Last of the olives

The snow went to a mini-ice storm - gelecidio in Italian and lots of dialect variations- 'when the birds can't stand on their feet' in Romagna. The big pine tree outside was tingling like a candelabra.

This morning it was all slush and pouring, incessant rain, fog rising, encircling, the light fading, the rain driving on. I helped one of the neighbours get his car out.

The day passed as we feel thrown back to the start of winter, suddenly exhausted and exasperated with it all. Friends in Herefordshire battling it out with Emma without their boiler.

Enough already.

Tomorrow we're going to try a run out to the house to see what's going on. It's been a while.

A blackbird and starling in the garden were pecking at fallen olives - lots of oil but encased in a skin as bitter as gall.

An extra of the fog. There was Saharan dust on the north facing windows this morning after Siberia's ice of yesterday. Interconnectedness is all.