Sauce for the Goose

People are determined to live in this landscape. Readers will know that piles of paperwork were needed to meet the requirements of the planning regulations under five separate headings to permit the reconstruction of the ecohouse and the recultivation of its land. And that was where there was a house and buildings and fields designated for the various local crops. Had been since 1629 - or whatever stood in 'planning regulations' place over all those centuries.

So everyone knows how beautiful it all is, but all of us want just our bit allowed. I opened the windows on the very top floor, turned to gaze at the untouched fields and hills and found that someone has built an open-sided barn. We all know what that means. It's like my tractor shed. Yes, there is a piano agricolo agreed with the local agricultural authorities. Yes it needed years of established cultivation, accounts, a real agricultural need for the agricultural building. No, of course it is to house equipment, store produce, shelter animals.

Shelter animals. Humans are animals. They need shelter even in the midst of such rural tranquility. So within five years the sheep will have all been eaten, the pigs ditto, the machines will be on a subterranean floor, and there will be a house.

And I haven't got a leg to stand on. Even as I type we are reinforcing the roof of the tractor shed to meet antiseismic regulation and, conveniently, rendering it strong enough to bear the weight of studio and terrace, looking across the glorious Arno plain to the mountains beyond Trasimeno. Oh well. There will be another building, tucked into the rebuilt vineyards (too low for decent olives there), and more people saying 'Gruss Gott' to us while hiking through our woods.