Orange Tuscany

As of midnight Tuscany has scaled the lockdown heights to Status Orange. One more promotion and we’re in the uptown top ranking with Lombardy, Piedmont and the Val D’Aosta . Who’d have thought it after all the sacrifices of the first wave that we could be back here?

And yet and yet. Yesterday I was at Poppi market buying fruit, bread, grissini, taralli picante and I even managed to track down a flu dose which I then persuaded the local health Centre to inject into my arm of hope. A colleague of J’s spent 13 hours in Florence going from pharmacy to pharmacy for a dose so I was lucky and I am very grateful.

It is just very weird to swing between such affirmative reality and the depredations of the virus, from the nurse vigorously rubbing alcohol on my arm - my first third party touch for months - to hearing that the plumber’s family now all have Covid. And the death toll (623 in last 24 hours) in Italy is getting serious.

Yesterday I clumsily wrote about the divisions in Italy, the political and statistical squabbling and political rancour. But maybe that division and fragmentation lives in my own head.

It’s them not me. My exceptionalism again their culpability. My vulnerability against their stoical acquiescence.

The highlight of the day was putting on my new tough guy work trousers delivered by the post and expedited through amazon from a German company. Kind of says it all.

Is just moi or are we all feeling prickly?