Redistribution, Redistribution, Redistribution!

Digging a well sounds so biblical, at least to me, from a place where water comes out of taps connected to the Water Board's supply system.  And really I had thought the spring was enough.  But if the ecohouse is to be truly and reliably self-sufficient then springs are not enough.  In part it's technical and in part it's bureaucratic - obtaining permissions to drill and build is possible now but might not be as restrictions tighten round a scarce resource; and when there are lots of people the spring-fed water supply is too close to the edge for our water-consuming habits.

There used to be a family of fifteen living at the ecohouse when the farm was a full-time occupation and source of income;  but they didn't have three bathrooms.  They didn't have any bathrooms, or electricity, or heating other than the open fire in the central kitchen and the beasts stabled on the ground floor under the living quarters.  We forget how close such deprivation lies, the family were there until 1953 and the great abandonment of the land lasted for twenty years, from the early 'fifties.  It's all been put into reverse now and, as usual, it's the rich that gets the credit and the poor that gets the blame.

The poor get the flat-bound periferia  of the towns and cities, not even the beautiful, historic centres, and that's it.  The isolation, the silence, the views, the woods and  pastures, the dawns and sunsets, the groves and gardens   - all the compensations for the cold, the dark, the loneliness the deprivation, are taken by the owners cocooned by modern technology (and bathrooms.)  The classes who kept these landscapes for centuries couldn't begin to afford them.

Everyone can walk and picnic through our woods; the hunters are welcome to cull the deer and boar (but not kill the birds and hare), keeping it functioning costs far more than it yields in output of wood and oil (and terrible tomatoes), but there remains an immense social and economic disjunction.   Without the rather miserable modern world there cannot be the (rather miserable) modern populations.

It worries me: if anything goes wrong, even by narrow margins, individual opportunity to act effectively in straitened circumstances is minimal to non-existent.  Notions of 'fairness' and 'aspiration' are irrelevant politico-economic categories except in the current settlement. 

Something, and someone, has got to give. 

Pink Always Precedes the Perfect Tan

Pink!  As the scaffolding came down, floor by floor, the colour of the palazzo emerged.  There was no way of pretending - it was pink.  Pink may be   fine in Portofino but it is, shall  we say, unusual,  two hundred metres from Brunelleschi's  dome.

The architect arrived in a  hurry (or do I mean flurry?)  Pink?  We all looked at the palazzo and at him, in turns.  Accusingly.  A long explanation of the chemical interactions that take place between the various layers and composites of  the intonaco  and its colour was listened to with respect - and  disbelief.  Even the architect didn't believe the sound of his own  voice; and the only thing holding the tongue of the representative of the Sovvrintendenza was the knowledge that he had accompanied the  restorers to the  colorists and approved the final layer of the building, himself, in person.  It's an important piece of renaissance Florence streetscape, after all.

Blushes all round, from the palazzo outwards.  Putting back the scaffolding would cost a fortune and insurrection from the neighbours, and from users of central Florence.   And if what the architect said was correct, who knows what these complex chemical interactions of air,  and layers of building-cover, and colour might produce at the next attempt.  So we all gave our palazzo one last chance and a stern  warning - turn glowing, apricot blushing cream by the day after tomorrow or .....or what?  Else, we said firmly.

This morning the sun rose on  an apricot confection of total loveliness - shutters coated in a very best quality dark chocolate with a dash of milk colour, walls glowing golden in the dawn.  Phew.

Debt and its Nature

The Eight O'Clock News has warned us all and reassured us all (this News is Prime Minister Berlusconi's personal News, you should understand):

we are going to have tens of billions of euros cut off public expenditure debt to meet the requirements of the eurozone but, mysteriously, there will be no reductions in services and pay-outs, or tax rises.

So that's all right then.  

Of course there is the slack of tax evasion continuing to be taken up - as it has been for the last few years, during which we have all learned to be punctilious in keeping our bits of paper and handing them over to the accountant regularly (no-one in Italy is without an accountant, it's not the avoiding so much as the claiming and allowances that are so easy to lose track of); but equally, we have all now agreed that  we don't want to be unable to show our innocence of ducking and diving.  The ending of mass evasion alone is yielding most of what is needed - as Mr Berlusconi,  himself a member of the masses, at least in his heart, knows.  And then there is the rectitude of so many Italians who don't do debt:  not  personal debt on credit cards and for, or from, silly behaviour.  They do private debt, very private debt  over generations and extended family; but that sort of debt is really private and, as it glues society together,  behaves differently and exists under wholly different rules from just the rules of economics.

So despite the ill-mannered acronyms and expressed derision of Anglo-Saxon journalists and financial commentators, Italy only  has public debt, which can be readily covered if the government insists, which Dr Tremonti and Dr Draghi do, without much embarrassment and certainly without any of the bad behaviour displayed in Greece recently.  And without the discomfort of the English and Americans who have covered themselves in all and every kind of debt.  So we were probably told the truth this evening.  But then, though perfectly capable if lying serves,  the Prime Minister isn't a liar by nature, whatever else he may be.

And the bank at the bottom of the hill is ready and willing to lend - to the credit-worthy. 

Keeping an Ear Out for The Door Bell

Employment and unemployment are states with shifting boundaries here.   This is because everybody has multiple jobs.  There is the posto that carries insurance and employer and employee contributions to pension rights; then there is the self-employed job, usually agricultural or highly-skilled tradesman that carries another set of rights guaranteed (and paid for) from within a trade union protection set that is more like a medioeval guild; then there is the casual, but often fixed for years,  service with a local firm or individual doing a relatively unskilled task; and finally there is the contribution to the household economy - self-build, gardening up to and including market gardening,  deliveries locally, etc.

Frankly how they all manage to have dined and turn themselves out round about nine in the evening, bathed and dressed in fresh clothes, for a stroll to the bar, a game of cards, a chat, an ice cream  a piece of skulduggery, is amazing.  I think that they rely  on what could be called recession-in-turn to manage to get everything done.  No-one is ever sacked except for personal action that asks for it, it's just that attention shifts to another part of the individual and family undertakings as economic tides wash in and out. 

The secret is to keep a close eye on the person whose skills you wish to command, let them know a touch in advance, make sure you have all the permissions, supplies, tools, seeds, clarity of thought lined up, and be ready to take up the offer of some hours of work when it comes.  I've let it be known there are a couple of trees that died of the cold (sigh) to come down and be cleared away from the garden now I'm back.  And then all the external woodwork on the ecohouse is due for a revarnish; it was a dreadful winter. 

Early Start

Peas, I wrote blearily, carrots, beetroots, mangetout, radishes, Brussels sprouts (surely they come later?) different sorts of lettuce,  endive, gooseberries, red currants...

The phone had rung as I drank my tea and stared at the plain, and the city on its hill.

"Signora, buon giorno!"  Sunday morning, quarter to eight!  Right, this was not my call, and its real recipient could get out of bed and discuss tomatoes forthwith.  But it turned out it was my call after all; if I wanted more variety in the vegetable garden up the hill a list was needed.

The mind goes completely blank when threatened with nothing but a tide of tomatoes unless a list is produced now.  Trying to imagine a summer table all that came up was lettuce - absolutely pathetic.   So this year it will be my fault  - celery, peppers.... but they're off, gone in that uncomfily early morning way people do things here.  By a more Godly hour I'll have thought of all sorts of things - spring onions, basil..