11 Poggio, November 2003

11 POGGIO, November 2003

Saturday 1

It is warm enough to sit outside. Grey skies and a warm wind, which I think is carrying yet more rain, which causes the trees to speak. I hear the wind can confuse you, especially the sirocco. I prefer it to the cold, biting tramontana. I love the sound of the wuthering sound the wind makes as it goes through the cover on the chimney. The rain no longer comes in after Claudio climbed up there, hurting his back to fix it.

Breakfast, and I want to heat up my roll. Here I am reminded of the breakfasts we used to eat in Hove in England. On a Sunday we would eat porridge, hot rolls from my father’s bakery and a boiled egg, which is missing today. I have eaten so many eggs I don’t think I can face another one for quite some time. I’d bought eggs and then a neighbour had given me more. This always happens. I buy eggs and am given them as a present. It does not seem to happen that the eggs come along to a fridge devoid of eggs. Eggs magnetise eggs. I wonder if it is the same with money.

Sunday 2

The dogs are barking. Someone goes around feeding the stray dogs, mine included. I’ve been told it is Louisa’s mother who feeds the stray dogs and foxes so they won’t go after the chickens. Some say this doesn’t work.

I put the heat on in the hopes that the dark laundry hanging on the radiators would dry and then I fell asleep. I need a day inside the house. I know that going to see Merry at Remo’s is a high point in the day, but I would rather find my brown wool skirt, paint and clean the studio. Even Matisse may not get out today. I do not know if I will sleep. I seem to want to put myself into that suspended state to consider my options.

My colleague calls to tell me he can’t come out riding because he’s working. He tells me it’s the first time he’s had to work on a weekend, which I find hard to believe knowing he comes from a cattle and sheep rearing family. Here there are flood rains and mud flows down hillsides. Riding would not have been much fun. Down at Remo’s I’m told that Merry and another filly had to be moved from their boxes because water rushed down the hillside, through the little window at the back of the box, which is built into a hillside. By the time I saw her she was dry and calm.

Mary Rose misbehaves at the end of her rope in a way I have not seen before. Rearing and bucking when I take her out to eat grass. I let her out onto the sand field so she could get rid of some of the kinks. She blows hard like a stallion, lifting her head with her tail held high. She rears and bucks, not to threaten me, she’s playing. I think they want us to join in and of course we can’t.

In spite of the grey day, back at the house, I wash the white laundry and hang it on my new resin clothes drying rack. Then, I saw fire irons in the same shop and bought those too. These cost 15 euro. In the market they were 50 euro. I have paper to burn and lots of wood, but I still don’t feel like building a serious fire, which I feel I must fire sit until it goes out, which can take at least three hours.

Matisse caught a blue tit, as it was still alive I tried to save it. It flew around the kitchen battering itself against the window. I kept Matisse out of the kitchen; he seems to think I’m helping him. Finally I caught the bird and threw it out the open window. He hid himself in the ivy over the fence. One wing, although not broken, had lost a lot of feathers; I found most of them in the bathroom.

Monday 3

I heard the horses in the night. Maybe I had not put the fence back securely enough. Nutmeg was on the wrong side and would not come through the space I made for her. She chose another place where there was barbed wire, as she came back through the fence she pulled it all down. I need to buy electric fencing to replace the barbed wire. I will call Roberto who is supposed to fix the fence. I suppose no one calls or comes because it is raining.

I must wean Nutmeg. Now I understand it is something that you do before rather than later. It is how sweet, how sweet and then how dangerous, because the tiny foal has turned into a giant overnight. I have not got a halter on her and I need to worm her.

Porgy seems to be able to release himself when tied. I’ve seen him do it. He scratches ever so carefully, and if he is very lucky he undoes the catch and he is off the lead and free. He seems to have a plan; he has that kind of look about him.

My contract has been extended until the 21 November. I am certainly not doing very much. What I do gets changed fifty million times and sent out with spelling mistakes that I don’t get to change because I’m not the last in the line to look at the document.

Am feeling very tired because of all the dreams. Boys with cats, horses. Remo and family, moving furniture for a man, who was about to leave and then hay fell and I think it fell on the man Remo was saying goodbye to, saying his wife was a witch. All this was mixed in with a telling of 1001 nights that I was listening to on the BBC. Then there was Mara who had a café with horses to rent. A very busy night for dreaming.

Trouble with horses. I feel out of control with my life. Fences are down. I need a secure fence. How long am I here? How long do I have a job? Where do I go from here? Symbols of my life, downed fences and horses with barbed wire marks across their bodies.

Tuesday 4 and Wednesday 5

No entries.

Thursday 6

I have been feeling as though I am coming down with a cold. Then suddenly I feel better, as though something turned out right. Was it my colleagues emails commenting on my writing style, one says I have a bouncy style, another calls it poetic. Or maybe it was someone telling me that Friday is tomorrow. Or was it finding my travelling buddy Marina on the train. She always travels in the same place so that her friends will know where to find her. Continuity, something I am not good at.

Remo tells me they lost the grey cat. He had a bad habit of climbing into cars or into the cabs of trucks. Most times he was brought back again. This time he has gone for good.

I go see a colleague who has to review the work I’m doing. I tell him I can’t send him the whole document with photos and graphs because it will crash my machine. He points to his, another old clunker. He is in a senior position and has to process vast quantities of material and the powers that be can’t get him a good computer. He has an outdated machine, just like the one on my desk.

He tells me he sees a lot of mistakes, and I wonder if he has been sent the correct version. I am still working on it. I know that several versions can be floating around. I don’t leave documents I’m still editing on the share drive because my work has disappeared from there, but I don’t tell the pale-eyed man.

Vincenzo has been here. The water hose has been moved and brush cut from somewhere.

Friday 7

No entry.

Saturday 8

I have found a very busy person who answers all my emailed questions; however silly they may seem to someone who does not have to edit. Heaven. I am filled with gratitude.

I hear the rain. It is a grey drizzly day, the sort of day that if I was at Penny’s house in England, we’d go to a shop and buy inexpensive clothing. Once I bought a bright orange fuzzy jacket and a pair of zebra striped slippers, which were huge on my feet. Penny’s well-tailored sons looked at my purchases with some alarm.

Sunday 9

I heard a horse with a loose shoe. It was Sophie on Toby coming round to ask me for supper.

It is a soft, quiet. Remo was here telling me to put the fillies in the field and keep the mother in. They have chosen the other way around. He tells me all the horses look good, but that I must separate Sully and the foal. This seems to be something I find hard to do. He tells me that Sully’s udder will drip milk for a while. I am to check that it does not get swollen. I have read that I don’t have to milk her and that the milk will be reabsorbed into her body.

I have bought a mushroom block and put it in the cantina. It looks like wood shavings stuck together, but I’m told that I must place it in such a way that the mushrooms can sprout all the way around six sides. I placed it on an old bookshelf that I found lying on its back in the dark.

Shooting season and guns are going off in the woods where, further away, I know they are hunting wild boar, which are raised to be shot, like pheasants.

Monday 10

I am suffering from a cold, can’t be that bad because I had a huge lunch. A colleague from Belize joins me and tells me how his country is only a strip of land along the coast and how it used to be an outpost for pirates. “Paid by the British,” I said.

Pat is back from America. She tells me her bag was searched by the government. She tells me the elderly are being used as mules. They are? She says people like her, with white hair, are suspect.

Tuesday 11

When I left for work in the morning I found a red car at the side of the road without licence plates. I called the carabineri. After about 18 rings they answered. I was glad that I didn’t have any kind of real emergency when would have needed them to answer quickly. I am put through to Bracciano. I tell them it is no emergency and am handed over to yet another voice. I tell this man about the car.

Later, I call Judith. She tells me she saw it being taken away on the back of a truck. I worry all day because the dogs were barking as though at someone. I then start to worry about the horses. I have a pretty rotten day.

I buy a small torch to put in my bag, which cost 7 euro. It hardly works. I should have tried it out in the store. However, it seems to speed me getting into the house because I can now find the lock in the kitchen door to place the key.

At work, I am creating a data base. I cut and paste. What I paste is completely different from what shows up. I call my Dutch colleague to come and watch. He says this is about the strangest thing he has ever seen. I’m glad that I’m not imagining things.

Driving along the road to Poggio I see a fox cross the road in front of the car. It stops and watches the car as I drive by. It seems so unafraid and seemed to glide across the road as though its paws barely touched the ground. I do not know if it is male or female.

Wednesday 12 to Friday 14

No entries.

Saturday 15

It sounds like rain. The cats are inside. I hear Matisse “talking” to Houdini. One of them is busy clawing the back of the sofa. I think it is Houdini, the babysitter.

Matisse goes across the road. Sometimes I try and stop him and he rolls around in the middle of the road. Or he lies there blinking at me, his anxious care-taker, before he saunters off into the big woods.

Sunday 16

Remo tells me he is working slowly with Merry. He tells me she wouldn’t let him get on his back until recently. He didn’t try while I was watching as there were too many people around.

While talking to the electrician, down at Remo’s, I was startled when a crow flew onto my shoulder. There was a wave of good feelings, a flutter of wings and then he was there. The electrician came and took him off my shoulder. This was the first time this tame crow had flown onto my shoulder. Maybe it was because I was eating a piece of bread.

From where I sit on the bed, I can see Matisse sitting on the bathroom mat looking up at the window. Although you cannot see through this window, I think he watches the shadows of the leaves outside as the move in the wind.

Monday 17 to Friday 21

No entries.

Saturday 22

I got through my last day at work. Many colleagues asked for my home email. I went to say goodbye to my boss who was rushing out of his office. He put his arm out. I don’t know whether he was to put it on my shoulder. He said, “I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.” I said, “Goodbye” and he shouts, “Send me your home email,” I said. “You will loose it!” “I know,” he says, “but send it anyway,” and like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland he dashes off to another meeting.

Sunday 23

I return from my errands and find Vincenzo rapidly picking all the kiwi from the vine. I didn’t think this fair since I’m paying for the water which kept them alive all summer long. I was very angry and I know he won’t understand why.

I complain to Pat, who reminds me I’m supposed to be looking for a house to buy. “With what?” I ask her. She reminds me that she didn’t have any money when she went looking for the apartment she lives in now. Do the work. She tells me. The money will come. Pat is always telling me exactly what I tell other people. Why I can’t take my own advice. I don’t know. Hard of hearing at close range, I guess.

Guns pop far away in the woods.

I think of going to my doctor for a check up. The last time I was there the secretary was telling people off for lining up in front of her. She made them line up beside her. Perhaps she never thought of it. If the line forms beside her then the person next in line can read what is being entered in the computer for the one in front. Maybe I can call and make an appointment instead of going in.

Monday 24

I’ve been amusing myself by practicing looking fierce. I don’t know when it might come in useful. I tried out the look in the supermarket and had the staff jumping to help me. It seems overly effective, and better take another look in the mirror to see what I look like. I had to speak calming words to them because all I needed was a new plastic card so I can take part in discounts and gaining points for consumer items I’ve never wanted to buy, ever.

I’m down at Remo’s. He gets on Merry’s back. She doesn’t like this. She keeps one eye on me. I ask him later if the horses act differently if the owner is around. I never got an answer because he may not have heard my question. After, I took Merry to cool down, to eat grass.

Coming back along the lake road I find a little dog that has just been hit by a car lying in the road. Possibly by the people in the car that passed in such a hurry. I saw it look at me before it died. I took the little dog and buried it in my garden under the rose bushes. The dogs kept a respectful distance. They seemed as concerned as I felt. The neck was broken. I know I wished to feel some kind of reaction as I lifted it up off the road. Even if it had been gratitude at being held gently in the last seconds of life.

I had seen the same dog on Saturday being let out of a car by a couple. At the time I thought they were letting the dog out to pee. Not such an odd place, because there is enough of a grassy edge to the road, even though the cars rush past.

Tuesday 25

Porgy is sleeping in the kitchen. In the mornings when I go in to make my coffee he rolls over on his back, with his feet in the air, and grins at me. I rub his white tummy, which is not as clean feeling as a cat. He then leaps to his feet to go out, I open the door and Houdini comes in. He turns his nose up at Matisse’s leftovers. He has a point. Those particular leftovers have been there for two days.

I had a dream. The radio was on and was bothering me. Dreadful, chaotic music and a hyper announcer. I tried to turn it off. No use. Tried to unplug it. I managed that but the music continued. I woke up enough to realise the music was on, the radio was on. I was then able to turn the radio off. Phew, it turned off. No magical continuing mad announcer.

Wednesday 26

It is raining again. I go out and the horses are wet to the touch. They have shelter, but stand around in the rain. I will keep them in the stalls today. Feed them hay and feed until the sun shines again.

I watched Merry being trained. Remo sent me off to buy giant plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner. This was so I could give her a bath and wash her mane and tail. Being an Appaloosa she is not exactly graced with a full and flowing tail. Or mane for that matter. It sticks up in the air making her look mischievous. After her bath he put a red blanket on her.

I remember when Remo was training Federica’s horse, Akim. The first time I saw her ride him I saw this Arab stallion arch his neck and step out so carefully. I felt he was different to when Remo, the trainer rode him. There seems to be a feeling between Federica and her horse. Beautiful to watch.

Porgy was not interested in what I gave him to eat. He looked at me and gave a healthy burp. So, I expect my neighbours have been out feeding stray dogs and foxes. How can I explain to Porgy that he has done nothing wrong. It just makes me apoplectic when the dogs don’t want to eat the food I go and buy with my hard earned money. As Roberto once said, I should just let the neighbours feed my dogs. They are not exactly mine anyway. They came with the house.

Thursday 27

I was very depressed about going into Rome. I went to see Flora in her shop. I think we had our best visit in years. As I went in I told her how depressed I was about coming to Rome. I told her she was the only person who could cheer me up. We spoke about anxiety and security. I realise that I have never felt secure. Not in the close your eyes and go to sleep and don’t worry about a thing kind of security.

Flora tells me she remembers feeling secure with her family in England. Growing up. Now, she tells me, her sisters give her that feeling. I think there are five sisters all together, including Flora.

I used to feel a certain security when I knew my brother was with Patrice, his first wife. I had, still have, a lot of my books stored in their attic. I gave them to my nephew, but he wants me to be there before he will trawl through my boxes. There are books there that I would not mind reading for the first time, or again, for the third time.

Went to the gynaecologist. He tells me to call him, to come and see him and not to make an appointment. He tells me that to make an appointment only costs me money. To nip in and see him costs nothing. I forget all the things I want to say to him. He seems so busy with mountains of pregnant women waiting along the corridor and here he is offering me free question time.

He batters on like an express train. Is this why husbands and wives or women with their friends will go together, so there are two sets of ears to listen.

Recently, a friend asked me to go into a specialist with her. I was amazed that she couldn’t remember a single word he’d said to her. I did. This is why I’d been brought along. My friend, being an ex-nurse knows that people go deaf when a doctor is telling them something. They may be afraid to hear what is being said to them.

Friday 28

It rains torrential downpours for seconds and then nothing. Outside I hear the birds singing and then nothing. No. The birds are singing. Maybe they know the sun will shine today. My cat would like to be outside. As I get dressed, and am wondering how many layers to put on, the heavens open and the rain comes down, again. By the time I go out to feed the horses the rain has stopped.

I have bought Gabriella Garcia Marques book, his almost autobiography. I went into the snob bookshop in Bracciano. The woman pulled the hardcover book off the shelf at the same moment I found the soft-cover book. The words are the same. It is not a present. Even my friends would accept a paperback book from me. One even gave me a used paperback book. A very funny cookery book, written in the fifties for single people. She said it was out of print and she’d searched ages for it. I read it every so often. It has some good ideas and is very funny.

This book tells you what you must cook for a house party when you have overnight guests. Tells you how to fix all the meals over the weekend. It is written for an England that may have disappeared. An England I knew as a child when I went to stay with school friends whose parents lived in a manor house on acres of their own land. In this friend’s house I learned to eat my pear with a knife and fork.

The dogs are barking, there is the smell of my old fire from a few days ago. The minibus turns on the corner, leaving dense clouds of diesel fumes, which is one of the drawbacks of living in the country where the bus turns. At least I don’t feel isolated. One day I’ll take the bus into Bracciano. Although I no longer like to shop there because it is too difficult to park and I have succumbed to buying food in a supermarket and not from the butcher, the baker, the fishmonger, the market for fruit in season.

Saturday 29

Matisse is looking at me with a concerned expression. It is Saturday, one of the days the dogs go wild. I think someone creates a dog feast for them. Once I followed the dogs through the woods. At one point they seemed to think I was joining them, until they realised I was cross that they had escaped once again from the hectare of land, which obviously they felt was not enough for them.

My painting teacher, Rolando, called and I’ll start back with my painting course on Monday.

I’m beginning to think Matisse is the most intelligent being living in this house, me included. He peers into my face when I’m angry with the dogs or the horses. He has no fear of me. I was angry with him only once when he insisted on walking on the computer keyboard while I was working on a document with a deadline. I’d picked him up and dropped him on the floor. He hid for hours, and I was the one in the end who felt punished.

Now my cat asks to go out. He reaches for the keys dangling from the lock at the kitchen door. As I’m mopping the floor I notice how Houdini begins to look worried. Matisse puts one paw around Houdini’s neck and licks his ear. Is he telling him not to worry, that I’m not planning on attacking him with the wet and dripping mop?

Sunday 30

There is another dog in the garden. A huge brindle dog, seems quite young but it didn’t want to come near me.

I’m hibernating. I feel like diving inside myself and being quiet. I don’t look forward to the long drive to Viterbo by myself. I don’t mind going, it is driving back by myself in the dark in my old Ford Fiesta. However, I put my bag together for my painting class anyway.

I call Pat and tell her I’m wearing a skirt. She tells me not to tell anyone because it might shock them because I wear skirts so seldom. Anyway, Pat tells me Liza’s sister says she, “Wants to dress like Rosemary”. How is that? I ask Pat. “You know,” says Pat, “Like you’ve just come in from seeing the horses.”

10 Poggio, October 2003

10 Poggio, October 2003

Wednesday 1 October

Happily I’m taking a day off to get the hay. I was going to let Lele go on his own, but I think he’d prefer if I was there to handle the money.

I’ve not been talking to anyone at work. I put my head down and work at the computer all day. I’m aware of people going for coffee a lot. I know they have to do this if they want to talk about anything at all, even work, in some kind of privacy. Sometimes the best place of all is a noisy cafeteria.

I have had responses to the e-mails I sent to my old yoga group in the States. Lore is still weaving; she tells me that Phil is teaching. Good for him, he was always such a sweet, kind man. A friend in Denver writes to say she is still in touch with an Irish friend, Marion, who stopped talking to me once I flared up at her. I feel that I’m looking for a teacher again. Now I have my painting teacher, though while I’m working I can’t go to the Monday afternoon class, which starts at 3pm in Viterbo.

Had a meeting with the accountant who wanted to offer me another job without pay. Maybe it would have led into something paid. I had to explain that I couldn’t accept anything else right now because my life was taken up with getting up at 6am to get on a train and go into Rome to get back at 7pm.

Porgy has been ill from the bites, so I’ve been keeping him in the house. Matisse went into the woods last night and I thought that was it. I was glad to see he hides in the bushes when cars go past. I was not happy to see him lying in the road. When I went out to lift him off the asphalt he again melted into the woods. Later, when I went out to look for Matisse, as I closed the gate onto the road, I heard a sound, which turned out to come from my little cat. He was inside the gate and me on the outside. “What you doing there?” he seemed to say. Maybe he was showing me the little hole beside the gate he uses to come in and out. Did he think I should crawl through it? The previous tenants must have made this for the cats or hedgehogs, as it is a perfect hole with a brick base to it. The old hedge must have been pruned carefully so that cats, or hedgehogs could go in and out as they pleased without being followed my a nosy dog.

Thursday 2 October to 4 Saturday October

No entries.

Sunday 5 October

I have not been writing consistently and have been feeling disoriented. There was a torrential downpour last night; if I’d been out I would have been drenched in five minutes. I don’t know what the horses did. They seem to be dry except for Nutmeg the foal, who seems to have a coat marked by rain drops, although she is quite dry to the touch. She allowed me to scratch her on the ears. I tried to take Sully’s halter off as it had somehow come unhitched. It is safer if she isn’t wearing one because the halter can get stuck on a branch and cause some serious problems.

I tried to put a halter on the foal. Ha ha! I got her in the pen but Pepita got in too and started galloping around, slipped and fell on the wet ground. She looked at me as though it was my fault. Once I’d been lunging Merry and she reared and fell over backwards. Heart stopping. I think they are so big that they must break in two. No. They get up; look at me with a certain amount of respect. Pepita seemed embarrassed.

Overhead there is a lemon yellow sky and I’m having an inside Sunday. I’ve been painting. I’ve gone as far as I want to go with the gouache. I’ll have to wait until I paint the dammar varnish over the top before I paint in oil, the painting is too damp. Now I have my colours back. Suddenly I’ve snapped back into painting like myself again. In this case I may have the head to begin a large painting.

Found Matisse on the other side of the road. I don’t know if he was chased there by Trusty, or if he just hangs out there because it is so much fun. There must be a lot going on over there if you happen to be a cat. A husband and wife were outside the gate when I went out to look for Matisse after lunch. The man was ugly, but kind. He said I’d frightened him. His wife was sweet looking. I let them in to pick up chestnuts. The man tells me that you have to eat this kind out of the shell with a fork. I don’t like them so much, neither do I like the hazelnuts, which make me cough; although I will eat almonds by the handful.

Breakfast is a roll with butter and marmalade. Almost a childhood breakfast. Sunday we would have boiled eggs, hot crispy rolls that my father would have brought home with him from the restaurant bakery. These would be warmed in the oven and then spread with melting butter. Honey or marmalade would be added.

Monday 6 October

A lemon sky tinged with blue and apricot. The sky is touched with orange and gold where the sun catches the clouds. I am sitting on the earlier snail train that arrives later then the one that leaves after it.

Sitting on the snail train going into work. I think of doing a series of cloud paintings. Annie bought a very stylised cloud painting from me with a landscape. A large painting copied from one of my small oil pastels that I’ve been doing on the train. I want to paint clouds, I also want to paint water. My most successful water painting was the one I did based on the sketch I made of a fishing net just eneath the surface of the water. Anne Marie in France bought this.

On Sunday I enjoyed painting. I saw that Matisse spent a lot of time climbing outside on the trellis. Then he came in to climb on the wire rack I use to dry my clothes on. He knocked it over and expressed a certain amount of concern as to its well being – sniffing and patting at it with his paw. Did he want it to get back on its feet?

A man sits with birds in a cage on his lap. The feathered creatures mutter to each other. They sound more like my cat Matisse. A cat making bird sounds. He also makes a sound like a horse whinnying.

I have left my bright red jacket hanging in the closet. Did I really need it? I would have preferred one that didn’t cost so much. However, it is light and warm and maybe it will last a long time. Today I’m going into the office dressed in clothes to feed the horses. This means comfortable jeans, reining boots, a shirt and waistcoat, the kind you can ride in with big pockets. Poor cat got left inside. Does he really look worried when I leave, or is it me feeling worried?

Tuesday 7 October

Matisse was back in minutes after I let him out. I can only assume it was wet out there in the long grass. His fur was cold and his feet wet. He now sits beside me taking up most of the chair; he has me well trained. At night I sleep on one side or the other sticking an arm out, he crawls under the covers and turns around to rest his head on my outstretched arm. If I sleep on my stomach with my face turned away from him he climbs out and taps me on the nose with a paw until I wake up and turn on my side again.

I am made to think of me and the horses, of what I’ve read (John Lyons, The Perfect Horse). Control one part of the horse and the rest will follow. In this case it is control one part of the human and the rest will follow. So, after the cat tap on my nose I turn obediently to the left or right, and little cat again climbs under the covers, turns himself around to put his head on my arm.

I’m keeping Porgy in at night. I sleep better without the bark provoker roaming around. I know he prefers to be running around outside and barking his head off.

The bathroom is beginning to smell again. Annie says it is a drain smell and not a cat smell. She says she had the same problem at her house in Marina Velca; the drains would smell.

One of the mares I’ve had in partnership with Remo is being sold. Her name is Cornelia, a pretty dark red colour with white markings, an Appaloosa. I feel a bit sad about this. If I’d been able to continue to work I’d have been able to keep her.

I worry about my own future.

Wednesday 8 October

I’m on the train travelling backwards. At Bracciano, while waiting a girl peers at me suspiciously. She watches me write my diary out of the corner of her eye.

I’ve left little cat in the house. He seems to have adapted to not going out every morning. Houdini, the orange cat, now comes in. Matisse hides, watching him eat, then leaps from his hiding place bouncing over Houdini. Maybe the older cat tells him that he doesn’t want to go out today because of the rain, wet and wind.

Returning from Rome I find Marina, a colleague from work, on the train. I like her. She finds me amusing and, when she doesn’t have one of her many headaches, is pleased to see me. I make her laugh. She asks good questions about painting and asks how artists see things. I tell her that when I started at art college I was amazed at how I began to see things differently. Light and shade, shapes. The world popped out at me as drawn or painted. I felt that I saw. I wonder if I have got so used to seeing in this way that I no longer remark upon it. Or worse, do not notice any longer.

Colours also. I told Marina that a painter friend names the colours she sees around her, as I will. I draw in pencil and write in the colours that I must use. This surprised Marina. Maybe people who don’t paint don’t think in terms of named colours. Right now I look up and see pink in the clouds. Last night I would have used burnt sienna and ultramarine to get the right light in the clouds.

At work a desk top publisher shows up to quote on the hydrology book I’m working on. She shows me a book she was paid US$11,000 for. I find this excessive. I don’t know of course, since this is the first time I’m having to get quotes on a job from desk top publishers. Maybe it works out if you are doing an enormous print of 11,000 books.

Thursday 9 October

Porgy has been sick all over the floor. I’d fed him too much I suppose. Tonight I’ve given him less, or maybe it just looks less because the bowl I’ve put it in is so big.

I’d returned from Rome to find the landowners looking for the rent. I told them I’d send it on the weekend, because I didn’t have the money on me. The house stank of drains as I went in. I looked down the toilet and now understand what Claudio, my builder friend, means. He’d been explaining about the S bend in the toilet and when the water goes below a certain level the pong from the drainage system comes floating up through the toilet. My next door neighbour had explained the same thing. He says it happens in poorly constructed areas.

I hear scratching and see that Matisse is now in the wastepaper basket. This used to be one of his favourite toys when he was a kitten. Made of wicker he could make it roll across the floor with him inside it. Now he is getting into a paper bag. This is also a lot of fun because it crackles as he moves.

Mara tells me her sweet little cabin at the stables has burned down. This was one room with a fireplace. She tells me her father, on the night of the blackout, didn’t put the fire out in the fireplace before he left for home. This little cabin is filled with memories, some good and some quite sad, like the time she told me Pupa the cat had been ripped to shreds by the dogs next door.

Friday 10 October

When I returned from work I found Vincenzo lurking about with a big blue plastic sack. It was lumpy and full of goodness knows what. He was subdued, polite. His wife was again using Lei, when she spoke to me.

Saturday 11 October

In the early hours of the morning I hear cats fighting. Matisse is still and silent as he listens. Being a cat, of course, he doesn’t say very much, but there was a stillness about him, and I would say he was worried. Someone had been hurt. Daylight, and there was Trusty-who-doesn’t-trust anyone, with a wound on the side of his neck. Houdini was limping. The sounds had come from under the bush outside my bedroom window. The orange cat brothers had been fighting.

I’m writing this while sitting at the stone table outside the kitchen. It is not exactly warm. I have my summer-weight jodhpurs on and reining boots that have not yet seen a horse.

Matisse is under the gas tank. Someone coughs. Horse or human? The horses are eating peacefully in a clump together. I move them up and down the fence now so the ground gets a chance to heal. The grass is already high in the garden.

Matisse has now moved to the old water trough in front of me. Again he has gone around the house. I wonder if I’d been inside if he’d come to look for me. I notice that the traffic along the road has increased. The next door neighbour’s dogs are barking. I need to cut the rotting grapes down and put them on the compost heap. They were unsuccessfully full of pips. The others were wonderful. Small, sweet, Muscatel.

Is someone illegally cutting wood or is it further a field?

Mara tells me that her little hut burned down after the blackout when the lights went back on. She tells me she managed to save Flora’s expensive saddles and burned her hand.

It is so misty now that I cannot see much beyond the edge of the barn, which is less than a stone’s throw away.

At work one of my favourite colleagues is leaving. He turns to look at me and I wave. I would have shaken his hand but they were full of multi-coloured suitcases.

Sunday 12 October

I wake up with the cat at 5.59am. How does he know? He had tried all his other tricks and none had worked so he jumped on my chest and startled me; he is usually so careful to jump over me. I hear explosions as I wake and wonder why. The military are sometimes doing exercises and you can hear the explosions on the macchia grande.

I put the horses in the garden, they were eating quietly at the back of the house, then Sully and Pepita went through to the front looking for more grass. Nutmeg went berserk. She wouldn’t follow me past the cactus plant, which must have pricked her. She galloped around and then went under the pole that Vincenzo had propped up with an old step ladder and a metal rope tied to the roof of the lean to. I looked at her this morning and realise that she must have crouched down at the gallop in order to get under this obstacle, because she is a very tall and leggy foal.

A man drove up looking for chestnuts and I collected some with him. I ate some for supper. They are small because there has been no rain; but still taste good. I cut down some of the grapes because they have gone mouldy. The dogs have quietened and don’t bark at the people as much as they used to. I wouldn’t mind if they did. In the summer it was continuous with the joggers on the road. Maybe they are all barked out.

Matisse is stalking in the wet grass. He stops every so often to nibble at a grass stem. An apple just fell from the tree and startled him. It may be Trusty I see over by the old water trough with the worried expression on his face. I don’t know why Trusty and Houdini should be so different when they must be from the same litter, they look so similar.

Matisse is now washing himself at the end of the stone table. I’m sitting outside and it is not warm. I’ve already had my coffee, which was very good this morning. Now I think of eating one of the left over brioche from yesterday. However, I realise that I don’t really like them. I think of my American friend Pat, who can eat two when at the bar. I wonder if she will lose weight when she goes to the USA for a holiday, as I did when I visited my brother in America, because I didn’t drink wine or beer for three weeks.

My neighbour’s horses are in the field next to the one I rent. I wonder how long I must keep my horses away from the chestnut trees. I better ask. I expect someone needs to come and pick up all the chestnuts now lying on the ground. Quite a job.

I hear the washing machine in its final cycle. I can hear everything I piled on top of it being thrown to the ground. I’d better remember that for the future and not put any china or glass on top of it because it shudders as it hurls itself into the final cycles.

Monday 13 October

Matisse has one eye closed and I worry that he may remain this way for ever more.

Vincenzo was here with a lock he wanted to use on the gate. He wanted to use his on the inside of the gate and mine on the outside. I frankly got confused just listening to him. In the end I took charge of the conversation and told him that I would put my lock and would give him a key. This seemed to please him. He wouldn’t hear of me giving him a lift home, because he said he was waiting for his wife to show up. So I left him alone on the road waiting for her.

Found Marina on the train who seemed withdrawn. I made her laugh when I told her I’d found someone to do the flowers for my wedding and another person to cater the food. I paused…but “I still have to find the husband!” Good to see her laugh after her looking so down. She cheered up enough to advise me to buy my curtains at Ikea as I’d been talking about buying a sewing machine. “Much cheaper”.

The horses are acting hungrier as the days get cooler. I hear them clunking around in the barn where they all stand in a clump. I must make more room for them, so that when Merry returns there will be room for four.

Tuesday 14 October

Matisse has not been going out much. I let him out this morning, he saw Houdini come in and followed him. Houdini comes in to stuff his face with food. I think he is too old a cat to be thinking of playing tag around the house.

Porgy and Cherokee went missing when I fed Navaho. I took up their food and would not have fed them, but Cherokee returned and literally asked for her food. I think they must have gone for the last pee and pooh before being fed and settling down for the night. I was later than usual because I’d been kept at work looking for documents that were required in the morning for a meeting.

Wednesday 15 October

Today there is a stink of drains. There is a wind and Claudio says there will be a pooh because of the evaporation from the famous S bend. The smell is almost unbearable. Others tell me to pour water down the toilet; I’ll see if that helps.

I hear the horses’ hooves on the hard ground in the barn. I’ll move the wood pile and the junk and make a larger space.

I have just read that five species of Italian donkey are almost extinct.

Thursday16 October

It was some kind of birthday for the Vatican so I could only get prayers on the radio. The folks sounded like a bunch of buzzing bees. I imagine the faithful around the world who hear the buzzing bee sounds know what the words mean in their own languages.

A colleague seems to be inviting himself out here for a ride. I’ve not been for so long because I’ve been waiting for Merry to be trained.

I went for the mammogram. A man did it. He was so kind and impersonal as he placed my boobs between the freezing cold plates of the machine. I think handling so many breasts must make you inured to them. In the same way that an artist may only see light and shadows when they have a naked human in front of them. Well, it is a lot like that for me when I am actually painting. I become so absorbed in what I’m doing that it comes as a surprise when the model, male or female, suddenly gets up for a break and they need to get their circulation going again.

I caught the technician looking at my breast. It was the look of a person trying to put an object in the right position. I could have been a bowl of fruit. He had a machine that develops the negatives on the spot. He puts one in and the other is already ready. He did an extra shot of my right boob, which sometimes has a painful cyst.

As I’m preparing to leave work a colleague comes with his baby. I sense him rather than see him. He gives out a sensation of gently whirling light, so it took me a while to get untangled before I could actually see who’d come to visit me.

Judith called about hay and I told her to ask Lele to help her the next time. The hay I bought from the same farmer she told me about is dreadful. I didn’t go and have tea with her on returning home because I let Matisse out so that he could play; but he was more interested in inspecting the car. I’d left the door open because I’d already done my Saturday shopping.

I have a dreadful headache what with the pong from the drains.

Friday 17 October

Matisse is thumping around in the bathroom. He was in the tent under my legs, but he got prickly and it is like being in bed with a cactus, so he got thrown out. He is now in the waste-paper basket battling with the newspapers I put there. Bits of paper are bitten off and spat out into the air. This waste-paper basket is an old friend of his, when he was a kitten it used to be left empty on its side so he could roll across the floor in it, or scratch it to bits. No damage as it is made of raffia.

It turns out that FAO finance folks have sent my money to New York. I’m told they send all the payments to New York before they get paid in Rome. It is more than a little demoralising because I’m down to 100 euro.

A young Muslim female colleague at work chats to me. I like her spontaneity. She is American. I wonder if I’m slightly jealous of this young woman who was supported by her family while doing a Masters in something useful.

Came home in a funny mood. I was fine until Pepita tipped her feed onto the ground. She seems to think she should be fed first, when I feed her mother Sully first. This weekend I’ll be tying string to the buckets so that I can hang them from the fence posts. Sully somehow alerted me to the fact that some of Vincenzo’s fence posts are wobbly in the ground. Now, how does a horse do that?

I dream. I come to the same place in my dreams. Always on a hill top by a freeway. I have been there at least three times already. I feel I’m working towards something in the dreams. As though that life in the dream is more valid than life we experience as real. In fact I wonder if the day to day work life is the dream. If we can influence the passage of our dreams – from negative to positive – we must also be able to do this in our own lives. I am becoming convinced of this, because it all feels like dreaming. All of it. I feel I am about to see something important for me. Soon. Maybe tonight.

Saturday 18 October

Matisse has already been out and come back in again. I think he’s hungry. I’ve shut him in because there are many cars parked in the woods.

Is it raining? Or is it is the wind in the trees I’m hearing and not the rain. I see the sky is grey and heavy with rain. I’m wearing my pyjamas under my jeans and sweater. A little warm, although my legs still feel cold. I will have to pull out all my clothes out to find the winter clothes and put away the summer.

Matisse has just startled us both by knocking over the rack where I dry my clothes. He went back to take a look at it. Now he is up at the window trying to open it with his paw in the crack between the window and its frame. I don’t want him out with all the movement and all the cars along the road. People have come in droves looking for chestnuts and mushrooms.

Sunday 19 October

Vincenzo and Margerita were here to talk about redoing the electricity, but without their electrician. They had opened the gate on the chestnut field and come up. Frankly, if you’ve an appointment with someone renting your house I would expect them to come and ring at the front gate and wait to be let in. My electrician friend took over. He stayed later for coffee, while I had a tea. He was full of ideas, perhaps too many. “What if we just install a “salva vita”, an earth?” I asked. Michele was horrified, he said he would talk to his lawyer friend. He tells me my landlords are dreadful people. He tells me that people with money, or worse, who think they have money are dreadful. We seem to agree on a few things. We talk about the nobility, we forget that many of them had to go out to get a job in order to keep the farm.

As Margerita is leaving she spits out, “What about the dogs?” and how she is going to send the “guardia” to pick them up. I feet sad. This is what my sister Melanie did to me. I was away for a few days and when I returned home all my motley pack of dogs had been given away. It was just before we were robbed. I may feel this happened because Foxy, the little bitch dog, who was not there to get the other dogs barking and biting.

I went to Remo’s to visit Merry and take her for a walk. We visited the cows, unfortunately at the same time fighter jets flew by in formation overhead. I hope she doesn’t associate cows with fighter jets in the future. I made her stay in one spot until the jets had finished swooping overhead. They make a sound like tearing paper; almost silent until they’ve passed. One day they’ll create something that is totally without sound. Maybe they have done so already.

Donato, Remo’s father, asked me to take pictures of the foals. He is buying the film. I told him I don’t have any money because FAO sent my money to the United States of America. I wonder how many other people have this problem getting paid.

Matisse has just come back in, all wet. He is staying in.

Monday 20 October

I still have not been paid. The money has now been transferred from New York. Now we have to see how long it takes to get back into my account in Italy.

This morning I found Nutmeg and Sully and no Pepita. Later she materialised on the other side of the fence. I don’t quite know how she got there. I heard a sound in the night and knew it had to do with Pepita, but was too tired to get up and check. Too warm. Too asleep. In the morning I smelled pipe tobacco. Again I was too warm and too asleep to look out. I awoke twice in the night. Once at 1am, when someone may have been coming home from working at a pizzeria. Or maybe it was my neighbour, who owns heavy equipment and works all hours of the day and night.

Matisse wanted to go out and took one look at the wet and Trusty sitting out there and came back in.

I called Roberto and asked him to help me with the fence because Pepita is continually getting out. He tells me he will come on Saturday. If it rains he won’t because they won’t be able to do any work. Reasonable enough. The ground is like chocolate pudding with puddles reflecting the sky.

I saw a huge bullfrog. Granny, I thought. Once, at home in Jamaica, I asked Anita the cook if she would help me move a bullfrog from the bathtub. How it got up the straight tiled sides of the bath tub I don’t know. Jumped? They seem more like crawlers than jumpers. Anita told me the bull frog could not be moved because it was “Mrs de Roux” as she called my grandmother. Strangely enough I found the bullfrog making its way down the passage and out the glass panelled door onto the veranda and so into the garden. Who knows?

Matisse is quietly watching something. He gives himself a quick lick and goes back to studying the wall.

Tuesday 21 October

Matisse goes out and then follows his pal Houdini back into the house. He toured the roomsmeowing his head off. I don’t get it. He meows after he’s been out all day and he meows after he’s been in all day. He then attacks my legs. I don’t mind if I’m wearing jeans. But when I have bare legs or arms it is a bit much. He gets this wild look in his eyes, then it passes. I get into the bath and he becomes the bath time cat sitting on the bathmat keeping me company. He is either curious about the bubbles, or he lies on the bathmat washing himself.

I get into bed. Matisse is creeping up on a fly. One of the best fly catchers in Lazio, if not the whole of Italy. He eats them up. Pat says one of her cats does the same. He crunches them up, maybe they are like raisins. I see Matisse eat one and go and look for another. Amazingly quick. We humans are too slow. I think that for their size and shape they must be more intelligent than we are.

I see cats in the parking lot. I’m sure I recognize the two my neighbour brought home and then decided to abandon. She could not handle two small kittens living up in her kiwi vine. She had a lot going on at the time having just been diagnosed with leukaemia, so I will forgive her.

I don’t think my contract will be renewed because there are no more jobs.

Wednesday 22 October

I am sitting up in bed, while Matisse is trying to bury his feed plate. He just took a dive into the wastepaper basket. He seems calmer tonight. I came home and there was no sign of dogs or horses. It has rained for days and the grass is growing.

I picked up my mammogram. They had written my name Allison Grace Mary. I thought it was a sign. Grace. Not grace as in walking gracefully. Grace in the way of the spirit.

I have been nostalgic for New York. I am reading Enzo Biaggi’s La mia America, and I was craving hot dogs and didn’t know why; until I remembered the book I’m reading.

The man who has been so silent at work is now talking to me. He was very concerned when I came in and said I’d lost one of the horses. It sounds worse than it is. He was concerned in a genuine way.

I hear the rain. The dogs did not come to greet me when I returned. I found them curled up in the barn. I thought for a moment that they had all been taken away. There they were, happy to see me and poor Porgy yipping.

With all this rain Merry will not have been taken out and worked.

Thursday 23 October

I am very tired. Maybe I just want to go back to my dream with all the Buddhist monks. I wonder, in painting, if I could just let go of all the reality and just do my dreams, like I used to paint story. Once I painted a series based on the Goose Girl.

A male colleague at work called me dear today. It was in the exact way a brother will call a sister dear when he is trying to annoy her. I don’t envy his wife with her husband away six months of the year. My colleague tells me she is used to it, because she used to work as a civil servant and understands the routine. I would want someone at home. Someone who could ease the tightness around my heart. Someone who could make me feel as secure as my cat must feel when he is curled up under the covers and knowing that there is food in his bowl.

Friday 24 October

No entry.

Saturday 25 October

It is that time of year again when all the clocks go back one hour on Sunday night. The horses will be used to being fed an hour later, because they get fed an hour later on the weekends. Kurt was shocked when he was here. However, he didn’t have much sympathy for my craziness about my cat.

On the train returning from work there was a man in an expensive suit who seemed to be trying to pick me up. Some of these people in expensive suits should take care of their teeth. Maybe he does this to get rid of people on his seat. So I left saying I’d seen a friend go upstairs (on the train) and I wanted to sit with her. I found a woman and said, “You must be the friend I’m looking for!” and explained about the man. A man turned in his seat to look at me. He laughed and winked. I was not feeling that attractive. So why doesn’t an unmarried…well it’s the age. Most men are married and there are more women than men and that’s the demographics of the situation.

Today I take Porgy to be castrated. A beautiful husky has come to visit. However, he seems to think Navaho is a bitch and won’t leave him alone.

I think Vincenzo must have been here in a violent mood because the horses’ gate was left open. Also the gate into the field.

Sunday 26 October

Porgy, for the first time ever, left food in his dish. I’d taken him to be castrated and he fought the medication and I was packed off for an hour.

Roberto came to take care of the fencing. I gave him the money and he seemed reluctant to take it. He looks ever more good looking, and may be one that improves with age. He says silly man things to me like when am I going to sell the horses. He has a point. I am now covered with hay because I’ve just fed them. Pepita broke out of the field. She is a nice horse but has a total disregard for fences. It may have been her that popped the wire. Roberto tells me I should put an electric fence in. I already have most of the poles and will need to replace others. Roberto tells me he knows someone who can come and see the horses and who will give me a price. I wonder if it is the same person that Remo knows.

A nice man came to look at Rais, who in 30 seconds saw everything that was wrong with him; that he had worked too much; that he needed to be re-shod. Someone else had told me he needed to work more.

Little cat is beside me in his sphinx pose. He works hard to get me out of bed. How can he know its 5.59am? I had put the clocks back last night.

After putting the dammar varnish, turpentine and linseed oil medium on the gouache under painting the colours change. I don’t know if I’ll need to do anymore to it. I’ll look at it again in the morning.

The beautiful dog has gone home by himself. Dogs bark. Maybe a persimmon has fallen to the ground. I have experimented with picking them unripe. They are OK and ripen off the tree but are not as good as those that ripen among the dark leaves.

Monday 27 October

Matisse, of course, wakes me up at 4.59am, which is 5.59am in the old time. I get to work early.

A colleague’s contract has not been extended. He’d been arguing with his wife about putting their son in school. Suddenly uprooted again. He says, “You didn’t hear?”

Of course Porgy is subdued. I tried to be nice to him, but maybe he is in pain. He showed up just as I was putting the food out for the other dogs. I am feeding them too much or Cherokee and Navaho need Porgy around to stimulate them to eat. When I came home I found a can of dog food standing up in the road. Not one of mine. Not a brand I use.

Porgy is staging a palace rebellion. He did not come when I called. He refused to eat. So I took his food away. He looked hungry, because he can’t help himself and just has that hungry dog look. Every rattle of paper and his eyes roll in my direction. So I gave him his food and he ate it lying down.

A colleague forgets to invite me to a meeting. Another asks why I wasn’t invited. My boss looks at me. He is amused. He knows me better than any of them and knows I wouldn’t have wanted to go.

I meet my neighbour on the train who tells me a sweet story about how his mother had fallen over backwards into icy water in Scotland. She had heated up so much climbing back up to the cottage looking for help that she didn’t in the end need any help at all. He adds that his grandmother had died at 97.

Tuesday 28 October

Today my American Muslim colleague tells me that she thinks I’m the funniest person in the group. I like this. She explains that she tells people, “With Rozes you laugh at her words. With me you would laugh at me.” I don’t agree. I think she is endearing and her words are funny. I don’t think I laugh at her but with her.

I felt I was dressed oddly. I had my yellow ochre shirt on and my yellow ochre jeans with mud on them. A man looks at me and smiles. I notice my reflection as I pass a window and my hair is sticking up like antennae.

Met my neighbour on the train who explained a lot about land leases and tenure. There was a man with a soft face looking at me and I wondered if my hair was sticking up on my head again.

Porgy spent a couple of days in the house. Last night and the night before he didn’t eat. Maybe he is eating elsewhere. I just want to know if he is OK.

Now, when I come home my heart lifts because of my cat, my horses and Cherokee, the female dog.

I have a month of hay left. I go through a bale a day. A hundred bales would have been about three months.

Talked to Annie. Her daughter Caroline goes to Milan to live with her boyfriend. Annie says that Caroline is very much in love.

I had been doing a course with the Open University and I didn’t finish it. I’m feeling sad about this. I didn’t feel I could be working and doing the course at the same time. I found the Brazilian man who also took the Discovering Science course we did in our first year. It was great, we both agree and he tells me that he has not enjoyed the other courses as much.

At work I watch my male colleagues, and hear them on their cell phones with their wives who may be half a world away. What do they feel so far from home? Their contracts are extended and when do they get to go home? I don’t know if I could stay so far from home. Although I am far from Jamaica, somehow Italy feels like home (or does it?). Anyway, I’m not married to a person living on a farm half way around the world.

I don’t feel 100 percent. I ate bad liver on Monday and have not felt well ever since. I ate in the cafeteria. Today I age gnocchi, little gluey balls of pasta with tomato stuff on top. The cook has changed and I think I can tell there is no passion there and no taste buds. Maybe he or she smokes. This is why I prefer the grilled meat that they cook in front of you.

Wednesday 29 to Friday 31 October

No entries.

09 Poggio, September 2003

09 Poggio, September 2003

Monday 1 September

Finally I’ve purchased a monthly train ticket, making me feel I’m finally part of the commuting world. This month feels like a dud, because my very sweet boss seems unable to delegate, which isn’t good for his health or home life.

I find my neighbour Paul on the train, asleep. I’d like to be asleep myself, but I find I can sleep on the train, but only going homewards. Even better, if I’m slightly windswept and damp, I fall asleep in the warmth and all the steamed up windows of the carriage.

At work I see that the young man Andrea has a music playing gadget. He listens to music all day as he works at the computer. Good idea. I think about purchasing something like this myself. However, I realise I am still not caught up with the present and the new devices have yet to become familiar to me. Maybe it would help to own one.

The situation in Iraq deteriorates, which means that my little job will probably be one of the first to go. What is the use of a reports editor when people on the ground are unable to travel around to visit the projects and are unable to spend time writing them up because they are already evacuated?

Porgy was walking around this morning. I hope he’ll be on his feet when I return. I suppose that two days of antibiotics will be enough. Last night I had to feed the poor dog by hand. One lump of meat from his favourite can of dog food at a time. He must be feeling very sick.

Vincenzo was here. When he heard that I wanted to lock the gate from the main field onto the road he wanted to bring his own lock. This is the fake lock. It looks locked from the outside but it is only a hook on a chain with the closed padlock showing on the outside. I try to explain that we are not living in the same world he was born into. Where people probably respected property, and a lock on a chain meant, “We would rather you didn’t enter here, thank you.”

He shows me the extra gate along the lane. How many other people know about it? Not very secure to have locked gates onto the road and a locked gate from the house onto the lane, and then just along the fence there is another unlocked gate to come in and out as you please. Where is the sense in that? Of course, if people want to come onto the land they have only to bend themselves in two and squeeze through the rungs of the rotting wooden gate.

I’m glad that Vincenzo told me about the little gate at the corner of the property. It saves me the embarrassment of having to tell him that he must call before he comes so that I can make sure the car gate is open.

In the evening when I return Matisse is still missing. I walk around calling him. Then do a final walk around and go to lock the gate onto the lane. I hear a meow and then he comes galloping up from the bottom of the garden. As I write this he is zonked out on the ironing board. Must have been a great cat day.

Dear Pat. I told her I wasn’t going to fix the kitchen, only buying a new stove. “I know what this means,” she says all bristling disapproval. “You’re going to buy a new horse. A Tiger stallion.” Well, I had talked about it. These Tiger horses are spotted like the Appaloosa leopards, but they have a gait. Meaning that when trotting, or walking, the left legs then the right legs move together. I’ve never ridden a horse like this. Some say it takes getting used to and then it is very comfortable. So, I’d talked about buying one of these horses and bringing it to Italy, as in what if and wouldn’t it be fine? I would just about have exactly the amount to ship a pregnant mare…and then what?

Something else about the Tiger horses is that they accept “no colour” horses. The Appaloosa folks register them putting an N in front of the number, meaning they have no markings. Fact is I know that you need a no colour and a colour to get a colour. There may even be a higher probability that you get an Appaloosa with spectacular markings from a no colour mare or stallion, as in when you outcross to a Quarter Horse or Arab, the foal may be highly coloured.

As I understand from the reading I’ve been doing, on the subject of the genetics of Appaloosa coat colour, it is the lp gene that gives the white coat pattern over colour. The other thing I have read is that the “ghost” or “few spot” leopards also produce coloured foals. The lp gene is supposed to be the dominant gene – but it has not yet proved to be with my foals.

Tuesday 2 September

My contract has been extended and I’m not sure how this makes me feel. I was cheered up somewhat when I found Cherry on the train, she’d been on holiday. Where did she go? “Lake Bracciano,” she says. Meaning that she stayed at home. When you live in a holiday destination I don’t see much point in going to another holiday destination. Well, for a change of scene or the thrill of getting on a plane, bus or train and coming home again.

I’d been thinking of an early night when I returned yesterday. No such luck. Porgy had a huge hole in him. The vet said it was another dog bite, but I wonder if it was Porgy himself licking, licking all day long. Then the vet showed me the bite marks. He sewed everything up again, as he whistled. A woman wanted to talk to him and he told her that he had a dog under anaesthetic, not true at that point, and it would be twenty minutes. It was longer. The woman turned out to be a blond, chunky girl in a very expensive car. I would be nervous of her too. She seemed more male than female, even though she was blond and dressed in a floating white dress that resembled a night gown. She seemed to be wanting to invite the veterinarian somewhere. He seems quite young; maybe in his 30s.

Which reminds me. Tina at work thought I was 35. I didn’t say anything. I think I may decide to become like my Grandmother Eva and stop telling folks my age.

Both Navaho and Porgy went missing. Then Porgy turned up suddenly and silently like a spirit dog. I immediately let him into the house and put a paper bag on his head to prevent him licking or biting at the stitches, it was off his head in exactly 12 seconds. So I taped the plastic reflector, usually used to reflect sunlight out of a car in the summer. I hope he survives this. I tell him he is a good dog and he wags his tail. He looks completely ridiculous with the long tube shape of the blue plastic on his head. This is only until I can buy him a proper plastic collar for wounded dogs.

Wednesday 3 September

In the morning little cat was let out. Poor Porgy is tied up to the table leg with his head wrapped up in the plastic window shield so he can’t bite himself or get into trouble. I bought a plastic collar for him, but found it needed to be attached to a dog collar. I think a muzzle might work better.

I’d dreamed that I took some of Judith’s family to a big sports event. I was with a large number of people. Some of the dream felt threatening to me because there were Africans dressed in traditional beads and grass skirts. However, one African turned out to be an old man sitting on a box who smiled kindly. So I knew the Africans were guardians, not aggressive. In the dream, Judith called to tell me she was ill and would not be able to make it. “What about my daughter Sophie?” she says. I could not hear what was being said. “I will come and get her”. I told her. It was something about the Olympics, trials, trials and trials of trials. Trials for teenagers and children who were Olympic material.

So, I was thinking of this child who was not allowed to fulfil her potential. I spoke out loud – in my dream – “She always does this”. I said, “She always gets sick when her children have to do something.” I felt angry and frustrated with Judith (myself, if we remember that we are everyone in the dream and everyone in the dream is us). So I know I am not fulfilling my own potential with my dream; with my life.

Matisse has disappeared. Last time I saw him he was galloping about expressing great joy that I was taking things to the cosmic dump. He came back to eat. Now I hear cat sounds of claws being sharpened against wood, but no sign of cat.

There is a history to the woods I’m living beside. They now all belong to the Odescalchi family. Maybe they once belonged to the Orsini who were the first owners of the castle. Then they went bankrupt in the 1500s (?) and sold it on with all the land to the Odescalchi. Poggio is a group of a few houses. Some of them date back to Mediaeval times. Where I live was built 30 years ago. Fairly modern but no thought of heat conservation in the winter.

Thursday 4

No entry.

Friday 5 September

Did not manage to write anything yesterday because for the past few days it seems I’ve been running to catch up with myself. I raced home yesterday. Was on the train when a colleague came and sat next to me. Then Cherry showed up. I’m no longer surprised at these coincidences. The colleague was yawning a lot. Interesting to note that when I told him to go to sleep and I’d wake him up near his stop; he stopped yawning.

At Poggio, Claudio came to hammer the piece of wood above the windows into the wall properly. He messed up my new paint job. At least I know where the paint is to fix it. I asked him to look at the gate, which he tells me has been forced. I mentioned this to Vincenzo who was floating around at the time. He said he didn’t think so. The fence hadn’t been fixed, said Vincenzo, because Rosanno had found the ground too hard to put the fence posts in. Maybe Rosanno didn’t want to do the job because he knows he won’t be paid. I’ll ask him.

As I left for work the big dogs were barking. I saw what I think is the dog that bit Porgy. A huge dark coloured dog with a white chest. He has a big square head and a docked tail. He has a big enough head and jaws that he could have been responsible for the big hole in Porgy’s behind.

Saturday 6 September

I was awakened from a deep sleep by a dreadful sound coming from the kitchen. Porgy with the tunnel of plastic attached to his head had climbed the step ladder to get onto the top of the kitchen cabinet. Why I don’t know. Maybe he felt if the cats went there must be a good tasty reason for him to try it too.

Mess. I tied him up outside while I cleaned up. Then I heard a frightened whine. I opened the door. Navaho was there, probably wondering what all the fuss was about. Porgy was brought in again.

At work people come into the office to count spaces and people. I said that about six more could fit in there. I was joking. It didn’t look like these people would know a joke or have a sense of humour. They look like the furniture police.

Sunday 7 September

I went for a walk looking for Porgy. I’d let him out with the plastic collar and thought he wouldn’t be able to get through the fence with such a hat on his head. A nice man with a nice dog and a nice basket of mushrooms was in the woods. He had seen a black dog with a white Elizabethan collar running around. He told me where to look. While I was out there I saw my old cooker, the one the house owners had told me they would take to the dump. It gleamed at me in the woods. I don’t know why finding the old gas cooker in the woods makes me feel there’s some kind of hole in the day.

Then there were three rifle shots, and I imagined that Porgy had been surprised trespassing into someone’s chicken coop. Then a hunting horn sounded. I think of life without Porgy. I liked this dog, but there was always something strange about his eyes. Then again, he never came when I called his name. Annie tells me that if a dog misbehaves, ignoring a dog will bring it back into line. She said her husband thought she was crazy. Anyway, I don’t think this will work with Porgy. Annie’s Yorkshire Terrier is very intelligent and probably picks up on the subtleties of a human ignoring him and possibly puts two and two together. Porgy wouldn’t give a damn.

Monday 8 September

Anger gets me up in the morning. Anger gives me the energy to feed the horses, take the dog for a walk, drive to the train, get on the train, get to work.

Matisse wanted to go out today until I took him out in my arms in the pouring rain, lightening and thunder and he decided against it. There was. He goes back inside and settles down in the new favourite spot on the bed in the studio. He watches me fly around the house and seems to understand, in his cat way, that he is stuck inside all day. When I come back inside to make sure the burner is unplugged Porgy gets up. It is his way of telling me he would now like to pee. I’ve already taken him out on an unproductive tour of the wet field. Porgy doesn’t like the rain and seems to be able to hold his pee for a very long time on wet days.

It was on Saturday, when I was taking an after lunch nap, that the Africans showed up. I know it was them by the music playing in their car with the roof the size of a football field. I heard banging. At the time I thought it was the neighbours, but it was raining. As I looked out the window I saw the African’s car backing slowly up the lane, a car was entering. Later, coming back from doing my shopping, I saw an African sitting at the side of the road by the fountain outside the gym with all his plastic bags around him. The car, an unmistakable dead berry colour, was parked by the rubbish bins, at the side under the trees.

I spoke to Penny, who’d left two messages for me. I’d called her back. She was in a rush. Had to go to the school chapel. Bryn, her youngest son, was furious. Later she called me back. I was in the middle of painting, badly. What I like about painting is that I can work to pull a bad painting together, make it interesting, fill it with colour and life. Clean up the edges, make things right, put the colours down. Sometimes I spend a whole day thinking about my painting, thinking about where I will put certain colours. I do a lot of painting in my head, a necessity since I am often on a train or in an office in front of a quietly blinking computer screen.

It is raining. What a joy! I like the rain because I spent three years of my life in Jamaica during the worst years of drought. Rain means life-giving water. Rain makes the grass grow and the trees sing. We, as cattle farmers, worried about such things.

Tuesday 9 September

The cat Matisse, stays in again. I can’t spend time waiting for the cat to come back. He has his own world in the big woods. However this means crossing the road with sometimes very fast cars and some days I can’t bear thinking about it. It seems to me he spends too much time hanging out on the road. Sometimes he even lies down in the middle. Is it warm? Is it comfortable? He blinks at me from there, me with my hair standing straight up on my head.

Wednesday 10 September

Matisse was where he should not have been. On the ground, on the road outside the gate. I tried to catch him and he climbed a tree. Everything a big game. Judith passed. Did she slow down? She was on her way to drop Paul off at the station. I didn’t see him on the train. While waiting for the train in the rain Cherry arrived and I went into Rome in her company.

An Italian colleague at work spends a lot of time talking to me about the difference between efficacy and efficiency. I admit, I had to look efficacy up. It means the link between cost and action. He tells me about the previous English language editor. “That girl….” he says, “she would tell me a word did not exist in the English language”. He pauses, “I looked it up and it did.” I had met this English language editor, so I knew what he was talking about. He goes on to tell me that the words they argued about were from Latin or Greek.

She also changed things. This I know from having watched her edit. She would start at the beginning of the document and just re-write. You can’t do this as an editor. You have to read everything first. I was taught to read through without a pen in the hand, which is almost impossible to do. After you know what you are dealing with, and are sure that you understand the content, then pick up the red pen and mark up the hard copy.

The Economist style guide advises doing one editing job at a time. Meaning if you are doing a complicated edit with tables, figures and graphs to do tables, then figures, then graphs. One similar job after the other. I have always had to read through a document at least five times. Some of the documents I get must be turned into some kind of English first, then I print out to read and to edit.

At last I’ve been given a real editing job to do. Two volumes on Hydrogeology in Iraq. I find this interesting.

All day I worried about my cat. Strangely, I don’t worry if I don’t see him before I leave. I do worry if I catch sight of him. Odd. Once he was in the big wood. He gets a different expression in the wild, while he goes around marking his territory. He turns (frighteningly) down the road towards the big dog’s house. Where he goes from there I don’t know. Once I caught him on the same route with Trusty trailing behind him and Houdini sitting by the gate at the bottom of the garden.

I’m sitting on the train. I find that the girl sitting across from me is behaving aggressively with her foot. There is a ledge, and I have set my foot on it, as I always do. Maybe she thinks I am taking up too much room with my pointy-toed cowboy boots. I must be invading her personal space.

Thursday 11 September

No rain today.

Matisse did not seem to want to go out. He woke me up at 5.26am and was curled up on the chair in the kitchen when I left to take Porgy for a walk. Porgy is still not used to being on the lead although he has learned to do all his pees and poohs while being, as it were, tied to me. He has also learned that he can eat and drink with his Elizabethan collar on, but that he can’t get to the itchy spots. Now I only hoped I turned off the clock alarm. There is always something I’m worrying about.

Saw Paul, one of my neighbours, on the platform, dressed in his outdoor coat. He was standing beside a couple. The man was wearing a t-shirt, the woman was also lightly dressed. Perhaps they are husband and wife, Paul’s relatives. Obviously English, being so lightly dressed in the gathering cold. I had already decided not to sit with anyone I knew on the train because I was feeling so tired and needed a nap.

I had to go to the bank at FAO to get my money, which had arrived. Unfortunately the woman I knew was not there and was sent out for further pieces of identification. When I returned there was a man I recognized ahead of me in the line. I asked him if he was an American, because of his accent. He turned out to be one of the more hostile Canadians who get prickly when you make this kind of mistake. I’ve met a number of them both inside and outside Canada. I didn’t tell him how much I’d hated living in Canada, mostly because of what seems like nine months of intensely cold winter. Maybe he softened when I told him I’d lived thirteen years in Terana (Toronto), I pronounced it as I’d been taught to by native Torontonians. They had told me that when crossing the border coming back into Canada, I should say Terana so that immigration officers would know I’d lived there for some time.

Later, I came to understand that I’d probably suffered from SAD or Seasonal Adjustment Deficiency, or whatever it is called. My friend Liza has special lights she turns on when the weather gets bleak and grey for days on end and she feels herself dipping into a depression. She says they help. I must admit that my bright halogen light, which I use when painting has the same effect. However, I don’t know if it is because I’m painting that I feel better or that the frequency of the light coming from the halogen lamp has this affect. Colours are brighter under the lamp. This also affects the way I paint.

Some chatty woman has been paid to go around the building to teach people how they should sit at their computers. Well, I suppose if she comes and tells you how to sit up properly and what kind of eye glasses you should be wearing (without frames) and you don’t do what she says, then you can’t turn around and sue the organization because they’ve not given you the right chair to sit on.

Friday 12 September

No entry.

Saturday 13 September

I bumped into Paul and a colleague from Africa on the train. This was a sweet man, higher up the ladder than Paul. Small boned, thin and short. I liked his energy, which felt light and as though he was used to laughing.

I paid a deposit on the cooker I’m buying. At the shop they call it a cucina, they also call the room you cook in a cucina. Claudio calls this particular type of equipment a macchina al gas. I suppose it all depends on which area of Bracciano you come from.

I have seen a pretty heifer, maybe more, in the woods across the road. Well, if someone puts their cows in the woods I could put my horses in the woods. I don’t know how long they would last there.

I would love to know why my black and white cat Matisse disappears and I’m always left with the two orange cats that don’t have anything to do with me, except that I now feed them every day. Pat says it is because Matisse is younger and is still exploring new territory, whereas the older orange cats have already been there and done that.

We, cat and me, did not wake until 8.30am. We had both been up during the night. I see that he hears sounds and reacts to them seconds before I do. I find this interesting. I suppose his ears are so much more efficient than mine. I think the creature we both heard was a tiny insect. Not so tiny, strangely shaped. I am afraid that I ended up tipping it down the toilet. I suppose I could have put it outside, I’d never seen one of these insects before, but then I didn’t have my glasses on.

Sunday 14 September to Friday 19 September

No entry.

Saturday 20 September

I’ve not been writing my diary because I’ve been forgetting it on the bedroom floor, along with my cell phone, when I rush out to work.

Little cat was batting me on the nose to wake me up early this morning. If I’d let him out he’d probably have returned already. As usual it is Houdini and Trusty who keep me company. I’ve called the other cat Trusty in the hopes his character will change. This is an experiment.

It is nippy out. While I was out riding, I saw that they’ve cleared land for building. There are huge trucks going up and down the road. This means more traffic. This is happening out of sight of Luigi and Anthea’s house. I wonder if they even know about it. I know Luigi rides, but I don’t know if he rides along the paths I do. I don’t think even Flora goes into that part of the woods. It used to be one of my short rides when I had Rais.

When I left work on Friday, the unbearable Dutch colleague said he didn’t know when work started or ended. I said neither did I. I should have told him that I did know the train schedule. As always I am very much aware that folks pick up points if they are seen at their computers late into the night. “You don’t care;” he tells me. About what? I should have asked, but the train was about to pass. The metro passes at 5pm and if I am on that train I can catch mine to Bracciano which leaves at 5.10pm.

I seem to owe a lot of money at the bank and have no idea how this has happened.

Sunday 21 September

I am up at 6.30am. Pat is coming in the morning, so I won’t start on my editing until later.

Matisse joined Porgy and me for a walk. He skips and jumps and races up trees; skips sideways at Porgy who, I see, has not poohed for days. I put him in the car and took him down to visit Merry, who seems disoriented. She did not recognise me. All the stallions called to her and she lifted her tail; she’s on heat. I’m glad to hear Remo won’t begin to train her until Monday. I lead her down the lane and she makes a chewing motion licking her lips. Maybe she thinks I’ve abandoned her or that she won’t be coming back to Poggio. I hope she does return, but then nothing is written in stone.

Dogs are barking in the woods and Matisse is nowhere to be seen. I heard someone shout. It’s difficult to tell how far away sounds are; since it is so quiet. Surely Matisse would not allow himself to get caught by a dog. But if there is more than one dog, this makes it more difficult for a cat to escape. In the morning I notice that Matisse disappears when he sees that Houdini is being fed. These cats have some kind of friendship.

Liza also dropped by with her friend Jill who I notice shakes. I wonder if she has Parkinson’s, like my grandmother did. She was very quiet. She had a glass of wine at four in the afternoon. I joined her. Liza drank a Pepsi and then a glass of wine. I shared my new store-bought cake with them and they agreed that it was very tasty.

Monday 22 September to Friday 26 September

No entry.

Saturday 27 September

Again I’ve not written for a while. I’ve been working in combative situations with the colleagues at work. The Dutch man and the woman from Madagascar have ganged up on me. After all they sit on the same side of the long table opposite me. I am a little saddened to see that Madagascar is slowly being pushed aside as the Dutch man learns to do the tricky parts of her job.

Today I go to see Merry and carry her a heap of fallen apples. I need to buy dog food, horse feed, cat food, me food. I must give Lele the money for the hay. I also need to find the number for the hay man, which I had been keeping on the back of an envelope and in a diary, which has gone on vacation without telling me.

The beautiful Serb consultant has gone away. I’ve been doing some work on his books and was struck by how polite this giant of a man is. I approached him one day while he was working at the computer and he leapt to his feet as though I was the Queen of England herself. There is no need, I told him, you will just make me nervous. When he leaves he shakes my hand and I am amazed at the firmness and gentleness of this tall man.

I must put the definitely summer clothes away and look for heavy fabric for curtains. I really want to clean the house so I will buy some rubber gloves, which I think are really plastic. They never last very long and my fingers go through them too quickly. I had started on the bathroom floor with a sponge and bleach, on my knees. The two bathrooms are not large so it is actually easier to get into the corners crawling around on all fours. I have an Austrian friend who is horrified that I use a mop. She is in her 70s and still crawls around on her wooden floors cleaning and waxing.

The electricians came. I don’t know why I felt like Pinocchio being visited by the cat and the fox. I like these two young men. I don’t think they are dishonest. However, I know that one knows my landlords and has no respect for them. He wants to do a good job making the electricity safe for me. He hopes that I will not have to pay him and that the landlords will pay.

Sunday 28 September

I have no electricity. I hope this is something affecting the area and not only me. Having lived in Jamaica I’m used to brown outs. Once I lived a few days totally without electricity because I had forgotten to pay the bill, which may never have arrived.

I only discovered the brown out was only affecting me when I saw my neighbours outside lights gleaming across the valley. We had no telephone then, so finding out such details usually meant waiting until daylight to go across to the neighbour to ask if they had electricity. This may have meant having to stay for coffee, tea or a drink before leaving. Nothing was simply drive up and ask and get your answer and drive away again.

A friend has called to ask if I want her old ladder. I’m beginning to be tired of people calling to ask if I want their old things. I may have been able to use a ladder. Now I have two that suit me quite well. One is aluminium and fairly tall and the other is a short, pretty wooden ladder that is set up in the kitchen near the window so Matisse can see out in comfort. A neighbour called to ask if I wanted all her old newspapers to build a fire. I told her that I read bulky newspapers myself and that I don’t need any more, thank you.

Went down to see Merry who may have wanted to be taken out for a walk to eat grass. Remo did not have time to talk because he was involved in buying a tiny wedge of land from his uncle. His father, Donato, has not been well, but the two days of influenza seem to have done him good. He looked well, maybe because of the forced rest; although there was no laughter in him and his voice had gone.

In the end I did take Merry down the lane to the lake. I’ve put her head collar and lead rope in the car so I don’t spend time looking for one once down at Remo’s. She has put more spots on. Remo tells me she will. He finishes my sentences for me. I say, “I have not separated the foal yet..” and he says, “because there is barbed wire.” I say, “I need to,” he says, “do the vaccinations”. Does he do this because he is a trainer and has developed a sixth sense or all horse folks talk about the same things year in and year out?

Tequila, friends laugh when I say this, is my medicine. I find it knocks a cold out in record time. I don’t know if it’s the tequila or the masses of lime or lemon I squeeze into it that is the cure. I don’t actually feel like drinking tequila until the summer. So if I do drink it in the winter it is for this reason, cold medicine. What is even better is hot buttered rum. Or tea with rum poured into it. I’m no drinker (anymore) so I put my liquor into other liquids and avoid drinking them straight.

A cat is looking through the window. It looks more like Trusty. I see that Houdini is darker and has been limping. His leg is swollen, he may have been stung, or bitten. I see that he eats and purrs when I go to look at his foot. I saw him go out to the barn. I told him he was staying in, but I think he would go mad if I shut him inside.

Monday 29 and 30 Tuesday September. No entries.