NOW IT CAN BE TOLD

I can show pictures like this now. I did not want to be commercial before. We are going out of the holiday rental business. It has been a disastrous year and the next will be no better. Few people gathered around this table for sleepy breakfasts or dinners made with things bought at il supermercato. The mill stream babbled by, the giant spruce tree cast its shade, the sun was bright on the garden and the barbecue remained unlit. There was seldom anybody there to enjoy it. We had breakfast there this morning for auld lang syne.

I don't like to be personal on blip but I was brought up to share whatever I had, be it little or be it lots. So when the first tenants arrived here I wanted to say, "Aw, shucks, you don't have to pay." I got over it but our prices were always lower and our standards always higher than any other holiday rentals around.

This year, the responsibility for the economic decline and the desperately poor exchange rates fell upon my shoulders, or so I felt. I was often near to tears when people begged for reductions as high as 50 percent. I felt guilty that I had these wonderful houses which I would not share, but there were taxes, licenses, cleaning, laundry and maintenance costs that would not be covered by more than reasonable reductions.

So there we are. This is the dining area of a house that was once a chestnut flour mill, then an olive press. Just across a walkway there is a magnificent kitchen which I would kill to have, myself. I would not say "no" to the big bathrooms upstairs, either. So it will be, I hope, year-long rentals from now on.

This is a reading nook off the main sitting room. Reading nook.

It made me sad to take these pictures. The focus is rubbish. Next week I will blip another room or two, at least one from the other house high, high in the hills. It has a view to take away the breath.