A Saturday of sunshine... — forrest spears

The last Thursday of March, it was overcast and cold. A grey day which later supplied an annoyingly weak form of spray for all of about 37 seconds, ON & OFF. If we have to do without sunshine, at least, couldn’t Climate Change give us abundant rainfall? Our garden needs a long drink of H2O. As for the last Friday in March, there were morning clouds opening up to a breezy afternoon of filtered sunshine. Still fairly cold. We stayed inside by the fire. The nine foot sofa can just about hold two dogs and two guys. On the First Saturday of April… NO JOKES, please… it was nearly 80F degrees. Fine frying weather. You-know-who, our two Weimaraners, Croesus and newly adopted, Anthea, and me, got to work on our respective tans. While graced by the Sun, we did what God had intended us to do on a Saturday afternoon: reading for us two-legged creatures and incessant barking at alien neighbours and UFO noises by the four-legged ones, our own in-house Protection Squadron.

Humans normally go slowly from white to tan, hopefully with protection 50 slapped on to forestall the risk of a sunburn. However, You goes from already black to way much more blacker, even with Protection 50 abundantly applied. It’s why he always gets sequestered by TSA when arriving in the US of A. You’s operandus primarius is his abbronzatura… or, his sun-tan. The consequence of being an eye doctor sequestered in darkened rooms with folk who have glaucoma or, other eye-sight issues. The dogs haphazardly evolve their hides into an ever paler version of their inimitable taupe chic. As for me, I just burn & freckle. Ahhh, the joys of being an Anglo-Saxon in Sunny Italy. Wish I could roll around on warm stone and rise up beautiful. Not to be. And, sadly, too much wine.

There is no better place to pass a hot, sunny, and blessedly quiet Saturday than out on our aia. Google Translate tells me that the three-letter Italian word aia means barnyard. Not any more. What with a wrought-iron pergola and draped grape vines, a terracotta topped table & chairs, an iron chaise with more cushions than even a Pasha could want, plus six Baroque-y cement vases at every quadrant, all when the warmer Seasons are about. Like having another room in your home. And the largest one too. The aia is il Poggiolo’s Summer HQ for our daily life: dogs sleeping it off in the mornings, pasta lunch under the shade of the pergola to buffets of assorted salumi e formaggi e vino d’ogni colore for early evening aperitivi and on to dinner parties lasting past Midnight. Then to bed elsewhere in the complex. There are nine of them.

But back to Saturday’s idle… You propped his 5 foot 8 inch frame on the latest flea-market acquisition of a shoddy white adjustable cabana lounger… circa 1970’s. He aimed it directly at the Good Ol’ Sole to read his paperback book. You is a voracious reader. I fear he knocks-off three books in a week to my half of one or, perhaps, more likely, one quarter of one. Sometimes, feeling lonesome or overlooked to You’s preference for the Sun, I attempt to strike up a literary conversation during what I have since realised is tacitly construed by You to be A NO TALKING SUNBATHING PERIOD, by enthusiastically asking what he is reading. I get a garbled reply of some title in Italian…

A word about translations between Italian and English book & movie titles. The translations are hardly literally matched. The difference can strike one as being an invention or, a disclaimer. For instance, Joseph Heller’s book, Catch-22 is translated as Paragraph 22 in the Italian. Does paragraph imply an impossible situation in Italian? Might be. Ever see how an Italian law i s written. Catch-22.

I opt for an immediate closing with one quick question: whether he’s enjoying the read? N’er a grumbled response can hide a definitive, No! The poor record. Few Yesses given.

I instead nestle my ample Scottish backside into a rattan wonder-chair…. wonder, because it has wonderfully survived so many cold & muggy Winters in the cantina and not shattered into nothingness… to read a well written and fluid biography of George Washington obliquely positioned to the Sun’s rays. I can use my good right eye to read and shield myself with the book, out of shot of the sunlight. My late breaking Read List of arduous non-fiction tales have lately ended up by Page 37 to be only vanity products, entailing years of paying for massive research, bought-for literary consultancies under the call for organisational H-e-l-p!!! and publisher’s theoretical editing for the likes of Dame Antonia Fraser or, that megalomaniac journalist-media-entrepreneur-person, Arianna Huffington. These gals and others apparently couch the need to make a splash by scribbling away upon ever frigging tidbit of their biographee’s life & limb. Means my arms wear-out holding a 608+ page tome against the Sun, risking a black eye or, a bruised cheek, in the process. I do not want to know what the person ate for breakfast or, what occurred in the vicinity of their birthplace two-hundred years before. Though ranting, I did learn that President Washington had constant problems with his dentures. But that was it. What I do want to learn and savour, possibly, is for someone to distill ALL THE INFO into a viable and entertaining and illuminating description of who the person was. The Best Bio to date has been a two-hundred & fifty-eight page biography on Sir Winston Churchill. It rocked and I was given a great idea about the gentleman to carry with me for the rest of my life. Thank you.

And, because I am a superior Mommy to our Adored Canines, both insist with various motions of body language… stray looks of turned head and energetic tail wagging… that the only acceptable spot for their mattresses is to be laid nearly on top of my person. And, if not, then right next door, say, at my feet. It’s called worship.

The afternoon passed with n’er a sound of motorcycles barrelling up the SR 445 towards the Carpanelli Pass and the Grafagnana beyond nor, hikers trooping past our back exit to take in the derelict Castello di Codiponte above & behind us, and other disturbances. No. Only Anthea on the alert for Neighbour Aliens and Noisy UFO’s. Disappointingly, Croesus, now has learned to follow suit. The World does not require two Weimaraners barking up a storm. Poor Neighbours. Both women came out to tend to the laundry flapping in the easy breeze only to be audibly assaulted by first a 23 kilo Weimaraner outraged by their appearance in her presence and secondly by another weighing in at 36 kilos. C’est la vie. The current tactic in our household, however, is to approve whole-heartedly Anthea’s barking, bathing her in warm approbations of… Good Girl… It’s all right… You’re so Brave, so Fierce, so True… if only a certain person would aligned himself with The Program. Most of the time she stops and comes for a back scratch. If not, then, as the Anointed Mommy, I have to yell… at full volume… BASTA!!! Shuts her right up. Back scratch? Doggie cookie? A lay-down on a mattress? Anthea choses all three.

A couple of us sought shade. Not You. The man stuck it out until nearly 6:00PM. I eventually repaired to La Casetta to begin preparations for our Saturday Night Dinner. You is so lucky to have me as his Chief Cook & Bottle Washer. Besides, the Sun seemed to be permanently stuck at 4:00PM over yonder chestnut tree decked hills. Felt I had already gotten sun-burned. This would not have been the case, if it were not for Le Ore Legali…. or, Daylight Savings Time… recently instituted last weekend. Not a fan. I see NO REASON to ruin a lovely & bright Spring Morning to instead have DARKNESS at 7:00AM, and then, to be subjected to the terrorism of ENDLESS LIGHT past 8:30PM and soon to be way beyond that hour. But, enough, our Happy day of Saturday Sunshine turned into a Happy Saturday Evening with steaming bowl of pumpkin & potato soup and toasted pieces of brown bread perched on our laps before a fire. The dogs previously fed snore on the sofa between us. I love this time of year.