Old

I’ve noticed that when you’re very young, you proudly tell the world how old you are.  Later on you start to ignore birthdays - you might even take a few years off.  Then one day - and you really don’t know how it happened - you come full circle and start telling anyone who’ll listen, how old you are.

I’m getting to that stage.  I’ve already told Anniemay.  “I know it’s your birthday today”  she says “I just hope you don’t start acting your age”.

It’s too late.  My frontal lobes are going, I constantly shout at the TV and every time I pick up her iPad, it slips through my fingers and crashes to the floor.  And don’t even ask me to write an email on a phone.

But it does mean I get to make a big deal about my birthday.  Which is today, as it happens. Florence is just 37 minutes by train from Bologna so we whizz down the tracks for a birthday treat in the birthplace of the Renaissance.

It was too hot and too crowded around the usual tourist spots so we settled for a quiet meal in one of the back streets.  It turned out be anything but quiet.  Today was the first semi-final of the 2022 Florentine Football championship.  

Florentine Football is the oldest football game in the world, dating back to the Renaissance.  My main blip shows one of the officials with the balls.  The teams marched round the town accompanied by marching bands - drums, trumpets and all manor of weaponry.  It was LOUD and colourful.  The procession took about 20 minutes to pass the spot where we sat watching.  

It made a spectacular end to the day.  

I’ve posted a few postcards from Florence in extras.

“salute!”