Three days ago the temperature rose to almost 17° (62.5°F) and we were in a sweat over yet more distressing signs of global warming. Today the wind is howling straight off ice, freezing my fingers as I hung the washing on the line and taking the perceived temperature – according to my weather site – down to -2° (28°F), though to me it felt like about -10°.
Frustrating, though, because sitting inside looking out on the blue sky and dazzling sunshine, the only hints that being in my garden wouldn’t have been pleasant were tree branches dancing like crazy, and bluetits having a hard time landing on the flailing bird feeder.
I desperately need to get out there. My asparagus bed has disappeared under couch grass and weeds of every description, and is punctuated by a forest of runners from the damson trees which produced – then promptly dropped – their first ever fruit this summer. They’re clearly more interested in spreading than in fruiting.
And talking of first fruits… my bitter orange tree! Or more accurately, my bitter orange bush because since L saw that it had dropped its leaves in a particularly harsh patch of weather some years ago, presumed it was dead, and lopped it off near the base with his chainsaw (grrrrrr) it has been growing into an ever-larger ever-healthier ever-taller bush which looks lovely but does… nothing. Except this year. I noticed one little fruit in the summer and got very excited. But now that they’re ripe and coloured I see that there are six lovely oranges. It’s almost a crop! As I write I’m making marmalade with Seville oranges from my supplier in Sicily. This organic producer is my saviour through the winter, delivering citrus to me and to my little group of juicing friends. But I think our first ever home-grown oranges deserve a better showcase than that. Last year I made oranges in syrup from a friend’s recipe. I need to get her to repeat it for me, so I can rustle up a precious, special cru of our very own fruit.
I’ve just realised that we’ve reached the end of the boar-hunting season (16 January) and I haven’t railed even once against them this winter – because mostly they weren’t here. They’ve never graced us so little with their presence. Yes, there were a couple of occasions when they were blasting about somewhere in the valley, but as far as I can remember there was only one Sunday when I glimpsed them anywhere near our property. What can be the meaning of this? Frankly, I don’t care what it means. I’m just glad they opted for elsewhere – a blessed deliverance.
It has given our local trail clearer Pino a chance to get down there with his tools. He has tidied up the old path number two which had become very overgrown. In a neighbouring valley he has re-made the path which skirts around Mario Draghi’s border fence. And now he’s working on our path through our secret valley which he leapt at when L mentioned it to him. Loathe as I am to share in with anyone, we have been giving him a hand too. Its saving grace is that no one who isn’t a serious walker is going to be too keen to spend much time down there: there are steep and scrambly bits, and it’s not always obvious which way the path lies. It’s never going to be over-run with Sunday strollers.
I’m most intrigued by this fascinating-fact email which was kindly sent to me by Google. That red pin right there in the centre is Pieve Suites. Of course I’d love to believe that 150,000 Google maps users have homed in and clicked on my little rental venture. But I have very serious doubts. That would mean that since September 2018 – when it appears I put my dot on there – 27,272 people have clicked on me every year, including all through lockdowns and travel bans. Is that even possible? Or does it simply mean that 150K Google maps users have idly opened up a page which happened to have my pin on it somehow? Is Google trying to make me feel triumphant about my own visibility? The danger is, though, that they might be having the opposite effect: I might be thrown into deep depression by how few of those 150,000 have been tempted to book.
For some reason elderly men – possibly deaf, probably lonely elderly men – with very loud voices seem to have taken a liking to me recently.
Like the local in one of our little supermarkets, propping up the checkout though with no discernable goods he wished to purchase. It was a foul day and I’d been out walking somewhere, and I was swathed in big rainproof cape and wellies. “We’re never going to have snow like we did in the old days again!” he shouted. This was slightly incongruous because though it had been tipping down it wasn’t cold at all.
It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that in the old days people half froze to death in their tumbledown houses with snow blowing in under the doors and window frames. But I didn’t. He was so busy reformulating the same emphatic statement in different ways that I was pretty sure he wasn’t interested in my logic.
Another day, I’m having coffee with a friend in a bar in town. Once again a local is desperate to make friendly small talk with us from the table across the way, where he’s sitting by himself. But a second friend joins us and we continue in English. He goes back to his newspaper, and to sweeping the room for possible other people to chat with. There’s no one though, so by the time he gets up to leave I’m feeling a bit bad about having cut him off, and wish him a buona giornata. It’s all the invitation he needs.
“You’re Roman, aren’t you?” he says to one of my friends, who is indeed Roman. “I suppose you’re a guide and you’re going to take these two ladies around the sights.” My friend runs one of Rome’s loveliest libraries, and she tries to tell him as much, but by that time he has decided she’s a guide and isn’t in the least interested in what she has to say. “You know where you should take them? It’s a place where nobody ever goes – no one even knows about it.”
Oh really.
“It’s half way down via del Corso,” he shouts, getting very agitated. “It’s a treasure trove!”
Galleria Doria Pamphili? I suggest. After all, it’s one of Rome’s better known sights.
“Yes! yes!” but he manages to make it seems as if he’s told us and not vice versa. “Galleria Doria Pamphili! It’s a wonder! No one even knows it, and there’s a Raphael!”
His other favourite place where my guide-not-guide friend absolutely has to take her charges? The Palatine.
“But you have to go before ten AM or it fills up with Romans.”
Unlikely, really, the Palatine being almost exclusively a tourist attraction these days but he’s right that it fills up – I’ll give him that. His eyes are glistening and he’s wrapt in his recollections.
“I was walking around the Palatine, lost in wonder, and suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.” Dramatic pause for maximum effect. “It was Virgil, come to show me around,” he says. “I think it’s called Stendhal syndrome.” If only all tourists succumbed to the magic of history and beauty like that.
La Verzura 