So, in England the cuckoos are um…cuckcooing, the darling buds of May are almost all burst out but for lucky us, it’s back to Italy!
I’m behind on everything (this blogging lark far too much fun) so used the flight time to edit the last pages of The High Barn before it heads off to St Lucy for a second edit. The High Barn is a coming-of-age story. I had two lads next to me, so to avoid the excruitiating embarrassment of them being privy to my youthful misdemeanours, I edited it in zoom view 75% i.e. invisible to anyone without binoculars, myself included. However, luckily the incoming headache was salved by scoffing a rather splendid addition to the Easyjet inflight menu – Joe and Steph’s white chocolate and raspberry popcorn bites.
GS’s is now a Plastic Paddy, his shiny new EU passport having arrived hours before so it was a race through Customs EU vs Brits. No guessing who came out on top 🙂
One gasp of outside air and you are in Italy. The jasmines are in full bloom, and the night air is heavy with their perfume.
We hammered right into our usually quiet, quaint little village off the beaten track to see a man waving candles at us. One glance down the street and we realised we were just ahead of a procession of the Madonna having arrived on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The procession was our man with the lamp clearing the way, then down the road the priest, and the statue of the Madonna held aloft by men whilst the parishoners, predominantly older ladies, prayed Ave Maria’s. Those not in the prossession stood outside their houses everyones pavement covered with candles.
‘We of course were delighted to arrive in time to witness something so quintessentially Italian. We skidded into the garage, lobbed the suitcases into the garden and GS raided the candle cupboard. In the nick of time, with the Madonna about to round the corners we had the candles out and lit.
Such a lovely way to arrive back in our village.
We didn’t follow her to church, but instead headed for the village bar in search of milk for tea tomorrow morning. But we knew when the Madonna was safely back on her altar for in the darkness stillness of our little village the church bells started peeling.
Just so wonderful.
A perfect supper: a Tuscan white chilled to perfection, a basket of wotzits and a salty panino with mozzarella and finely sliced crudo. The first truly warm night with no jumper required.
So then, in the dead of night we walked home. Arh! to walk home on a May night in Tuscany! The air was laden with scent and then in the background we could hear in the trees the singing of Nightingales.
When I lived in Rome a nightingale lived in the tree outside my room. Every year in late spring it would sing, a lone clear voice. When I worked in Macedonia during the Kosovo crisis I once sat next to a raging river, the other side of which was deep forest and there heard chorus of Nightingales, enough to drown the sound of snow melt, charging water.
It was the sort of night that Keats spoke of in his Ode to a Nightingale
I was dawdling like a toddler on a walk. Face first into bushes of jasmine, stopping to listen to another Nightingale, then the scent altered as we walked under a lush fig tree laden with figs the size of advocados.
‘Come look’ said GS trying to stop me squeezing figs trying to find a ripe one to steal. ‘Fireflies’
And there they were, little pops of light silently flashing in the blackness of an overgrown vegetable garden.
I love fireflies. They are magical, fairy creatures that belong in dreams and legends.
When I used to live in Rome, when friends visited I had two ways to decompress them fast- a dip in the natural hot spas outside Rome or if they landed at Ciampino it was a short drive to Castel Gandolfo for a starlight swim. To walk along the woodland path where you could drop in the bathe in May was to walk your feet lit only by the magic of clouds of dancing fireflies.
We laid out by the pool listening to the Nightingales, watching the fireflies. It’s too early for the shooting stars that will come in Summer.
We used to have a villa cat Zadok on account of the forceful way she used to come through the catflap. Never has there been a nicer cat. Zadok came of her own accord and GS doted on her.
I like animals but GS says we travel too much.
I quite fancied a pair of donkeys. NO! said GS
Wallabies?NO! said GS
Bees? NO! said GS
Rescue skinny horse in the hills and keep it in the downstairs loo? NO! said GS. I got into trouble for that one.
Anyway it turns out we have some new pets. So there was a bomb d’aqua this spring. ie a rainfall so heavy that it bowled over the stone perimeter wall. So it now transpires that we have a family of very naughty wild sausages cavorting around the garden. GS says I am not allowed to leave out cornetti (brioche) for them as that is not how the food chain works.
He doesn’t want to have wild boars swimming in our pool like in the Caribbean.
