Dinner for one

Today we woke to find the power had gone (it was the main trip). And then the handle broke off our new coffee pot (luckily when empty and not scaldingly full). There is sometimes a sense that the world is turning against one.

The Boss went off to work and I to the packing. This involved a trip down into the Arno valley to Sieci to 'get cardboard boxes from the Co-op and replenish the hosts' wine'.

Somehow things went awry. I got chatting to the very nice guy behind the butcher's counter. He remembered me and the steaks we bought last week for the BBQ. He just happened to have cut some of that steak off the bone and it sat there. Normally tongue-tied before the butchers' inscrutable and bawdy might I asked him what the cut was called. 'Bistecca' - steak - he replied.

The wine replenishing for the hosts went well but of course a bottle or two for us.

Everyone in the rather forbidding Sieci Coop suddenly seemed to be my best mate. If you could sell Scotland on a stick these guys would buy it wholesale.

They love the 'idea' of Scotland. In 36C of heat who wouldn't! One bloke a long while back in this three/four month odyssey said, 'I love Scotland because you can sleep under the covers at night in the summer'.

It is hard to overstate how hostile the sun becomes in people's minds here, the heat, the pollution in the valley, the mosquitoes. Everyone will tell you where the air is better, finer, cooler; where the shade is delicious and flowing like water on your skin.

But back to the packing. I got home - and now as we prepare to leave it stupidly and beautifully feels like 'home' - by a circuitous route over crumbling and roads and worse tracks through God's version of 'countryside'.

Before I knew it the steak was on the griddle, with red peppers, white onions and cherry tomatoes. The bread was cut. The salad made with olive oil made here from the grove here by Andrea and Laura (who gave us a bottle).

I pulled the table under a shade tree, opened one of the bottles bought for the hosts - that was made just across the valley- not even three km away - and set to with the grub.

It was the best meal I have had here. Because somehow it signalled that we have arrived. That we are part of this glory. That those months of anxiety and dislocation and nagging, bitching shit have paid off and morphed into something gentler and sweeter that promises a kind of contentment amidst so much else.

So I drink to The Boss, our neighbours, to the people of Sieci and Fiesole and Le Caldine, to the friends we have made and often paid back poorly, to Gianluca and the Casentino, and to the hope of our returning.

We will find that house. We will find a balance and poise between our mother tongue and our adopted mothering tongue. And somehow, despite all the odds, the noble experiment (Alex Massie) that is Europe and the European Union will continue with our stupid, divided but loveable country in its midst.

The motorcyclist in the crash that I passed yesterday did not die. He is in Cesena hospital having been airlifted out by chopper. 'Meno male' as they say.

Motorcyclists are known by the synonym of 'centauro' in Italy - man and beast.

Here's the report and photo of the crash.  http://www.forlitoday.it/cronaca/incidente-stradale/moto-scende-dal-passo-e-si-schianta-in-curva-contro-una-porsche-ferito-il-centauro.html