Bibbers

Or Bibbiena. A trip to the Co-op supermarket as we are no longer Tuscan red but Covid orange. We’re still supposed to fill out the fiddly autocertification form but there seem to be very few police checks unlike Lockdown Uno. So I just carry a folded blank form in my pocket.

Bibbiena had a bad school-based outbreak and still has a few new cases but I’d imagine they are confined to families already in quarantine. Anyway, temps were being taken and masks are very compulsory.

I enjoy shopping in our village stores but it’s nice to be able to shop in a more anonymous style, not that I bought anything approaching risqué unless you’d count a net of overripe avacados.

As per The Fast Show I managed to forget the things really needed but I made up heroically for my omissions.

I came home the back way and stopped on the Teggina/Arno floodplain. Everywhere is sodden at the moment after cold incessant rain. This is a field of broad beans.

The rain continued all day. Even Tuscany can be dreary and miserable. Three years yesterday our furniture arrived from Kent on a miserable dreary day. How the new heating and lighting cheers up the house though.

Waiting on Mr Johnson to pull his famous Brexit rabbit out of his plummy Eton hat. Did I read somewhere today someone (Danny Finkelstein ?) saying that we are four years from the referendum and no one has yet successfully articulated how the ‘new freedoms’ of Brexit are to be used? To create a Singapore-On-Sea or as is more likely a regulated social market that protects and promotes a levelling up agenda? That is not so different from the European Union.

I went and looked it up behind the paywall below.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexiteers-need-to-make-their-minds-up-9br39n08x