A spring in your step

Whilst life in Italy is, for the most part, on hold, the same cannot be said for Mother Nature. With Friday marking the official start of spring, the weather has obliged by continuing to be warm and sunny and everywhere there are signs of new life.

Apart from the burgeoning of various plants and trees – I have been keeping a close eye on the quince tree that marks our return point on our walks and whose tight buds on Monday had turned to small leaf clusters today – the field across the lane has see a lot of coming and going. This began on Tuesday with prepping the soil and a machine that criss-crossed the land in double-quick time thanks to its caterpillar tracks. They were back yesterday for more work then again today to seed and roll. This rolling has made us hopeful that the rotation has come round to sunflowers again, as Stephen says it is part of the planting process for that crop. If he is correct it will give us a glorious view come summer (as well as maybe the odd discarded flower head to provide bird feed for next winter).

As for me, the most exciting thing to happen at the start of the week was realising that my Fitbit had a dual-coloured watch strap, with one half grey and the other grey-blue. How this shocking state of affairs came into being I am sure you are agog to find out so let me put you out of your misery. When the original watch strap broke last week, Stephen (being the practical one of the family) effected an emergency repair while I ordered a bargain pack of four new ones from Amazon. This duly arrived a couple of days later thanks to Prime and Stephen (being the practical one of the family and also inclined to take charge whenever the opportunity presents itself) swopped the repaired strap for one of the new ones, only he didn’t.

What he did was replace the broken half with a replacement but then reattached the still intact old strap. I know; can you believe it? What is even more astonishing is that I didn’t realise myself until Tuesday when I thought I would ring the changes with a different colour from my selection of four. The problem now was that the Stephen had thrown the two parts of the strap into the recycling, which could have made for a tragic ending if not for the fact that the bag of plastic was waiting at the top of the road for the next day’s collection. What else could be done but for Stephen to drive up, bring the bag back and search through it for the missing new half. You will be relieved to know that he found it lurking at the bottom and I was able to wear a fully matching strap. How we laughed, and how I know you must be relieved that such a dramatic story had a happy ending – and who’d have thought that life in self-isolation could be so exciting?

Whilst I was busy mooching around at home, Stephen was still paying morning visits to the factory most days, taking time out on Thursday to do our shopping. We had decided to miss the usual Tuesday run and move the Friday visit to Thursday to avoid all the ladies of the village buying for the weekend. He managed to get everything we needed but was still gone for two hours. This was mainly due to having to wait his turn to enter the shop, congregating outside as far as social distancing allowed while women shouted recipes for maritozzi (enriched bread buns) at each other and men came and went to Bar del Borgo for cigarettes.

When he did get inside, it was to find all the staff (except for Pia on the meat counter, who always marches to the beat of her own drum) with their faces encased in Perspex masks. These may be slightly more cumbersome than Stephen’s, but probably benefit from the advantage that they don’t, like his, steam up your glasses. At least he was wearing one, unlike the elderly gentleman of more than a certain age who got into bother for not only being without a mask but also shopping without gloves. His touching bewilderment, whether feigned or real, cut no ice with the staff, who conscious of their own health and that of the other customers sent him packing.

After dropping the shopping off at home, Stephen still had time to fit in his factory visit before lunch, returning shortly after midday with more eggs from Mrs C as well as five freshly cut lettuces. Like last week, the eggs were put to use in a lemon ciambellone and some jam thumb-print biscuits, while we managed over the next few lunchtimes to use up most of the salad. I’m not sure how much insalata Mrs C thinks two men can eat as Stephen had to be very firm in refusing more on Friday, though he did have to make a second shopping trip, this time to Simply C rather than Sigma. Why the change of venue? To buy gin, of course, what else - and some potatoes too as he had forgotten these the previous day.

It was also on Thursday that our week was made when shortly after we had finished lunch Stephen received a call from the gas man to say that he was in the area and would be coming down our road in about twenty minutes time to fill up the tank. We breathed a collective sigh of relief at this, for it is a good two or three weeks since Stephen had called him to say we could do with some more gas. We probably had enough to give us hot water for the next couple of months, the firewood supplying enough heat now the weather was a bit warmer, but it was comforting to know that we had a safe buffer should it be required.

And so it is the weekend again, and a further directive from the government today saying that we all had to stay in our own local area. Seeing as we’ve been doing this for almost two weeks now it is not going to be any more of a hardship for us, though yesterday morning I did manage a fractured conversation with Luigi. He had walked down the field to the barn by the house just as I was on the terrazzo cleaning the dogs’ feet after our walk. After asking how we each were we commented on the fine weather and he mentioned that the forecast for next week was colder with the chance of snow.

Being March, this is well within the bounds of possibility, which is slightly at odds with another sign of spring that caught my attention when out with Bella and Harry after Saturday lunch. We were just passing through the copse on the way to the bottom of the field when I was alerted by a rustling and was just in time to see one of our local black snakes, of baby size, slithering up the banking before disappearing into the undergrowth. What was more of a surprise, however, was at the same time a lizard of surprising dimension scurried across our path in the opposite direction; it’s good to know they’ve got the message and are exercising social distancing.