I don’t think I will trust even the cutest dog anymore. It was during the parade in memory of the Second World War at San Giusto di Brancoli that I found myself next to this gorgeous animal.

I thought its hairy mane was somewhat lion-like. I found out that this shepherd-dog’s name was indeed Leo.

Leo’s owner was not next to him when it happened. I must have done something to provoke the dog who was on a lead tied to the bench where I was sitting. I’d bent down, looked at Leo, then suddenly felt a sharp pain. Leo had bounced up and bit me on the lips. I yelled! The response was quick. I was quickly attended to by some of those at the event. In fact a WW2 German soldier administered first aid to me.

The emergency services were called for by this time I was loosing blood. They came within ten minutes and attended me pronto!

‘We should take you to hospital with the ambulance.’ they said. ‘No thankyou’ I answered. ‘I really don’t want to leave my car and husband here.’

So I found my way to Ponte a Moriano’s ‘Croce Verde’ by myself

‘You must go to the emergency at the hospital’. I was again told. So in our car we reached San Luca. In a remarkably short space of time, which would have been the envy of the UK NHS, I was seen and had a couple of stitches put in where Leo had bit me.

My family doctor had since removed my stitches.

Everyone tells me how lucky I’ve been for things could have been far worse. However, I now know never to trust anyone, including a dog, however cute it might look!

(Goya. Dogs on a lead. 1786)

What one would give to have a live recording of an original Schubertiad – a musical evening spent with the great Vienn inese composer. Or how about a salon soiree with Liszt on the piano? Or the premier of Beethoven’s ninth symphony with the composer conducting and not able to hear the audience cheers at the end? Or even Lully conducting for Louis XIV beating time with a stick on the floor, hitting his big toe with it forming an abscess which caused his death? Or perhaps the riot which accompanied the first time Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was performed?

We are of course, lucky that since the invention of the gramophone towards the end of the nineteen century we are at least able to hear some of the greatest musicians, composers, performers and conductors of our time perform; Ravel, Prokofiev, Nikisch and Elgar among them.

As the twentieth century progressed several performances, particularly of operas, began to be filmed and masterpieces like ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ and ‘The Barber of Seville’ finally reached the silver screen.

Yet even with sound recordings and filming now available there remained major lacunae in the performance repertoire. In some cases this was due to the early death of the protagonists: Dinu Lipatti, Ginette Neveu, Kathleen Ferrier among the most loved ones in this tragic lot. In other cases it was due simply to the carelessness on the part of the producers. It seems astonishing, for example, that, as late as 1964, only the second act of ‘Tosca,’ with Callas ‘La Divina’ as heroine was filmed at Covent Garden. (Callas was more that just a great singer; she was the greatest of dramatic sopranos). Furthermore, despite Zeffirelli’s gorgeous set, Tosca was filmed only in black and white.

Christopher Nupen’s videotaped films of Jacqueline du Pre would have been rather more extensive if several of them had not been wiped by the BBC, as was the custom in those times when videotape was very expensive and when a consumer market had never been imagined.

Today, of course, everything is different. Just streaming on YouTube I can watch umpteen versions of obscure Neapolitan baroque operas or Wagnerian rings or every single Bach cantata. (The Netherlands Bach society is particularly excellent in this field).

One particular opera, or rather ‘divertissement’, I particularly love is Handel’s ‘Acis and Galatea’ describing in brilliantly youthful music the love affair of two classical swains before the dastardly monster Polyphemus dashes the hapless shepherd to his death with a colossal rock. Happily Acis is turned into a stream and made immortal by the gods, although I do feel this transformation is somewhat cold comfort for the grieving Galatea.

Of the various performance on ‘YouTube’ I was utterly entranced by a Czech performance from the Moravian town of Ostrovo. Taking place in a puppet theatre the production featured the soprano Patricia Janeckova, barely out of her teens, as Galatea. Handel’s exquisite gem (composed for George Brydges, duke of Chandos, whose estate – alas, the house has long since gone -we visited at https://wp.me/p8ybdb-4pM) seemed perfectly made for Janeckova. Her voice, transcendental in its quality, her sweetness of interpretations, her playful interaction with puppet birds and butterflies, her magnetic charm were absolutely memorable. I wanted to hear more from the singer. Then I found out the bitter, totally unfair truth about her. Patricia Janeckova died this October of breast cancer. And she only married the previous July!

May she rest in peace and may her lovely voice continue to be heard both by God and mankind for all eternity.

***

PS Thank goodness that we can still enjoy Janeckova’s youthful promise as Galatea at:

Another Penny Market chain supermarket has opened in our area. This time it’s at Pian di Coreglia and occupies a formerly abandoned, unfinished structure. Easily visible on the right side of the road going from Bagni di Lucca to Fornaci di Barga the chain has done a good job in completing an eyesore concrete box.

We visited the new store yesterday and found it well laid out although a little smaller than the Penny Market branch we normally patronize at Borgo a Mozzano. A feature which is different is that, in addition to a separate fresh bakery section it also has a meat and fish manned counter. We might well use this supermarket when going northward up the Serchio valley. The check-out queues, too, appear shorter than those at Borgo: self-service check-outs are not a feature in our part of the world where most people still pay for their purchases with cash.

Supermarkets may have their advantages, especially for car drivers, and many lower prices but they also bring disadvantages. Bagni di Lucca had three family-run local mini-markets when we first came here over ten years ago. Now they have all gone thanks to the supermarket chains. No friendly face-to-face chats between shop-owner and customer. No possible door-to-door delivery. No information as to the precise derivation of fruit and veg sold. And with out-of-town locations supermarkets are obviously user-unfriendly for those folks who actually like to walk to their shops from home or even cycle there.

This year yet another supermarket has opened up in our area. It’s a branch of Carrefour and is on the Via Brennero between Villa and Chifenti. This time the supermarket utilizes a former car showroom. At least the structure has not been left unoccupied but again its presence must impact on local family-run shops.

Of course many will say that this is how things are going and that there is nothing anyone can do about it. Certainly in this cost-of-living crisis many mortals will believe they may be saved by supermarket prices, especially ‘discount’ stores like Lidl, Eurospin and Penny Market.

Looking at what is happening in the USA, however, even supermarkets, especially if they are situated in shopping malls, may be doomed. On-line shopping has greatly increased since the pandemic encouraged it. The frequency of parcels bearing the familiar curved arrow motif has certainly increased at our place, although the only food items we have ordered are items not normally found in our local supermarkets like Scottish shortbread and Arab loukum.

And this leads me to a last point. Could there be a beneficial competition between our area’s supermarkets? Apart from prices could some stores become specialists in wines? Maybe have a special gourmet section? Or how about providing outlets for local products? Eurospin in Castelnuovo has been successful in having a local products section, for instance. Other stores could publicise a less crowded ambience or a quicker check-in routine. There might even be increased space for the sale of products from the UK. Cheddar? Silver-cut marmalade? Hovis? Haggis? Cumberland sausage? Melton Mowbray pork pie? Quality Street?
Some supermarkets may even pride themselves in having friendlier staff!

Montefegatesi’s inauguration of its presepi, or Christmas cribs, on Sunday truly starts the festive season for us. A plethora of cribs of all shapes and sizes decorated the streets and corners of this valiant mountain village, the highest in our comune at a height of 2,800 feet.

Three of the best could be found in the little entrance chapel.

On the first really crisp day this November the event was very well attended. The little village square was filled with stalls selling cheeses and other local products and there was also a display of local mushrooms,some edible and some to be avoided.

The local second-hand shop also provided an excellent way to find ecologically sound and opportunely priced presents for December 25th. For instance we managed to pick up this Goya painting of dogs on a lead for the price of a local bus fare.

Wonderful scenery of the appenine mountain range surrounded us, enhanced by an ecstatic sunset. Truly we are beginning to feel Christmassy!

A trio of travellers, two young men and one girl, wended their way through our beloved Val di Lima a year ago. Using no vehicles except their legs and with one of them even barefoot they traversed mountain paths, sometimes rocky, sometimes overgrown with brambles, sometimes lush pastures enjoyed by flocks of sheep and goats. Sleeping largely under trees, within shepherd’s caves, in abandoned pastoral hut they faced all weathers from torrid summer heat to torrential downpours.

What was their mission? Clearly to be one with nature: to re-establish contacts with the elements of our beautiful but transgressed Earth. However, there was a second reason for their pilgrimage. It was to meet local people and hear them speak and perhaps gather some stories from them: stories of historical events, of legendary tales or scandalous village gossip.

After meeting the villagers and listening to them the trio would cast what they had heard into dramatic vignettes. For they were also strolling players in mediaeval mode and arriving at the next village on their path would enact those vignettes before the newly-met inhabitants in their village square.

What was the object of all this? I suppose it was foremost to redeem the intrinsic worth of our valley’s inhabitants, to give back to them the true value they had as part of Italy’s cultural milieu. Perhaps, in the manner of Gray’s ‘mute inglorious” Miltons, the lives and traditions of the Val di Lima’ denizens would be restored to their proper places as highly valued expressions of even the supposedly humblest of existences.

I also imagined a latter-day ‘Canterbury Tales’ in which the author re-elaborates stories heard from his fellow travellers while on a pilgrimage.

From our trio’s experiences in the remote corners of the Val di Lima a film emerged. For I did not mention that our travellers were accompanied by a film cameraman-director who shot over 180 hours of their peregrinations. His problem was clearly how to edit this footage into less than two hours while still giving a good idea of the trio’s experiences. In the end the director ditched the standard documentary format with third-person narrative, and very structured focus on particular aspects of the experience, for a kind of existential collage in which his own persona disappeared and where the protagonists were seemingly in control of the action.

So it happened that what we viewed at Bagni di Lucca’s Teatro Accademico yesterday evening was a sequence of snippets showing the actors cooking and sleeping in abandoned settlements, engaging with locals and hearing their stories, tramping through thick forests and accidentally falling in and getting badly scratched by brambles, joking among each other, focusing on the faces of villagers as they related their narratives and indispersing these with views of the villages visited and the local dramatic vignettes they enacted.

The fact that the production was shot in black-and-white emphasised its nature as not yet another nice, welcoming, glorious technicolor documentary on an area’s natural and cultural wonders but rather a more personal, even intimate recollection. The film also reminded me of something quite Pasolineque in the often raw nature of the footage and the sometimes abrupt cutting.

After the movie’s screening all its protagonists met up on the stage to discuss the whys and wherefores of what they had accomplished. The addendum to the evening ironed out quite a few queries about what we had seen.

‘Tessere il Valico’ (weaving the pass) is certainly a very worthwhile project and has given me food for thought about how other aspects of our lovely Val di Lima could be approached in greater and perhaps rather more structured detail: our high-level footpaths perhaps, some of our exquisite Romanesque churches, our artists and artisans or even a focus on our local poets and actors, some of whom can recite whole cantos from Dante’s Divine Comedy by heart.

The evening concluded with the sudden guest appearance of a very seasonable visitor.

Ah well ..it’s now time to search for those colourful lights again!

Central Italy. The Angelus bell tolled across the dusky hills. Its plangent tone added a tenor to the crystal-like tinkling of the goat bells as the animals scratched their way around the olive groves. The setting sun incarnadined the white-washed facade of the little church on the hill. In the distance, beyond the undulating hills, the cupola of a large cathedral stood out against the blooded sky.

A gravelled terrace extended in front of the church. Down one side of it a clerical figure in biretta and long gown paced up and down. With both hands he held a breviary. Mouthing the words silently Father Antonio read a meditation. In his forties, the priest’s hair was greying but his sharp jaw and distinct eyebrows imparted an impulsively youthful appearance to his face.

To the right of the church a wrought-iron gate gave way to a small inner courtyard festooned with vines rising up from serried ranks of terracotta pots. Father Antonio pushed aside the unlocked gate and entered within. A black-and-white cat with a somewhat torn ear glided up to him and stroked his face against the priest’s cassock.

“Good evening, dear Barnabas, and has the maid given you your supper yet?”

The purring of the cat intimated to him that this was, indeed, the case. To the side of the courtyard a narrow flight of stairs led to an upper room. Up the flights went the chaplain, opened a creaky oak door and retired into his study. Bare-walled, except for a picture of the Virgin and Child, the room was as monastic a cell as one could find. One side of its minuscule dimensions was taken up by a low bed. The other side was largely filled by an inordinately ornate sacristy cupboard with little angle putti attempting to fly from its corners. The Father opened the cupboard’s large door which disclosed shelves upon shelves of large flat-laid folios. From the top shelf he took out an unfinished manuscript and read out the opening bars of a score penned in a cursive but neat hand.

Softly he sang the opening syllables of his new motet: Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, Hail Holy Queen Mother of mercy. The notes, written with the time signature alla breve, gave away their origin in the archaic melodies of plainchant. However, on the four lower staves, which were assigned to the stringed instruments, the busy quaver figurations full of rushing arpeggiandos and crescendos showed that this composer was fully aware of le style galant and the spreading influence of the Neapolitan school.

Salve Regina Hail Queen.

Antonio sharpened his goose quill. “One more section and then it will be finished”, he thought.

The pen etched its notes on the paper. To the words O clemens Father Antonio added sound, harmony to make the words fly even higher, to fill his congregation with the intimations of a higher life, more perfect and purer than anything one could ever hope to experience on this earth.

The cat came in the open door. He found a goose quill on the floor and started to play with it, toying with his claws and tossing it hither and thither: the smell of a featured creature was too strong for its instinct.

Engrossed in the activity the cat did not even wink at the motionless presence of the Father leaned over the half-written sheet of manuscript.

In an Edwardian inner-London suburb the May wind rustled through the plane trees bordering the row of red-bricked villas. John placed his record of eighteenth century motets on the turntable. It was one of his favourites from his large collection of vinyl and was the crowning achievement of his pet project.

He cast his mind back to its genesis. It was during a holiday in Italy. He was seeking shade in the empty porticoes of a white-hot and deserted northern Italian city. Was it Turin or Bologna? He couldn’t quite remember. Anyway, taking a side turning he found a shop with its shutters still unfolded. He though it strange that, with all the other blinds down for the couple of hours the whole town fell asleep exhausted from the searing heat of the summer afternoon, this place should still be open.

It was a second-hand shop. Entering into its crepuscular gloom from the blinding light outside he almost crashed into a large piece of church furniture. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he noticed its ornate carvings with angels on the corners. An elderly gentleman shuffled towards him.

“May I help you”, he asked.

“What an extraordinary cupboard,” replied John.

“Yes, it is rather nice,” he replied, as he opened one of the doors.

A whiff of mildewed parchment hit John’s nostrils as he did so. Inside, on one of the shelves he could discern an untidy pile of what appeared to be large folio manuscripts, music manuscripts as they turned out to be. At the top of one sheet was written in a shaky but neat hand Padre Antonio incipit. In the hand of Father Antonio.

Back in London John, a lecturer in the history of music, presented news of his find to the Music library of the British Museum. They agreed to take the manuscripts for conservation and storage. One of them had particularly attracted John, It was a motet, unfinished, to the words of the Antiphon Salve Regina. What drew him to it was the enticing mixture of plainchant and intermezzo style. The flattened Neapolitan seconds and sevenths gave to the piece the seductive quality of a dark southern beauty calling to him like the evening waters on the shore of a mythological sea town. Later, with a band of amateur singers recruited from his church choir, he had made a private recording of a selection of these manuscripts.

Although unfinished, because of its great beauty John decided to also include the Salve Regina. He took the record and placed on his turntable.

An E minor chord intoned by the choir started the Marian antiphon. Vita Dulcedo et spes nostra salve. Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.

Hope, yes hope indeed. And the sweetness, the recollection of those arcadian days of youth and high expectations flourishing among the grassy banks and tender kisses of his loved one. How their bodies had quivered to the touch of each others fingers, her tongue in his exploring each other like an hidden sea grotto whose entrance was only uncovered when the tides went down.

Ad te clamamus. To thee do we cry poor banished children of Eve. Yes cry. He had done that many times. Internally too. It was no longer necessary to waste visible tears on this. Gementes and flentes, mourning and weeping. Mourning and weeping for my lost love for her radiant body, so confident so proud, her nipples erect on her perfect breasts. O to be one of her babies and suckle on her teats. What a mother she would be! In hac lacrimarum valle. In this vale of tears. Stroking the cat he felt her hair between his fingers: her raven hair thick and flourishing cascading over his skin. Turn then, thine eyes of mercy…eja ergo.

I though it unfinished. But it plays to the end.

The O clemens O pia..o merciful o loving..o dulcis Virgo Maria! O sweet Virgin Mary. A rainbow of iridescent colours seemed to flow swirling round his eyes. A golden light appeared to penetrate his brain. A delicious feeling spread through his body. Bliss, bliss o this was too much, too much to bear.

Sarah came into the room. Across the sofa she found his lifeless body draped down one side of the sofa. A cat was licking John’s face and nuzzling into his neck.

What an evening it must have been. And to be that proverbial fly on the wall! There, in that elegant hide-away villa by the shore of lake Geneva, with storm-clouds gathering from the surrounding dragon-toothed alpine mountains, enfolded by that sinister calm before the tempest breaks, was a band of exiled Brits with names that would resound for all time in the annals of romantic literature: Byron, mad, bad and dangerous to know, Shelley, advocate of atheism and revolution, Polidori, a scion of a family ejected in a previous century from Lucca for holding Protestant views, Mary, Shelley’s wife, beautiful, intellectual, passionate, daughter of a mother who had vindicated the rights of women but who had died of purpureal fever giving birth to her.

A challenge had been given to this intimate group of free-thinkers: during a night of presages, of perils, of weird forebodings where the haunting owl ‘s hoot became an antiphon to the illuminated shattering of thunder.

Each one was to write a ghost story.
And so it came to pass that two of the most horrific monsters continuing to inhabit our wildest imaginations today – the vampire and the zombie – were recreated through the pens of Polidori with his ‘The Vampyre’ and Mary with her ‘Frankenstein’.

Today a similar challenge has been set to a group of writer through the ‘Shelley Project’. For a day these authors will be isolated in Bagni di Lucca’s casino and required to write a ghost story in evocation of that fateful night spent at Lake Geneva just over two hundred years ago. Next year we will know what new ghostly monsters will have arisen from the teeming brains of these latter-day romantics to make us tremble with fear.

The project was introduced last night in the exquisite surroundings of Europe’s first purpose-built gambling den, Ponte a Serraglio’s Casino.. An elegant parade of period-costumed gentlemen, ladies and one dog entered the hall and were melodiously accompanied by a string quintet playing Boccherini.

The presentation of the Shelley project was followed by enacted scenes from the lives of the lake Geneva protagonists indispersed with a well – detailed account of their lives

.
Francesca Chiarantano was the presenter and Sauro Donati the artistic director. The Anonima Teatranti, the Società di Danza Circolo di Lucca and the Elisa Baciocchi String Quintet were the artistes.

The next Shelley project event will be on November 26th.

It was a great start and a truly fascinating one to the lives of a group of young glitterati who continue to enthrall today. And to think that we, and all those who live in the ancient thermal town of Bagni di Lucca, live in the same area where the Shelleys and Byron found delight in a wonderful ambience, enjoyed walks and relaxation among its chestnut forests and were inspired by the sublime scenery to write equally sublime works.

I will certainly look forwards to the results of the Shelley project and am prepared to face the ghosts, perils and monsters of the night in these ever-longer darknesses which forewarn of the freezing times facing us as we plunge into the unknown dangers of yet another winter.

Wait, wait! Who is behind that door which is opening without a noise of a footstep, There is no howling gale and we are all here together huddled round the fire. What unknown fiend is ready to enter our living room?

Oh. It’s only Carlotta our calico cat nuzzling her way in….

Women are traditionally associated with the care and protection of the human race. They are not only mothers of their children but also of our planet Earth. From ancient times the goddess of birth, love and death, the Moon’s phases, the perpetual source of mercy, the Madonna, Isis, Alpanu of the Etruscans, the eternal feminine has radiated her perennial, ecstatic charms onto the dour pragmatic world of the male.

Metamorphosed into the Lady with the lamp, Florence Nightingale, deified in the effigy of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I, worshipped in her saintliness, whether it be Mother Teresa of Calcutta or her martyred adolescence like Lucca’s own Gemma Galgani women have been primarily associated with their role of nurturing, preserving nature, and, indeed, pro-creators of the human race. As the SeeBee sailors the musical ‘South Pacific’ succinctly sing ‘there is nothing like a dame’.

Yet, in the midst of at least one political sphere women may be the opposite of the qualities expressed in their mythical status. How can someone, born in a migrant family, brought up in often straightened circumstances, with a Paris Sorbonne qualification, with a re-appointment to the government’s second most important job – thanks to the support of her similarly heritaged prime minister – hold such contrary views? 

She launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister who appointed her to her job and accused him of betraying the nation.

She is a rabid supporter of Brexit despite her university degree and love of French literature which was possible, not just with a love of Europe but with EU funds that supported her education there.

She dreams of sending ‘hurricanes’ of migrants with backgrounds often very similar to hers to the jungles of Rwanda.

She, with a comfortable home in a plush, leafy suburb, declares that London’s huddling homeless masses have chosen deliberately to sleep in tents on the metropolis pavements or lay their sleeping bags in the subways not out of necessity but as a conscious lifestyle choice.

She is convinced that members of the global LGBT community use their labels as a prime means of obtaining political asylum.

As for the unemployed, her advice is that if they can’t find a job they should train as fruit pickers or abattoir or toilet attendants.

As for her use of words destined to divide, foment hate and segregate, these have been consistently condemned, especially by those who have suffered similar torments foisted by intolerant societal groups.

Last but not least: the way she fobbed off her speeding offence. But then she is already way off track and a quite irresponsible user both of her car and of her government post.

And yet ‘Suella-Cruella’ is just one woman among several others with the same kind of extremist views so contradictory to their background. Her previous incumbent, again of similar heritage, ‘Pretty-awful’, held similar views.  And the great matriarch of British politics, ‘Thatcher-(school-milk) snatcher’, made even the most right-wing male politician speak as effectively as a (quote) ‘dead sheep’.

In Italy we have, of course, the archetypical (her words) ‘Italian, mother, Christian’, Giorgia Meloni of the way-right-wing ‘Fratelli d’Italia’ party. Opposing her (at least she’s a woman) is the left-wing Swiss-born, lesbian lover, atheist Elly Schlein.

Interestingly, although on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both Braverman and Schlein have Jewish family connections: Braverman’s husband and Schlein’s father are Jews.

Can I think of any major female political leader who is not fervently right-wing, divisive and anti-inclusiveness today? In other words someone who is, according to many, ‘woke’?

Rosa Luxembourg perhaps? But then that’s history.

Meanwhile, the list of right-wing populist female political leaders such as Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidl and Corinna Miazga grows. Women supporting traditionally anti-feminist parties??? I wonder why. Any answers?

We experienced two Remembrance Day commemorations last Sunday.

First we watched the ceremony at the Cenotaph on TV.

We then went to attend the inauguration of the Ivan Houston (US army liberation of Lucca 1944) room at S Giusto di Brancoli’s WW2 memorial museum.

Re-enactment groups from as far as Ancona joined up and a parade was held so that we might never forget what this place had to experience between 1940 and 1945.

A platoon presented an olive tree, that perennial symbol of peace, to the site.

The ‘Museo della Memoria’ at San Giusto, Brancoli has now been enriched by further contributions from Ivan Houston’s family including photographs and, most preciously, his medals

We were privileged to meet this soldier of the ‘buffalo’ brigade in 2019 just one year before he died aged 95 in 2020. As a 19-year old Ivan fought in the liberation of Lucca in 1944. He told us he was amazed, as a black, to see a black Christ in the city’s cathedral: the ‘Volto Santo’ dating back centuries and an object of the greatest veneration.

Over fifty years later Ivan wanted to revisit those places which had so impressed him during his wartime experiences. In the holy peace which Italy so luckily still experiences, the ex-teenage soldier, now a much-loved head-of-family member and highly respected retired business consultant was glad to revisit the country which had so influenced his youth.

It was that chance holiday which has established a permanent bond between the soldiers not just from American and Italian regiments but from all those forces, whether they were on opposing sides or not, who fought and died in the largest war the world has experienced.

And yet…..yet so many men, women and, especially children, are continuing to suffer from the futility of war. Will it ever stop?

We shall never cease from remembering them in the day’s glowing sunset, in the perils of the night and in the iridescent promise of the rainbow.

***

For more information on the Brancoli theatre of war and on Ivan Houston do see my posts at:

Today has been the first day for what has seemed to be a very long time that the sun has finally managed to spend its time with us from dawn to dusk. What better activity to indulge in then but to go to our little olive grove and pick the unctuous berries from its branches.

This orto or allotment has been ours now for over fifteen years and the olive trees we planted then have grown into healthy teenagers. Of course, not all of them are bearing fruit this year (they never seem to do) but it is an absolute delight to pick the olives which range in colour from green to dark brown.

At home we will sort through our pickings and place the olives in well sealed, seasoned jars where they will mature into tasty morsels suitable for accompanying a party drink or just to savour as antipasto for our winter meals.

We are so lucky to still have our orto. It is full of pleasant memories for summer boules games, to badminton matches to celebratory gatherings or just for solitary summer afternoons under Lucchesia’s sun.

If only some in this world today could be able to offer branches from their own olive groves to their neighbours…