eyes all but getting out the binoculars. By now I was a way away.

‘Are you done yet? The thin voice of my travelling companion travelled across the darkness to me.

‘No!’

‘It’s just that – can you be quick’

‘Why?’ I said annoyed.

‘Because its full of poisonous snakes’

‘WHAT’

Now I love animals. But only if they have four legs (and even then I’m not keen on rats tails) and don’t view me as lunch. I am no ophiologist. I didn’t know if the snakes referred to were a sun of saw-scaled adders, a quiver of spectacled cobras or a writh of pythons or boas. It turns out there are 42 species of snake in Rajestan, 6 of which are deadly.

The Roman Goddess Medusa had a head full of snakes. Me, I didn’t fancy my glowing moon bum being the target of disgruntled fanged ones. Ne’re have I moved so fast.

Then I became a young lawyer with tic-tac high heels and pencil skirts. Those were days of dark panelled loos in Chancery Lane, the scented finery of posh hotel loos; Amberley Castle, The Ritz, The Wardorf. Very nice loos.

When I went to work in Rome, I discovered to my delight that the loos in my office not only had showers, but- height of civilisation- bidets! It is fair to say that as I adjusted to the summer heat of Rome, I had constant wet hair down my back, either from a lunch time swim or a dash in to the showers, constantly spritzed with Izzy Mikake or Kenzo. I thought the days of dodgy loos were behind me.

But those heady days are in my distant past, along with rock hard pelvic floor- or other- muscles.

I recently had to visit my darling demented mother, which involves a ten hour round trip to West Wales.

I’ve done this before so thought I had planned for all jeopardies. At Reading I slunk off to the clean and empty loos to be found tucked at the back of platform nine. Nothing. I’d overdone the pre-emptive dehydration.

As the train pulled out of Reading station for the gallop to West Wales, which is as scenic- and remote- as Hogwarts, thirst gripped me. With hours to go, and shrivelling up with dehydration I could not resist when the trolley man came past touting his wares. Possessed by some primaeval survival instinct I bought a bottle of orange juice. Once it touched my lips, they latched on and all the will power in the world could not peel that bottle from my mouth until I had sucked down every last drop and felt its cooling nectar spread down.

Bad, bad idea.

I had condemned myself to a fate worse that death. It was only a matter of time. The minutes ticked by. First one leg coiled around the other. Then I plaited my legs together- to no avail. All I could think off was that I really needed a wee and couldn’t wait until I arrived in another country.

I walked down a swaying train, found the loo and pressed the button. The curved door to hell slid back.

Who knew what might be inside? Noxious gases from a long term resident? The toilet tissue thing empty? (always check first) Horrible puddles on the floor?

It was bad enough that the loo seat was up but imagine my horror when I looked down to see a toilet bowl sloshing with somewhat yellow fluid, and lots of massed tissues. With vain optimism I flushed. The water level rose precariously to the rim. Then sank back to half full, if any thing no slightly fuller.

But I was committed. It was hours before Llanelli. What’s a girl to do?

Friends- with far better pelvic floor muscles than mine- have spoken in wonderous terms of a she-wee. Wherefore art thou She-wee?

I really, really didn’t want to perch on that loo seat and have the benefit of a tsunami of other peoples wee down my leg if the train decided to lurch on its tracks. By now the train had picked up its speed and was doing a fair amount of tilting. I could tell by the agitated sloshing.

You know those wildlife programmes when giraffes splay their legs out so they can drink at watering holes? Well that was me. The only thing I could do was….splay, looking through my legs in the hope that should the train lurch and sent a tidal wave in my direction, I could spring forward to avoid a soaking. Unfortunately this meant that my head was roughly underneath the automatic drier so, intermittently I was blasted by hot hair. Motivated by the thought that if I got it wrong it was another 15 or so hours of strangers urine slowly drying on my legs before I could bathe and change, I speed weed. I now hold the world record for speedy giraffe weeing.

It's not just me though, recently GS didn’t get off so lightly.

My darling squeeze is fastidious. He goes nowhere without his supply of wet wipes. He is probably single handedly responsible for one of those fatberg things composed of toilet wipes that block up the Victorian sewage of London. (Sadly, Tiger aka dingle berry, the cat hasn’t adopted his fastidious manners.)

Recently, we were very fortunate to be invited to Verbier for a weeks skiing with old and new friends. We were spoilt rotten at an absolutely lovely chalet. However even in posh Verbier things can go awry.

One morning he had been gone for rather long time. There was muted yelp followed by the sound effects was having a sudden impulse shower.

Unfortunately it turned out that the loo brush was not a solidly engineered Swiss item, or one that clicked into place, but something which could, over time, during a long an arduous life, unravel. As it turns out somewhat explosively.

GS had reached for the loo brush to do some ceramic cleaning, when the whole thing sprung apart and let him liberally appointed with the vintage contents of the loo brush and its container.

I tried so hard not to laugh, but failed. As my father used to say., ‘there are serious illnesses, and other peoples’

Fame at last! Please note from the photograph above, scenes of anti-social anarchy and lights visible from space (under a swiftly erected tarp as it rained- summer in England after all)

We have just returned from our annual car migration from Italy to England, and because, I am too lazy to start The Great Wash or The Great Unpack or anything else with The Great in front of it (although I did drag myself to the gym for 28 minutes, any more and I’d have risked breaking out into a sweat), I was doom scrolling through our local Facebook page. And there, posted last August by the prolific writer Anonymous is the post-

‘Lost! Sense of neighbourhood, community and common sense. To the family in the large house with multicoloured garden lights that light up at least 6 gardens. Turned on at 9.30 pm when they crack open the wine and start loudly discussing terribly important matters. YOUR NEIGHBOURS HAVE TO WORK. Come on it’s a Monday night. A Tuesday night etc etc no wonder there’s so many houses for sale. TAKE IT indoors. PLEASE’

‘Large house?’ You can’t slide a credit card in this house, and we’ve already had to build a hanger in garden to cope with the overspill of our possessions. I am going to the gym to get thin so I can get into my clothes- and my house without getting bruises.

Lights on! Talking! Wine! AT NINE THIRTY ON A SUMMERS EVENING! ! We aren’t hoodlams. We are barely in the UK so this is extremely rare but (‘fessing up )- we both had 60^th birthdays last summer. At around midnight my batteries expire and the only noise coming from me is snuffling. Admittedly the boys may be up later and have deep voices but it’s not as if they are singing Swedish-Viking drinking songs. Well, not always.

It comes to something when a couple of sixty year olds chatting in the garden get a bollocking from Anon. I can only say that Anon is lucky that the portable hot tub is no more as we used to have to shout louder over the bubbles. And having consumed too much wine, I have on rare occasions been known to fling Gianni’s pants into the herbaceous border which has led to much kiss chase and shrieking. (Don’t tell the kids) Also, thinking about it, I am wondering if our Anon neighbours ears were twitching with anger on the night of epiphany when I serenaded our lovely apple tree by bashing drums and singing the wassailing carol to it. (see earlier Substack)

https://piawhitmartlet.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154296842?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fhome%3Futm_source%3Dsubstack

We have had problems with the neighbours before. Infact, I’m wondering if it’s the same neighbours.

A few decades ago, I kept hens, geese and indeed Indian runner ducks in our garden. It was idyllic- a pretty little hen house with a weather vane on top, black current bushes, raspberries, fowl dust bathing in happiness, the ducks running around everywhere chasing snails. The geese, Christmas and MidSummer, lived in a lovely old wooden dog kennel I’d painted, the ducks in the old log/bike shed, the chickens in the hen house. It was like a glossy spread in Country Living. We loved it. We used to hang off the edge of the hottub watching ‘Modern Family’ with my computer positioned on a chair just out of the splash zone. These are the treasured memories of when the kiddies were tiddly that I am mining for my kiddies picture books.

My morning routine was let the chooks out (getting an egg for my lunch), school run, back for a cup of tea, then start the day. One day, I found tiny red mites scurrying up my arm. I assumed that the feather cushions on the sofa were at fault so at enormous cost sent for the exterminator who steamed to death every soft furnishing and mattress within the house.

The very next day, that I realised that they were back - running up my arm from when I’d taken the eggs from the chicken coop. Close inspection confirmed the problem. I treated the chooks with the anti tick stuff you put on kittens (which worked remarkably well even though the vet said ‘no’ although someone had successfully use it on their parrot) BUT I knew there were red mites in the hen house.

So my au pair Stanni and I decided upon a solution. We pulled out the garden hose just in case, got two glasses and a bottle of chilled white from the fridge, sloshed some petrol around and set fire to the hen house (admittedly it had been a dry summer) thinking we might BBQ/lob some potatoes over the embers and sit around chatting rubbish until the fire/wine had completely died out. In other words behaving completely like responsible, albeit female, citizens.

To be fair the hen house went WOOF and did burn somewhat alarmingly fast and high but we had the hose and it was all under control at all times, if a little hot with flames sometimes dancing within the tree canopy.

The next second some hovel- dweller bloke (only a hovel dweller could think our house ‘large’) from the street that backs on our garden was yelling at us. He refused to accept we had it all under control. We ignored his protests which were largely downed out by the roar and crackle of the fire. Stanni and I muttered that it was all very sexist and had we been blokes with beers this interference wouldn’t have happened.

The shouting alarmed my son (aged about six) who ran inside and upstairs, flung open the bathroom window and started shouting ‘FIRE! FIRE ! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE’ as if this was London in the summer of 1666 and we lived on Pudding Lane.

Shouting SHUSH IT’S FINE didn’t work but I couldn’t leave to comfort him/shut him up as we were guarding the fire which was in no danger of going out.

(The bathroom, and indeed the garden, have been scenes of the crime before. Once on a Christmas play-date one of the kiddies – not mine- disappeared to the bathroom. Presumably I had forced them to try a mince pie and unsure what to do with it, or perhaps having unsuccessfully attempted to gnaw it, the said child stuffed the mince pie down the bidet plug hole. They then turned the tap on and returned to the melee downstairs. Of course I was none the wiser and to be honest even if I had given it a moments though, the worst I would have expected would have been to find an unflushed log left in the loo. God knows what preservatives are in mince pies. The pastry didn’t dissolve at all but sealed the bidet plug and pipe shut. The bidet flooded the floor and the kitchen ceiling fell down.

Talking of disasters there was also the Halloween party when madness possessed me to hide chocolates and sweets etc in the garden for a treasure hunt. I armed toddlers with torches and off they tore into the blackness of the garden (complete with black (duck) pond for drowning in). No sooner did a beam of light alight on a shiny wrapper when all charged at the same spot. It was like skittles as they bashed into each other and fell down. I thought there was going to be a mass trip to A&E for concussion)

Anyway, back to the hen house fire.

The next second Stanni and I were still in the garden when in rolls a continent of fire officers (looking fabulous in their kit) and hoses etc with the lane outside full of flashing blue fire engines. We were all for cracking open another bottle of plonk to share with them and grabbing some glasses but they said ‘no’ and next second and the hen house inferno was being drenched by fire hoses.

At this point this a scruffy bloke that I don’t know from Adam sauntered into the garden.

‘Nothing to do with us’ said the fireman

‘Who are you?’ I asked

‘An interested by stander’ he said

‘Then bugger off’ I said escorting him down the side passage. Seriously a girls home is her castle.

So I think the finger of suspicion points at them.

Anyway, I’m saying Power to us sixty year olds. Let’s fight for the freedom to talk loudly, drink wine and have coloured lights on at 9.30pm on a summers night. I’ll even give up dry whatever month it is and fling Gianni’s under pants into the herbaceous border again for kiss-chase shriekery. If there’s a table I’m still up for dancing on it, I may even use the extra height to waggle body parts (or a digit in )the general direction of Anon. But I may need a hand getting up. Who’s with me?

Well hush my mouth! You will never guess.

Gianni, is the designer side of the equation. He has the fast soft top car, the designer suits, the watches.

Me, I lean in more to the scruffy side of things, or as I like to feel it - a Romantic, Beatnik, Bohemian, Art Nouveau floaty style. Well that’s the plan. On occasions I wear the lovely sparkles Gianni has bought me over the years and the watch he gave me (but which I cannot read as my arms are not long enough) and waft around in Camila pieces that float somewhere behind me. They dazzle everyone with their loveliness so they don’t’ realise that ‘the canvas’ is a slightly-gone-to-seed doughy eccentric.

I love, love, love Camila Franks

https://uk.camilla.com

But the reality is that whilst I would like to have a Grace Kelly chignon or a Stevie Nicks topknot, I am far more likely to be found in a loose pony tail secured with a pair of (clean) pants, wearing something baggy that I can sit cross legged in. Or, if it is cold, wrapped head to toe in a blanket. But it wasn’t always like this, there was that brief moment when all was different

Truth to tell, aged thirty, I was able to escape some almighty messes I had made in England for a new life in Rome. The golden age of Rome was not Fellini’s era, it was 1000% the years between 1994 and 2004. I lived in my extended late twenties in a riot of happiness and freedom. That happiness, freedom and joie di vivre burst out – in parties, in dancing, in creative ventures (I wrote a pantomime and two other garden theatre plays!) It showed in the unexpected confidence of my wardrobe choices. Gone were high shoes with blood at the heel, gone the uncomfortable strict black or greys suits of a city solicitors practice.

Instead I bought dresses inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera. I bought the softest swishiest fake fur Dalmatian coat, half 1950’s movie glamour, half hooker-chic. I bought see-through designer black lace dresses with tiny slip dresses beneath and chopped those slips shorter, I bought one off pieces that were one week on the Milanese runways and the next mine, I collected La Perla concoctions - scraps of exquisite lace crafted into camisoles and French knickers, my favourite La Perla piece- a fuchsia pink feather bikini. How I loved that bikini. You couldn’t swim in it of course – it went from Folie Bergère to drowned chicken in an instant. I wasn’t the only one that loved it either -many a time I found a fuchsia feather floating down the stairs and had to wrestle it back from my pair of Siamese cats.

https://laperla.com/

Later, when the world had turned on its axis again and rivers of money had become shrunken ditches of dust, I treated myself to a stiff granny column coat made of curled shearling fur with a leather trim. On arrival it seemed that it had never been worn. I imagined it hanging unloved, kept for best in the wardrobe of a lady recently gone, her probate treasures being dispersed of through eBay to the highest bidder.

By then, not just a mother, but an impoverished single mother of two wonderful children, BB and Archie, the glamour had faded and slipped away. Motherhood combined with repeated injuries to turn youthful lithe muscles to fab, cellulite bobbles and wrinkles. Nouveau pauvre meant no glamorous events and soon all of the relics of my La Dolce Vita were wrapped in tissue on the off chance that my baby girl, when grown, might want to play dress up with these vintage, physical items of history.

I didn’t forget those days entirely. Busy with motherhood and inspired by The Apprentice, I had the odd entrepreneurial pipe dream. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a little boutique Lingerie shop called Boobie Trapped? La Perla at that time had floral pretty names for their collections- at the moment they have Midnight Botanica, Dreamland, Zephyr (although I myself would avoid a reference to wind if I were naming an underwear collection) I wanted to design collections for the recent mothers ‘ The promised land, milk and honey range’, and the recently betrayed the ‘Come out fighting’ range, the ‘Cougar bites’ or the ‘F**k me into a coma’.

One by one the years passed and I grew older. One by one the years passed and my baby girl grew from a babe in arms into a teenager and then a young lady, happy and free of spirit just like her mother. And, one by one the treasures came back out from their tissue tombs.

My Dalmatian coat made regular appearances at fancy dress parties.

My pink feathered La Perla bikini reappeared on my daughter.

Next up was my black lace dress for a party in a Tuscan hilltop castle. She danced so much the little spaghetti straps finally broke.

This week is Paris Fashion week. BB and Friso her boyfriend are in Paris, invited to front row for the Paris Couture shows and doing press interviews. We are as excited as they are, impatient for the videos are flying back. The designer https://juanamartin.es And guess what is being worn by Friso? My fabulous granny column shearling!

The moral of this bloglet is not that my sartorial genius has finally been recognised. The moral is that once upon a time an unloved, unworn coat was sold on eBay. It spent two decades in suit bags and tissue on occasional airings. Then one day it was discovered by the fresh eyes of youth, and vooom, the next second it was starring in the front row of Paris Couture week.

So to the young- aim for the catwalk and conquer on the world- it’s yours for the taking. For all my fellow writers, artists, photographers and creatives, currently mothballed, our youth long gone and our lights hidden by layers of tissue. We are hidden beauties -one day we too will go to the ball.

And as to that coat?- I always knew you were a star.

Mid winter. The grass outside is crunchy and white, the pond has been frozen for a week. Catkins dangle and dance from the hazelnut tree hinting of spring and lambs tails. But for now, growth in the bulbs has paused, and the garden sleeps.

It’s January. Half of our friends are off skiing. We are pining to join them, but the kids schedules are complicated so like everyone else we slink around under grey skies that turn violet at sunset and hint of snow. Pub quiz’s and outings may tempt us out, but by half past four I’m itching to secure the chain is on the front door and drawn the heavy curtains closed. Gianni and I snuggle under blankets and watch old films trying not to watch the news.

For the cognoscenti the weeks between New Year and St Valentine’s are special , not for diets or dry January, or even ticking down to play in the snow. I have been squirrelling away old jam jars for a while, just in case the urge gets me. Another broken sleep- it’s now or never. The itch is upon me- it’s now.

The early starters have already swooped. The green crates in Waitrose are empty. Are we too late?

‘When are they next in?’ I ask

The shop assistant checks his iPad-

‘There are no more deliveries forecast. Funny though, you are not the first person to ask today…’

‘What?’ The hunt is on.

‘Quick’ I hiss to Gianni, ‘let’s go to Secretts Farmshop-they may have them’ I whisper lest we be overheard.

Secretts Farmhouse is a gourmands paradise. Ceiling to floor delicacies- cheeses, chocolates, wines, small batch chill sauces, towards the back, the fruit and vegetables laid out like an old fashioned groceries- bright shiny and tempting.

But there in the middle is what we are looking for- a pyramid of Seville oranges, bags of pectin infused sugar and details of how to enter the Annual Secretts Marmalade competition.

Two brown paper bags, 2 bags of sugar later, and I am ready.

‘They used to call me Paddington at Uni because I had marmalade sandwiches at early morning rowing outings’ says Gianni, and then ‘when I go sailing I like to take a jar of F&M’s marmalade’

‘Are you throwing down the gauntlet? I say

So, I’ve not made Seville marmalade on the Aga before, and it turns out that perhaps what I have made in the past is Orange jam not Seville orange marmalade which is a whole different beast. I spend the afternoon pouring over cookbooks and in the end decided on a hybrid – Delia’s proportions, method part vintage Aga cookbook method, part Ask Charlie with extra ingredients; then our special ingredients love stirred in from me and a little Gianni magic- whisky and spiced rum.

Inside our house, all is aglow in a hive of activity. It’s like Halloween but with the scent of bitter oranges, whisky and spiced rum rather than pumpkins, and the hubble-bubble of sugar at a rolling boil.

As midnight ticks into the next day, the first batch of marmalade is ready – a mere 6 assorted jars. The shreds are suspended in golden glow of marmalade amber (with a hint of gherkin, mint sauce, branston pickle or horse radish) .

I try a little. Oh My.

I am hopping around dying for Gianni to have a first taste, but he is already in bed with cleaned teeth.

So I have to wait until next day – fresh bread, butter and homemade marmalade. It was worth it for Gianni’s face, eyes popping in appreciation. The taste? Sweetness, then an explosive burst of citrus and a hint of either whisky or rum. Ginger next time? It is the King of Preserves.

And now Gianni, suddenly exposed connoisseur of Marmalade reveals a thin veil of territorial jealous. He won’t sacrifice a single pot to the Secretts competition. Me, I am puffed to bits with pride

So to make your own-

2 lbs of Seville oranges

2 lemons

4 lb pectin sugar

4 pints of water

Slosh of spirit to taste

My hybrid method

1. Put water and citrus in pot A, bring to boil then pop in cool oven for 3 hours until the fruits look as if they have imploded. Meanwhile put sugar in a deep pot B and leave to warm on Aga top

2. Place muslin bag on colander, suspend colander on pot B Scoop outsides of citrus and place into muslin bag. Some will drip into the sugar.

3. Carefully scrape any remain pith off the skin until you can see the peel pores and add to muslin bag.

4. Tie muslin bag, put in with the orange water in Pot A, bring to boil then leave in cool oven for an hour. Meanwhile cut orange skin into shreds, add to warming sugar in pot B

5. Squeeze out goo (pectin) as much as you can from muslin bag into the orange water Pot A

6. Add orange water to warming sugar and shredded rind (Pour pot A into pot B). Slowly bring to the boil and then once on a rapid boil time 15 minutes.

7. Test for setting point (wrinkles and if you draw finger through it sides do not meet), boil until reached

8. Leave to cool for ten minutes so shreds do not rise to the top, add alcohol if required, but don’t go too mad or you will dilute the setting point.

9. Put in sterilised jam jars

Charlie’s method:

Secretts farm shop https://www.secretts.co.uk

Normally I would skip breakfast as I have trained myself to drink black coffee rather than café latte, and actually don’t mind it any more. But because we are eating healthily these days I had two boiled eggs and was just about to scoff a bowl of Greek yogurt topped with a kilo of blue berries and thinking whether I could get away with some honey or maple syrup when Gianni said, ‘Isn’t it the gym induction today?’

‘What!’

Now, bit of back ground, Gianni was a national rower in his teens (what a hottie he must have been- Poldark good looks, and rippling muscles on a 6’4 frame) but that was a few beers ago. Before we started dating I was never more than a size 8-10. But Gianni lives and eats well, and I kept getting injured so the weight has been attempting to sneak up. We have been holding it back- until we moved we were members of a country club. I spent most of my days doing Zumba or Balance or Stretch, but not Pilates as it gives me whiplash and makes the crystals in my ears go off piste, and I naturally swerved anything too high impact as the light fittings would fall of the walls.

The Country Club was quite posh, everyone has the same designer vagina by the same surgeon, Kegel muscles so strong and tuned they could crack nuts or -mentioning no names Ms Ping-Pong- fire a speculum across a cubical in A&E, and the loos flushed with neat gin and the urine of pregnant horses also known as HRT.

Then a friend said she fancied playing tennis too. Before we knew it we were playing tennis at 8am in the morning, jumping around the net like leaping salmon in our ‘Lucky in love’ delightful tennis frocks, feather light racquets and more protective gear than gladiators. When I got pale and scared with breast cancer everyone rallied around- it turned out that everyone else had had it too, some got born again15 year old virgin boobs, another had a nipple tattooed on as the prosthetic kept floating off in the swimming pool. Oh the joy of early morning tennis, fresh fruit by the pool, a hot tub and swim. We thought those days would never end, but then we moved, my beloved bestie tennis player moved and it’s too far to get there now.

In Italy we don’t do much exercise. I can’t persuade Gianni to go out for a walk as a) he doesn’t do mud, b) he thinks we will be mistaken as wild boar and shot by hunters unless we get hi vis jackets, c) it’s too cold/hot/wet/sunny/early/late or time to eat and d) I got banned from walking in the woods by the locals when I got a TV crew all over the village (a long story starring a horse called Ribs. I’ll tell it next post).

Meanwhile, between litigation and writing my books, I’ve been sat at my desk padding a path to the fridge for months. It turns out I’m a stress eater- filling my cheeks like a hamster at every opportunity. But unlike a hamster I don’t spit and bury but swallow.

The inevitable happened. With an exercise void unfilled, the weight piled on with alacrity. One second I was in my arty and creative baggy velvet dungarees, the next they were snug filled with a Winne-the-poohesq silhouette. Christmas I was horrified to find I couldn’t do up my jeans. Bypassing size 14 altogether, I had ballooned to a whacking size 16 (albeit with a low-slung gusset and a rolled over waistband) but this is, is way north of cuddly, past stout and into treading into sumo wrestler territory.

Something. Had.To.Be.Done.

Losing weight and getting fit is like preparing for exams. You put if off for as long as possible in the certain knowledge that as soon as you start you are going to regret not doing it earlier and will have to go all out. Until the official start, it’s a lot easier to sit under a blanket and eat mince pies. But the mince pies are all eaten, I don’t even like stilton but the crackers have gone too. It was time for the belated New Year weigh-in.

I find it disconcerting that our weighting scales wink to show they are ready, (braced) for a ground up view of my naked body. I was officially in hippo territory at 78.7kilos with 40% fat.

I went and played tennis, gingerly testing out my post cortisone shoulder; that was fine. There was a £1 January membership offer at the gym. I signed up, went to a strange Zumba class where the teacher said nothing but danced out of beat. Then I booked the Gym Induction.

For a second, I had a stay of execution -it snowed, the world went magical and gave a great excuse for more hibernating and then in a flash sleet was falling. Gianni drove us the 500ms to the local gym.

I do have a fetching collection of tennis skirts, tops and frocks. I have a collection of yoga pants too… somewhere. But given my expanded form and lack of knowledge as to where they might be, I was dressed in tennis shoes, some thick grey joggers of unknown provenance, a stripped Portofino T shirt with wood polish stains from my upholstery days and a baggy cardi with pockets for my phone. The gym was rammed with muscled and toned intense athletes in sleek gear.

I presented myself at the desk and was soon being taken around the gym by the inductor. My word, gym equipment has come on a long way. I’m not saying the last time I was in a gym was in plimsoles, trying to vault ‘horses’ over green rubber mats or scale some ladders with a rope (why?why?) but it was a crash course in QR codes.

My instructor, a man of a certain age, was fit as a flea. He looked at me with a kindly, if incredulous eyes. I tried to focus but my eyes were constantly drawn to his hair.

‘You have a go’ he said after he’d got entangled in this contraption

‘What?’ Now, it takes me two hands to lift a full kettle.

I managed two repetitions at 2.5kilos.

Then this angry badger woman arrived. She was maybe a decade younger than me, with jet back hair, apart from a white stripe, black and white kit, a scowl and a shouty voice.

‘They told me to wait downstairs!’ She snarled. We continued our tour of the torture chamber. I was starting to feel a bit self-conscious as I was definitely the lardy one in the gym.

‘When is a quiet time?’ I asked

‘February’ answered fitman.

‘I’m going to be coming at 6.30am’ said Badger. I laughed until I realised she was serious.

‘Is there like, a fattie hour?’ I asked. They stared at me in silence.

Anyway, my staged resolution is to get to 70 kilos by the end of the year, and to drop a dress size by 20th January when we return to Italy. And guess what! This morning I was 78.1kilos, 39% fat and comfortably slid into size 14 jeans which was good as I had to look respectable going to London. Only 8.1 kilos to go!

‘It’s epiphany’ I said to Gianni, as we rushed to the station ‘when we get back from London we have to Wassail the apple tree, bash saucepans to wake her up (just like in the olden days of Covid), tie ribbons on its boughs and sing it the Wassailing carol.’

‘You are going to sing to it?’ he said, ‘Are you trying to wake it or kill it?’

*

We were late home so it was pitch black when I went out. It is a different world beyond the glass- no moon, the shaggy grass crunchy underfoot. The air was full of the frost too, it hung in the air as particles of white like dispersed ghosts. Into the black I went, blinded by darkness, hoping not to end up in the pond or bashed by one the urns.

I sang to my lovely old apple tree, thanked her for the apples rammed in our freezer and on behalf of the blackbirds and squirrel. She has a new ribbon on her boughs to go with the tattered rags we put up when the tots were little, but no drums, we’ll let her sleep in for now.

After working from 8am til 2am for as many days as I can remember, at 4pm on the 23rd -December with a whoosh of the email, all 28 pages of my witness statement went to my opponents lawyers. I telephoned to confirm receipt, said I wouldn’t be working on it until the New Year and wished him a very happy Christmas, and a happy and successful New Year but obviously not as successful as mine. My attempt at a sense of humour and seasonal jollity met with ringing silence. Opps

No matter -Christmas began!

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Christmas Eve would usually be a ‘The wonder of a winter’ romantic walk up the hill to the magic woods pinching greenery for the fireplace mantel followed by a late lunch in front of burning logs at the The Sun Inn. I think this is the epitome of romance, but Gianni, a totem of efficiency, sees no merit in anything that delays reaching the pub. Romantic walk? Muddy trudge more like, coming home with a basket of stolen weeds.

But as soon as I woke up at well deserved 10.30 a whistle went off in my head.

‘WE HAVE GOT TO GET UP AND GO FOOD SHOPPING!’ I said to Gianni all but lobbing a cup of tea at him over the duvet.

In fairness, this was inconsistent with my previous edits which were that since it would be just the two of us, we could gamble and stalk the aisles of Waitrose waiting for the last second discounts and bag our Christmas feast from the random odd assortments left behind. It’s a bit like sniping on ebay- calculate how many seconds you need to get your bid through at the very last minute, whilst not giving your competitor time to respond. Admittedly it can be a bit rogue- ostrich steak with wonky carrot anyone? But I have been in Waitrose with aisles filled with people looking at the ceiling and pushing empty trolleys waiting for the discounts and there is nothing Christmassy about a Waitrose scrum. Lives could be lost.

Having just got back from Italy I knew the content of our fridge consisted of a splash of milk, two gourds left over from Halloween which are more deterrent than actual food and any way I could easily loose a finger trying to axe them into bits, and the M&S seafood platter that Gianni had the foresight to order in about June.

Gianni will put up with a lot but Christmas dinner composed of a starter, followed by tinned carrots left over from our Covid hoard, gherkins and horseradish sauce was unlikely to be winner-winner Christmas dinner. And we had run out of both tea and coffee which is a well known legal defence for anything.

So the dial in my head had shifted from ‘It’s fine, to PANIC’

Gianni, didn’t really enjoy the Taste The Difference at Sainsburys. He had signed up to that blue wand thing that means you don’t have to queue up, but as the internet only works at the front of the store near the doors you a) have to walk about four times the distance and b) you risk getting nicked for shop lifting if it looks like you are making a break for it.

Meanwhile, I have to say, delirious with happiness that I was no longer hunched over my desk sweating blood, I could not have been happier. We had a trolley each so off I danced off chariot racing on the supermarket sweep. The jolly Christmas music was playing, I was singing along, dancing in the ailses, thanking all the staff for working Christmas Eve so we could get our lunch.

I had wanted a goose. Gianni said no and as it turns out Sainsbury’s didn’t have goose but it did have a duck.

So Christmas lunch for us is going to be M&S seafood platter, decomposed duck with all the trimmings , and Black Forest Gateaux.

Delia Smith said to leave the duck out overnight to dry (presumably she doesn’t have a cat) . She didn’t mention it going a very deathly colour overnight like something out of one of those grisly crime dramas that I don’t like. I know it is dead, obviously, but when it came home it was creamy and white, if a bit sweaty, and the slightly waxy look has been been replaced by a pallor that could convert anyone to veganism. Apparently it gets blasted for 20 minutes in the hot oven and then spends three hours sweating in the bottom oven which I hope is enough to kill most bacteria. Luckily the Aga sucks all cooking smells up the pipe, and any way now Tiger has returned from his holidays cooking/corpse smells will be overwhelmed by of Eau di Cat Litter.

Any way, just the for the record, I love Gianni to bits and don’t intend to poison either of us, although a little bit of light poisoning would be okay as we could both do with a bit of a…cleanse to get the weight off in the new year.

A merry Christmas to one and all!

UPDATE

Well hush my mouth – there was a bit of concern when I found that in her book Delia had said leave the duck out but on line it had evolved to ‘ leave it out out…in the fridge!’ WHAT!!! So I cremated the duck, and knowing that Gianni’s gastric juices would be 100% alcohol we went with it. All I can say is…all hail Delia Smith, Goddess of Duck, you’ve done it again! Love, your unworthy disciple

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