Attending Piegaio’s Pumpkin festa is a long-standing tradition for us. However, this year was a little different. First, the weather was of a grey dullness well-known to all who live in the London basin. Second, there was no festa venue at the school. It had been demolished with all the village children now having to go to Pescaglia for their classes. Happily a new school is being built in the same place which will adhere to the latest anti-seismic regulations.. Let’s hope the cost of it will warrant the number of children attending for sadly depopulation still continues here, as in so many other rural areas of Italy.

As a consequent the ample grounds around the school, normally used for the festa, were restricted to a smaller area on the other side of the high street. However, there was still a good variety of stalls selling everything from handicrafts to local food products.

There was also the characteristic display of animals including some fine birds of prey – from ravens to kestrels to eagle owls – alpacas and a donkey.

Exhibitions included a collection of historic photographs illustrating Piegaio’s past life and a fascinating array of radios, walkie-talkies and gramophones. How lucky we are that we can now condense all these items (and many more) into one mobile phone fitting in our shirt pocket.

The original reason of the zucca festa is to have a competition for the best pumpkins. Here are some worthy of prizes:

One Piegaio pumpkin transformed itself into a coach and four and transported us to a fabulously high-pitched concert at Fornoli’s delightful parish church. This was the programme:

If two flautists can generate a pianist and deliver us everything from Donizetti to Sousa then I’m all for this type of marriage. The repertoire was both familiar and unfamiliar. A Dvorak sonata was more well-known to us in its original violin version. The Carmen pot-pourri was fascinatingly different when played as a flute duet and we were introduced to that nineteenth century flute virtuoso Franz Doppler. The performers were themselves virtuosi with the church’s acoustics lending themselves well to the often ear-piercingly high registers of both flute and piccolo.

The penultimate concert in this series will be next Sunday at 17.00 in Diecimo’s impressive pieve (parish church). Again it’s another event not to be missed.