Field maple

A foul cold morning- low cloud, a dying gale flinging icy snow around. We had two breakfasts to compensate and regain a semblance of equilibrium after the tremendous buffetting in the night.

Later after domestic chores the cloud lifted. Still fairly parky but the clarity of light and bracing air lent themselves to a spot of wood chopping and pruning with the pole saw.

Cold again tonight after watching the rugby. Funny how in Italy if you mention the RUgby, a fairly marginal support for confirmed masochists, no one knows what you mean. But if you say rEgby they get it. Strange how hard it is to accept that one of one’s words has been enmeshed in another language and has been bequeathed a different, albeit wrong, pronunciation that occluded the original and naturally correct pronunciation - like cull de sack, for example or, to twist the whole thing slightly, spag boll. Which in Bologna is, of course, eaten with tag-lee-a-Telly rather than spaghetti.

Endlessly fascinating in a low key kind of background noise way.

We were sent a new lockdown designation for Santo Valentino. So kind.