Contrasts

A day of contrasts. The weather over the pass was dodgy and dicey. It suddenly turned to ice and there appeared to have been no gritting. I was very glad of the snow tyres as they finally bit into the road surface on a notorious bend.

Then down at the house one of the guys was whistling away so content with his work and life. I pressed on with recovering the steps - or at least making them less icily dangerous. Underneath the new 'old' steps of crazily and awfully concreted in terracotta - which is actually lovely and for which I will find some kind of use - there are older concrete steps with a kind of cobblestoned - longitudinal small stones - fill behind them.

It was a right pain to cart away the muck down to the stables for hardcore, on what is a really steep and now clay-slick slope. I was using the barrow supports as brakes and only just staying upright. So as not to waste the return journey I brought wind-brush from the walnut trees for the fire that's been burning for days now.

R tells me that you can no longer use hardcore on the tracks, even private ones. Instead it has to be taken down to the stoneyard  - where you pay to dump it - and then can pay to take it back once it has been certified to use as hardcore.

The extra show the contrasts between the pass and the lower vineyards around Nippozano.

I went down to the garage to replace the underguard for an extortion and then high-tailed back over the pass in crummy cold wet foggy weather. I came down the other side behind a big lorry and trailer who seemed to be taking it very gingerly. Still plenty of snow around.

Stopped at the unlovely Pontassieve Co-op for supplies. The wind picking up when I finally got back to Fiz. A bottle of prosecco fell into my trolley on the way round. Bozzy Johnson would be hopping mad.

Postscript: And here's the killer 'Isn't-the-world-a-small-place-yeah'.



It turn's out, through talking to he man himself, that M Senior in the garage, was only off in somewhere called 'Mooll' - that turns out to be Mull itself - shooting woodcock - beccacia (the big beaked one) - this summer in Mull.