The other day I was driving back from Castiglione del Lago and noticed that organic Apple Man had his sign out. We call the place Apple Man – and there are apples, and there is often a man serving (there are at least two of them in fact) – but they also have potatoes and beans and chickpeas and what have you. And the person serving is often a woman. So all in all our name for the place is not entirely accurately descriptive.
What we really go there for is the Goldrush apples, unquestionably the most delicious apple grown in these parts, or any parts I suspect. Bitingly tart and tinglingly crisp, it is, in my opinion, the only apple that brightens up the gloom of winter fruit consumption. Were they ready? No. “Come back in November,” Apple Lady said, then offered me some of the apples she had. What were they? I can’t remember. Gala perhaps or some kind of Delicious. “You’ll love them,” she said, “they’re really crunchy.”
They weren’t of course: they were mealy and ordinary. And they filled me with despair at the thought of winter approaching. No more peaches, no more nectarines. Nothing much, in fact, to inject any joy into our breakfast fruit salads. My terror at the idea of the onset of cold gets worse with each passing year.
So just as well the heat is doing its best to stick around. In the past couple of days it’s been making a valiant effort to seem autumnal, with some rain showers and some less-than-cloudless periods. But then the sun comes out again and the thermometer starts to hover around 30°C (86°F) once again and I feel I’ve been given a reprieve from something truly awful.
Another harbinger of my worst nightmare? Kids going back to school. In the last few days of summer freedom the streets of CdP are full of older teenagers sauntering, showing off tanned legs and midriffs and swaggering ostentatiously through their final homework-free evenings. From one day to the next they evaporate, drawn back into the world of learning. In the local Conad supermarket parents are collecting great packs of freshly ordered text books. And local outlets are laying out tempting school-time offers.
I looked at this particular €10 meal offer for teachers and students at one of our bars and just had to marvel. In my imagination I was hearing an English voice saying “what’s that rabbit food? and where are the chips?” It’s a different approach to feeding growing people.
Another thing that rings cold-season alarm bells is L’s departure each year for the Venice film festival at the end of August. However hot and glorious it is outside, it’s still the beginning of the end of summer. This year I joined him for the final weekend. I’d missed the Biennale last year for the first time in who-knows-how-long. This year I was determined to whip around.
I’m forever being contacted by The Telegraph to write stories about overtourism and the ghastliness of all things Venetian. And sometimes I do, though I always try to point out that Venice really is one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth and for all its problems it’s very close to my heart. But quite frankly I rarely come up against it in any way that makes my stays in that city anything less than delightful. Maybe it’s because of when I go, or how I go (five-star hotels sending water taxis for us is always a boon) but I really can’t remember when I’ve ever had to let an impossibly over-crowded vaporetto go by. Until this time.
My stay began with a wait of an hour and 20 minutes in the ACTV transport office in bus-filled piazzale Roma. My travel pass had expired and needed renewing. At the beginning of term, with hundreds of foreign – for which read American – students descending on the place, it was inevitable that there’d be a queue. Later I realised I could have done the whole thing on line. I never expect Venice to be that contemporary. My stupidity.
Then I went to the imbarcadero to catch the number two boat to San Samuele (I was going straight to see the surprisingly fascinating Chronorama show of photos from the Conde Nast archive at Palazzo Grassi). I joined a scrum which barely fit through the ticket barriers.
It was suffocating in the holding pen. A vaporetto arrived, disgorged its passengers in front of the station then embarked about one eighth of the people waiting. I was nowhere near getting on. In fact, I calculated that I might just get on the seventh or eighth vaporetto that arrived. At one boat every 12 minutes, I could well be squashed in there for and hour and a half. So I pushed my way back out the ticket barriers and fled, and hauled my bag through to San Tomà where there were five other people waiting at the stop. I crossed the Grand Canal from there, no problem at all. You can try to skirt it, but overcrowding is real.
Across the Scalzi bridge, the streets were were still full of rather bewildered crowds. As I moved on I witnessed one of the many annoying things that Venetians have complained to me about, namely the fact that GPS services mean tourists fan out. Once upon a not very long time ago most visitors were terrified of losing themselves in the maze. Not now: the droning voices of Google Maps directions echo along alleyways. But even so… somehow they disperse. It wasn’t far from the station that I was rattling through unpeopled calli. On the weekend when Venice announced that there were now more beds for tourists than for residents in the city, I could still find my space.
Will a €5 entry fee for day trippers improve things? The council is off along that forlorn track once again. They’ve already admitted that this will bring the city no real income – in fact it will barely cover the cost of administering the scheme. So what’s the point? A €5 ticket will deter almost no one. And anyway, how do they determine who should pay? Is someone visiting a relative for the day a day tripper? Is someone coming over for work a day tripper? And for a city which wants to shrug off its theme park image, how does an entry fee play? Not so well I’d say.
The Biennale? It was a little plodding – not the best year I’ve ever seen, though naturally there are always going to be interesting things in such a huge collection of ideas. And of course any opportunity to stroll around the Arsenale is welcome. More interesting was the Lido, which I have always kind of dismissed as “not really Venice”. The old Jewish cemetery was open on Sunday morning, with an elderly guide telling tales of historical Jewishness in a city with one of Europe’s oldest Jewish communities… but no more tolerant through the ages for all that. Though maltreated and depleted over the centuries, the cemetery is a place of green peace.
The evening light striking the northern beach by the abandoned (but soon to be restored, we heard) hospital was superb. The restored 1930s airport is magnificent.
Each Saturday morning I join the queue at Roberto and Romina’s vegetable stall in our market. They bring all their produce here from their farm down by Lake Bolsena. I’ve written about them before. Their stall is the one where people in the know wait half an hour and more to be served rather than go down the road to the ‘competition’ and be served immediately. Because their produce is better.
Anyway. A couple of weeks ago I rushed by the spot outside the deconsecrated church of Sant’Anna where their stall is usually located. I thought it odd that Roberto was standing there, and his truck, but no stall. It must have been after 9am. By that time they’ve been selling for over two hours. Strange. But I had things to do.
When I returned to do my shopping… no Roberto, no truck, no nothing. Could he have thrown a hissy fit for some reason and gone home? I wouldn’t put it past him. My heart sank. The weeks when I have to go without R&R’s produce are sad weeks indeed. I stomped back down towards my car – then found their stall in front of the church outside the walls, where the underwear bancarella usually stands. How did they get there?
Romina, still quite flustered, explained. There was a craft fair competing with the ordinary market in the centro. The miserable vigilessa (“what do you expect?” various people have commented re this universally unliked young traffic warden, “she comes from Perugia”) had insisted that there was no way R&R could have their stall in the usual place. Hadn’t they received the email telling them to pitch up elsewhere? No.
The crafts people all objected that there was plenty of room for everyone and that the stall should be left in place. But nothing moves this woman and she was adamant: the fully laid out wares all had to be transferred. Roberto said he was going home. The crowd of people waiting said “no way”. And so everyone grabbed a box of something, four people took hold of the supports of the pagoda covering the stall, others heaved up the tables and off the marched through the Saturday morning market crowd “like they were processing the Madonna on a feast day,” Romina said.
How I wish I’d been there to see the procession, and the face of the vigilessa. It was a brilliantly CdP way to deal with the situation.
La Verzura 