Day One

Yesterday we got the 7.30am flight from Stansted to Perugia. Blank with tired bags, emptied for bomb checks. I’ve discovered sleeping in a plane seat with your head straight down on the fold-down table, rather than curling it round for apparently better position, is a great improvement and avoids those dastardly cricks later in the day.

Our house is the lowermost; you can see the green tarpaulin still covering the pool

I empty my mind here. Obligations are few and usually mediated by Mum. The house is in place, peaceful, little is superfluous. The terrace is always there, ready to receive you, to sit or wonder or eat or come in or out, or ruminate on a swim, or on how lovely a swim would be if the pool had been set up for the summer, which it hasn’t been yet.

Fernando, our olive-man and gardener, came round for his usual friendly check-in, still irritated we can’t speak Italian. Beverley, my Mum’s friend who moved here ten years ago, handles him.

Figaro, Beverley’s dog

I nap, in a bed that smells of washing machine, in sheets too clean to be slept in. I think of my feet at the bottom, under covers, making the sheets dirty, and wince. A ten-minute nap (or an hour and ten minutes, perhaps, and I had forgotten the time difference) that felt it had done its job.

I came down to olives and crackers and wine, and Beverley, Mum and I began the dinner evening. That switch-off moment when the wine comes out, establishes itself.

The terrace. South-west view from terrace is top image, above

During my nap, I thought I’d love to try living out here full-time; I mean for a month, say, in October. I couldn’t have a car. I would have to shop at Bianca’s, a local grocery shop. I could have my bike, for cycling to Spoleto and to the pool.

South-east view from the terrace

We talked about wine-tasting nearby. We tried, finished a delicious Sagrantino, the Umbrian grape. We complained about our neighbour Gabriel’s dog Fido, who barks incessantly when (and because) he is shut outside for the night. We hear him barking.

Beverley talked Mum through organising having more time and peace to live her life as she wants. This means winding down and eventually leaving her van business. We talked through one of her employees, and how her not totally trusting him means the stress on her is greater. Beverley suggested getting in a workplace consultant she knows. Beverley unpacked Mum saying she felt like she had spent her life enabling three men to do what they want to do. And told Mum she is amazing. I teared up, Mum teared up and I hugged her. We don’t tell her she is amazing enough.

We talked about dating – I said I think Mum would be happy if someone arrived and was in place, but the process of going out to find someone is too much. Mum said – spot on. I said – I feel the same. Beverley said that next time she came round with her laptop she would reset her online dating account settings to my preferences so I could see how it worked.

It feels like resetting chance, using online dating. Like meeting someone belongs in the chance realm of walking into the same bar as them. But that is just one way of aligning with someone. Online dating is another way of aligning with them.

We wrapped up and I was in bed at quarter to ten UK time, sharing with Mum rather than downstairs, and keeping the second bedroom upstairs for Imo, my sister, when she arrives on Friday.