Keep your cool

28th September 2025

Though Stephen might have had an important date with Linea Pelle, he did arrange it so he was able to share some of my birthday with me before catching the 11 o’clock train to Milan on Monday morning. I opened cards and the presents from him and Peggy and Harry over breakfast (once again, the dogs had been incredibly generous) before he sorted himself out to head north and I got on with a wonderfully mundane day doing bits and pieces and not much else.

That was very much the tone for the week, in fact, for while the most exciting thing to happen to me was having to wait while Roberto put the new cash roll into the till at Conad, and then for the machine to decide to start working again, Stephen’s was far more thrilling, so while I experienced life vicariously, you, dear reader, will be living it vicariously once removed.

It was less than a propitious start to his few days in the big city when Stephen alighted onto the platform at Milan station and found the concourse heaving with travellers and the exits blocked, for their safety. It was the day of mass protests in support of Gaza all over Italy, but one particular group had decided to kick off outside the station and throw things around. Fortunately, in a light bulb moment, Stephen remembered something about a back exit and an underground passage once used by Italy’s royal family when they wished to arrive or leave unnoticed. He followed their example and did the latter.

After a couple of busy days, he was less than looking forward to having to go to a client’s fashion show on Wednesday evening, but a three-line whip from Bertrando (if one person can deliver such a thing) meant he was queuing outside the venue in good time. That, of course, is a mistake in Italy, where nothing, especially a catwalk show, starts punctually. It was with some surprise, therefore, that he and few other early arrivals (by which we mean on time) were let in, before a young woman started frantically waving her arms saying that things were not ready. Too late for the few, the lucky few, who were already ensconced and were at least able to wait sitting down. 

As for show, it came, it went and who knows if it conquered, though Stephen was very pleased with the shoes they’d made for it and to be in the presence of all those VIPs. “Which ones?” I asked. Some influential influencers, it appears – so no one of real note or who is of actual use to society, though Bertrando was made up when he greeted Renzo Rosso, billionaire owner of Deisel, as if they were old friends and had a selfie taken with him.

There was, as happens with these things, an after-show party to which Stephen was also invited, but with a neat sidestep he told his boss that he needed something to eat first as he was hungry. This turned out to be a caprese salad, a packet of crisps and a Kit-Kat – and if you think this doesn’t sound like usual restaurant fare you’d be right. It was what he had waiting back at his apartment, where he decided he might as well stay put.

Thursday, he had his usual stopover in Bologna, including the shock of finding out why the bijou apartment on the building’s top floor was a good price. It was so bijou you had to share a bathroom at the bottom of the corridor. Who knew such things still existed in this day and age. 

Stephen was home Friday evening, in time to witness me at both my best and worst when I had an encounter with a triumvirate of hunters. I think I have mentioned before how the pleasure of our morning walks at this time of year can be dampened when accompanied by a soundtrack of intermittent gun fire. I’ve also mentioned that this year there has not been nearly as much activity as previously – until yesterday morning.

A strange, almost Hound of the Baskerville-like howling was the first indication that we were going to have company, and indeed when we were coming down the road, just at the most treacherous part for anyone on foot, three men and their dogs straggled across, spread out in a long line, not far from the house. I’m not sure what made me snap: maybe it was that they were cutting across the field only twenty or twenty-five metres from the front of the house, guns over their arms; perhaps it was all those years of anxiety hearing the sounds of gunshots and wondering just how close they were; mainly I think it was having to deal with two dogs excited at seeing another in the road looking at them and wagging its tail while the man taking up the rear plodded on apparently oblivious and making no attempt to call it to heel.

I snapped and started shouting, first in English and when the man studiously ignored me, switched to Italian. He also feigned to ignore this, but I have a sneaking suspicion of what he might have written in his diary once he returned home: (with apologies to Jane Austen) Went to Monte San Pietrangeli to try out fresh terrain for hunting, wore my new camouflage gilet and looked much to advantage, but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted Englishman who shouted obscenities at me, sometimes in Italian, and would not let me go. 

Actually, I had no power to detain him and he tramped on his way (not sure where but when Stephen went later that morning to collect something from the office in Montegranaro he spied them going into a bar, so they weren’t as we suspected, local – just as well). When I got back to the house Stephen was on the terrazzo. Now I’m for it, I thought, but here is where my finest moment comes in. He found it all highly amusing, especially as he said he had never heard me speak such perfect Italian.

The rest of yesterday was very pedestrian in comparison, but we did head out in the afternoon for some vital basics (coffee cialde, hide chews for the dogs and magnesium and potassium supplements for me). This evening we have been to Marco and Maddalena’s for apericena and for them to give me my birthday present (a very nice t-shirt with jolly Vespas on the front, just right for the pool). Stephen had great fun reliving Ian and the Hunters for them, to much shaking of the head on Marco’s part – not at me, but at the alien Elmer Fudds coming so near a house with their guns. It’s comforting to know that I might be deranged, but I’m not unreasonable.