The olives of Lavorone

That’s what Louisa said to me in the shop when I bought 2kgs of salt. Pickling your own olives is a ‘lavorone’ - a big ask. I internally tutted thinking, ‘You'd know behind the counter of a store.’

But tutting I am no more. Deleafing, destemming, picking out the imperfects, washing and endlessly transferring from this to that and inevitably sending olives skittering over floors, tables, trays, tarpaulins. It is un lavorone. Who’d have thunk it? Other than most Italians who’ve been doing this since the time of the Etruscans.

New soft lockdown rules here from midnight. It feels like about time. Conte the Prez of Council of Ministers says we’re not so much being outrun by Covid as keeping pace with it.

There are tricky alliance politics, central/regional politics and a desperation to avoid the crippling economic impact of a complete lockdown.

Protests have gone off in Naples and Rome - to some extent capitalised on by ne’er do well political groups.

Despite the words there is a fear that Covid is outpacing a less compact government and people then in the first wave with three decrees in eleven days.

To sum up the new rules: if you don’t have to you are strongly advised not to and after 6pm you’ll not be doing it anyway.

But when I skim read the Sunday Times investigation on the triaging of the elderly into death wards and deaths at home and in residential care in the UK I was thankful to live in a country where the health service and its frontline staff are not treated as an Orwellian public relations exercise.

What happened under Johnson’s leadership is unconscionable and was a massacre foretold.