Lost in the House

I can't find bits of the plough. Not the heavenly body, the one that's dragged behind the tractor. It's impossible, you might think, to lose large, bright blue metal blades with curly edges (more than a dozen of them) but I've searched the limonaia (confidently, surprised not to find them), the cantina-cantina (nervously, the c-c is a kind of glory hole filled with everything that cannot be thrown away because either it is in a sealed box and the label has fallen off, or it's useful in a not-currently sort of way but were it to come back it would be irreplaceable, or it's a huge lump of wood of enormous value that's been there for centuries and one day will be cut into planks and turned into furniture without price but no-one has the time at the moment. The cantina-cantina is also home to many creatures that snuffle, rustle, stalk about, have googly eyes, live in webs that brush across my hair or legs, and has sacks of unknown contents. And huge, wooden wine vats resting on stone plinths with dark spaces under.) Am I the only woman frightened of bits of her own house?

I have searched the cantina-ingresso, a rather grand space with polished cotto and polished beams but where things tend to get dumped on wet nights 'to be put away later'. Huh. The cantina-ingresso is also haunted so that's a bit of a nervy place too. Mostly everyone comes in and out of the old main door which precipitates you straight up the stairs to the first right-angled defensive bend (or catches you as you precipitate down as happened to Mr HG last summer. Yes thank you, much better.)

The men say the bits are not in the tractor shed - still standing despite the best efforts of the envious to have it down, the Forestale are on my side - and if they say no then it's no, the tractor shed is a model of orderly work space and hung up tools, and vehicles and trailers.

There remains the little house, which is just that, leaning against the back of the main building where some of the braccianti, the landless labourers, used to be. I want to pull it down but as it is effectively planning permission for building in the historic centre, it has to stay. I'm not going in there, the place gives me the creeps. And if the plough bits are in there then whoever put them there had better remember and own up.

If any one of consanguinity, affinity, or spiritual relationship, or any other link with here whatsoever (to borrow a phrase) knows where the bits are, speak now.

Short Back and Sides

The garden is full of light and the trees are wondering what hit them. They look worryingly bare, lopped, but I suppose the men knew what they were doing. There is a side to people who work the land and plants and crops. They have a capacity for resentment at all the hard labour I think. So every now and then they take a swipe at their life's work which is personal and over-enthusiastic.

Don't we all. In the days when a typescript was a physical object it was wiser to have a copy made before editing the text. An unexpected outburst of revolt over usage, punctuation, argument, or persistent misspelling could lead to a chapter's worth of savage perfection being imposed - and then it would all have to be retyped when, tranquility of mind restored the following day, or even after lunch, perfection had to be toned down to pedestrian competence and polite suggestions for recasting. Not least because really high quality upgrading might have led the author to demand uniformity of such standards for all the hundreds of pages. Now you can just click on undo. And make do with a lesser text but a quieter life.

They will look at those trees on the way to Mass next Sunday and feel a bit guilty. There's no undo on a tree.

Flying In

One doesn't make a summer, but their outrider has arrived, wheeling over the terrace. They're very late, I'd feared they might have met with a mishap or global warming.

Heads

"Would you like something absolutely free?"

Mr HG, "Well, how kind. Might it be.....?" hesitates.

Butcher, "It's a lamb's head. For Easter.'

"Now that is astonishingly kind. The brain, particularly, but the eyes too, have always been so sought after."

"I'll wrap it for you then."

"There is the problem of the Signora. Can I, I ask myself, put a lamb's head in the fridge?"

'Ears and everything." urged the butcher helpfully. "Or I could trim it a bit".

'Between you and me, almost nothing could be nicer. But you know how it is. No shocks when the fridge door is opened. I'm going to have to pass. The kitchen is not run as once it was."

"Just wanted to let you have it if you liked it. Severino, You?"

Honestly. If I had opened the fridge door this morning, all geared up to cook Easter day lunch, and found a little lamb's head, ears and everything, I'd have fainted clean away.

Cross

Standing on the big terrace I watched the Ape carrying a load of crosses round the piazza. One to the ironmongers, one for the headquarters of the blood donors, one for the butcher:

'But where shall I put it", he asked struggling to hold it upright as it was taller than him and quite robust.

"Put it where you like", snapped the ironmonger's daughter.

The butcher looked pained and, shouldering it manfully, disappeared into his shop. Perhaps he plans to put out a good display of Easter lamb, prosciuttos, and his delicious salamis and finocchionas he makes from his own pigs.

There's to be the Via Crucis tonight but that's no reason to miss a marketing opportunity in these hard times.

Awakening

Prince Philip, the tortoise formerly known as Lenin, is under the stone bench next to the church wall. Covered in mud and blinking slowly, he turned his head to take a look at me and took a bite out of the dandelion flowers dipped in rainwater I had rushed off to get for him.

He has grown.

No sign of Queen Elizabeth (formerly Rosa) yet, but she is fairly small and could be under the acanthus leaves in the wilderness bit. Actually, most of the garden is looking a bit wildernessy, blackened cactuses, lots of nipped branches on the shrubs, a fallen arch of honeysuckle. It's been a long, cold winter. All the citruses are still indoors.