06 Poggio June 2003

POGGIO, June 2003

Sunday 1 June

It was a sunny day and I prepared ten panels with rabbit skin glue and then gesso. The surfaces are not smooth as glass, but the way I paint I don’t think that matters.

There are scouts in the woods across the road. They stayed up shouting at each other until quite late. Actually, it was not so dreadful because there was so much happiness. I’d tied Porgy up because I can only imagine how much barking he can cram in with all these young visitors in the woods.

There is very little grass in the field. Some rain has fallen and I can see that I’ll have to tie up the kiwi vines because the flowers are so heavy they cause the branches to break off and fall to the ground.

Cherokee has been limping because a colony of tics is living in her paw pad. She allowed me to look, although she rumbled at me the whole time, seeming to say, “If I bite you please forgive me because I will have done it without thinking.” I pulled a tic off and treated her with Front Line. I am infected with fleas because they’re all hanging out in the bottom of the chest of drawers, where I will put bay leaves. In Jamaica I used to put Sour Sop leaves under the bed to take care of the flea populations that sprouted there left by the cats and dogs. I’m not sure that it worked.

I can see Pepita’s ribs. Donato once said that you should barely see the ribs of a healthy horse. Now Pepita has her head through the gate to see if there is any food. I think they miss the human company. Merry is coming in for a drink of water. No. She came to look at me sitting out at the stone table outside the kitchen, writing. She was being tortured by flies and I managed to get fly repellent on her face without being kicked.

The horses thought they would come into the garden, where Matisse was ready to play with them. However, I don’t think he has realised there are now two. He and Merry have touched noses a couple of times. Matisse gets up high on the gate post where Merry raises her muzzle to meet his tiny pink nose.

I have been feeding apples to Merry. Pepita does not yet know what to make of them.

Monday 2 June

Cherokee, who never looks very happy, looks more cheerful. Matisse prised me out of bed at 6.14am, I suppose because Houdini was around. Now they’re both galloping around the house. Eight cat feet on the tiles are not silent.

I think it was the other red cat that bit Houdini. This outsider cat arched his back and rubbed himself under Porgy’s chin. Matisse my black and white cat chased Porgy the black and white dog. Poor Porgy gets tied up, because this seems to keep the other dogs quiet. Cuts the barking down to silence.

Pat came to lunch, in at one and out at six. Folks who come here don’t seem to want to leave.

I’m fortunate to be here. A nice house in a beautiful woods. However, no job. I never seem to get the combination right. Such as, good job, own nice house in beautiful location with wonder relationship with sweet, sensitive, very wealthy man who loves horse, dogs, cats and me.

I think of Virginia Wolfe. I admit that I’ve never read any books by her because she killed herself. I’ve been too afraid to be drawn into her depression. I’m afraid to recognise my own demons. It is for this reason that I read comedy or biographies, or books on science. I write this because Pat lent me The Hours to read. She tells me I would appreciate it better had I read Virginia Wolfe. I’ve been told that our depression allows us to see the world from a different perspective. I think it was Caroline who really helped me get through it and over it and to throw it out, or to treat it like a cold. Get into bed, drink lots of water and read a good book.

Tuesday 3 June

The pink horse (Merry) is no longer pink. My little horse who was once a red roan is turning white.

Luigi and Anthea’s horses are back on the other side of the fence where Merry is now calling to them.

While Bettina and Julia were here I found two little bird wings on the floor in the gallery/living room. I am very distressed by the thought that there might be a little bird out there without its wings. Pat assures me that the rest of the bird is down inside one of the cats.

The grass is growing nicely in the shade. Not the right choice of plant for someone who does not own a lawnmower. I smell the heavy sweet scent of the Stephanotis growing at the front of the house. Pat tells me the smell gives her a headache. I’m sorry for her. Then, I didn’t like the smell of jackfruit until I tasted it.

From where I sit I do not see the branches of the trees, only thick leaves.

Wednesday 4 June

The dogs went mad last night. Yesterday they did the same thing and I saw a line of baby pigs trotting down the pathway in the woods across the road. Cherokee had her sad dark brown eyes fixed on something out of my line of vision. It turned out to be a man who threw something in the rubbish container on the corner and turned back down the road whence he had come. I saw that he had a moustache.

Does this same man clear his throat on the other side of the hedge? The air is so still right now that sounds must travel further and more efficiently. All the air molecules standing close together with open hands and passing the sounds along with care.

I have to go into Rome and hope that Matisse shows up before I go. He seems too young and foolish to be left out on his own while I’m away. Yesterday he was waiting at the gate to be let out onto the road into the big wide world. Then he was down by the corner of the garden where I see a hole in the old gate. I’d been intent on keeping the dogs in, but now I don’t know if I can ever keep a cat in. Houdini is out all the time and not much seems to happen to him; he does get bitten badly and the bites become infected and I end up having to nurse him back to health.

I have done something I am living to regret. I threw out my paint covered clothes. I have others that can move up (or down) into their slot, but not as efficiently. Maybe I should only have thrown the shirt out and not the pants. The clothes get so stiff with paint and stick out. In the increasing heat they are uncomfortable to wear. I could have put them away for the summer and thought about it again in the cool of autumn. It was the long sleeves, wet around my wrists that bothered me the most.

Thursday 5 June

At Bracciano station there were a man and a woman trying to buy train tickets for nineteen people. The ticket seller was being nice to them. I know these guys; although we are not on a first name basis. I kept asking the couple why they left home if all they could do was laugh about how people could not understand them. The man tells me softly that he was not doing that. A young man beside me steps in to take over the translation and speed up the ticket buying process.

At the art store I buy gesso di Bolognia. I saw there was also a gesso di Madrid. The man at the art store recognises me and explains how these types of gesso are mixed to give a smoother surface. Rolando talks of surfaces like glass. I realise I should sandpaper the panels before I paint on the rabbit skin glue, I should also sandpaper in between the layers of gesso.

Visited Flora in her shop. The same paintings on the walls and the same odd artefacts. In front of two men she tells me in English that I must never think of getting married; that getting married is to have children; that a man in the house is a heavy thing. I keep silent because sometimes in these situations I have too many words to say and know I don’t have the time to say them.

Madia shows up while I’m visiting Flora. She kisses me with such tenderness. I had never understood if she was actually going out with Aldo an old beau of mine, or if they were only ever close friends. Flora said something about this and I said, “I know, Madia told me.” Flora seemed shocked. I have always admired Madia, who once followed a man from Kazakhstan to Rome with her small son; he may have neglected to tell her he was married.

Returning from Rome on the train, there was a young woman dressed as an art student reading a huge book on art. I read those books myself, but not to take an exam. When I went to art college in Canada I dressed like the young woman in clothes that did not quite hang together right. Maybe I dressed as I thought an artist would dress, but I can’t remember actually thinking that way at the time. I didn’t get up in the morning and think I’ll wear my paint covered blue jeans and paint covered tee shirt because an artist would wear these clothes. I remember most her huge black hot, sweat producing boots.

Cherokee is lying close by. Is she sleeping because she is tired or is she on the way out? She whimpers when I touch the lump on her chest. I know a few dogs with these lumps. If she ever seems to be in too much pain, then I will…I don’t know. We’ll see what I will do if ever we get to that point. I don’t touch the lump. For now she seems to be OK. No pain. Just sleeping.

Friday 6 June

My sister Melanie had another baby. She e-mailed Patrice. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. I’m afraid the children will grow up not knowing they have an aunt. I’m hurt she never once told me she was expecting a baby. However, I do know the baby was planned. The tea-leaf reader saw him coming and Melanie was very pleased. My sister had told me how she hadn’t expected to enjoy being a mother so much. The man she married was already a father of three and, I think, a good one.

I call the landlords. I know Vincenzo has been here. Water in the tank for the horses. Grass cut. Ladder moved. I do not find him.

Renzo the man from the household appliance store was here. He showed up on a fine old motorbike, tall and lean looking in his blue jeans and blue-jeans shirt. He was a lot different than he was the first time I met him. I felt he had acted like a subservient being. This time he seemed to be himself; although I don’t know him. He even asked me about the horses and said a neighbour of his may have hay I could buy. His son is a blond Adonis, someone I might think of sending on an errand to climb a glass mountain to bring my brother or my sister back from the evil princess or prince.

Julia has called to tell me she will definitely be coming to help me put the paintings up for my show. I was thinking I would be doing this on my own.

The dogs certainly do not get themselves up until after eight o’clock. I open the window to find Navaho stretched across the driveway by the gate. He doesn’t even lift his head or open his eyes. Cherokee has just surfaced from the bottom of the garden. I usually find her sleeping at the front of the house where the stephanotis is in blooming and scenting the warm air.

So peaceful.

Went to Rolando’s art class. He tells me my paintings are beautiful. OK. But why am I so dissatisfied? He seems to want me to be doing something different. He may suggest figures. I want to do a long painting, the little laughing nude woman. The rest of the class tell me I am fast. I am, says Rolando, because I work with colour and do not have to bother with chiaroscuro, light and shade Not that I would know what that really means. He makes sure that I understand there will be another lesson on Monday.

Saturday 7 June

I think you begin to develop another sense working with horses, it begins as a survival tactic. I begin to “hear” movement or feel that I “hear”. Do I? It is difficult to say.

I think of writing. Maybe Lorne Brown, an old storytelling friend would help. Last I heard from him was when he wrote to tell me Alice Kane had died. He wrote to say that before she’d died she’d been moved to a new nursing home and had brightened up considerably, being able to recognise her friends and join in conversations. How old was she? Ninety-five? 100?

How can I turn my life into Grimm Tales that have journeys and tasks in them and end up resolved and happy. I don’t know. Garrison Keillor said that he was the master of the long pause. I can top that. I may not even begin.

Sunday 8 June

Sophie, Judith and Paul’s daughter, rides by on her horse. She doesn’t stop, wave or say hello. I find this very English.

I see pictures of myself from the Caribbean party I held at the house. My eyes look BLUE? and my hair looks too red. It IS red, says Pat. I think of going natural, being like those woman with their long faded hair, natural, of accepting the passing of the years. Sophie rides by again on Toby, her Welsh Cob, who turns to look at me. He at least recognises my voice.

When I returned from Rome the man was here with the tractor to cut the grass in the fields. What a tragedy. The weeds were so bad that I asked him to cut both sides. I was sick of the weeds, even though the horses would have eaten them anyway. As soon as he’d finished cutting, the rain fell hard for half an hour. The horses escaped onto the side of the field that was cut first. They galloped up and down and then let me catch them with a bucket of feed.

I was invited to a party at Remo’s. It was down where the horses are stabled, a few tables and some folks I recognised. I was called by his parents Simonetta and Donato to sit with them. I learned that I must let the horses eat the grass in the field until MARCH. Then I must take them off the side I want to leave to make hay, which should be cut in MAY (not June). I said I wanted to improve the hay and Donato said he would be putting in alfalfa. After they had finished with his land they could come up to me. This happens in September. By September it is hoped that I have some kind of job.

I asked Donato to name my new little foal, as I’m not good at names. He tells me he keeps a list of names and reuses them over the years in cycles, and here I thought it was spontaneous. He tells me that the word RED for all the horse names stands for Remo, Emmanuel and Donato. I hear myself speak miserably bad Italian because I do not see anyone. I seem to have got to the party a little late as dinner was in the process of being served. The steaks were lovely. From Tolfa. There was a really good wine from Cerveteri.

On returning to Poggio I find the horses are on the wrong side of the fence. I expected the worst. The wooden pole I’d used to barricade the entrance to the next field in front of the barn was down. I managed to get the horses back on the side I wanted them. Pepita has a bad barbed wire scratch on the inside of one of her front legs. I touched it with disinfectant. I will have to get a halter on her. Will keep both horses in for a few days and work on this. No good having a horse that I cannot touch.

Monday 9 June

Julia helped me hang the show. She’s good. I put the paintings around and she made suggestions. I forget that Bettina, her mother, is a painter and Julia probably helped her set up shows in the past. I made Bettina laugh when I reported that Julia had told me, “It is not everyday that the daughter of Bettina Shaw-Lawrence helps hang a show.” I’d told Julia I’ be setting off in the morning all tense and nervous. I’ve been told I must do more shows so that I won’t be so nervous. I think my prices are too low. My paintings used to cost 400,000 lire in the old days and I’ve placed them at 200 euro. Kurt from England tells me I should quote my prices in Sterling. He tells me that no one will buy an inexpensive painting. He may be right.

Because of the hay crises, there isn’t any hay. Donato tells me about cubes of hay. It turns out that these are pellets. I find that I’m a traditionalist. Actually I’m a beginner and would prefer to deal with old style hay made up into bales. I still have 25 bales of hay. I have been giving the horses about one bale and 1.5 kg of feed and they seem to be calmer and happier. They are probably not as hungry. Donato tells me to feed the horses up to 10 kg, which includes hay plus feed everyday. The one bale should last one horse three days.

I had lunch with Edith (from Trinidad). She tells me that Cynthia’s sister died suddenly. I hear she was considered very overweight. I tell Edith about Mummy. I (we, no one) ever saw her as overweight. She was light on her feet, well dressed, full of life. When she was comatose in the hospital it took six nurses to wash her and turn her over in the bed. I’d not noticed, until then, that my mother was a whale.

Tuesday 10 June

Came back from my painting class in Viterbo. My farmer neighbours Rosanno and Luigi were here baling up my bad hay. Actually Luigi drives a Cotral bus and Rosanno owns his own heavy equipment, so they are modern farmers. Rosanno told me I’d have collected good hay if I’d kept the horses on one side of the field and left the other just for hay. As I say, I’m a beginner. He tells me I’m not to worry about hay because he’ll have enough to sell me over the winter.

I watch Luigi and Rosanno pick up the bales. The tractor is left to drive itself at a slow speed, giving them enough time to pick up the bales and stack them on the trailer.

Mary Rose was biting Pepita on the rump to make her gallop round the field. This is what Rais used to do to her. Mary Rose also seemed to think she was going to spend the night in the garden. I don’t know how secure the garden is and I know I wouldn’t have slept with her clumping around the house. One thing to have horses in the garden when I can keep an eye on them and another when there is no one to protect my lettuce patch.

I have noticed that the cherries on the old tree are finished. I could have eaten many more. They were really good. The birds have got them as I cannot climb as high as they can get by flying there. Vincenzo had asked me to get someone to cut the dead tree limb. I have a feeling this is a job that he should be arranging and paying for, not me.

Wednesday 11 June

Luigi and Anthea’s five horses are in the field on the other side of the fence. Pepita was no longer interested in hay or feed when she saw them and wanted to run to greet them.

The dogs have been up all night. Matisse (the cat) got me up at dawn, when I turned on the BBC they were talking about it being four o’clock. He had rattled the cat food bags and as I shot out of bed he was looking at me from the door to see what affect this noise would have on me. Later in the morning I chase Matisse, he escapes under a bush and then leaps at me and goes to hide under another bush where he allows me to catch him. I should let him out all day, but it is so hot. This is a two shower day. One in the morning and another tonight.

Simonetta, Remo’s mother, took me to find the feed store. I wouldn’t have found it, as it is not sign posted because it’s a working farm where they manufacture the pellets from grass or alfalfa, so there is no store.

The Bulgarian man who used to work with Roberto was at my gate. He tells me he’s left Roberto (as soon as he’d put him “in regular”). This young man will soon learn that working with Roberto was not such a hell. Roberto works hard and expects the folks who work with him to do the same. He takes them to breakfast and makes sure they stop and have lunch. I know this because I’ve seen when they’ve come to work for me. This Bulgarian wanted to be the boss man, although I saw that he would put down his tools as soon as it was five o’clock and want to go home.

Thursday 12 June

Annie met me at my show and told me she’d asked her husband if she could buy one of my paintings. She tells me he says I’m too expensive. I tell her I lowered my prices. She picked out two paintings and paid me 500 euro on account for the one I’d called Yellow Dawn. I told her how I’d tried to buy a painting back from Aldo, an old beau, and he’d tried to charge me more.

Roberto showed up in the evening. He spent about an hour looking at my neighbour’s jobs, I was there to translate. He says he doesn’t want to spray the olive trees. He says folks who own olives do this themselves. Judith doesn’t want to spray because she has been diagnosed with a type of leukaemia that is “sleeping” at the moment. It takes about a week for the smell to go away and the olive trees are right up close to the house.

The night was quieter, although Cherokee seemed to need to bark sonorously through the night. Once I opened the window to see what all the fuss was about and saw the corner of the garden lit by car headlights, and then the car turned slowly into the roadway beside the house. Maybe they were stopping to throw rubbish into the bins on the corner. Last night I tied Porgy to a tree, he seemed quite content, or resigned. It makes for a much quieter night. The horses were left out in the field in the cool. Now I’ll bring them in when it is hot in the day. On the other hand, I should let them decide whether they want to be in or out.

I see that the field has bald spots. Pity I can’t water the grass.

My stomach was a wreck even before I ate two pieces of chocolate cake and drank a beer. I was in such agony. I put it down to drinking too cold water in this heat. I won’t be doing that again.

The horses are calmly eating the grass left in the garden. Cherokee is softly snoring in her spot by the broad-leafed plant. The stephanotis is in bloom, the scent sweet and heavy. I have opened the front door, which I’ve never used, because I prefer the kitchen side of the house, just so I can enjoy the scent.

I see Sophie on Toby, it is almost dark. I tell her I could rent a horse from Mara and show her some of the trails. She tells me she rides at night because she can’t stand the heat. I was brought up in the heat of Jamaica. Not full time, but long enough to know that heat is something you cannot fight. You must slow down.

Friday 13 June

I’ve decide to buy the “horse nuts” and not bother about trying to look for hay. We are supposed to be living through the hottest days in 50 years. No rain.

I’ve been studying for a course on the environment given through the Open University. As usual, I am not doing what I would have liked to do, which is physics. I thought I’d do something to improve my chances at a job. I’m shocked to read a village was lost when shale was moved to make cement at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. There were only a hundred people in the village, mostly fishermen.

Saturday 14 June

Well, we are to have “the birthday party”. I don’t feel like a party at all. Annie tells me I’m 50 only once in a life time and that I would feel sad if I didn’t do something.

Horrors! The horses are not eating the hay.

I am at the supermarket with Judith and we run into Anthea who tells me someone tried to break into their house with a pick axe. When my dogs bark I don’t always get up to look. I did get up last night, twice. I thought the dogs were barking at the horses, but the horses were lying down at the far corner of the field and the dogs were barking through the gate.

How nice! Matisse stalks by Porgy and the dog opens one eye to look at my cat and then goes back to sleep, possibly glad that Matisse is not attacking him.

My hay-cutting neighbour asked if he’d charged me too much. I told him I’d prefer to pay him 250 euro than an electrician. I think that if he asked me if he charged me too much then maybe he did and is feeling guilty about it. I don’t have a clue how much cutting and baling half a hectare of hay is worth.

Sunday 15 June

Matisse was attempting to wake me. I’d been up already and must have fallen back to sleep. It was 7.45am, late. The orange cats were waiting on the kitchen windowsill, expecting to be fed.

As I rattled the buckets, the horses came in from the field. I realised that it may be impossible to spray Pepita’s small wound unless I have control of her head. It took about 20 minutes to get a halter on. I made her go around the small enclosure and maybe she finally figured it would be less work if she just stood and let me put the halter on. I’m a bit fed up with having to start from scratch every time I need to put medication on her wound.

As I was getting into the car to leave, Vincenzo showed up to look at the “macchina al gas”, which is the old gas cooker. He wanted me to help him haul it outside so he could pull it to bits. It used to be that the town would send someone out to pick up unwanted furniture and equipment. For a small charge they take it directly to the dump. This service seems to have been discontinued when the right leaning politicians took over city hall in Bracciano.

The car’s fan belt broke. I think it broke at the level crossing going down to Remo’s place. I seem to have been able to drive to Anguillara and to Bracciano and back to Poggio. I’d stopped at the gas station and asked Signora Anna if I should always have the battery light on. Now I realise the battery was not charging properly because the fan belt was in shreds. On my safe return to the house, I opened the car hood/bonnet and said to the olive tree, “Someone is looking over me”.

I see that Houdini and Matisse are engrossed in looking for lizards. Matisse was up on the top of the old water trough and Houdini down. Now they’ve switched positions. The lizard looks as though it’s stuck. Not stuck. Turns out there were two lizards, possibly a male and a female. I realise that I know nothing about lizards. Not a thing. Only feel forever shame about the time I allowed one to be shot by Richard, a childhood sometimes friend. I will never forget how it raised its front leg, seeming to plead for mercy, which never came.

Lizards make my skin shiver, but I am getting over this. I see so many of them and try to save as many as I can from Matisse. They have already lost their tail by the time I get to them.

I’d been to visit Rodolfo and Patrizia to ask about hay prices. Patrizia understood completely. I tell her that because I am a foreigner I can’t help but feel I’m being charged more than an Italian. She tells me that this is not true. The truth is that as a single women we are charged more. She assures me that she is always paying a higher price than her neighbours, because she is a woman and not from the area. “And I’m Italian,” she adds.

Monday 16 June

I must now fix the car. Bettina and Julia came to lunch at 12.30pm and left at 6.30pm. We all had a nap. I suppose there is nothing to stop me from just getting up from the table and saying, “I’m off to bed, see you later”. I’d asked Pat to take me to the mechanic. I’d asked Julia, but Bettina said, softly, “She’s not an early riser,” and when I said that Pat was coming at 10.00am she said, “Oh dear!” as though they never saw that time of day.

I am fed up with Pepita acting as though I’m about to club her when I put the halter on. Today, I made hissing sounds with my breath through my teeth, so that when the can with the blue liquid sprays her she will not be afraid. She raises her head. So now I have left the lead rope on her, so that she can begin training herself. Sometimes they get too clever too fast and learn not to step on the rope before they have learned the lesson of “giving”.

Merry still pulls back when I lead her, so now I turn away from her and lean into the rope and she follows. She seems to have decided that there is no more reason to “fight”.

Matisse has taken off. He was under my feet while I was feeding the horses, probably wondering when his turn would come. He woke me early by trampling on me with extremely heavy and pointed cat feet. He meowed loudly and his tail was twitching. I must have gone back to sleep because when I reawakened he was stretched full length beside me relaxed and happy.

A really ugly looking bird has just rested on the fence. Maybe a very large baby bird taking a break from learning to fly. In New Mexico I remember the Blue Jays and the Cardinals, they always surprised me. They would flash by and shine in the sun with their jewel-like colouring, blue or red.

The horses are not eating the hay, which is already mouldy. It emits a great heat, making me think of spontaneous combustion, a thing my father once told me about. How some things can heat from within and burst into flames. I think damp hay in a zinc-covered barn was one of them. I give the horses what I can and wonder where I can put the rest of the hay. At the moment it is in what used to be a garage, and before that it was a stall where cows were kept. The horses don’t look thin, but I wonder if they are just puffed up…with worms or with mouldy hay?

I hear a cat around the corner. Yes. His head comes around the door and disappears again. Sometimes I wonder if I am being watched as much as I watch him.

Peter, my brother, called last night. A quick call to check my address. Our sister Melanie has had a baby boy. I said that I never knew Melanie was even pregnant. “Neither did I!” he tells me. He told me the baby was two months premature and that he’d spoken to Melanie and to Mummy. They tell my brother the baby looks like him.

The horses have been eating the oak tree, meaning that the grass is thin on the ground. It is cooler today, but there is still a heat haze.

Tuesday 17 June

Matisse and Houdini were down by the gate at the corner of the garden. Houdini leapt up onto the gate and Matisse followed him. I was down there like a shot. This is right on the corner of the road where cars whiz by. I call Matisse. Miracle, he turns around and comes back, but then would not let me catch him after he’d found his way back through the gate, which made me wonder if he’d already done this trip before. Up over the gate, over the road, back over the road and through the gate at the bottom, where there is a very large dog-sized hole.

Wednesday 18 June

When the horses are in the garden, I sit at the outside table and hope that this is enough to protect my little lettuce patch, growing in a raised flower bed along with two small rosemary bushes. I cannot tell if the horses have already devastated the lettuce, or just sniffed it. I see that it is now standing up alright. Taking another look I think the lettuce looks nibbled at by a very large animal with big teeth and hooves.

A dog exploded into barking. I think it was Porgy barking at things only he could hear. His bark seems to be squeezed out of him almost as if against his will, as he looks at the ground, which is why I thought of the title, “Barking at the Ground”.

I gave the horses a choice. Garden or field, they picked the garden. Merry did eat the straw-looking hay. I know Pepita was eating something because I got up in the night, when the dogs were barking a lot. I think that I must almost be sleep walking because the memory of the horses in the dark and the invisible noisy dogs has a dreamlike quality. Pepita comes out of the open door of the stall to look at me. I hear munching sounds. She usually has at least one stalk of something protruding from the side of her mouth giving her a surprised look. Merry was nowhere to be seen, then I saw the tips of her ears because she was lying down. I think she must feel more secure in the stall as she seems to lie down there.

I am wearing men’s oversize shorts. I now wear them because I lost weight. Funnily enough I bought them when I was a lot fatter and thought they’d make me look slimmer. They did not because I filled them. Now, even Pat says they look nice. I don’t know how “cool” they are.

I’m seeing many lizards running around without their tails. I’m surprised at their resilience Matisse had found the one in the house. I don’t know how long he has been playing with it. I’d found it and saved it. I put it in my hat, carried it outside to drop it into the middle of the rose bushes, where I felt it would be safe, and it would not let go of the hat rim. I find them to be tenacious, fierce little beasts. I’m glad they are no longer the size of a house.

What’s this? Matisse has a naked bum. How this happened I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to bother him unless I try to look at it and then he bites me. Not as in bite, but he takes my hand in his mouth and holds me.

I give the dogs biscuits. Navaho eats his lying down and shifts over to the bowl beside his without getting up. I see no reason to change this feed if they are eating it so well.

Thursday 19 June

Porgy is lying down barking. He looks at me to see how many barks he is going to get away with without me screaming at him.

Peter called last night. He says something about not being able to call again using his cell phone. I hear his voice falter. He tells me he saw trucks up to their hoods, they were big as “big as my dump truck”. There must be a flood somewhere in the States. I don’t have a television and get my news from the radio and newspapers.

Last night when I was trying to catch Matisse (now, is this real or do I make it up?) Houdini is out in the garden watching me chase Matisse, who is now under the fir tree with the branches touching the ground. Houdini leaps up and runs around the corner of the fence on the house side. Matisse leaps up and follows Houdini, right into the house – oops! – Caught! I hear Matisse thumping around the house and yowling. He was so cross at being tricked again. Hey! If even Houdini thinks Matisse should be inside, then I think a cat should know.

I let Matisse out on the cobalt blue cat lead. Red would have been better for my black and white cat. He was so cross he bit me, but again, he holds my hand in his mouth and no marks are left. Cats have such sharp teeth that I imagine there would be bite marks no matter how they held their mouths. I have often been surprised by the lizards left for dead, without a mark on them; maybe they die of fright.

There is a strong wind blowing and the horses are in their stalls. Remo says he keeps his horses in, if he can, out of the wind. He says it makes them nervous.

Friday 20 June

I hear the sound of munching coming from the stalls and hope the horses are eating that dreadful hay. These beasties get bored sitting inside, I’ll be able to let them out because this wind is not as strong as it was yesterday.

Matisse is on the table bothering Houdini who sat up and looked at me with an expression I read as, “Can’t you control this child?”

I must call Annie to find out what time they expect to arrive here tomorrow. I need to run around in the morning. I have beer, need more wine, need to buy sausages from Bracciano. Just one loaf of bread. I seem to go overboard when I buy the crispy crusty bread, and a little amount of salad because only I seem to eat it.

There are a couple of fearless blackbirds. I don’t know where they come from. They were not here before, not so blatantly, unless they have been watching me and figure I will save them from the cats, which I will attempt to do if I am around.

How come I have not started to paint horses? Take photos. I find it odd that horses, cats and dogs get as camera shy as any human when you point a camera at them. I suppose it is scary when a human they know suddenly covers their face with a large dark object and aims it at them. However, Matisse has settled down to being photographed, when it is Liza taking the photograph. Matisse likes Liza. How can I tell? He doesn’t leave the room when she enters, but comes to her and wants to cuddle up to her as soon as she sits down. She was the one who took him in first and called me and asked if I would like a kitten. She told me she knew he was male because of the way he walked, which brings me to thinking that there must be basic ways male and female cats walk. I ask her about this and she is amazed that she ever said such a thing.

Merry was eating the roses yesterday and I said not a word. They were already dying down and I see how well they did after she nibbled them the last time.

Somewhere in the world, perhaps at home in Jamaica, is the little painting I did of the Sufi kitchen at Torreone in New Mexico. I am thinking of it because I am sitting looking at the water trough through the kiwi vine hanging down and think about doing a painting.

It is paradise here in the summer, but in the winter? I look across a field empty of grass, the towering old chestnut trees and the dark Cyprus tree in Anthea and Luigi’s garden. Across the road is the worked chestnut woods. At certain times of the day, the lane is shaded and I can walk in the shadow of the trees, cool as water, knowing that the hot sun is beating down overhead.

Saturday 21 June

Midsummer’s day. From this point on the days get shorter.

Julia comes with me to take my paintings down. We go to Cerveteri where Julia wants to eat lunch. I find it too hot. There is a woman who recognises me. She used to be a secretary in an office I worked in for a few short days doing some editing. She looks so young and happy. “I’ve retired,” she tells me. Julia orders a quarter litre of wine. I say, “How can you drink wine in this heat?”

Annie tells me she wants to buy the wine for the party. She and her husband will be staying the night. I am sleeping on the little camp bed in the “studio”. Matisse sleeps there too. He squeaks in the night when I roll over and almost squash him. It is “his” bed anyway. He took it over some time back, I suppose I am only borrowing it from him.

I had a dream. I was in a place where tall people came out of the woods. One wore a horse’s head. They moved as though they were many metres tall. Up close they were people with cat ears. There was a man and a woman dressed in white. It was the man who wore the horse’s head. It deserves a painting. I felt curious about these people. I was not frightened.

Sunday 22 June

Annie and Tonino came. I had almost finished what I wanted to do. They bought me a cake, they did not have to. I did not have candles. Who needs candles when you are 50? Luigi and Anthea, Pat, Julia and Bettina and Aldo, Judith and Paul all came to my birthday party. I took pictures of Aldo barbecuing the sausages. Aldo says his son, who is buying a house with his help, wants to buy one of my paintings. He once wanted a yellow painting. An abstract I painted while studying with Alberto Parres. However, Federico has bought a red couch and he does not want to appear “Romanista”, a Rome football club supporter with his red couch and yellow painting.

Yesterday I had blackbirds in the garden. Today it is magpies. At night, when I turn the light off I hear the screech owl call as it sweeps through the dark on soft silent wings.

After the barbecue Annie and I spent a long while putting the fire out. We poured so many litres of water on it. I thought the metal grill of the barbecue would float away.

Everyone agrees that “Barking at the Ground” would be an excellent book title. Now, what did I want to write about? I said I wanted to write a boring book where nothing happens, like a French movie (which I particularly enjoy). “Slow,” says Annie, who is French. I really like French movies, there is a sense of the slowness and the unexpectedness of life. I want to write a book that people will pick up and read again and again, just for the slow pace of it.

Fruit, bread, tart, coffee, yogurt. I tell my neighbour Judith that Annie and Tonino are my first (non-paying) guests. I now sleep five I tell her (including myself).

Monday 23 June

We saved Pepita from killing herself in the manger. We were having lunch. Merry and Pepita were in the stall, there was a sound of scuffling. I did not think much of it because Merry is always pushing Pepita around. Then Merry goes in and out of the stall in quick succession, without Pepita tagging close behind her. I find Pepita is stuck inside the narrow, deep manger, which is built with wooden rails so that a few calves can eat side by side.

One moment Annie was looking into the stall and the two horses were standing. Now Pepita is lying stuck. I have heard how a colt died in exactly this way when it fell into the manger and broke its neck struggling to get out. Pepita lies still, she is breathing hard and rolls her eyes looking at me. I call Remo on his cell phone. I borrow a chainsaw from my neighbours. I call Roberto.

Remo arrives. He had been on the way to the beach. He is dressed in beach clothes. He shouts at me to get out of the way and unhooks the filly from the manger. Annie is telling me to breath and is talking quietly to Pepita. I am frozen useless. Remo shouts at me that a kick from a foal will break my leg. We get a halter on her head. Get her standing. Remo tells me to give him the hose, run the water. He gives Pepita a shower to lower her temperature and to calm her.

Remo leaves telling me to call him immediately when ever there is something wrong with the horses. He tells me to call him and NOT to go near the horses because a panicked kicking horse can break limbs, its own or mine. As he leaves, Roberto arrives.

Penny calls. She wants me to go and spend a week with her and her family near Sienna. If I can find someone to look after all the beasts I will go.

Tonino tells me that I could do a bed and breakfast in this place. I do not have to feel embarrassed.

Tuesday 24 June

I get up late. I am tired. The dogs barked all night. Something happens on a Monday night that does not happen during the week.

I am glad to see that Pepita is feeling good enough to get up to her tricks. Today I wanted to lead the horses together and she was having none of it. Until Merry turned and looked at her, and must have said some kind of horse thing to her because she quietened down and I could easily lead both of them. Merry also seems to be treating her (full) sister better after the accident.

I see that it is time to catch Matisse and bring him in. He gets a kind of stoned look when he is out. I think he has such a great time chasing lizards he gets dizzy. He has not yet learned to pace himself in the heat. At this hour the orange cats have found a nice quiet place in the shade. One curled in a flower pot in the shade of the hydrangeas, the other in a cool part of the barn.

Wednesday 25 June

I was a wreck when I got up. Matisse also slept through until 7.30am and did not beat me up to be fed until I was on my feet. The dogs barked all night. I would have tied Porgy up but Luisa was in her yard and Porgy was waiting beside the fence. I was watching Pepita move. The worst part is that the stifle looks swollen. It is difficult to measure how it should look, by measuring one horse against the other because Pepita is smaller and slimmer, more like a little race horse and Merry is more robust looking.

Thursday 26 June

I dreamed I had a huge room and another room to the kitchen. Like the kitchen my friend Greg had, long and narrow but filled with all the exactly right things someone who knows how to cook fills their kitchen with. I suddenly realised I HAD ROOM TO GROW. In another scene I was at a book signing party for an Iranian writer. I was in a tourist place and just by chance. Matisse was with me. At one point we were bowled over by a large wave. I worry that he will get wet, catch pneumonia and die. We relaxed into the wave. Matisse didn’t struggle to be free, then we got out before the next green rolling wave hit. He escaped at that point. The next time I saw him he was on top of a wallaby’s head and being bounced around the garden in the tourist area at the book signing party. I took a book for the Iranian woman writer to sign. She was very beautiful. I bought it from a sullen-faced man who gave me many book marks advertising other books. As I took more bookmarks from a rack a woman said, “Oh I leave these all behind.” I replied, “I hand them on”. It was here the dream seemed to change to that of me finding that I was in my house with extra rooms that I never knew about. Dreams, of course, are symbolic, or speak to us in symbols we may or may not understand. I understand that it is our subconscious speaking to us in symbols. Anyway, after this dream I am feeling so much lighter.

Friday 27 June

The dogs barked this morning and a man’s voice responded. When I got up the kitchen door was open. It is the inside catch that prevents it from opening entirely. I know this door clicks open by itself, much in the same way the bedroom door will.

I stopped by Remo’s and picked up some feed. Remo tells me he will be bring Sully and her foal here because they now have too many horses. I told Remo that I would give Cornelia to him to cover all my bills. He said “No, not now”. When it is time to do the accounts we will talk about it then. I could feel the tears pricking my eyes waiting to fall. This family is sometimes more my family than my own family. They have taught me what family is.

I was in the rose garden in Rome. Coming back along the road towards the FAO building I saw a family. The man was taking a picture of his wife and child. He was heavily built. As I came closer I saw the kindest, sweetest face, and caught the glance he gave his wife as he handed her the camera. Love and kindness, admiration and respect.

On the train coming back to Bracciano from Rome I see how difficult life is for the visitor. All the name signs at all the stations have been pulled off while the backgrounds are being given a fresh coat of paint. The only one that is left on is the last one you see as the platform is left behind. I noticed this because I could hear an out of sight boy repeatedly asks where he was. The man sitting in front of me smiles. I noticed how nice his shoes were. My mother said that the best way to pick a man was to look at his teeth and his shoes (yes the same things you look at when buying a horse; teeth and feet). Yes my mother was brought up on a farm, They kept horses.

As I opened the kitchen door on my return, Matisse leapt out, later he hung around me licking my legs and allowing me to pick him up. Porgy had something in his ear and while yelping in pain he crept along the ground towards me. I was touched that he thought I would know how to help him.

Saturday 28 June

Remo has brought Sully and her baby. I’m glad that Merry’s domineering mother is back to keep her in line. I had put Pepita to eat by herself. Pepita has now linked having a halter put on her head with being fed, so she now stands still. Both horses now let me hug their heads. I trimmed the blond bits off Pepita’s black mane, twisting the ends like I once saw in a magazine so that it trims in a ragged and not straight line. She shook her mane out after all the attention to feel it sit right on her neck again.

Vincenzo was here. Again he has done something that he has done before. He cut the hedge outside. The first time he said the horses could eat what he cut. He sees the horses on one side of the field and puts the cut vegetation where they cannot reach it. I pick it up and carry it over to them. “Oh, the horses won’t eat that,” he said. I told him, “But it was you who suggested that they would”. I think that one of us is a little wobbly in the head.

There were two mushrooms under a tree. Vincenzo tells me they are edible, but I won’t be eating them until I hear this from someone else. I might eat them, get ill and then he will say, but I told her not to eat them.

It is nice to see the horses and to know that Sully has another foal growing inside of her. I see her new one here has dark spots on her legs. I wonder if these will let her pass as being a coloured Appaloosa. Some dark spots may only be the baby coat coming off in patches. This foal is almost brave enough to sniff me under the watchful eye of her mother. Merry has melted to see such a little one, she drove the baby back to Sully when she strayed too far away.

The dogs barked all night. I opened the shutters to peek out. The cool night air came in. If only I had the courage to leave the shutters open through the night, but I can’t without a wrought iron grill.

Matisse is up crawling through the kiwi vines. He is now up on the roof. Yesterday while I was waiting for Remo, Porgy, Cherokee and Matisse all came to see what I was up to. Matisse ran towards the road and then did not put a paw on the asphalt at the end of the lane but made a swift left turn and was up over the fence. The day before I was stroking Houdini’s swollen belly, worms or had he just eaten? and suddenly he was up from a relaxed lying being stroked position up on all four paws. Don’t know why.

Matisse must have done his rounds. He is now lying on the cool travertine top of the table I am writing on.

Sunday 29 June

Matisse got me up. I must have been in a very deep sleep because he seemed quite concerned. I must have gone to sleep again because it was almost eight when I woke up and there was “Reporting Religion” on the BBC.

Porgy didn’t do much barking last night, I only heard Cherokee. In the morning I spoke to Porgy and he whimpered back. Maybe it is the heat. I expect Cherokee and Navaho to be asleep the whole time because they are so much older.

This morning I was surprised to find that I had good hay cut from “my” field. Really good, sweet-smelling hay. I am pleased. The bales from the side of the field nearest the road were quite mouldy. The horses eat it because I select the best bits, wash it. I scatter the rest on the bald spots on the field. I heard the next door neighbours say, “but she gives them hay”. Have no idea why. It is summer and there isn’t any grass so I expect that most people are feeding hay to their horses.

I heard rain in the night, but when I went out in the morning I found the ground hard and dry as a bone. Grass is growing, but not in the bald spots.

When I go out to feed the horses, Matisse follows me to the field. It is nice to see that he is not afraid of them, but he remains cautious. He may be curious about what it is that I give them to eat.

I open the kitchen window to find Houdini and his nameless brother crouching there. They prefer the crunchy cat food. The outside cats refuse to eat the canned food I bought for them. I notice they prefer fish to chicken, so why I bought the chicken flavour I don’t know.

Monday 30 June

The car wouldn’t start and I called Pat intending to ask her to help me. She sounded as though she had flu on the phone. I wonder if I sound so dreadful when people speak to me first thing in the morning. Then I asked her to help me and she cheered up no end.

On the way to Remo’s to pick up feed Pat told me that Katherine’s little apartment had been broken into. The Carabineri had gone to Mara, because Katherine’s dog is there while she’s away. Someone had gone to tell Roberto, who owns the restaurant Katherine goes to often. Mara called Gillian because she was taking people out riding, Gillian called Liza because she was just back from Viterbo and was too tired. Liza called Pat because she had people visiting. Pat went and found the door was still wide open. She called Leslie her (for me overpriced) handyman to come and fix the door. No one has told Katherine because they don’t want to spoil her vacation.

Now Cherokee is having a dream. Her back legs are running and her front legs twitch.

I called Judith my neighbour and she sent her husband. Turned out the car’s battery needed charging. He leant me their charger and it took all day but in the evening I was able to return it. They invited me to dinner. Paul cooked. Excellent Chinese type cuisine.

I am calling Roberto. Matisse is sharpening his claws. Roberto does not answer. He is so cute, my cat. He did not batter me to get me up in the morning.

I have decided to call the distrustful orange cat Trusty, in the hopes this will change his nature. He still acts as though he thinks I will shoot him with a water pistol any time I get up close.

Judith tells me she has become quite fond of her chickens. She is a new chicken owner, so is surprised at herself. I had a rooster once that I bought in a market in Jamaica because he was so beautiful. I’d never owned a rooster before. He lived all by his own sad self in his cage until my father stewed him in a pot one hungry night. I still have a photograph of him in my big box of pictures.

Merry and the little foal eye each other. Merry was herding the little one away from the fence. The little one tried to sniff me and then squeaked in surprise (do we smell that bad?).

05 POGGIO MAY 2003

POGGIO, May 2003

Wednesday 1 May

It is a bleak grey day. The dogs barked almost all night. I don’t go out and check; although one night I will. During the day they bark at joggers, cars, cars parked across the road, bikes, motorini, people walking dogs, dogs, horses, Merry and the ground.

Jancis is bringing out a friend of hers, who she tells me, is happy to see an untidy place. Am I feeling flattered? Consoled? Insulted? I think I am untidy but not dirty. There is a difference. I remember staying in an apartment where the bathtub was filled with plants, encrusted with dirt. Maybe it was the only place they had to keep their growing things while they were away; making it easy for the house-sitter to water them.

I think I belong to Porgy. One night it was so quiet. I heard dogs, way off in the distance. I thought the dogs must have abandoned me. Went out and called softly, Porgy, Porgy and he came tickering out of the dark. Amazing how quickly he learned his name. How Houdini picked up on his new name. I suppose I know Matisse’s meow for, “I want to go out,” and “Hey! Who shut the door to the kitty litter”; a distraught yowl.

Had many dreams. In one I’m on a plane as it touches down. The pilot is asked to speak to the enemy guard. We had already flown one mission and were flying a second, more dangerous. I don’t know what I was doing on the plane. One book would state that I was dreaming one of my parents (or even grandparent’s) experiences. As in memory is locked up in the cells, in the DNA. I would not be surprised. I had tried to read this book in French, too complicated, and now will look for it in English or Italian.

Thursday 2 May

There was a lot of traffic and Jancis took a long time to get here. They did not do as I told them, to avoid Bracciano and Trevigniano. The woman who came with Jancis is quite some fun. While they were here Matisse went missing. Had to endure questions like, “How do you know so much about horses?” Me, “I don’t know anything about horses”. Them, “But you must know a lot about horses.” Me, “Why?” Them, “You have one”. I did not explain that I also have a car and I know even less about that.

I went to talk to the neighbours children and noticed the young boy they were playing volley ball with was their father. Merry was beside me by the fence. She rears, “What you doing?” I ask her. One of the girls tells me she’s playing. I ask them if they have seen a small black and white cat. No. I ask my other neighbours if they have seen my cat. No. I am told that no cat ever goes into their garden. I don’t tell them that I see Houdini and his cat friends.

Matisse came back around nine at night, then it was as though he did not recognise me. He sniffed the ground where Jancis’ friend has been sitting and decided it must be safe to stick around. He smelled of old musty things, not like a cat just coming in from the great outdoors. He had a scratch on his nose, slightly worse than the one Fat Cat had given him.

“At least now you know he knows his way home,” says Pat, who has three cats that play under cars and roll around in the middle of the road outside her house. “You must let them follow their own destiny,” she tells me many times over. I am glad I never had children. If I’m like this with a cat I would have been a dreadful mother.

Friday 3 May

Today is soft and grey. The birds sing and Matisse is walking like a tough cat.

Saturday 4 May

A cuckoo, dew on the grass, which looks softer than if there had been rain.

Judith called and invited me to lunch. Her cousins are here, there will be a barbecue. The cousins, one works with the Fair Trade organization.

At night the dogs seem to sleep outside my bedroom window. It is warmer there because the sun travels around from the back to the front of the house. It is also more protected. They either seem to be there or in the barn when it rains.

It is so beautiful here. I have in some ways found my small paradise on earth. Garden, land for the horses, hay barn and stalls. Yesterday scouts showed up for water. The fountain on the road isn’t working. How could I refuse? They were sweet. Across in the woods children in scout uniform set up tents.

Sunday 5 May

Matisse goes missing in the chicken coop. No chickens there anymore. This is the dusty smelling place, he may find mice there.

Spent the whole day at home. It was so quiet. I think all the neighbours must be away, or I am coming in as they are going out.

In the morning I cannot tell what the weather is like until I open up the shutters in the kitchen. The ground seems dark because it is shaded by the trees, so I don’t see the full glory of the day until I open the windows and see the sky.

Someone was whistling in the woods. Porgy had his head on one side. I called him and he shook his head, “Can’t you see I’m concentrating?” and he wandered off to the corner of the garden to listen better. I woke in the night, seemed I heard Porgy whimper in a way a dog will if you hold its nose too tight and they can’t breath. Or was it me or the tail end of a dream.

Horses are calling to each other.

Matisse has shown up in the long grass beside the water fountain. I cannot go towards him or he will bound away. Suddenly he comes running. Why? He jumped from somewhere. He stops and looks attentively towards the barn. I see nothing except grey stone and zinc.

At the barbecue the English people were dressed in pastel colours for spring and summer. Here in Italy I have noticed they wear red and white in summer for years in a row. Nothing that would look good on me.

Monday 6 May

Merry spent the night inside. I went to check on her because the dogs were kicking up such a fuss. I looked over the stable half door and she was lying on the ground. She made to get up but then realised it was only me.

The man came to measure the kitchen. By five in the afternoon he had done a dreadful drawing. Not even a crawl space underneath to hide more stuff. The price quoted is 2,400 euro, ridiculous.

I had planned to stay in and paint and study in the afternoon. Vincenzo showed up to water the kiwi vines. He tells me I must do this every three or four days. He causes a flooding and a small river runs under the vines.

I had a dream where I was a leopard or a cheetah; I attacked a man who did not give me work. Not to kill him; I gained respect. I have never had this kind of dream before.

I hear horses in the woods, or a little beyond. Merry has calmed down; Matisse is up on the pergola that holds up the kiwi vines. There were buds on the rose bushes, even the ones Merry has been eating.

It is so peaceful here I feel the spaces between my cells relaxing. A crow is…well can’t say he or she is singing. Sheep are passing and I hear the soft sound of bells tied around their necks. If I get up and run and get my camera they will have already passed. Porgy barks at the corner. I see a large white Maremmano dog up ahead barking back at Porgy, warning not greeting. The sheep will feel protected.

Tuesday 7 May

Matisse has climbed from the pergola up into a tree. A bird flies out.

I went to see “horse Mara”. The dogs followed me because I was on foot. Navaho was happy to turn back, Cherokee became small and cringing and then turned for home. Porgy, when I say go home or casa, he looks around to see who I am talking to. Then he follows me at a respectful distance.

I suppose when visiting Mara a person should turn up half an hour later than planned. There were people there, who were preparing to go for a ride. Porgy seemed to be looking for Lilly, the rough coated black dog that used to be there. But Lilly has recently succumbed to poison. They tell me it is the man with the pigs and goats.

I lunged Merry. She goes alright in one direction. I have read that until you ask them to go in the other direction they don’t quite understand that you are making them do something they might not want to be doing. She rears, not aggressively, protesting. She seems confused and hurt that this human being is asking her to go around to the RIGHT.

I walked across the field and took photos of the plants. The light needs to be much stronger for the type of film I have in the camera. Today is overcast, cooler than yesterday. I was happy to have the cool house. I hope to have carpets down for next winter, like the previous tenant although I hear they suffered from fleas. Maybe this is why there are so many broken down vacuum cleaners in the store room. I should try them out, maybe one still works.

Matisse goes missing and I see him sitting, looking, watching the small creatures in the hedgerows. He caught a lizard’s tail and brought it wiggling. He played with it between sleeping Navaho’s great paws. We have come a long way when Matisse can sniff Navaho’s paws.

Matisse has just refused his expensive dry cat food. He sniffs it and sweeps his paw over it, “bleah!” Now he dances after a fly, swats it and brings it to his mouth and eats it. He licks his lips. At least I won’t have to buy fly spray.

Wednesday 8 May

A neighbour calls to ask if I will find out about the buteri, the Italian cowfolks lunch. I drove to Canale Monterano to find out the information. I think about going myself, but these are events it is best turn up on a horse.

I was waving at a man I thought was the “Man with a hat”. I thought I knew him. Turns out I don’t know this one at all. He was not unpleasant, untidily sporty, fashionably dressed. I was a mess, but now I have found where my summer clothes have been hiding, so there is hope.

I cleaned out the barn, the way Vincenzo told me to, scraping out the old hay between the logs, lifting the logs, getting out the mouldy earth. When I pulled away the last bale a rat leapt away and I found a nest of tiny baby rats born a few days ago. Who can kill someone else’s babies? So, I put another bale in front of the nest, hopefully leaving a hole that is too small for a cat and big enough for a rat to get into.

Matisse comes in with his ears flattened out sideways. He catches the poor fly that has been buzzing around the kitchen, now he has eaten that too. I suppose they are pure protein. I didn’t know that cats ate flies.

It is a grey cloudy day. I would have liked to keep a weather diary, plotting rainfall (When?) and temperature.

Thursday 9 May

Received a call from a market research company asking if I would shop for them. I said I had already done this for them and had always had a hard time finding whatever they had wanted me to be looking for. It turned out they knew the product would be difficult to find, which is why they had asked me to go find it and buy it in the first place. For me this was one big exercise in frustration. This time the ground rules are different. I shop for new items and send the empty package and get to keep whatever is inside. Will it be something I can eat? Will it be something that I need, pet food?

Judith has shown up with a loaf of bread. She makes it fresh in her bread maker. So I will now have bread and honey for breakfast.

Friday May 10

Went down to Remo’s who said we could put the filly on the van; by the time I get there he had already gone. I spent two and one half hours in the pen with the filly. Merry’s sister, they are similar, even to the expression they have in their eyes. She was not letting me touch her. Then Remo came by to check on how I was doing. As soon as she saw him she bucked and squealed. He had to catch her to worm her. As soon as he left she allowed me to touch her. Neck, back, rump scratches. He would not have believed it.

I took Pat to the physiotherapist. They have a rinky-dink machine that they hook her up to. It is supposed to stimulate the muscles. Then she was given a rather painful 15 minute massage on her broken foot. I then took Pat around the lake for a very slow drive. My car is filthy and I must clean the windows so that I can at least see out. This is dangerous. The muffler, which was broken, seems to have healed itself. Maybe it got jogged out of place and then got jogged back.

As I write my little cat is battering his head against my hand. He purrs loudly. This morning Porgy comes up to the stone table outside the kitchen door. Matisse is standing on top taking tentative swipes at Porgy’s head as he passes something Houdini will do. This is the first time I see him do this.

Saturday 11 May

Porgy is fast asleep. All the dogs are. I wonder if they have been poisoned. I came out in the night and Navaho and Porgy were there. A boy went by on a motorbike the dogs went after him. He turned around to frighten the dogs. I told him that would only make it worse. The boy may know nothing about dogs. I was fixing the hole in the gate at the front with a metal fronted door off a kitchen cupboard and barbed wire. I tell the boy that I’m trying to help him by blocking the corner exit where the dogs leave to bark at him.

I now know that Remo trains horses in a specific manner. If you, as the rider, do not know the commands the horse is confused. Click the tongue to make the horse go from halt to walk, from walk to trot, trot to canter. Then whoa to make the horse stop. Shift weight to the left to go left, to the right to go right. I am riding Cornelia. Nothing. Remo says, “How do you make that sound to make horses go?” I do that and off she goes clockwork. No amount of kicking had any effect.

I note that the dogs spend the whole night up barking and the whole day sleeping. Maybe they will sleep more when the weather gets hotter.

I was in the pen trying to put a halter on the mystery horse when Simonetta’s brother showed up. I didn’t know he knew so much about horses. He was giving me a lot of advice. I listened. Kept my mouth shut. Remo tells me a lot of folks will tell you how to do things. I find I have to do them in my own way, since I’m in this body beside this horse and forming this rapport.

Sunday 12 May

Is it true or is it my imagination. I get anxious about Matisse and Houdini is around. I say, “Where’s Matisse?” and minutes later they show up together. Pat says if Houdini knows his name then he knows Matisse’s. “Are they intelligent, or are they intelligent,” adds Pat. She has been in contact with cats longer than I have.

The neighbours are back. I have not heard them playing ball for a long time. I let Merry out and she was harassing the dogs and then the dogs were chasing her. I shouted at the dogs to stop. Then I saw Merry lean across the neighbour’s fence to eat their roses causing Louisa to put her hands on her hips and ask my horse what she thought she was doing. I go out, show myself. Merry gallops across the field towards me and stands prettily while I put her halter on. She wanted time in the garden before being put to bed, it was already quite dark. At least my neighbours have seen me with an apron on; white plastic with yellow and pink tulip type flowers all over it. I have also been seen on warm days wearing my stripy shorts, Wellington and the bright plastic apron.

Matisse meows and eyes the grate of the fireplace. I pick him up and carry him to the cat litter box, which I’ve just cleaned. Anyway, for me it is clean. For my cat there is nowhere to place a paw. I imagine that if he were human he would always be dressed in a suit and tie. Houdini, on the other hand, would be dressed in sports clothes. Possibly soft velvety corduroy pants, an old floppy jacket and cotton t-shirt.

Merry is calling to a horse, she gets a reply. I listen to the birds in the morning and I wonder about a lot of things. Is Merry on heat again? Every 21 days.

Fat Cat is nowhere to be seen. Is Houdini looking concerned? He looks up on the pergola; he may also be looking for Matisse.

Someone was talking to the neighbours. “She doesn’t know. She’s a foreigner. However, she has horses”. I feel my neighbours like me because their children shine when they see me. I don’t know how else to describe it. A little kid with his father calls to me. They are looking for their male cat and looks like a Siamese. A tom cat that has probably gone off wandering in search of a harem. Pat says male cats may go missing for a long time and can live without eating for 15 days.

A horse in the woods, maybe Antea’s horse. I’ll tell Remo I think it best to halter train the filly before bringing her here. It will be easier for me. I don’t yet have a fenced area so I can’t exactly enclose her anywhere if there is need. It took me two months to put a halter on Merry because I did not want to take away her freedom. In the end I thought it better me than someone else.

Tuesday 13 May

Tina took me to the painting class in Viterbo. At 80 she looks very young. I spoke to Pat after and told her we had driven the whole way in second gear. In fact, it was not me who said that. It was Pat who said she had decided to drive to the art class on her own because Tina never changes gears. She should really have an automatic. I had my heart in my mouth. Tina drives better then someone else I know who will talk to me as she is whizzing along the road. Lift both hands off the steering wheel to make a point, and looks at me to check that I am not asleep and that she has my full attention. We are protected by the driving god or goddess and she is not even Italian.

The Maestro was in a mood I get into. Scratchy and bear like. He was working on the portrait of the girl. He tells us she is not beautiful. I hear this painting has taken four years. He is working in mixed media, tempera and oil. I see that he is again working in tempera. He tells me he uses lemon or onion to lift the oil from the oil paint. Then he can work again in tempera. He tells me that you cannot get the highlights in oil that you can in tempera. There is more control.

The cats were here play fighting. Houdini is like a Zen master with his pupil. Matisse does not kick Houdini with his back legs. It is as though he is saying, “If I am in this position, then I would make a kicking motion with my back legs”, which he then demonstrates in slow motion.

Wednesday 14 May

I was able to leave Merry out because Antea and Luigi’s horses were in the field beyond the fence. It looks like rain. Hot yesterday and people were driving badly. I had forgotten people drive this way from May through September. In many cases I don’t think the drivers are locals.

For example, I wait for a young girl to cross the road and the car driver behind hoots the car horn at me. Then I am making a left hand turn at a traffic light, a car speeds by on my left hand side; enough to cause intense and deep surprise with a sharp intake of breath and palpitations.

Thursday 15 May

I have 20 people coming to my house. I am to buy 40 sausages.

In Rome I go to the paint supply store. I tell the man that I am learning a new technique. New to me, used from the 1600s. He smiles. He knows what I am talking about. I tell him I never knew the colours would be so jewel like. Rolando tells me that Chagall worked in this way.

I skipped around the corner from the paint store to see Flora in her shop. She asks if I want to go riding at 6:30 in the morning for an hour. I said if she was going for longer than definitely. I would be riding Orazio, Flora’s horse.

I go to the hardware store in Rome to get the rails to hang my pictures. This is harder than I imagined it could be. I buy ugly picture rails; looks like a train could run on them. Maybe he thinks I am hanging ancient heirlooms. Valeria calls me and I go and wait outside her apartment. She comes down with a colleague. They are both dressed in Tibetan Buddhist colours. Red and Saffron. Do they know this?

Friday 16 May

I got the halter on Pepita. I had heard Remo tell me another name, but it did not matter in the end. I feel it is a lot easier for me to put a halter on a horse when I know its name.

Around 9am a sometimes friend picks me up and takes me to the market in Manziana. Nicer than Bracciano. It feels more like a market with the stalls set up on a parking lot. In Bracciano the stalls face each other across the road outside “my” supermarket. Julia and her mother stay for lunch. Salad, tuna fish, potatoes.

I hear thunder. No its not, its Merry galloping up the length of the field.

The young man helping at Remo’s sees me with Pepita and her head collar is on. Like Merry she gets a soft sleepy look in her eyes when I tell her “Brava!”. It was too much to make her walk on the lead rope, but she did. The other foals standing watching around the pen at the time all whinnied at the same time, reminding me of spectators at a football match when someone has done something surprising.

I feel these colts/fillies want to be touched. They ask to be touched but are so afraid. Indeed they should be because the first time we touch them, or think of touching them, we are also reflecting on the time we will train this young horse, take away its freedom. So, at the first contact of fingers against hide I feel their hide and backs or necks slip away. It is as though our touch burns an imprint into their hide.

Merry is calling to the other horses. With any luck Pepita will be coming here soon. So she won’t be feeling so lonely in her field. Vincenzo came, he is also without hay. I need 400 bales, which will cost 1,200 euro if I have to pay it all at once.

Matisse caught a fledgling. Maybe it fell from the nest. Its parents are the birds that make the funny backwards and forwards mechanical sound. I heard them briefly this morning. I saved it and took it back out into the garden. I didn’t know what to do with it. I had no raw meat, maybe it’s a vegetarian. Its parents were frantic in the trees. I didn’t know where their nest was. I had put it back on the ground and it had crawled under a leaf to hide. Breaks my heart that I don’t know the first thing about tiny birds. I don’t know much of anything at all.

Saturday 17 May

Claudio has arrived with the guy who will turn the wall, as in close the cupboard space in the bedroom and recreate the original hallway. He is now cutting the wall with a pruning saw. If he had a circular saw he would be done in less than five minutes. I hope he has measured before cutting. I am keeping my mouth shut. This builder drives a very swish car with Polish licence plates.

I have found that if I tie Porgy up in the night I have a quiet night’s sleep.

I hear that a childhood friend’s daughter has been killed in a car crash, Georgia, USA. My brother is asked if he will go and get all the young woman’s personal belongings out of the car. Later, when he tells me about it on the phone he speaks of the handbag and the car being covered in blood. He does this because the mother is part of our growing up time in Jamaica. People ask my brother to do these acts requiring certain courage. I don’t know if I would. I know him as a sensitive being and know he carries reverberating memories and pulsating images inside him for the rest of his life, as I do. Peter tells me this young woman died when another driver, who survived, did not stop at the red light at an intersection.

Sunday 18 May

In the night Matisse makes a peeping sound, more like a bird than a cat. I am sleeping on my belly. He gently touches the end of my nose with a paw. I turn over and he crawls into the space beside me curls around himself, purring, “Good human!”

The man took all day to fix the wall. The boy on the motorino was shooting in the woods. I wonder if he was also shooting at the dogs because they were all in the kitchen and there was no thunder.

I had to rescue Matisse who got stuck up a tree. He had dashed up the pear tree, which has not been pruned for years and grows straight up into the sky. He stands and mews at me, “Do something!” He seemed most perturbed when I turned my back on him, “Meh, meh?” I went to get Vincenzo’s shorter wooden ladder and had to climb the last little bit. I pulled my kitty down by the scruff of his neck. He didn’t struggle and I carried him back inside. He needs to learn to come down backwards, in the same way a human does. Back feet first, but I did not think of teaching him that. No doubt he would have worked it out for himself eventually.

Thirty people are coming today. Matisse gets shut in the bedroom, too many cars. The dogs were quiet last night, no barking at all.

When I get down to the horses there is no water and I am asked to help bring the tube across the fast road around the lake. Pepita is already standing in the pen “caught”, waiting for me? I am feeling bad tempered and had decided that if I feel this way then I won’t try and work with horses. However, my bad temperedness is ignored and I’m accepted into the small herd. Training to lead continues.

It is so quiet I think everyone must have gone away to the beach. I cannot lie on a beach because my legs get restless and I have to go for long walks. In summer this is not as pleasant in Italy as the beaches are crowded with people. I tend to go to the beach in the winter when I can walk, hear the sound of the crashing grey waves and feel my cobwebs blown away on a steady cold wind.

Monday 19 May

I would say the party was a success; although we had two types of rice and two types of chicken and my sausages got taken home by Edith and Cynthia and some frozen by me. Somebody’s Polish girlfriend took over the barbecue to cook the chicken and the sausages were forgotten.

I started reading Dervla Murphy’s book Full Tilt. Pat said she felt I should read it because she can see me doing such things: cycling from Ireland to India. I am flattered, but I know my limits! On horseback, maybe with stopovers at five star hotels for me and my horse.

Only with all the people here did I remember to look up at the kiwi flowers. Edith’s husband Luigi tells me the cherries are full of worms. He sat in my studio with the sun hat my brother sent me happily listening to the Formula I races. I would have liked to take a photo and hope that someone did. At the party I hear someone say, “He must not sleep all the time because it is then that he will get depressed.” Others go into the field and cut cicoria, I did not know there was so much. I gathered up horse manure in plastic bags to send in expensive cars to Rome.

It is a soft, cool, bright day with not a cloud in sight. Too cool to read or write outside.

Tuesday 20 May

I drove myself to the painting class. I took about 45 minutes to get there, I drove quite slowly. It is quicker on the back roads. It is more pleasant because there is not much racing traffic, it is not a particularly beautiful road.

Tina was in the class working on a portrait of a dead friend. She asked Maestro’s opinion and he said that she should put more colour in the face. He sits and demonstrates and although he puts down a colour I would never use on a human face the portrait immediately looks more life like. She has also brought a painting she did of the Maestro in a suit and tie. He looks more like an insurance salesman. Later, he helps me out to the car. I shake hands with him, a thing I tend to do with men I’d prefer to be kissing.

Merry is out in the field, this makes my life a lot easier. She will nip at me, not through evil intent, she is treating me the same way she would another horse. Only, if she nips me in the back of the neck I’ll be done for. John Lyons (The Perfect Horse) writes that it is one of the times he will shout loudly at a horse, if it nibbles, or worse tries to bite him. He advises a few seconds of uproar, mayhem and shouting. This is the only time he advises taking such action.

Others say that you must kindly pay “too much” attention to their muzzles. I find this works, because they begin to hold their faces away when you go to groom them.

Edith has given me a lovely carrying basket from Africa. It has been taken over by Matisse. I am glad no one was here when he curled up for a nap in the salad bowl.

Wednesday 21 May

I wonder if I am suffering from low blood pressure. Pat and Jancis have complained about feeling tired. I wonder if it has to do with the weather. I wake up early and listen to the BBC then promptly fall back to sleep again.

Rushed to the corner to break up the dogs who were barking and howling. My English neighbour’s youngest son is there standing with his hands on his hips. He is a small boy, his stance says, “I dare you!” The dogs may have found it threatening. He is not much bigger than Navaho or Cherokee. I run out with my decorative green horsewhip and the dogs scatter. It is then I notice that the older sister is there, “Hello Rosemary,” she says. I also see that she has the family dog on a lead, which is probably why the dogs are making such a fuss.

After the barking there is a deep, touchable silence. It is much cooler today. Last night I fed the dogs mixing their food with a garden trowel. There are so many apples and bananas left over from the party. Merry can eat most of the apples, since there are too many for me. The bananas will get carried in the car for emergency snacks.

Again I wonder about my experiment. How much would I have to sleep, meaning how many days, before I would feel awake. I feel it is true that the more I sleep the sleepier I may become. I remember a yoga teacher in the States telling me that when I feel this way I must just MOVE! As in motion, not in moving house…perhaps this is another word I have misunderstood.

There is banging and clattering in the kitchen. Matisse just returned. For such a small cat he makes a lot of noise, like a couple of furniture removers shifting chairs and tables.

Thursday 22 May

Went to play with Pepita, fed her water and felt she was cross with me for some reason. After it being so easy to put a halter on her head it becomes difficult. Remo shows up to say we can put her on the trailer on Friday.

I had cut up apples for Merry because I thought about putting her in the stall out of the wind and rain. Before this, I put her in the garden to graze with only a cord around her neck since the halter was still on Pepita’s head. I go to get the apples. No apples. A puzzle. Did the dogs eat them? Thinking they were soft bones?

Shopped for the market research firm. They ask for all products with NEW written on them. I notice that the breakfast cereals all have this word in big bright letters. If only to state NEW formula, or NEW crunchiness. I look for food or any items at the supermarket that do not bear the word NEW. Am I a traditionalist? I seek out items with whole grains, things in cardboard boxes, with not much plastic.

Poor Matisse will not be going out today. There is a strong wind and Fat Cat is out there waiting for him like a shark in the tall grass.

Friday 23 May

I waited for Mirto, became confused about the time I was to meet her and was leaving as she was arriving. She apologises. I glance at myself in reflecting glass and do not look bad, even though my clothes seem to be those of a farmer just back from the fields. Farmers at least dress properly to go into town, even in their Sunday best. Men look at us, mostly Mirto because of she is stately, beautiful and draws attention; me because I look wild and unkempt beside her. She takes me to eat at a restaurant with an exhibition of paintings hanging on the walls. The man who is supposed to give the OK for my work is Marek the Czech artist I know. Mirto has all the makings of a good friend of mine. In common with all my closest friends she finds me or whatever I say funny. This does me good, and prevents me from taking myself too seriously.

Pepita is to come today. I also hear from a friend who had promised me hay that she can no longer sell me any. This year she has 40 percent less hay then she was expecting and will have to buy herself. I am surprisingly unconcerned by this.

Saturday 24 May

Matisse has a morning routine. He cries and thumps around, pushes something noisy onto the floor. When he hears movement, I may roll over onto my back, he settles down curled up almost under my chin, across my neck and under my nose, which is not very comfortable.

Pepita is now here. I went to help bring her and could not find the horses where they usually are. They had found a slight dip behind a tree out of the wind. I got Elegance and Pepita into the round pen as though it was a normal day. This time Pepita had her halter on so I could clip the lead rope to her before she could even think. Emmanuelle, Remo’s brother, tells me I have improved. This is high praise, because his horses are always so tame. Remo gave Pepita a little tranquilizer as this was the first time we would be transporting her.

I was asked to lead her onto the van, but I got told off because I was too far away from her. I am told that she has to feel that I am close to her. I have to give her confidence. I had wanted to give her more room to go forward. It was true, the closer I got the more confident Pepita became.

Vincenzo was at the house. He rang the gate bell because he had forgotten his key. He had come for grass for his rabbits and to water the kiwi, which I have not been watering. I tell Vincenzo that I am sending my mare to a stallion. “To a Maremmano?” he asks. No, I tell him, to an Appaloosa, like Merry with spots. He smiles and shakes his head. He may only know about Maremmano horses although I know he went to the Calgary Stamped one year. He pulls out his old scythe, beautiful, someone would probably pay a mint for it. He shows me how to use it, lets me try a few swings, but this is something that will need a lot of practice. Scything requires the graceful uplifting movement of a trained dancer and involves not getting your legs cut in the process.

My shopping job entails buying litres of detergent and softeners that I don’t know if I can ever use. I decant these into large bottles, since the company only wants the plastic containers. Matisse leaps for a long legged fly and drops vertically onto the bottles tipping them and breaking two of them. Broken glass and lethally slippery liquid everywhere. I rinse him off as best I can and shut him away while I clean up the broken glass. The slippery liquid takes a long time to get off my hands.

After, as I write my diary, Matisse comes up to me with his, “Are you alright?” squeaky sound. I am not angry. I am relieved this happened before I went out and not after.

Sunday 25 May

I don’t know if I will be celebrating my birthday. If others want to then I won’t tell them no. I will have to let Liza know because she has already written a note in her book.

Matisse has settled on the nice cushions Annie brought for the plastic chairs. Roberto showed up to tell me he thinks I should not try to make hay, but should cut the field to clean it. He tells me that if I had wanted hay then I should have left the horses on only one side of the field and left the other to make hay. I am very new at this game. The bales will be heavy with weeds.

Matisse wants me up and out of bed by seven o’clock. I am lucky I didn’t have him around when I had to leave at five thirty in the morning or six, because he would certainly be pushing me out of bed at that hour. He still seems to be upset by the fact that I have closed off the wall in the bedroom and re-created the corridor.

I tell Roberto that I want holes dug for a round pen. I tell him I will buy a circular saw and drill and make it on my own. He reminds me that I cannot build a round pen on my own, unless I have extremely long arms. “Who will hold the other end?” he asks. Right. He has a point.

I have a dream about particles in suspension. All particles of the same mass are together. “Along the line of acidity,” said a man in the dream. I have no idea about this at all.

Vincenzo complains that the weather is upside down. It is interesting to read in the Dervla Murphy book (Full Tilt) that the British were being blamed for the change in world weather patterns because they had been testing nuclear war heads in the atmosphere.

Monday 26 May

There are a lot of dead branches on the kiwi. Vincenzo tells me it is the wind. I have also seen the cats up there and both Matisse and Houdini chew on the fallen branches. Maybe I should try this. In fact, if the fruit is good to eat why wouldn’t the branch be?

I take ages to write up the product descriptions for my shopping job. The labels are filled with words in Italian I cannot find in either of my giant, many-paged dictionaries.

Tuesday 27 May

I am asked to lunch by an old friend. He feeds me leftovers from a dinner he gave the night before. My revenge is to tell him that I don’t eat pasta. SHOCK. I love telling Italians that I don’t eat pasta. I am not telling the truth.

My friend is having trouble getting his data line from the phone company. He makes the same mistake I do and shouts at the person who takes his call. They hang up on him. He calls back. I am glad to see that Italians have the same problems with the phone company that I do. I sometimes think it is because I am a foreign single woman. Not true at all.

Vincenzo shows up. I have drunk two beers and am need of a sleep. I tell him I will ask the neighbour to cut the grass in the field, since if the old grass is cut the new grass can grow better.

Wednesday 28 May

Missed a day.

Thursday 29 May

I was sleeping so deeply. When I woke up I found Matisse sitting at the bottom of the bed looking at me with a grave and thoughtful cat expression. Maybe it was his plaintive meow that woke me up. He was not interested in cuddles. He gets me out of bed earlier and earlier.

Saw paintings by an Iranian woman in a cafeteria. They are highly coloured and I feel they are violent. I think about culture. About clothing and identity. I am not sure why, but I remember, , my mother sent me the latest fashions from England, when I was in Canada; hot pants, tight blouses and one beautiful soft cotton blue dress. Clothes I wore to art school. My friend Patti told me the hot pants with the hand stitched across the rear end were not for me. You are a quiet and shy person, she said. These clothes tell people you are someone you are not. She was right. I wore them because my mother spent good money buying them. I wore them because I understood they were clothes my mother would have liked to have worn herself, and having a lot of weight on her at the time, she could not.

Merry is happy she now has Pepita to chase around the field, in the same way that Rais used to chase her around the field. Bites on the bum and a lot of galloping. I need to put a better lock on the gate. One that does not look as though you could cut through the chain with a pair of scissors.

Found a dead rat and a dead lizard in the horses’ water container, a black plastic bin. It looked like a young rat. Quite handsome, looked more like a deer then a rat. I have a feeling that we are all related.

Matisse is at the end of the table as I write. Birds sing. Matisse drops to the ground with a trilling purr sound. He wants to pat the sleeping Cherokee on the nose. It does not look as though it is going to be a gentle pat. He seems to have his claws out.

Friday 30 May

Vincenzo was here. He seems to have been told that I am a writer and that I am writing something. I actually work as an editor, although Italians don’t seem to have this word in their vocabulary. (This is still a rough draft please don’t judge me! I need to start somewhere). Vincenzo is now scything the grass in the garden for his rabbits. I see new green shoots are coming up. He tells me sheep eat everything. I am always thinking of buying a sheep because the Little Prince had one to eat down the baobab trees. Vincenzo tells me sheep are bad. I wonder, how bad can a sheep get? I imagine a sheep running around the garden with its teeth bared. Anyway, he explains, it is only that the sheep will eat everything.

The grass is so high the horses’ heads disappear into it. Vincenzo said he’d tried to give them some of the grass he cut. He does what I do and speaks for them. He says they come over and tell him, “Thank you, thank you very much, very kind.” And go back to eating the grass in the field.

I tie Porgy up and notice that the “punishment” extends itself to all the dogs. They all act as though they have been tied up.

During the night, I open the window to lean out into the garden, listening and waiting to hear a sound. Nothing. The darkness is spoiled by the street lamp brightening the ground with its cold pale light.

Saturday 31 May

Took Pat to my favourite lakeside restaurant for an ice cream. There is a sense of urgency as people rush around. A storm is brewing, pewter grey clouds hang over the lake, we wait for thunder and lightening. I want to wait and watch the storm. We are so close to the lake, here we can watch as just across the narrow road the waves are whipped up by the wind, more like a storm at sea than on an inland lake.

There was a thunderstorm and the horses were in the middle of the field. I call to them and they look at me. They stand in the field and wait in the rain. I tell my accountant that I have a filly to sell. He tells me he knows someone who keeps horses for a hobby. Merry is getting spots, she gets lighter and lighter as her coat changes. An Appaloosa thing.