Eco Victory in the Face of $150 a Barrel

Never had I expected the ecohouse to come into its own in the heat of summer. Fuel expenditure sits in the February part of our minds, fired by lots of electric light and gas-fired boilers heating the radiators, cooking our dinners and keeping us clean.

Wrong, wrong, wrong when the cost of oil hits $150. All showers are taken now up the hill. Meals are cooked on tiny piles of glowing oak ash rather than lazily compiled on the gas stove in the big kitchen in the village house. Greens of all varieties are used from the kitchen garden but if it doesn't grow there, then only potatoes and cherries are making it through the greengrocer barrier. People who have swum sun-warmed lengths all day crawl up to the terrace, eat anything put in front of them (and then the table cloth, followed by the table), courteously help with the washing up (using the free, boiling hot water) and stagger off to bed. No lights, nothing - the days are longer than their energy, the nights end before their dreams. Then it's back into the showers to ease the pressure on the system, and head first into the pool, with breaks on the terrace reading bad novels and sinking litres of local, ice cold, white, child-bottled in the cellars - shadowed coolness -one tipsy afternoon.

The village house is shut, too much gas and electricity required. Florence slumbers shuttered against the midsummer heat and desperate visitors sizzling on the stones. Acqua minerale quality water seeps into the new garden planted, too successfully, to attract fauna (I didn't mean wild boars to come and dig up the irises, nor bambis to dead-head the roses before they even emerged from bud).

So the entire external energy input comes from me cooking the meals and everyone helping, and the anti-mosquito fornellini burning the beasts in their tiny, well-deserved, mosquito hell.

It's a bit quiet on the rest of the world's news front.

Subsidiarity at Work

School over 10 days ago, many left at once for the seaside, battling through rain and braving windswept beaches. But they have their reward now as every evening the main news shows them all lounging and eating, and paddling in blue seas. Still, the village is deliciously deserted of small boys kicking footballs in stone canyons while we tell one another they're only playing, and our houses boom like Lambeg drums.

The hills are alive with courting couples and their attendant guardoni so we really have the place to ourselves in the evening. Whatever change the election of Mr Berlusconi may have brought, it hasn't reached here yet.

Softer

Hot, bitey, fighting off vicious new mosquitoes that make no sound, driving for two, bad cough from insisting the swimming pool could be inaugurated despite earlier grey, cold rain.

Why is Italy so cruel? So exaggerated in its being? After all, they invented sfumatura.

Weed

The garden jungled about in the first sunshine for absolutely ages. Lenin and Rosa (tortoises with doubts about their gender but none on their political affiliations) quick-stepped into the patch of sunlight that had escaped from the forest canopy. We turned to our Leader, who had received a swift gardening lesson from Mr HG in the last patch of sunlight some days ago. Mr HG being hors de combat after fighting the stairs with both hands tied behind his back needs gardening help. As the idea of anyone laying into the garden without his all-seeing eye makes him jumpy we were a quiet party.

But not for long: 'Is this a weed?' Two linguistic philosophers paused to consider the nature of weediness. ' That's a special kind of mint you're pulling out'. 'But it's in the little edging hedge. It's become a weed.'

Right. Everything in the wrong place should get it. We set to. It was not enough. Should nettles (soup, poultices) in neutral ground come out? It was ruled no because no-one was wearing gloves and these nettles must have glowed in the dark with frills on in their virulence.

As confidence grew, and does confidence grow quickly in the confident, plans were laid for lopping trees, training climbers over arches, swinging hammocks, planting favourite fruit and veg.

"What are you doing?" said a voice from the limonaia. We froze. "Bring me what you have weeded." We left Mr HG sorting his uprooted friends from his uprooted enemies to put on the lunch.

Bring Back Council Tax!

I did not vote for Berlusconi, Fini and Bossi. A combination of criminal, fascist and racist was unappealing. Most of the Italians did, though, and one of the first, noticeable changes is the abolition of ICI (council tax) on the main residence.

So we pay nothing in the village and nothing in the city (separate residence, and if Mr HG goes on needing his dinner cut up for him it will be effective as well as formal).

Surprisingly, this doesn't feel good, or right. It feels retrograde and unfair. A tax difficult to avoid even by Italians, masters of avoidance, that was more rather than less progressive - at least it reflected the square metres - has been dumped onto general taxation and, in the process, removed the diversion of berating the Comune and reduced the importance of electing its council.

Off Games for a Month

Carrying a number of bottles, some papers and my bag Mr HG missed his footing at the top of the last flight of stairs. So he arrived at the main door faster than usually and cracked his ribs, broke his collarbone and hurt his shoulder - stone stairs are unkinder than the carpeted ones.

"Ha" said the doctor as he was arranging him to go through the scanner at the local hospital, 'You're obviously from round here from your accent, so why aren't you a whiner?"

Pride.