08 Poggio, August 2003

08 Poggio August 2003

Friday 1 August

A lizard was hiding out between the pages of my diary. He must have been one of the trophies Matisse found. Obviously a survivor, although without his tail. How long he has been in the house I don’t know. He had been lying beside the pen I keep clipped to the pages of the large hard-bound exercise book I write in.

Found maggots in Pepita’s wound. Remo came and was asking for some fierce liquid stuff I did not have and had to go out and buy. What they use to kill the maggots is a product used to disinfect stalls. Stinks.

Matisse did not wake me at 3am to let him out. I don’t think he had such a great day yesterday. He seemed anxious on my return and ran out into the road to hide under the car when I’d stopped to open the gate. I think the dogs had been chasing him again, because that is exactly what they did as soon as he had to move out from under the car. They all ganged up and chased him.

Now I am working in this overcrowded, no privacy office situation I am reminded of something a colleague in New York once told me. “Make them right”. I am not exactly sure why she was telling me this. I now take it to mean that if someone is steering a conversation into choppy waters, agree with them and paddle fast in the opposite direction. I have also been told that if someone tells me something I must assume that they are telling the truth. This makes for a much simpler life. I no longer spend time wondering if a person really means something other than what they are saying.

Saturday 2 August

I fed Sophie’s animals. It is quite difficult to come back on the train from Rome and have to walk over to the next door neighbours house and feed all their animals and then come back and feed mine. I don’t think I will offer to do this again. I did not give the horses feed, did not wet the hay, which is hard and prickly but not dusty. I did not take the horses’ fly masks off. I put the dogs in the house as soon as I had fed them and put the hens in the hen house way before their bedtime at 9.15pm, which is my bedtime.

Vincenzo had been around taking fruit off the trees, well it is his land and this was written into the contract. He also leaves the ladder up against the tree, so I know that he would not mind if I went out there and took some fruit for myself. Some of these fruit trees have been allowed to grow absurdly tall. One single branch has grown up towards the sky and now you need a long, heavy handmade chestnut-wood ladder with a couple of wonky rungs to get to the fruit growing up there.

I am sitting writing and I hear the wonderful soft rustle of rain. It is not. It is a cat scratching on a post. Matisse was up at 5.30am patting me on the nose with a paw to wake me up. Today I can go and do all my errands, dog food, cat food, horse feed, supermarket for me and sometimes a trip to the “cantina” in Manziana to buy wine from grapes grown in Tuscany. A good, honest-tasting wine.

Sunday 3 August

Fed Judith’s animals twice. This was the day the folks from England were to have shown up. The chicken’s seemed to be so happy to see me. They ran out in a fluster to greet me. “Oh we are so glad you’re here, we had a dreadful night”. Well, it could have been something like that.

It was around 8pm that the folks arrived. I was walking over to feed the animals, where I threw down hay and took the fly masks off the horses. The horses seemed relieved that I did this. The water was right down. Porgy had come with me. The last time he was reluctant to follow me, maybe because he had not been fed and was afraid he would miss feeding time. Thinking of this I realise it took Matisse ages to discover that there were two orange cats. A good cat and a mean cat. I thought animals went by smell. Maybe the two cats smelled similar because they are obviously from the same litter. I could tell them apart, so I was interested to see that it was more difficult for my cat to differentiate between them.

Going to work on Friday, Matisse hides under the car as soon as I go to open the gates to leave. I find this a major reason to lock him inside when I’m leaving. Before he kept out of the way. How do I communicate that just because I am sitting behind the wheel inside a car does not make it safe. I chase him out.

Gypsies were here yesterday and then a boy and a girl on a bicycle. They wanted to know if I had any old thing to sell. I do, but none of the items belong to me.

Monday 4 August

Pepita got into the hay barn. This is quite dangerous if you are a horse. The hay bales are stacked and there is loose hay on the ground. I know that there are poles lying across the floor so I can stack the hay bales on top. A horse won’t. Also these poles are old wood with rusty nails hooked into them and pointing out at odd angles. I get her out without getting myself into a panic or communicating fear and excitement to her. I have now moved everyone into the front field where the sweet chestnut trees are. There is more shade there. Vincenzo has warned me to keep the horses out of that field when it is time to collect the chestnuts off the ground.

Pepita and the foal have now got out of the field. I think Merry and Sully are preventing Pepita from eating. She also stinks with the stuff I am pouring into her wound to kill maggots, which bled after her climb over the hay bales. I shout at Pepita and the foal. They are not one bit afraid of me. The foal dances and bucks and goes back to Sully.

I think of all the places that might be dangerous for a cat. The bins I leave out full of water for the horses, where Matisse drinks. His hind legs balanced on a rickety step ladder and his front paws on the edge of the bin he balances there to drink the water. So, what’s wrong with his personal cat water on the floor in the kitchen? I have even filled buckets of water and left them around for the dogs.

Tuesday 5 August

Little cat went out through the door and came in through the window. He makes such a small sound, as though he is gently alerting me as to his return. I had wondered where the makers of plush toys got their squeaking sounds from, and now realise it must have been an alert cat owner who put these tiny sounds inside the furry toys.

I almost missed the train to Rome and into work because the horses got out. Pepita and the foal. I am attempting to make Pepita come to my side of the fence. One of us is not very bright. She wants to come through the fence to get to me with the feed in a bucket and not bother go the 50 cm to get to the gate. She gave me a really hard time as I tried to dress the wound on her leg and turned to bite me. I reacted by punching her on the nose, which I don’t think will do much for her trusting me in the future.

Last night at feeding time I saw Merry kick her mother full in the chest with both hind feet. No feed this morning because they all turn into swirling sharks and I don’t have time to watch what I’m doing as I put the feed down. I also don’t have the time to stand and wait until they are all finished. As it was, I just made it to the train. I think the driver must know me because he stood with his foot on the step into his compartment until I had leapt from the platform, breathing hard and onto the train. I walked all the way back down the train, as I’d got on at the front. I was pleased to find Cherry and her husband, who may not have been happy to so me because they both seemed in need of a good sleep. They told me they’d been up all night.

A man in my office is invited to lunch, smoked salmon in a woman’s apartment. Because of the open plan situation in the office I feel we are in a play. I watch her as she moves away, maybe the invitation was gently turned aside. I hear the rustle of leaves as she passes me. I saw her as a man eating shark in woman’s clothing. I don’t know how a man would see her. I would have been afraid of her, even as a woman she sent warning prickles up my spine.

Wednesday 6 August

Matisse left, but not at 3.48am when he woke me up. He jumps down into the garden from the bedroom window. This is made easy because the house is only the ground floor. He looks back up at me, or the window. Is he checking to make sure he recognises it, or is he looking back at me?

I get back after the train trip from Rome and find myself wishing that I had a male companion. He would have already fed the horses. Maybe not, because after a day in the office I like to stand by the horses and hear the satisfied chewing sounds they make. This sound melts the sadness and the frustration of a totally unproductive day at a computer. The wished for companion might have cooked me something nice to eat. Even fixed a salad. I will get by with no food in the house because I don’t feel like eating when I return from Rome. However, I am spending four euro on totally unappetising food in the cafeteria.

I wore my blue dress with the huge roses all over it, I bought it in the market on a Wednesday. People smile when they see me in it, because I look nice or because I amuse them? Some tell me I look nice in it. I know that when I am walking beside Annie in her black silk outfit I don’t look like much…I know!

Thursday 7 August

Did not let cat out. He is here. Houdini cannot be found. I’ve fed the horses. I found a bale of clover hay. Vincenzo has moved the ladder to another part of his property, either it has fallen or he was hitting down the pears with a long stick and didn’t need it. I will take a look at the pears on the way to the car. I have made dreadful Journey Cakes, or Johnny Cakes, as we called them in Jamaica. These are flour, water baking soda, salt. A fried dumpling. They tasted a lot better in Jamaica when someone else was making them, so I am missing a secret ingredient, be it coconut oil, or the love placed there by the one doing the cooking.

I know I won’t be going to Remo’s for his birthday party. I am concerned about money. I called Penny after I had drunk two glasses of red wine. She was alone in the house since her husband was in India and her youngest boy had gone to stay with friends.

Out in the field with the horses I see that Merry has fallen again to number two position after her mother, Sully. It is interesting to see that Merry now waits politely until she is invited to eat with her mother and the foal.

I’ve asked for a day off to go and get hay. It amuses me to be working for an organization that caters to farmers and to agriculture. I fear that there are not many, if any, working there who have ever spent a day on a farm in their lives.

A wonderful sight to see a man riding and leading another two or three horses. I am disappointed that he is only my friend Leena’s husband. He stops to say hello to me as I’m standing in the field watching him ride by. He wants to know if I ride Sully, my leopard Appaloosa. She is only a brood mare, I tell him.

Friday 8 August

I don’t know who, or why, but a person in a white car followed me while I was driving. So close behind that I could not even see their headlights in the rear-view mirror. I slowed down expecting them to drop back. Later a white car drove through the parking lot followed by the Carabineri. I had the feeling I was being checked out. Is this a case of mistaken identity? There are so many of my kind of car driving around. I have seen at least four in my neck of the woods.

I was kept in late at work because I’d been given a last minute editing job to do. The English was dense and badly written by a person who struggled in the language. I got to the train station and all the trains were stuck because the level crossing was locked up and failed to close at Vigna di Valle a small town on the way to Bracciano. A French colleague passed along the corridor of the train. He saw me sitting and waved, because I was waving furiously. He came back to sit with me. He is thin, suffers from malaria. He does not speak Italian that well, so maybe he wanted to hang out with me so that I could explain what was happening. There is a festival feeling on the train. Only a hitch no one is hurt.

Saturday 9 August

I needed a loan and had asked a friend to ask another friend if they could help me. The second friend is upset because I had involved someone else and had not come directly. OK so I know for the next time.

On the way out in the morning my naughty kitty was out on the road. I don’t know if he was leaving or returning. He seemed as shocked as I was to see him there. He ran back towards the house. I stopped the car, got out, opened the gate, found him at the kitchen door, let him in, put food down for him, stroked his back and closed him in and left for work.

I hear a group of horses going up the road. Maybe it is Leena’s husband because there is an uneven sound to the hooves, as though there are more than two and they are cantering in place.

I think of Matisse on days he crosses the road and goes into the big wood. I remember Pat’s cats that live on a street lined with cars. She has a small ground floor apartment with a garden. This garden faces onto a street that is lined with the cars of people who live in or visit the apartments. I have seen her cats lolling around in the middle of the road, or under the cars. I know I could not sleep, eat or think because of worrying about the cats. Pat is a long time cat keeper, I am a novice.

Contrary to my thinking, the horses seem to be quieter when I give them feed. Maybe they are just less hungry. I wonder if Merry kicked Sully because Merry was on heat? I have to keep track of all of them. Every 20 days they come into heat.

Sunday 10 August

I worked on the barn. Vincenzo arrived and I heard his squeaky “Salvè” but couldn’t figure out the direction. When I saw him I gave him the rent check. I told him I’d deducted the work done on the house, which was 50 euro. He told me I should have spoken about this with his wife. She had told me to talk to Vincenzo who hadn’t done a thing about whatever it was I needed to have done. So I’d just gone ahead.

I told him I was working and I asked if he would mind not coming on the weekend. I said he could come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday but to please let me have Saturday and Sunday to myself in private. I told him that he left ladders out, barrels upturned. The gate no longer works, the door to the cantina is still a wreck.

I got so prickly with the hay in the barn and talking to Vicenzo that I left for a swim in the lake.

The hay has nothing in it. The horses nibble the outside and all that is left is hard, red-coloured weed, which they leave. However, I was taking too long to feed them and I see that they will happily eat this same red weed that I have piled in a mountain in the middle of the field.

Pat tells me that Marina tells her that Rolando says the class is closed down for the summer because of the heat. Pat says she did not tell Marina that I had received a call from Rolando inviting me to an art class.

Giovanni the boy on the motorbike was passing as I was backing into the drive after my swim in the lake. I warned him that the gate was open and he would be in danger of being barked at by the dogs. He looked concerned but did not stop. As he passed he smiled, nodded and raised his hand to thank me. I am pleased we have crossed that bridge.

Monday 11 August

I tried to write the diary on the train but I ran into Cherry. I’d seen her arriving dressed in a sweet yellow dress. So we had a chat and I made a detour to ride with her on the metro because it sets me off in the right direction. I’d spent all day on my own on the Sunday cleaning pooh from the field and dressed Pepita’s wound.

I’ve done a complicated drawing of the horses who were standing snoozing in the hot sun by the water trough. The kiwi vines swing down across the foreground.

Vincenzo, I noticed when I went to open the put together gate, had retired the knot and put a wire around one of the bars. I’d put the whole thing together so that if a horse ran into it it would fall apart and not break the horse.

Pepita’s cut is open again. I wonder if there is something in the field she is getting stuck on. I may confine her in some way, but she wouldn’t be with the other horses or be able to move around freely looking for shade and most important water in the shade during the hottest part of the day.

Merry acted like a shark chasing Pepita around the field. Now Merry is the middle horse and she can’t beat up the foal without Sully having something to say about it. I wonder how much of this behaviour is what Rais did to Merry, or if it is normal horse behaviour.

Matisse I see will stay in quite calmly after he hears me tell him “No, no, no” in a sing-song voice. I let Houdini in to play, but he is more interested in what is left in Matisse’s bowl. I think he eats too much because now he only flops around in the sun or shade to sleep.

At work I am learning what my job will be this time around.

Tuesday 12 August

A minor miracle has occurred at work someone has arranged for me to get my money in cash. I am warned not to leave any money lying around, even in a locked desk drawer because it may be stolen.

I let Matisse out very early in the morning and slept the sleep of the unjust and barely woke up at 6.30am.

I scrabbled around feeding horses. They seem a lot calmer when they get their feed. I had been pouring it on top of the hay, but now everyone gets their own individual bucket.

I am off to get hay today with Lele, Remo’s brother. We will do two trips. One will start off at 9am from the stables at Vigna di Valle because I don’t want to be waiting along the road and not knowing what is going on.

Wednesday 13 August

Lele (Emmanuelle) is very precise with time. In the afternoon his girlfriend joins us in getting the hay. Maria Grazia is a sweet person and I was glad that she was there to count the bales as they were being loaded. The hay cost more than I thought it would, but it is a better quality than what Judith bought. It took us five hours in all with two round trips. In the afternoon we had to wait for the farmer and his son to awake from their after lunch nap. I imagine the signora is an excellent cook, who looks strong and healthy and well able to swing a cast iron frying pan with a flick of the wrist. I have arranged that Emmanuelle will pick up the hay on his own the next time.

The wind, the horses or too many apples has brought a branch down. I will have to cut it back, drag the branch away.

There was a party next door and the children threw their ball over the fence twice. Maybe they wanted me to join in. They are always playing ball there every night and this is the first time they are tossing a ball over the fence.

As I get ready to go catch the train I see my little cat friend has crawled to the safety of his cat cage and is watching me from there. What does he think? That I will pick up the cage and take him with me? I don’t think it would be much fun.

I am aware of a feeling of fury and wonder what it could be attached to. I can only blame myself that I did not continue in my day job in New York, where I had a steady income, continuing contract and pension. If anyone had advised me I wouldn’t have listened.

I am on the train, which is passing Roberto’s house. If I was sitting up high I would see his side of the house where the windows are still open to the four winds, and his uncle’s side of the house, which is all fixed up. Roberto is still living in his kitchen. I had wanted to give him the book Kitchen by the Japanese writer.

Sitting in front of me are an Indian couple. She is dressed in a floppy dark t-shirt and baggy pants. Very Western. She has a Joan Bodger feel about her (a friend from days in Canada).

I have a three day weekend coming up. The 15 of August is feragosto, which is a national holiday. Some say it is a pagan festival and marks the change in weather. After feragosto, I’m told the rains come and the weather cools. I know what I will do. I will put the horses on the other side of the field, look for hazelnuts on the ground; tidy up under the trees; write lists; look for people to help me put the rails up to hang my paintings. I will write until my anger goes away. I remind myself that anger is creative energy seeking expression. I better paint.

Emmanuelle tells me a story when we go for the hay. One man is in jail and the friend took over the wife, they had a baby together. What will the man do when he comes out of jail? He may come home very angry.

Pat tells me about the Sri Lankan man who used to work for her in Rome. One day he came and told her that the daughter of the family he worked for had wanted him to kiss her. “What should I do?” he asked Pat. “Kiss her” said Pat. He must have done, because they got married and moved to live in England. He recently visited bringing his wife and daughter.

Emmanuelle tells me to spread the old hay out on the ground and let the horses decide what they will eat. He tells me to take out the mouldy part, which can give them colic. I am thinking of selling Sully’s foal, with papers.

A huge man sits down next to me on the train. He may be on his way to the beach. He looks out of place among us going to work in an office train.

Thursday 14 August

Came back to the house to find Vincenzo still there at 7pm. In the morning I couldn’t close the gate onto the road. Inconvenient. It feels so nice to have a metal gate to lock at night.

I had a coffee with a Canadian editor. I had been asked to edit something he wrote. He tells me that he doesn’t always know what is going on because everyone is very secretive. He tells me he is asked to write something and everything is wrong because he is told old information. This sounds painfully familiar and I am glad this is happening to others and not only to me, otherwise I might become paranoid.

Friday 15 August

Today is Feragosto. Mist rises from the fields. There is a peacefulness, which is broken only by the sound of the washing machine. The fabbro came. The window was not going to allow the wrought iron grill to enter. He and his son have made such a pretty grill. They have painted the curling iron white.

In the early hours of the morning I showed Matisse his window. Suddenly he realised the window was open. He went through it. Minutes later he was back. I congratulated him. Then out again, and back. Back and forth he goes. I go to get him some food and he pees in the fireplace, which does not please me. He had such a serious expression on his face that I decided not to disturb him. Only a little spritz against the back wall of the fireplace. Maybe to tell us all that he lives here. Perhaps it is an anchor for when he goes through the grill in the small window in the bathroom. Now he is gone, possibly to the woods. I don’t like the idea of him crossing the road. What can I do? I can’t stop him.

Cars are passing on the road. Anthea has passed twice already to pick up her helper? To take water to her horses?

Saturday 16 August

Judith called from England, I can’t remember why. Paul was in the background cooking lobster soup. He had set the pots himself. I asked if he’d had to dive to get them. Judith tells me she is wearing a sweater. This is something that can make me, in the heat of an Italian August, nostalgic for rain and grey skies. I am asked how my kitchen is coming on, (not as fast as I would like) and how many horses I have and what train do I take to the station. Being brought up in Jamaica I have difficulty with direct questions. So I may answer, “what train do you take,” with, “I was taking a shower last night when the phone rang”. Anyway the people house sitting Judith’s house dropped off the keys after six in the morning. I thought they’d be leaving at three or four the way they were carrying on about leaving early and not wanting to disturb me.

Little cat wanted to go out in the morning, so I opened the bathroom window. I thought he’d gone out. No, he was back in again. He meowed. I fed him. That wasn’t it. I shut the bedroom door because it was only 5.30am. Matisse kicks up a fuss in his kitty litter.

The big black dog Navaho has now disappeared. I chased him because he stole Cherokee’s bone. Anyway she didn’t want it back after he dropped it in the horse pooh. A bitch must be on heat because the two males have disappeared leaving Cherokee behind. Porgy, I notice, no longer comes when I call him. I think someone else is feeding them. The dogs return licking their lips and looking satisfied.

I am looking for somewhere else to live where I can keep my horses. A place where the landowners care about the house that I’m living in. I was spoilt with the landowners in Bracciano. “Fix it,” they would say, “we’ll take it off the rent.” “Do you need a refrigerator? We have one in the storeroom”.

Sunday 17 August

Coming back from feeding Judith’s animals I find Luigi at his gate. I find I’m being invited to Robert Cook’s art show in Canale. I waited on the road at 7pm as instructed and no one came to pick me up. Amanda, Anthea and Luigi’s daughter, had asked if I’d like to join them for a pizza after the show. I walked over and rang the doorbell. Anthea asked if I was going in my car. I said I hadn’t planned to but I could. In the end we all went in Anthea’s car. Robert Cook is not a young man, but he retains his youthful face. Perhaps it is his smiling face and twinkling eyes. He may have looked like Gregory Peck when younger. His work is interesting, intricate sculpted games.

Eating pizza, I sit next to Luigi who tells me that Margarita chose the husbands for her two daughters. Until the one who was friends with Amanda was 13 she was allowed to play with her. Then she was not allowed to visit. They have never been to Rome (40km away). Amanda’s friend had wanted an education, but her mother blocked this. All I said was it was all very sad. He said he agreed, but that it was something that seemed to have worked.

Luigi tells me to feed my horses less. He gives his huge horse 2kg of feed a day. Everyone now is on lesser rations. It is only Merry who seems to big and fat. Luigi tells me that Pepita’s ribs show as they should. I tell him that the dogs are better and have more energy now that I am feeding them less.

Today I would like to handle the foal. She lets me touch her and no longer looks at me with distrustful eyes. She sees that Merry and Pepita do not turn into puffs of smoke when I touch them.

Porgy came with me when I went to feed the animals at Judith’s. He follows right behind me, not to the right or left. When I look behind me I find him trotting with his head down not looking anywhere except at the backs of my knees. It is so hard being an Alpha female and leading this motley pack of dogs.

I feed Judith’s animals. Poor Shadow wanted to show me how he could sit and wait before eating. All well and good but what is Judith’s command to have him eat? I only hope his stomach will get the better of him. Lucky, the Corgie, was nowhere to be seen. He wanted to go into the house and I wouldn’t let him. I was ready to feed him and he would not come. I realise he must only get fed at night.

Monday 18 August

The gate bell was rung on Sunday by the next door neighbour who was complaining about the “bad smell” from my horses. Later I went over to say I’d moved the horses into the next field. While talking to them they asked if I smelled the stink. I smelled the spicy scent of bay leaves warmed by the sun, and the heavy sickly sweet stench of the wife’s perfume. “No, I don’t,” I said. They tell me it is because I’m used to it, as though I was used to rolling in horse manure before going out to dinner with friends.

The horses sleep walk and sleep eat. They stand by the barn in the blazing hot sun waiting for the air to cool down. Anthea asks me why the horses stand out in the sun. I tell her that even when they have a choice they stand by the barn. I wonder if the flies are less. The neighbours told me the horses drew the flies and tafani. I said I’ve lived here for 12 years and know the tafani live in the woods. So they have stopped talking to me about flies.

Judith’s in-laws arrived all carrying back packs. There were so many of them I didn’t try to count. Matisse flew by them through his grilled bathroom window. Then he meowed at me and I picked him up and put him in the bedroom until I had given everyone with a backpack water and put their bags in the car. They told me they’d been up since 2am. It had taken them until 5pm to get to me.

On the train I see a man across the way is sleeping, comatose, with his mouth open. A woman chews gum like a cow beside me. A red head in front, possible asleep behind her dark glasses, and a blond woman across from me with eyes full of emotional pain, as though she is remembering something. Maybe she is sad about going to work. I know I am, feeling as though I have taken a big step backwards. I don’t see any alternative and don’t know what will happen. I am certainly not considered a career international civil servant.

I have told my neighbours I am looking for somewhere else to live. They say, “with more reasonable owners”. I see that they understand.

I knocked myself out with wine but was interrupted by my neighbour. I must have been very tired. I also don’t think I will be buying this cheap wine again. Since when do my nerve endings in my face go numb after a glass of wine? Will go back to the local cantina, where they assure me the wine is without added chemicals.

This evening I will gather up some of the hazelnuts that have fallen. A lot were thrown away in the dried horse pooh. I know that my neighbours across the road are not smelling the horses. I have smelled the stink of drains. These Rome folks would not know the smell of a horse if it came up and spoke to them in a shop. They seem nice, just not my kind of folks. I will ask Luisa if she is bothered by the smell of horses.

Tuesday 19 August

Where am I when I write March and not August, when I turn on the wrong burner to make coffee and end up with sizzling blackened sausage?

Little cat left at 4.30am when I was awake.

When I was at work I was told that my paintings were beautiful.

I have to admit that after a day in an air-conditioned office I came back to a strong smell of horse urine, so I cleaned up a bit.

At six in the morning it is still quite dark outside. It will be good if it rains. I miss painting, but how much did I paint when I didn’t have a job? I don’t ever seem able to get the right balance, work, money, painting, house.

Paul, at work, says he went riding at Remo’s. He calls him Reemo. I know already where Remo took them, up on the hills behind the ranch. It is a nice enough ride, once I relaxed enough to look up at the sky.

Luigi is trying to make me accept a 14 year old horse. He thinks that I am without. I have three and three halves (I did not say). One is to be trained.

Now I know who cleans out the cat dish in the kitchen. It is Navaho who was coming in as I sat at the kitchen table.

Wednesday 20 August

Violence in Iraq resulting in the death of Sergio di Mello and sixteen others. I heard about this on the BBC when I turned on the radio and heard the news at 1.30 in the morning. I write about this because a friend I used to work with used to talk about him as though he were a friend. Somehow I think I feel differently about this attack because it feels like there is some kind of connection. Not like other attacks where I hear of people being killed and I don’t know what to do with the information. We hear so much now that I wonder if I am becoming a stone wall.

Thursday 21 August

As predicted by myself, after a really early night I have processed what I have needed to and am now ready to go on.

When I left the house yesterday I saw my little cat marching down the road as if he was off to visit someone as far away as Napoli. He was actually walking carefully through the bushes followed by Trusty. Houdini was sitting by the gate on the garden side. He was peering through. I parked the car at the side of the road. Matisse skipped into the woods and then seemed to decide he would prefer to be caught. I picked him up and took him back to the house. It is Trusty that makes me nervous.

As I returned to Poggio in the car there were ten children playing in the road on the their bicycles. I rounded the corner and my neighbours who had complained about the smell of horse were walking along the road. They talked to me, the husband told me I was coming home from work too late. The wife told me the smell of horse had gone.

When I meet Cherry on the train she always asks me if I know the English woman who runs the riding stable near Macchia Grande. I don’t. Generally I am allergic to English people, tending to prefer Americans. Roberto also asks if I know her. He sometimes shifts mounds of horse pooh from there.

I see that Remo now has a woman who gives riding lessons. She is tall and blond and I thought she was a foreigner, not Italian.

I have decided I can only keep two horses here Sully and Merry. Pepita and the baby must go at the same time if possible. No one has grass and there is no rain.

I find I am thinking a lot about what I can do with the mounting pile of horse manure. I see that Cherokee eats it. Maybe this is a dog thing. I don’t think they would appreciate getting it as a side dish to dog biscuits. Porgy is slimming down now and is less square shaped. He looks silly fat as the fat does not increase the size of his pencil thin legs.

Friday 22 August

Did not sleep. Dogs barking. This morning I am feeling ragged. Also Porgy is missing and my little cat wanted to go out and wanted to be fed and wanted Houdini inside and it seemed that Houdini himself wanted to stay in.

In the night I heard footsteps in the garden. Could have been Cherokee, or Sully, because I heard the sound a horse makes when it clears its nostrils. It is a sound that fills me with a feeling of security. I think it is because I used to hear the sound of the horses and cows across the wall in Jamaica. I felt secure thinking of the huge horse blowing its nose in the night and eating grass up by the blue coloured cut stone wall.

I watch the things I forget to do early in the morning. This morning I managed to put the mobile phone in my bag, but I did not manage to close the gate. I left the lid off the dry cat food container. No image, no registration. This is what I mean when I say I am asleep. I am still asleep.

Saturday 23 August

On the way back on the train I see Paul and Judith’s relatives. I tell them I could give four a ride. I still haven’t figured out how many there are. Come to think of it we were a family of five. Mother, Father, me, Peter and Melanie. I wonder if we were like a lot of people. I didn’t feel like a lot of people when we were all in the car together. Maybe we felt like a lot of people when we turned up unexpectedly for lunch. Something we never did. Everything was always arranged days in advance.

Matisse has disappeared leaving Trusty and Houdini behind to guard me. Is the train track that goes through the woods too far for my cat to reach? How far do cats roam?

I have received the photos from Penny. One of my Mother putting the clothes on the line. Her arms seem long, not thin, but long. My father is holding the laundry tub with the clothes in. They look happy together.

Cherokee goes off to the rubbish bins, mine. A bird cries, I hope it doesn’t mean the cats have found a fledgling.

Anthea and Luigi call to me as they walk by. Luigi is all aglow as he holds his grand-daughter in his arms. I have had my one beer and I’m feeling tipsy, can they tell? I am feeding the horses. The other mother in law is with them. I compliment Anthea on her outfit, she sparkles at me. She sometimes looks like a young girl, perhaps it is the way she dresses.

Sunday 24 August

In the night I heard the same hammering sound that I heard the night before. Matisse wanted to go out early, but I managed to keep him in until I was ready to get up. I opened “his” window and he was up on the ledge as I opened the kitchen door, which is right beside it. I don’t know what the world must look like from a cat’s viewpoint, but he was surprised and, again, did not seem to recognise me.

He hung around the horses and then galloped off towards the big gate. Maybe he went over the top and into the woods, or over the top and along the road.

The dogs started to howl, I don’t know what sets them off. They sit in a row, and it is not the first time a human has stopped them. I came around the corner holding a brush in a menacing position. They disbanded. If I shout at them they continue, maybe because they think I’m joining in.

I see the snails are out. Do they know something we don’t know? Is the rain coming?

The neighbour has put some smelly stuff to perfume the air. It is giving me stomach ache. Vincenzo had muttered about his nephew putting manure down. I don’t know if I understand everything he says. Luigi says he never did and he worked for him for years. He say Vincenzo speaks a dialect. He is surprised that I seem to understand Vincenzo better than they do, perhaps it is because I’m a foreigner and have had to listen carefully.

Again I feel that I don’t seem to be able to get my life in balance. I have no work and lots of time to paint, or no time to paint and work. My contract ends on the 2 September. Who knows what will happen.

Remo’s mother asks me what is going on because I have lost weight. I don’t know I tell her, but I do know that my bra is too big for me, she laughs. Simonetta is looking good, her garden is green, they have their own well and can water with apparent abandon.

Matisse was in the house batting around a poor lizard. I’d already saved one tailless lizard and put it outside, tipping it into the thickest part of the roses, hoping a cat won’t go there.

Monday 25 August

Cats hiss outside. It is hot sitting in the kitchen. I will have to put a t-shirt on to feed the horses. It is still dark outside and when we put the clocks back it will be even darker.

My watch strap has broken. The last time I wanted to change the watch because I wanted something pretty, the man said I didn’t need a new watch only a new strap. I am somehow touched by how people in shops will do this. They stop me from buying something when they think it is not necessary. How do they make a living?

Tuesday 26 August

My boss is back. He asks for the report I’ve been editing. It was a good one. It was the writer himself who had asked that it be worked on. No wonder folks get cross with editors, sometimes we must make someone’s work less interesting. Make it conform to bureaucratic expectations.

Matisse was playing in the BIG wood. He was bobbing up and down in a chase of something that had quick small movements; a lizard or a mouse. He heard my car and turned around. I decided to leave him to it. As Pat says I bit my nails all day. I came home. No Matisse for half an hour. I fed all the horses. At one time I glanced back towards the house to find Matisse sprawled out at the open kitchen door. As he saw that I had seen him he blinked at me.

It rained for a long time at night. Matisse wants to go out. His window is locked shut. He isn’t going out today. OK so he sneezed, once.

Wednesday 27 August

Matisse leaves at 4am. Of course the other cats are around. Matisse seems to have gained weight. As I was waking up a cat was walking around my head purring. He’d been shut in the day before and I felt he was acting like a shadow of himself, like a depressed cat.

During the night the dogs bark and the ground trembles more than once.

A colleague at work is in a state. She begins to talk to me. We meet friends of mine in the coffee bar. She is suddenly like a duck in water. She is of colour and my friends are rainbows.

Judith asks if I’d like to be paid for looking after her animals, or would I like a present? I said to put the idea in a pot and that if I ever needed someone to look after my horses I would know I could call on her.

I took my coffee in a jar to work, it works quite well. Cool coffee, home made, drink it and think of my yellow kitchen and the kiwi vine and the animals snoozing in the hot sun.

My boss compliments me on the database. He says its excellent. Well, it was not that difficult to do.

Thursday 28 August

I haven’t been paying attention to the dogs lately. Cherokee and Navaho are mostly here, but Porgy is not. However, last night he was covered in mud and very subdued. When I brought him into the kitchen, into the light, I saw there was blood. He would not settle in the house, like Houdini his cat friend, he is used to being outside. I see a mark that looks like a dog bite. One long mark. I decide to wait before taking him to the vet.

Roberto drops by to make sure I’m doing OK and to look at the fence. He said he would take my manure pile away, he tells me to move it further from the house.

Friday 29 August

A neighbour was on the train with a bunch of English folks. I didn’t know the relationship between them all because of course, being English, they don’t tell you details like that. You are supposed to know everything already. I know this because I went to English boarding school and was brought up this way, to be a mind reader. However, I’m not good at this and get things wrong anyway.

I get over my nervousness and actually looked under Porgy’s tail. He had been telling me in his dog way where the hurt was and, being a human, I had taken two days to understand what the lying on the side and lifting the back leg up very slightly might mean. His testicles were swollen. He has been bitten. Not just there, but all over his hind quarters. I find the Betadine, mix it with water and pour it on his testicles and on the bite marks. Like Lazarus he gets up. I think it is just because I wet the ground he was lying on, but it appears the Betadine did a lot of good.

This morning he is curled up in the barn. I must make sure there is hay on the ground this winter, so the dogs will be warm.

All through the night a car comes up and people are throwing things into the rubbish bins on the corner. I hear two male voices, one tentative and the other angry. “What ARE you doing?” The tentative one is worried that there is a cat in the rubbish bin and may get hurt. Later, I go to look at what they have thrown in there and find a tyre. I wonder why they make such a noise and spend so long.

Matisse leaves at 4.30am in a state. He seems to be putting on weight. He did not touch the wet cat food as he goes out, and I don’t know why his little cat fart should smell like plastic.

I have a bad day at work. Come home and eat a piece of chocolate cake, a peach and drink a dark beer. This is my dinner and I’m still loosing weight. Maybe it is that I now, after my birthday, I own a mirror and can see what is happening with my body.

Again, I wonder what those boys are throwing into the woods. Why is there a smell of petrol?

I need to call Remo about training Merry, she chases Pepita around the field. Pepita is so sweet. She comes up to sniff me and to say hello. When I put Sully’s feed down I have to kick her away, she is still not used to the fact that she is no longer the baby and another baby has taken her place. I have Sully the mother with three of her daughters.

At least she now understands that her pile of hay is on the end of the line, away from anyone else who might bother her. The horses have other ideas. The first pile of hay I put down is nibbled at by Sully and Nutmeg the foal. The second by Merry and then Pepita hangs around because I’m not so fast with the third pile. She waits for feed. This gets put down. First, 2kg for Sully and Nutmeg, but I now have to wait for Sully to come from the pile of hay she’s eating. It is Nutmeg who makes her move when she comes to eat a little from the bucket. Today I’m in a hurry and put the feed on the pile of hay. Then Sully comes over. I go to the third pile of hay and put down feed for Merry. She is now busy eating from the first pile of hay I put down. Then I wait until Merry comes over. Then to the first pile of hay I set down and Pepita now waits for me to put feed down. Confusing. Yes.

Cherry Hill writing in The Foundation Years says that when we are with horses we are always training them. They are learning. We do not know this, but I realise I’d better hurry up and wake up to the fact. Their memories are second only to an elephant’s. She continues, tongue in cheek, that horses are not renowned for their problem solving ability.

Vincenzo had been and left the hose on the ground and a fork by the kiwi vines. I put them in the old pig pen where he keeps his tools. I’m told that this elderly man has been unable to give up complete ownership, which is something you must do when you rent.

Saturday 30August

Porgy is already in the car, but it is only 8.15am so I can’t take him to the vet yet. He lies there not moving. He was moving around yesterday, he may have blood poisoning.

Sunday 31 August

I went to Judith and Paul’s 25^th wedding anniversary. I had been planning to duck out of going. While I was cleaning the paddock in the afternoon I was seen by Paul, who stopped and said he hoped I had a big appetite. Then all the in laws, who had gone on the bus to the lake beach, returned. They waved and called out to me. They told me to make sure I took a shower before I came to the party. Then Anthea stopped to make sure I was going that night. I asked if I could walk by and ring their gate bell and we could all arrive together.

Later I went over, rang the bell and Luigi came out and wanted to show me the antibiotic spray for the horses.

We go to the party. Luigi notices that he is the only Italian there. We try very hard to speak in English. The moment I lapse into Italian we loose the English boy. I suppose it looks rude, but it was unintentional. Sometimes I forget which language I’m talking in. Something that happens, I’m told, when you ONLY speak two. You become more aware, I suppose, when you speak four or five different languages.

I do not recognise the people who recognise me. Judith’s father and beautiful American second wife. If she were living here I know we would be friends. Then someone asks someone else to talk to me because I don’t know anyone. “Hells Bells!” I say to myself.

Luigi and Anthea find me. At one point a woman says, “Oh you always say that you have been there or done that after I say something”. I find this odd. She is talking to me. The first time I met her it was for a coffee and a cornetto and the second time I met her was at this party. Both times I don’t remember being able to get a word in edgeways.

They receive a lot of silver picture frames and one amazing silver rose bowl. I have not taken anything. I had forgotten the small painting I was planning to give them. It would have been lost among all those silver picture frames.

I am walked home through the dark by the eldest son. I ask him if he has ever taken the back road to Manziana. He is pleased to find out that it actually leads somewhere, and tells me he will try it one day. I suppose that having a horse helps in exploration of gravel roads and earthen pathways.