Call out the instigators

1st November 2020

The start of a new month sees the end of what has been, even by our standards, a very slow news week. There really has not been anything of note to relay so I’ll just make do with a couple of things of no note whatsoever and let you be on your ways.

I suppose we could try to blame the lack of action on the Covid regulations that came into affect last Sunday, but as our life is so leaden we very seldom frequent restaurants or bars after 6 p.m. and swimming pools and gyms never (all those bodily fluids) they have had a miniscule effect. We are not, however, going to take to the streets and protest like some of our adopted countrymen have, because we do have a brain cell.

Although our mad whirl of a social life has not been affected, the same can’t be said for my lessons. Whilst none of my students has actually contracted the dreaded virus, they have suffered the effects from those who have. First it was Fouzia, who while testing negative has had to quarantine for 14 days, then next it was Laura, who tested negative after a positive result for one of her close relatives. These were followed on Thursday when I was all set to start lessons with Vanna’s (my erstwhile student, who hopes to resume herself all things being equal) son and daughter and one of their friends, only for it to be cancelled at the last minute. She had received a message from the school that someone in her daughter’s class was Covid positive and thought it best to hold fire till she had been able to investigate further.

You can see, then, that unlike the lockdown earlier in the year, this area is being significantly more affected than previously. Stephen, however, is still at the factories most days and I even managed two lessons on Friday, when we also kept to our haircut/shopping/pizza-for-dinner routine. There has been further evidence that normal life is continuing to a large extent this weekend with a flurry of action in the fields surrounding LCDDB. Yesterday a tractor spent most of the day preparing the ground by spreading some sort of fertilizer before returning today to seed the fields. The latter caused a large flock of birds to follow in its wake, but hopefully they didn’t get away with too much before Mario and Luigi started rolling the ground in in the afternoon.

As for the former, we are not sure what exactly the fertilizer comprises of. As the fields are used by Mancini it must be of a natural variety but it doesn’t carry the strong scent of the farmyard that sometimes wafts across the valley when others are feeding their fields. Nevertheless, it is obviously potent stuff as it drove Harry wild. He spent a good deal of the early afternoon careening up and down the terrazzo, barking, as Stephen says, like a lunatic, and continued to do so when we brought him inside in an attempt to get a bit of peace and quiet. As I said, normal life is continuing – at least where Harry is concerned.