The new foal

The fact is I think I have been sleeping for a long while. It happens like this, the horse has her foal and then suddenly I wake up again. It is as though for all that time I have been in a state of hibernation, but I think I would call it a state of deep anxiety. Every time my horse foals I swear that I will never put her through this again, but who is going through this anxiety ... not her.

The foal is born. This time I was there minutes after and found the foal with its amazingly worryingly uneven hooves not even bothering to get up. Her head was up, she looked around with such an intense curiosity that I was amazed that such a new being could be so interested in her surroundings.

It was raining, my mare had selected a nice muddy patch of the paddock to foal, she was not even inside the shelter with the deep pile of softness under hoof.

Later the foal attempts to get up, we stand and watch from a distance, we cheer for her when she finally makes it, then we hold our breath until she finds her mother's udder. Then we hold our breath again because we have to watch for the first pooh to fall. All of this has to be reported to the veterinarian.

It is only a day later when the veterinarian comes to give the foal her first tetanus shot. I hold the foal around her chest and the vet holds up her tail, it is amazingly easy and the foal stands still after I have learned the correct way to block her. She had bounced twice, an automatic response and then she was still, I stroked her shoulder as she stood there like a horse that had been held a thousand times before. But it is her mother who is snuffling and mumbling at her nose to nose and the foal is quiet in my arms.

"Did she suckle?" asks the vet. I pull out my notes. Everything is written down in the order it happened, time of birth, first time on four legs, first meal, first pooh. The vet stays to watch while the little foal suckles.

Now we have the problem of the name. I had first remarked about how joyful this little creature was, and so we decided to call her gioiosa, because I am living in Italy. Everyone starts to call her by this name, but they do not know me and naming. She is now called Paprika, much to the surprise of all those who are now calling her gioiosa, and this is only to content the people who are desperate for a name. I used to be like them.

I know in my heart that I will not have a good name for the foal until she herself  'tells' me. She grows up, I watch her, I try different names and then one day she walks towards me when I have called the name I think she must like the best. At least this is how it was with the other foal, Nutmeg. There is of course the chance that, with all the name calling, the young animal discovers that the best way to shut me up is to walk towards me.

I watch my mare as she walks around her foal, protecting her from the leaned over tree, from the electric fencing. It is time for my mare to eat and I am bring her a bucket full of feed. I lead them both across the paddock to the large, airy open box with the manger full of hay and the feed bucket. The foal does not want to enter. She only just came out into the light and now she is to go back into the dark. She makes her high-pitched tiny whinny in protest. Mother horse goes out and brings her in circling her and huffing and snuffing at her.

As an Appaloosa the foal will need a name for her registration papers. There are six spaces, first choice and five others and then if the horse club does not like any of those names they will select one for you. I now have three of the names I need to fill the boxes, combining the name of the dam and the sire.

It may be that this foal will end up with the stable name Paprika. I chose it because of her reddish coat color, but the vet has already told me she will turn white. I also chose the name because of the wonderful two-day ride I went on with two now departed friends and their horses, one was called Paprika. It brings to mind the landscape, the rivers, the litres of coffee we drank, their sweet, amused friendship. I rode in a state of total wonder, but that is how it always is when I am in the saddle.

I will need to wait to see what color this foal decides to be. After all Nutmeg was a bay and then at three or four she decided it was time to lighten her mane and tail and put on a spattering of snowflakes over her copper colored hide.

The name I suppose will have to wait, there is still time.

Friends in passing, Tramonti di Sotto, 21 February 2014

I don’t know when it occurred to me that I might always have been moving from county-to-country, from town-to-town so that I would never get to know anyone well enough to have to go to their funeral. 

Now i live in a small town and I have already been to two funerals. One was for Nonna who was our neighbor and was 94 when she died a couple of weeks after her birthday party. Today was the funeral of a neighbor’s mother, who I had never met.

I realize, in the end, we go to a funeral for ourselves, for memories, for love, for friendship, and for the people who remain standing around the grave. I was reminded of my father’s funeral, the soldier playing the last post on his trumpet, the golden light. Uncle Eddie standing behind us and telling us to leave before our father’s coffin was covered. “It is too final,” he said. Then the wake at our house after the funeral when all the people came. “Come like a wedding,” said the butcher man.

They had looked all over Jamaica for a Union Jack to drape over our father’s coffin. In the end they draped a Jamaican flag. A soldier was there who told me that our father was the best commander that he had ever had. It reverberated to think that someone knew Daddy before I was born and, seeing his name in the paper, had come to pay his respects. I only wish that I had listened better when he told me his name and shook my hand.

Where I live now, there are about 420 residents. The small church is full. Maybe half of us are here. The rest still at work somewhere in the valley. A small boy looks up at me from an upside down position. He hangs by one arm from the back of a pew. Candles have been lit, I think of lighting candles for friends who have recently died in Jamaica. In the church, the pale pink and white flowers remind me of weddings and spring time. Small bunches of flowers are thrown into the grave. Again I think of weddings and spring time, not funerals and death.

The mountains surround the cemetery where we stand. I love these rugged, silent sentinels, the cloud mothers. I see their summits are blanketed. Where we stand it is sunny and warm after all the rain. I know that in the morning, when the clouds have lifted from the peaks, there will be a fresh layer of snow. 

Leaving the cemetery we pass Nonna’s tomb. The Bear touches her image briefly and crosses himself. I look at her and remember how she always invited me to come and talk to her, even without the Bear, and how I had always felt too shy to go. She spoke Friulano. The Bear says she spoke the old way, and that even he had difficulty following what she said. He would go to talk to her to learn, to practice this old language. As I look at the photo I am aware of a spark of pure joy? My spirit lifts, as though I have received a message from across time. 

“This is not the end,” I hear, “only the beginning of yet another journey.”

Burano and bees

Thursday 6 June 2013

My friend Plod and her husband Turtle came to Italy, Venice for a surprise birthday gift to Plod. I hauled Big Bear out of hibernation and took him on a train and a boat to visit them. They were not in Venice, they were on one of the islands staying at a hotel, or an agri-tourism.

We arrived at the train stationVenice, Santa Lucia, and neither Big Bear or myself (Thickness) had the address of the hotel, I suppose each had expected the other to bring the piece of paper I had written on in pastel-coloured pencil. Big Bear remembered I had sent the address to him, so we were able to find it searching his email stored on his cell phone.

Since the hotel was on an island, it meant walking a fair distance to the vaporetto, we did not mind. We had been stuck in the house waiting for the rain to stop, and on the Wednesday we visited Venice we had a resplendent glorious day. We stopped for coffee and I was surprised to find a regular coffee costs the same as it does at the bar around the corner.

We found the vaporetto and took a short ride out to Burano. Again we were lost and our friends found us in the huge vegetable garden behind the hotel. We had been gently advised by a local not to try to go in the front entrance, dressed as we were directly from the mountains and me wearing my hiking boots. 

We went for lunch at Al Gatto Nero, and were treated very well. It may have helped that Big Bear speaks Veneto and was able to order for us. It turned out as the lunch progressed that the owner could speak fluent English, heavily accented with an Edinburgh, Scottish accent. We ate mostly fish and then finally scampi, because this was Penny's favourite. It had just been delivered and was brought to our table so we could smell how fresh it was.

Plod and I have known each other since we were four years old, a long time. It is always as though we just saw each other yesterday and we pick up from there. "Do you remember?" She says, and I am reminded of how Plod has always been my memory. And then we say, "We must do this more often". Why don't we? We don't know. We talk of anything and nothing. Flit from one subject flower to another like butterflies sipping nectar. 

Which reminds me of the bees.

We went to visit them today. In one hive we found the queen bee with her tiny bright yellow dot, and the workers are all busy building up the cells in the honey store box to fill with honey. We didn't find the queen in the other hive, and the bees are busy dismantling the wax in the frames in the honey box. We find discarded wax on the metal floor of the drawer we pull out to clean.

We are beginners, and must now call the expert to find out what he thinks. We are only now able to easily identify the drones from the workers. We can identify the cells where more drones are waiting to hatch. We recognize the honey store, and where the pollen is kept. We find queen cells and leave them in the hope a new queen develops and that she and the drones remember to return to their hive after the wedding.

The only way to learn about bees is to experience, to pull out the frames one by one and look carefully, observe. 

I find that still I am learning this last ... to observe.

Of bees and horse

Saturday 25 May 2013

Snow on the mountain and rain all day.

First the bees and then the rain.

I go check the bees and only one flies out and immediately flies back inside. I imagine her tell the others it is only me with the dogs in the grey pouring rain.

On Thursday, we visited my horse at the clinic in Osoppo. I have owned her since she was six months old, she is now 13. Only on Thursday did I realize she answers to the name, Rose. One man is explaining that my horse's name is Mary Rose and my name is Rosemary. Everyone laughs and one says, "so I call her Rose."

Later, while my horse is waiting in a stable for yet another echogram I call her, "Rose". She has her back to me, drowsy on her feet. Suddenly she swings towards me with that expression that makes me think she is smiling. Or, is she laughing that it has taken me this long to learn her name?

 

What???
Twins? Horrors!!

When I have a new animal friend I call different names until they respond to one.  OK, so they come anyway after they have figured out that the noise I am making and the treat I am waiting to give them must mean "Come here".

However, as with a few of my horse-loving friends, the horse's name was not important. It is more our relationship with that horse, which is mainly wordless. This is what is most important. But finding that my horse answers to Rose, feels like a gift.

Why two echograms? During the first, the vet shows me the two dark globes, the embryos; bad news. They seem to be attached; more bad news. We wait, they move apart; better news. One has to be eliminated; bad news. We could wait to see if one is eliminated naturally; good news. But maybe when they move around they will attach and ... bad news.

So the second echogram was to see if the embryos had moved apart and if one could be easily eliminated. My horse is patient, the best, I am told. I stand with my head close to hers. I try to explain what we are doing, silently. No need, she doesn't want to know. Someone is giving her a hard treat to nibble on.

Last night I received another message from the vet. "Only one embryo". Relief, we are still pregnant.

Big Bear tells me all the tension went out of me when I received that message. Maybe he does not know how tense I can be while my horse is pregnant. I was not aware of this myself until I saw Rose's first and second foal standing beside her in the field. That strange unease drifted away and I understood that I had been hopelessly worried about my horse for a whole year.

Maybe this time will be different, this is Rose's third foal, or should I say ... our third.

Dog walk on a bicycle

15 May 2013

Nelly and the mountain
Taken 2012

I took the dogs for a walk, the buttercups are in bloom, shining in the sun, I had forgotten my camera and my cell phone. I will now have to wait, because I see the grey clouds are gathering again and the rain is about to fall.

I was riding my new, old, black and grey bike, leading Porgy the black dog. Nelly was out in front, she is always free running because I can trust her to come back when I call her name. When the dogs are running together, there is a point when they run shoulder to shoulder and I have to call them back, or they'll not return until they are ready.

If I call Porgy I will be ignored, but if I call Nelly she will turn around and come and ask me what all the fuss is about. Porgy can be counted on to return with her because he thinks he might be missing something.

I have found a bench, where I can watch the shadows of the clouds change the shapes of the mountains. I plan on taking a canvas there, but I don't know where my portable easel is, so I will take a sketch pad and make a series of sketches and then paint from the drawings. I usually do this. I prefer sketching to taking photos of landscape. I have discovered that a good photo does not always make a good painting, unless you take a photo 'like a painter paints' and then it may as well remain a good photo because it runs the risk of being copied.

Yesterday, I walked the other way, the usual dog walk, down the road to the end, across the field, turn right at the bench and walk to the end of the asphalt path. Turn left into another field, follow the path that seems to have been made by someone on a motorbike and then someone has crossed it wearing pointed feet. I bend to measure the tracks. They are as long as the first two joints of my index finger. I have seen where these creatures lay down, the shapes of their curled up bodies have been left in the grass. Only two, slightly apart in the long grasses.

I have to ask myself if they were there as I entered the field. Did they just get up and are they looking at me from the shelter of the newly leafed trees?

Once in the winter I followed the tracks of a large beast in the snow. He dragged a hind leg. At one point, looking down through the trees towards the river in the valley I am sure I saw him. Standing, silent and still as a tree. So still, I think I may have imagined his dark brown eye.

Horses will stand in the same way. Immobile they will watch you with a faintly amused expression in their eyes. I have caught them looking at me in this way when I enter a field and do not see them immediately, because they are Appaloosas and their dappled coats are invisible in the leafy shadows cast by the trees. At least this is how it was when I lived at Poggio.

When the dogs went for a second walk with the man I set about collecting vegetables in the garden. Bitter dandelion leaves, which I have just cooked, drained and will cook again with onion and hot pepper. My favourite is risotto made with stinging nettles.

Outside the top of my mountain is hidden in a grey cloud. Is this rain for tonight or will it rain all day tomorrow? The painting will have to wait.

A ramble

2 May 2013

Cherry blossom, Spilimbergo

If someone was to ask me what I have been doing with my time I might be hard pressed to explain. It is not as though I have a job that I go to everyday. I have a job that flies in at me from out of the blue, sometimes unexpectedly or else expected for a long time.

I work hard for a few days and then the job is over. Sometimes I am blessed with a supervisor who will answer all my questions within a reasonable time and will pay me as the job is handed in, or soon after. Once in a long while I have a supervisor that does not answer my questions about the particular document and does not acknowledge they have received the job. I am perplexed about the second type of supervisor. I am glad to say that this does not happen very often.

Squeaking about having to pay rent or buy food is useless. Experience has taught me that folks become huffy and angry, as though the needy person maybe telling lies about living on the edge of a precipice, or out of a paper bag.

Once I told someone in charge of payments that I needed urgent funds for a scuba-diving vacation. It just happened to be true, but it was not a vacation, it was an overnight in a hotel so that I could take my first diving exam with about 20 other people. I was amazed to see this person go through the stack of papers on her desk and pull out my payment form, which was at the bottom. Payment was effected immediately. I still wonder about this. If you need money to eat, people will look the other way, but if you need to do something frivolous, people will go out of their way to help you out. What does this say about us as a species? I am still trying to work this one out.

So, lately I have decided to add other strings to my bow; hence the bees. So we have gone to our classes and bought two hives. Our bee man told us to be prepared, to fill our honey store boxes with frames. I see that the wax sheets are already pressed with hexagonal patterns so the bees only have to build out from the template. This saves them time and energy. While we were engaged in attaching the waxy sheets to the frames we were accompanied by three wild bees that came to watch. Unfortunately I forgot to check the direction they flew when they hurried away as the sun set.

When the bee man is ready for us we will pick up the two brood boxes with the new bees, we will bring them home and set them up in a field on a ledge created with rocks and found objects. The hives will be set against a cut stone wall, falling down at one end. Tall pine trees stand behind the wall, which will protect the hives from the fierce north wind. The entrance to the hives will face the sun's path across the sky.

I worry that our bees won't have much to eat, which is why I have been going around photographing anything that looks like a flower in bloom to make sure it is bee friendly. Our bees will make honey from hundreds of different varieties of flowers. I was surprised to find how tasty dandelion honey is, although it may smell like dead socks to some people. This reminds me of Jackfruit and how it can stink like a pig sty until you have tasted it and then all you can smell and taste is wonder and magic.

Perhaps life is like this.

You think you are living a difficult moment, and then something happens to lift the veil, change your perspective; the dark clouds become bright sunny skies, the rain a rainbow and a frown a smile.

Suddenly we are surrounded by friends, magic, love, miracles and bees.

Liberation day in Italy

25 April 2013

Primulus veris (?)

Today is liberation day in Italy and we are all on holiday.

For a few days now I have been experiencing intense spring fever. This manifests as a great sleepiness and unease as I get used to the sudden change in climate.

All the blossoms are popping out on the trees and the mountains are touched with gold to light green where the deciduous trees are unfurling their leaves. I am confused and disoriented as we switch seasons when we go down to the plains where the season seems so far ahead of us who live up in the mountains.

There is a galloping explosion of colour in the gardens as we drive past on the way to and from the horse. Monte Rest is still showing signs of snow. My mountain outside my window has final touches of snow showing as faint memories.

We went to look at a pasture. I was the first up the lane and saw movement on my right side. All dressed in forest brown they stopped and stared at me and I at them. I recognized them as capriole (Capreolus capreolus) or roe deer in English. I was so excited to see them. I shouted "CAPRIOLE!!!!" I looked back down the lane to see Big Bear struggling pushing his bicycle through the long grass. "Hurry!" I yell at  him jumping up and down. Then I looked back and they were gone. Melted into the forest. I doubted that I had seen them at all.

Big Bear said he is VERY VERY angry with me. He thinks a bit and adds another VERY. He says it is the LAST time he goes on a fact finding mission with me ... unless I can promise to be as silent as a good hunting dog until given permission to bark. I cannot promise him.

I have been here almost ten months and it is only now that I am beginning to see the animals.

Once I was out on my own with the dogs. I turned to find what they were up to. Nothing, just dog stuff. But parallel to me, just behind my line of vision if I had continued to walk in a straight line, were muflone (Ovis musimon) mountain goats that are really sheep. I stopped, looked at them and they didn't even give me a chance to yell MUFLONE before they were gone.

Big Bear is a hunter and he suspects that I do not tell him when I see herds of animals, or even only their droppings. I do not tell him that I think he may be right.

In the winter, when the snow was still on the ground, after the first deep snowfall, I found the dainty prints of deer in the garden. There were two sets, they had braved the barking dogs to nibble, I suspect, on the sage that still poked above the snow.

Now we are celebrating spring. The cuckoo calls calming my spirit until I recall that these birds push other birds' eggs out their nest to lay their own. A young boy rides by on a motorbike, the neighbour saws wood outside his house. I know that Big Bear is trimming the branches off thin trees cut down earlier just before the sap began to rise. I should go and help.

If I go outside I may find the dogs sleeping. Porgy will be in the sun and hairy Nelly will be in the shade. Maybe the cats will be with them.

This morning I gathered Silene vulagaris for risotto. Dark green, soft to the touch leaves of a flowering wild plant. The stem snaps easily between my fingers as I gather a small bunch. The flavour is more delicate than asparagus.

Now I wish my horse was here, I am impatient for her arrival. I must not go to help trim possible fence posts.

Rainy day

22 April 2013

Magic Red Mary Rose (aka Selva)

We do not leave the village all day. It is time to vote and Big Bear has to go and make his mark. I am the noisiest person when it comes to voting, because I never seem to be living in a country where I can vote. "It is so important," I tell people. Then I add how I threw away the only vote I made in Canada voting for the Rhinoceros Party.

I do not understand protesting by not voting. Isn't that what the other parties want? Maybe I was not listening during Political Science. Which now reminds me that once I was the founding member of the Apathy Party. There were three of us and we promised to do nothing once elected. We were voted for by most of the students and then found ourselves in the very strange position of suddenly feeling we had to stand up for something, even though we had won the vote by saying we had promised to do nothing.

Today I thought I would be writing about picking up the bee hive, but I have noticed in all the time I have been living here that Italians, and those of us who were born in Jamaica, have one thing in common. We become sleepy when it rains. A little drizzle and it is time for a nap. A downpour in the middle of summer and it is time to light the fire, pull out the red wine and then fall asleep listening to the rain. When I lived in Jamaica and looked after my mother's cattle farm I knew the men would not be in to work on a rainy day.

They were right. Guinea grass is like knives on a wet day. They would have been cut to pieces if they had tried to round up cattle in the wet grass. Here in the mountains I am pleased with the grass growing bright emerald green. I hope my horse will be coming to live here soon. It is tame grass that does not threaten to grow over your head. There is a lot to be done. We have to fence the area and we have to put up some kind of shelter for the horse in case it rains, or hails or snows.

The project has to be approved by the owners of the land and the town council. We have found used fence posts and they seem to be a reasonable price. Everything has to be portable. My horse will shelter in a shack that we can take apart and put on a truck to cart off somewhere else. The fencing will be that electric kind, maybe three to four strings of it to keep the wilder animals out. I am more afraid of stray dogs than wild boar, especially if my horse manages to have a foal.

We are waiting, waiting for the sun, waiting for my horse to come into heat so we can do the first test before we order the semen. This year we will try artificial insemination. The stallion is a Leopard Appaloosa. I chose him without looking up where he lived on Google Maps. Even if a friend transported my mare to the stallion he would still need to be paid for the diesel fuel. It is less expensive to ask a couple of vets to get involved.

I look at the photos of this stallion's offspring and hope my mare decides to go into heat. He is a working stallion, is ridden out on the trail. This is all very important to me, how can you know what a stallion is like if no one has ridden him on a day-long ride? But this is in the future. Seems all the mares in our area are late.

The vet tells me the mares were put off by the bad weather, the cold and the snow. "We must wait for her to change her coat," she says. Or, says a friend, "for the moon to change".

Tomorrow is another day.

Out in the cart

21 April 2013

This is the third time we have been out riding in the cart. Emily and Drago pull us along the rock strewn torrente, where the floodwaters would flow. Now the river meanders sparkling in the sunlight friendly and tame.

There is more to driving a pair of horses than meets the eye. Especially two that are pulling a long cart behind them. I don't know how much I am learning. I have watched and now would know how to hitch the pair to the cart, but slowly.

Emily is very frisky and protests, but her eyes tell me her protest is not out of fear. It seems more like a bad habit.

I learned today that the horse that has the most trouble pulling is always placed on the right. I was once told that a horse on the right must always be on the right and the horse on the left must always pull in that position. Our guide tells us this is not necessarily so. I have also been told that a horse that is used to pull a cart or a carriage must not be ridden, but these horses are ridden.

Our guide tells us that he has noticed how the horses improve by riding them, how they seem to enjoy the comparative freedom of galloping, of drinking from the river with the fly weight of the rider on top.

These horses are twice the size of my own Appaloosa. They are a little taller, but seem shorter and built low to the ground. They are deep chested and short legged. Their hooves are huge and heavy. Today I brush the young male, he lowers his head and neck as I comb out his mane. I notice later that I have left a line of dust all the way down the middle of his back because I am not tall enough to see what I am doing. Reaching up, I use a cloth to clean him off. This works better than the brush I had been using.

Out in the cart, I am lulled by the movement, the sound of the harness and the horses hooves on the ground as the cart is pulled over the rocks. I have tried to take photographs but we bump over the rough ground and I am not sure if I would be taking a photo of the backs of the horses or the blue sky overhead. At one point we are beside a small wood that runs alongside the river bank. The plants growing beneath the trees are wild garlic. This week they are in bloom, their white flowers scenting the air with the pleasing perfume of fresh garlic. The leaves on the trees are beginning to unfurl reminding me of a pointillist painting.

I imagine taking the reins in my hands, but I can see that there is more to guiding these large creatures. There is something about how you must turn them down a slope so that you do not tip the cart in the process. Our guide has told us that we can come out with him driving when ever we want, but if we  really want to learn how to drive a carriage and pair and enter competitions we must take lessons from someone else.

I realize with a sinking heart that our guide has been driving these horses since he was a boy. Then I am heartened by another thought. A friend in Bracciano began to drive a horse and buggy in his late fifties. Another took up the challenge in his seventies because his doctor told him he could no longer ride. So now he rides around the back roads around Bracciano, his horse clips along at a spanking trot tail flying drawing a light carriage with my friend on top smiling serenely. So, there is hope.

We pass more people down by the river now that the weather is better. Some are gathering plants for their lunch. I am told they are gathering a white flowered plant, which makes a fine risotto, but I am not familiar with the name. On the way back through the narrow lanes mothers stand holding their children by the shoulders. One boy is lifted into the air, his legs are still running. His mother has stopped him in mid flight drawn, as if by a strong magnet, towards the horses and the rattling cart. A man and woman in their vegetable garden stand and wave and I wave back.

This is an uncommon feeling, being carried through a town on the back of a cart. I don't know what the protocol is. I suppose it would be best to wave at the people as we go by. I do not know how I feel about this. Shy? Humbled? If I was standing on the road watching a cart drawn by two huge horses would I want the passengers to wave at me? Or would I prefer to be left to my own dreams? Would the person standing beside me suddenly need to reach out to hold me back as I lifted off the ground and started to float upwards towards the passing horses and their cart, lost in my reverie?

I have decided that the next time we go out I will wave at people and discover what happens. I am sure that the boy who is lifted while running towards the horses and cart will wave back. And the girl with the long plaits, her mother holding her shoulders, as though afraid  she will float out of her reach and onto the back of the cart, will also wave back at me with a tentatively raised hand.


Tomorrow picking up bee equipment.

Hair Cut

20 April 2013

The big day and I went to have my hair cut.

It took me almost all my life to understand that the only way to get a good haircut is to ask someone with a hair cut I like, and who is working close to where I live, where they got their hair cut.

When I first came to Italy I did it all wrong. I would walk down a street and try out the hairdresser close to where I lived. I was mostly very disappointed.

I have been living in Friuli-Venezia Giulia since June, I had seen the waitress at the bar with a good haircut and she had told me about 'Fashion Time' in that same month, but it took me until today to get there.

The owner of the salon was the woman who had hung up on me (twice) when I had attempted to call for an appointment. She did not mention this while she was washing my hair, or discussing the design of my head. It was not until she had almost finished that she said, "It was you I hung up on." Yes! "My fault that I did not understand you," she said.

She explained, "The call centers phone at least five times a day and I don't have time to listen to them while I'm working."

So I said I also hang up on cold callers, which is not true because I usually listen to the callers and then tell them they must not waste their time on me and to hurry up and put the phone down because there is someone out there who will want to talk to them.

At the salon, looking in the mirror, I was forced to notice my broken front tooth. During the winter, in a fit of impatience, I used my front teeth to pull off a glove when I was suddenly moved  to photograph a mountain. Mountains are not usually known for their speed, and this one was in no hurry. I am certain that I could have taken my time to take my gloves off properly using my hands, and the mountain would have waited patiently until I had aimed my camera. But there it is now, my left front tooth is slightly shorter than my right and now I try to talk and smile without opening my mouth.

When I did look out the window at the salon, turning my head slightly to the left, I was surprised to find a wide view of the piazza down below. In the distance,  tucked between the buildings surrounding the town square I saw an old, grey church with what I suppose is called a rose window.  I have never seen this church before, now I must visit the next time I go into Maniago.

Pleased with my newly designed head, I walked by the bar to say thank you to the waitress with the fine haircut. Stern faced she walked towards me. I said, "I went for a hair cut," she did not recognize me. I walked on. Something made me turn around and there she was laughing, "I remember you!" Well, it was ten months ago she'd advised me where to go for a trim.


Tomorrow leaning to drive a pair of horses and cart.

Buying the hive

Forsythia in April, Spilimbergo.

19 April 2013

I see across the lake, which is not a real lake but one held up behind a dam that the cherry blossoms are in bloom, pale pink beside the forsythia, bright yellow. I consider painting them against the pale grey of the buildings in the background. It is a hard place to stop, the road winds around the lake with a rock wall on one side and a steep drop to the water on the other. I could come here on a bicycle. I cannot even stop to take a photograph.

We decide to buy dog food and tic repellent. I have just found an intrepid tic up high on my legs. After years of living in Jamaica, I am used to the feel of them and have learned to look before I scratch. At the Consorzio Agrario we see someone has drawn and coloured a bee and stuck it to some shelving. We ask if they have bee hives. The young man tells us he is specializing in bee-keeping equipment. He has only just begun, like us. I have already chosen my face mask. He only has two types and they are both square. I am quite pleased. How often can I legitimately dress up to look like a robot. I can't wait to get my white all in one suit.

Having already lost bees, we order the top half of the bee hive, where the honey hopefully will be stored and a queen excluder. Down the bottom the queen bee is supposed to lay her eggs and the workers and the drones and possibly future queen bees will be nurtured. It is all so early yet, but we feel that we need to hurry because already the cherry tree in our neighbour's tiny garden is dropping its blossoms. It looks like snow from where I stand in the middle of the garden.

I am a little worried because the intense buzzing I heard only a couple of days ago is fainter. I worry that someone has found their nest and killed them all thinking they are wasps. Roberto tells me off for drawing bad luck.

Later he tells me that bees bring good fortune. "What about the ones that flew away?" I ask him. He says, maybe they were not willingly given to him. These will be different. We will have paid a small fortune for two families and so they better stick around.

The bees we will buy are Carnica and  able to withstand the cold in the winter. Last year's bees obviously lived through the winter and I wonder where they holed up. I will not have time tomorrow to look for them. After more than six months of letting my hair grow wild I am being carted off to the hairdressers.

I had seen a haircut I admired at the bar we go into Maniago. When I say bar I am talking about drinking coffee and cappuccino. We confuse them because it is me who drinks the coffee and Roberto who wants the overheated cappuccino. At this bar they serve good brioche, slightly warm. There is a waitress there with the good haircut and she has told me where her hair cutter is.

It was difficult making an appointment because whoever answered the phone hung up on me whenever I started to speak. Roberto grabbed the phone from me. "You scare every one away with the way you talk to them," he says. "You are not talking to a deaf horse."

He speaks softly. This time the woman answers and he tells her I want to make an appointment. At first she seems to be allergic to my accent. "English". Then when she has made sure that I have never been there before I hear her cheer up. I tell her that I admired the haircut in the bar. "La mora?" she asks ... the dark one? Yes. I say, "I don't want a cut like hers, but I know it is a good cut." I am given an appointment for this Saturday.

"We'll talk about the hair cut," I'm told. 

On Monday we are to pick up the new bee hive. Hair and  hive, my life is changing at the speed of flight.

Friuli Venezia Giulia
April 2013

I have been silent for a while, not exactly because I have continued to write my diary and sometimes get to read it over and decide to write up bits and pieces, which may still appear here at some point.

I am now living in Friuli Venezia Giulia in a small town up a mountain side. I see a mountain every morning when I open the shutters, it seems now that what happens on the mountain may affect the mood the rest of the day. Of course if I cannot see it, it is about to rain or raining.

Next door is the cherry tree, it is now in blossom and a thousand bees buzz between the blossoms. I had the idea that I would be waiting to see which direction they go in, but have the feeling that I may need to make a sandwich and be carrying a flask of water. One bee seems to remain around the same few flowers for rather a long time, longer than my attention span.  I may attempt this tomorrow, waiting to see which direction they fly.

Now why would I be doing this?

I have recently taken a course in bee keeping and Roberto, the man, had bees last year and they all swarmed and flew away somewhere. I know they are not wearing t-shirts with Roberto's Bees printed on the back, but I am convinced these were once in his hive. This is actually why we went to the class to learn about why the bees would have flown away.

We learned many reasons. I suspect it was because they felt over crowded and just needed a bigger place to grow. This time we will start with two families in two hives and a spare hive just in case someone feels like moving in. Yes we still have a lot to learn but there some things in life you can only learn by doing and bee keeping happens to be one of them.

More later now that I have found my way back.

I would call the flowers in the photo cowslips, but I think they must have a Latin name, to be looked up and added.

Matisse as a kitten and Houdini

Here is Matisse as a kitten.












On the right is Houdini, one lazy summer day at Poggio.

12 Poggio December 2003

Poggio, December 2003

Monday 1

Liza arranged a lunch for all her friends so they could meet her younger sister Dim, who wore a skirt and was dressed in blue. I was in brown and also dressed in a skirt, which I mention because it is a rare event for me. Dim wore a necklace of highly coloured miniature parrots. A necklace a child, or any good friend of mine, might wear.

Justin the watercolour painter was there. He’d ridden his motorino in from a small town where he’s now living. He said it had taken him an hour and he looked as though he needed to be thawed out. “Long time,” he says to me, but there was nowhere for him to sit at my table. He used to sit on the street in Rome and paint and sell everything he painted to passers by as soon as it was dry. I tell him I’m to go into Rome with Katherine to see the Toulouse Lautrec exhibit.

I tell Pat that I’ve not yet figured out how to stay at home and be paid. She says, “When you have a pension this happens.” I’ll probably never have a pension. Artists don’t stop working. I remember being told that. I also remember a life drawing teacher shouting in exasperation during a class in summer school. “Why are you looking for a job? This is your job. You are painters. You are never without work.”

Tuesday 2

I went to Rolando’s art class. A man I’d not met before was there. His name begins with B and ends in ino. He paints realistically. Takes photos, which he copies, placing a few unrelated images in the same painting. We all seem to be painting from photos, mostly the paintings bear no resemblance to the photo.

I enjoyed the drive to Viterbo, except when I came to what I call the bad bridge, which is built at an angle. Going one way you can’t see the cars coming from the other direction. Coming from the other the same thing but at night the blank grey wall, lit by headlights, looks exactly like mist lit by headlights. It has confused me more than once. This time there were a few cars, unusual on a Monday. One car was stopped at the side of the road and the driver waved me on.

On the left hand side of the road, not too far along from the bad bridge was a huge pile of flowers. Someone, maybe more than one person, had recently died there. It seemed that the people in the cars had to do with the flowers. Round the corner by the bar, up the hill on the right there is a cemetery that I’d never noticed before. Walking towards it there were many people, a broad cross-section of Italy; young, old, middle-aged. All going to the funeral in the clothes they happened to be wearing that day to go to work.

I am at the art class and have to leave early because I want to feed the horses at 5.30pm. Silly really. Maestro says he likes the painting I’m working on. It is a shame when I myself am not so sure and am struggling with it. I struggle to maintain enough enthusiasm to continue on a certain path and not suddenly start painting something else.

Wednesday 3

My Australian colleague called to book a ride with three other people on Saturday. I’ve decided to take the Saturday riders to a friend’s riding stable: Caino. Actually Caino is the nickname of my friend’s father. He’d been kicked off a bucking horse when a boy and had landed in a tree. They had meant to call him Icarus, but they got the name wrong and called him Caino. The name stuck. The son now runs the riding stable at the top of a cliff out by Canale Monterano.

I found a robin trapped in the kitchen fluttering against the windowpanes. I caught it in my green jacket and finally let it fly out the window. It was unharmed, unlike the blue tit that had been caught by Matisse.

I’m being paid the last payment for my work. Money seemed easier to hold onto when we had lire instead of the euro. I also felt a lot richer. Anyone would, I suppose. One million sounds a lot better than one thousand. Six hundred lire sounds better than three hundred euro. My bank account looks depressing and I can no longer call myself a millionaire.

A lemon sky and I wonder where my grey wool hat is.

Thursday 4

I put the halter on Nutmeg. Doesn’t count. I tricked her. I put feed in a bucket and had the halter all ready loose in my hand. As she ate I fiddled around her head and got it on her. When she raised her head from the bucket to take a breath from eating, I got the noseband over her muzzle. I told her she looked very beautiful with her new halter on. Actually it is Pepita’s old one so must now get her a new one. I want to teach Nutmeg to lead today.

Cherokee is out there looking for food. She seems to be hungrier in the morning than she is at night. Maybe they need to eat more because of the cold.

I am wondering where I can take my Australian colleague and friends to ride. Remo’s cousin used to have a place over by Anguillara, but he fell out with his father. All the horses used to come out of their stalls to drink water at the same time. Then they would all go back to their own places. All without any human intervention. Or you would unsaddle them and let them be and they would go for a drink of water and back to their own stalls.

Friday 5

I have a headache since last night after I went out to check the horses. Pepita was nowhere to be seen. She’d lifted up the bar between Nutmeg and herself and Sully’s stall and squeezed herself through. It was raining and I found Pepita eating the leftover hay in Sully’s den. I chased her out.

I complain of a cold head and am still searching for my grey hat, which may remain on my head indoors and out throughout the winter months. I’d been wearing my hat at Maestro’s. I had to take it off because he gets two wood stoves burning and a fire in a huge fireplace in the main room. I got my old spot back. This is crunched in with the long timers in the smaller room with a very efficient wood stove. Maybe the light is better in there. We all get an easel and stand or sit to paint in oil. Not too much room to move around.

I’ve bought a beautiful bosal from Donà, the local saddle shop. It is white rawhide with plaited cotton reins. A girl’s bridle for a girl horse. It cost a whacking 90 euro. It is more for show than for being used. It is very beautiful and I wonder about just hanging it on the wall.

Saturday 6

Vincenzo the landlord shows up. “Come stiamo?” How are we? he asks me lightly joking with me. Then he starts apologising. He tells me he called to say he was coming but that the phone must have been off the hook. I tell him that I have Memotel, which is a telephone answering service and would take a message even if my phone was off the hook. It is very difficult to explain all these new innovations. I’m beginning to suspect that this elderly gentlemen in his too short trousers can write his name but would be hard pressed to read what he’d written.

Vincenzo says he has an electrician who is installing a burglar alarm at his house. He wants to ask him to make an estimate on changing the wiring in the house I’m renting.

Later, Mara rode by leading a young boy on the overfed pony Polly. She told me one of her horses, Ricca, had died of colic. I knew that horse and she was always getting colic. I saw her once in such pain. These horses lived in a field or waited standing in stalls to be ridden. It was while she was standing in the stall that I saw her arch her back downwards. All muscles tense. That time Mara and I were with her and were able to give her something to relieve her pain and, I suspect, save her life.

The folks coming for the ride wanted to know how the horses would be. They wanted to add another woman to the party. I booked them into a restaurant so we could eat something before getting in the saddle.

Pepita escaped (again) on Friday. She ignored a bucket of feed that I rattled at her. I decided to chase her and made her canter around until she was fed up and wanted to get back to the herd (of two others). I was able to catch her and then took the opportunity to lead her and teach her “whoa”. She listens. However, I still don’t know if I can tie her and leave her.

Sunday 7

The ride was wonderful, the weather was cool and it didn’t rain. The hills rolled away into the soft grey sky. I rode a black horse that acts up in the same way as mine will on the way home. I am aware that I may be the problem and not the horse. I feel myself stiffen and hold too tight to the reins. I resolve to watch myself when I next get onto my horse.

The people were OK and I didn’t lose my temper. One of the crowd had to get off his horse to be sick behind a bush. They’d all been out drinking the night before and had probably had made a long night into the morning. It was about this time that we were joined by a man I’d ridden with before. A few of us had gone to Civitella Cesi on horseback. One man rode Paprika, who was stolen during the BSE crises and horses were being stolen for meat. Later her owner died. A mutual friend said he’d never got over his horse being stolen.

R, one of the riders, rode with me in the car from the restaurant and after the ride back to my house. Where we all met up for hot tea or hot chocolate. I’d bought a lemon cake from the supermarket and it was dreadful. I have frozen it. Maybe it will improve the flavour.

I really liked the man who led the ride. They also train folks to be guides on horseback, and I want to do this. He said that I could bring Merry if she was ready to be ridden. We could learn together.

R had told me bad news about future work. No one wants to invest in agriculture in Iraq and five to eight hundred staff members are to be released from service.

Monday 8

A holiday Monday and it feels like a Sunday. Porgy was barking and it never occurred to me that he was barking at the horses. All it would take is one kick from Sully to his silly head and he’d be dead. Going on the same concept as tying a dead chicken around a dog’s neck to stop it chasing them. I tied Porgy up beside Sully while she ate. I saw her make an ugly face at him and at one time she laid her bared teeth against his head. I knew I couldn’t go into lunch and leave them to it. When I went to put water in the buckets I saw Sully stamp her forefeet beside Porgy and felt that he may have had enough. So tied him up at further away from her.

Tuesday 9

The wind blows and teaches me all the places the cold comes into the house. I dress to feed the horses hay and immediately after I’ve done this come back inside again. I find Matisse on the closed cover on the toilet. He can no longer watch the shadows play on the bathroom window as I have covered it with a thick and heavy towel to keep the cold wind out.

Wednesday 10

It took about twenty phone calls, but finally Remo and Lele showed up to help me with the vaccinations. I don’t know why I bothered call them in the end as I could really have done the job myself. I had been afraid that the vaccination for the foal would have been different, and it wasn’t.

In the night I hear the heater work overtime. Pat and the electrician tell me that it costs less to keep the heater on all the time and to keep the temperature at a constant and even low temperature. I think differently. I will turn it off all the time and only turn it on when I really have to. I think this will save fuel. They argue that the heater must work longer to heat a cold house up. I watch myself. When the house is really cold the only warm place is in bed and that is where I go. I don’t actually have any energy to do anything else, not even work on the computer. In the end it is warmer outside even with the wind blowing.

My French friend AM turns her heater off at night and sleeps with her bedroom window wide open. She sleeps under a heavy rug made of many pieces of goatskin. As a child I used to imagine being at the North Pole on a sledge pulled by huskies. Someone would be wrapping me up first in silk, then in thick soft wool and then in soft furs, and then I would fall asleep and be pulled through the cold northern night in my dreams.

Thursday 11

Went to the dentist, who is more beautiful than I remembered him to be. He is young, his hair sticks up on his head as though spiked by the wind. He has an artists way of doing his dentistry. I’d been told to go to younger dentists in Italy, because they are now trained longer than they used to be.

I bump into a colleague from Anguillara who asks how can I continue with these short work contracts. After a while, he adds, “They must weigh you down”. It’s true that at the beginning I feel quite positive and then I start to worry about whether or not my contract will be renewed. It makes it difficult to concentrate sometimes. I’m not very Zen.

On the radio I hear them talking about Iraq and saying how it seems that someone is sitting down and planning attacks on humanitarian aid workers. “This has never happened before,” they say.

Friday 12

Here I am at Christmas time, with no job. Once, I was told by a friend that she knew I was to be offered a temporary post. Someone had seen the paper work. It got stuck in someone’s desk drawer, she said. However, I was glad to be out of that particular department at the time. Maybe it was a lucky break.

Marco the maniscalco came on the dot of 2.30pm. He charged me 10 euro for doing both Sully and Pepita’s feet. After, I put the horses in the field with the electric fence and it works. Porgy got zapped twice and came to me to comfort him; sweet.

Saturday 13

Remo rode Merry on the campo. She has to look at everything. He says he will take her out in a group. He tells me that the next time they go out in a group I can be the one on Merry. I’m not so sure.

I think of going Christmas shopping, which means going to the upstairs discount above the supermarket, or looking for newer, unread books on my bookshelves.

I’ve been turning the heat down to 10-12°C at night. In the morning there is a smell of mould in the bathroom and I see it spreading on the underside of the tiles over the bathtub. The engineer for the house tells me the bathroom was added after it had been built by him, or he’d followed its construction.

Vincenzo will show up today. He told me that he usually builds a fire after the first rains. He is talking about the huge hill he’s building in the field, over which he’s placed a sheet of plastic so the rain will not wet the pile and it will light easily. I told him that we have had days and weeks of rain. He moves his hands and shakes his head as though to clear it. I think he means he’ll light his fire after these long first rains have ended.

Sunday 14

Matisse gets me out of bed at 6.35am. I let Porgy out and Houdini comes in. Matisse pounces on him and gives him a body hug, which may come with a bite. Houdini sometimes spends an hour or so inside playing with Matisse, but today it seems he has another place he wants to be.

Matisse is intent on burying his food in the floor. I’ve bought very expensive Hills D/D prescription diet because he is scratching a lot. The woman in the pet food store says that sometimes this is caused by a food allergy. I’ve been buying the highly coloured – inexpensive – red cat food. Maybe this is it.

I spent three or four hours waiting for Remo to train my horse. The next appointment was walking up the driveway. A man with white hair and a beard who has bought his granddaughters a stallion to ride. I think I wouldn’t have done that, even though Remo seems to have a magic touch with stallions and they behave themselves as well as a mare or a gelding when he is done with them.

There is something heavy bouncing around the garden. I am hoping it is the dogs and not an escaped horse.

Monday 15

I wake in a bad mood. I thought I was going to write a Christmas letter to anyone who might want to hear from me. I hate Christmas. Hate is maybe too strong a word, I am indifferent perhaps. I buy presents for people I know are buying presents for me. There is no point in sending anything to Mummy because she won’t get it. I think the problem may lie with the Jamaican and/or Italian post office.

There were five vacuum cleaners lined up in the storeroom beside the house. I’ve now taken them to stand in a line beside the rubbish bin out on the road. I have hung the faded plastic hula hoop on the plastic knob sticking out of the side of the rubbish container. Maybe a child will take it. It looks like some sad time traveller. I was too small to really enjoy a hula hoop when it came into fashion, but I remember by elder cousins played with it while shrieking and giggling.

Tuesday 16

I awake with a headache. It is biting cold. Matisse is battering at the window wanting to be let out.

An electrician came to do a quote on the re-wiring of the house. He drives a BMW. I don’t think I want an electrician who drives such an expensive car to be writing up an estimate for a job. It makes me nervous. He barely glances at the house and tells me the estimate will be ready in the afternoon.

I find Matisse eating the outside cat food. He refuses to eat the expensive kind that is drying up in his bowl. Now he is contentedly washing himself on the back of the sofa-bed.

I’ve given all the kiwi fruit away to Pat and Rolando. I’ll pick the rest growing upstream from where the dead cat is buried and store them in the crawl space in the store room. How Vincenzo got there I don’t know.

A chill wind blows strong enough to make the curtains move over the closed window. It is painful where it lands on me, like a cold knife plunged to the bone.

Wednesday 17

At one in the morning I find the two male dogs, Porgy and Navaho curled up in the barn. I tried to keep Cherokee in, but she was whining and so I put her out. She looked at me with her big brown eyes. Sorrowful and questioning. She has a huge tumour and no longer follows the male dogs on their excursions through the woods.

I think Cherokee was once used to following the previous tenant, the one who abandoned her, around the house. Once she’d come into the house and immediately gone into the studio, which used to be the bedroom and curled up on the floor. In the kitchen poor Cherokee goes into the corner where there is now the washing machine, as though she expects to lie there.

I sat in the barn waiting for Navaho to come back, but more to feel what it was like, and experience why the dogs sleep there. Amazingly warm for an old tin-sided barn. I suspect it depends which way the wind is blowing.

Thursday 18

I wonder if my brother, Peter, is planning a surprise visit. He’s been very quiet. He may well be thinking the same thing about me.

Friday 19

Navaho has not been back for two nights. Cherokee showed up last night after I got home and I’d decided to take Porgy out to see what the dark lump was beside the road. I brought her into the kitchen and fed her, and then again, and twice more in the night. She is so thin. Today she is walking around. I’d got up in the night to give Cherokee yet more food and I put on the heat, so by late morning we were all sleeping like babies.

As Matisse leaves when I open the door to let Cherokee out, I’m reminded of what Rolando my painting teacher tells me. I must let the animals live their own lives, with as little interference from me as possible. I’m there to feed them, give them water. I don’t know, I think I’m also here to worry about them too.

I’ve been interviewed for another editing job, at least a month’s work.

Saturday 20

Went to Remo’s where he was preparing the sand field with the tractor. “Ten minutes,” he says. Two and a half hours later he is on Mary Rose’s back, but it didn’t matter, it gave me such joy to see her. She looks so elegant and as though she is thinking about what she is doing. Remo seems to be preparing her to spin. Remo tells me he will take me to a good store to buy Western gear when I’m ready. I said I cannot ride my little horse looking like a rag bag.

I’m not good at Christmas. I think of buying small gifts for people, like a bottle of rum and tropical fruit. Who knows if the family I would buy this for would even eat tropical fruit. I thought of putting all this in the little red basket I have, but I see that it has been taken over by Matisse.

In the night I hear a sound in the garden and remember times I’ve opened the bedroom window and found Cherokee there. She has been going down hill for a while now with her tumour. It is very cold out there. I think of getting her into the car and taking her to the vet. I could lift her front legs in and then her back. She is very large. Maybe I should pay someone to come to visit her.

Sunday 21

I thought of giving away my ivory netsuke, the little working man and the man with the horse. I picked them up and they were warm as though they had recently been handled. The little working man smiled up at me and I put both ivory sculptures back in their safe spot.

I have taken Cherokee to the vet, who told me she has bronchitis and gave her a shot of antibiotics. Cherokee staggers. The vet said it could be this but it could also be the tumour has spread to her lungs. The part I can see is as big as an apple. He tells me there is not much he can do. I can only make her comfortable. He talks of her staying in the barn. He may think of a barn with brick walls, filled with sweet-smelling hay. I now don’t have much faith in the tin-sided barn to offer much protection to a staggering dying dog.

Later in the day after a dog walk with Porgy, I found Cherokee had collapsed in the field. I got her into the kitchen slowly encouraging and half dragging her there.

Monday 22

Cherokee is still alive. She circles the kitchen walking kilometres. I pick the food I’d set down for her off the floor since she walks through it as though not seeing. She scatters the contents in the bowl. Porgy looks at me from his place under the kitchen table.

I told Anthea about Cherokee and she tells me she has only just put Esposita, her Marimano dog down because of a tumour on her chest. I tell her that Cherokee circles the kitchen and gets stuck in a corner and won’t move. “Maybe she’s in pain,” says Anthea. “She makes no sound,” I tell her. Then Anthea tells me something I never knew. “They don’t”. They don’t make a sound. Dogs that whine and bark all through their lives don’t make a sound when they’re in pain.

Down at Remo’s I play darts. They are playing with light-weight children’s darts. Not the heavy kind I remember from my parent’s bar, the Old Pimento House in Jamaica. Marco the blacksmith was there with his sweet daughter, Ilena, with an angelic tiny face. I watch a young man ride his Arab gelding as it rears and bucks and he rides out the storm with elegance and doesn’t fall off or shout. We are all given Christmas gifts. A horse shoe with a pine cone and dried oranges. It is pretty and seems filled with good magic. I put it up on my bedroom wall.

At Poggio, someone drives up to the corner of the garden and whistles. Maybe they wait for the dogs to come barking and running. No one will go. Porgy is under his table in the kitchen, Navaho is missing and Cherokee is silently circling the kitchen.

Penny calls, she’d been on my mind because she’s the one who has sat and watched her pets die at the end of their lives. She has never put any of them down and disapproves of it. I wonder if the veterinarian would release Cherokee from her pain.

I tell Penny that I used to think of my brother’s house as a “safe house” a place to go when I needed to feel cared about. It was easier when I was in New York and he was in Florida. “You can come here,” she tells me. And I know that I can. Somehow I am much more stuck with all the animals. I don’t feel able to just close up the house, get someone to feed horses, dogs and cats and disappear to England for a couple of weeks to get my bearings again.

Penny tells me someone is building in her garden. She is ordering trees to shut them out. Magnolia and Cypress all the way from Tuscany. “Will they grow in Sussex?” I ask. She tells me the gardener says to move them in the winter so they have time to acclimatise. They may even grow better with the extra English rain.

I notice that Matisse sits on the left hand side of the bed and he blinks at himself in the mirror. From this vantage point he can also keep an eye on me without even turning his head.

It was only two weeks ago that Porgy and Cherokee were walking around outside the gate together. Maybe I’d not notice how ill she was for a whole week because I thought the dogs were being fed by the neighbours. Cherokee had not been eating and I’d not been concerned. Now she drinks milk, laps it up. She’s drinking my expensive goat’s milk very slowly. I see Porgy eyeing it. “Give it to me,” he seems to say, “I’ll show you how fast a dog can lap up goat’s milk”. And he does. He places one paw in the centre of the bowl so it doesn’t run away from him and finishes the milk in seconds.

Tuesday 23

The Maestro was very pleased with my painting. “Very painterly,” he says. One of the students comes and asks if the man in my painting is eating an apple. The maestro returns to look into my eyes. I wondered if I should feel hurt by this comment. The man in my painting is playing a tiny wind instrument that is held in both hands like a harmonica, it can’t be seen. I know it is there because I took the photo, which I am now working from. The man was one of my male friends. I may even have been in love with him, but he was never in love with me. He was as I have painted him mercurial, and his eyes are laughing.

About painting, I learned some time back that people’s comments should be listened to. They often tell me more about the person doing the criticism than it does about my painting. It all really depends on who is doing the talking. I will always listen to Rolando, Maestro. I will sometimes listen to Pat. I will always listen to Liza, because her advice is worth following.

Sometimes the comments about my work make me embarrassed, as though the person talking does not realise they are giving so much of themselves away. I used to read the children’s books I wrote at schools, then the children and I would take huge sheets of paper and coloured pens and we’d create books together. Some of the stories they told me would make my heart skip a beat, or cause me to hold my breath. These children were not always from the richest or prettiest part of town.

I go to visit Mara carrying a stupid mug with a grinning horse on it. I find Flora is on her friend’s horse just about to go looking for her husband who is riding around bareback in the woods on her horse, Orazio.

I have stopped writing the Christmas letter because I have no Christmas feeling and my letter would be filled with questions. Maybe people wouldn’t mind that so much, especially friends. Although my friends would want a personal handwritten letter from me and not one they shared with a lot of folks they’d not met and had not much wish to meet.

Cherokee continues her clockwise circles of the kitchen. She stops in corners and under the stepladder. I know she sees because she focuses on Matisse as he flickers across her vision. I try to feed her and her tongue comes out and doesn’t pick up the food. Is there a point in continuing this life of hers?

Wednesday 24

I took Cherokee to the vet. He says there is not much we can do. He tells me to leave her in the hay barn. I did and when I went to look she was no longer there. Maybe she went to look for Navaho. Liza was here and we exchanged Christmas gifts. I heard Cherokee bark. Two short barks, as though in some kind of distress. I didn’t run out to look. Later I went, when Liza had gone, she was nowhere to be found.

Isn’t it better that she is outside? In the kitchen she would circle always in a clockwise direction and then flop down asleep. I think the vet must have thought the barn would be a warm one, filled with hay and animals sheltering from the cold. A warm barn. Not the windy, draughty place with the flapping tin sides.

Pat tells me Cherokee had probably gone off to die somewhere. I smelled her outside the kitchen door, even with the tramontana, the cold wind from the north, blowing. Strangely, I smell her more outside than inside the kitchen where she’s been existing for the last few days. I never knew that I would learn the smell of a dog. In the summer I learned their barks and could tell one dog from the other. It is a cold day for Cherokee to die.

Thursday 25

Christmas day and I wouldn’t know it. Matisse and I bump into each other. There are at least five good sized rooms here and we always seem to be in the same place at the same time and going to sit on the same spot. Now he is lying close to me with his right paw hugging my leg and his nose up against me. I am thinking angry sad thoughts and spiralling down into a pit. I feel two paws on my face, “Wake up,” seems to say, my furry friend. “There’ll be lizards to chase in the spring when the sun shines.”

Friday 26

Santo Stefano, Boxing Day. Matisse gets me up at 6.39am. He is battering around the house waiting for me to let him out. It is feeling like a very sleepy day out there. Quiet, cold. No sign of Cherokee or Navaho. I hear a human cough on the other side of the hedge outside my bedroom window. Then a car came by, probably to pick up the cougher.

The water outside is frozen in the taps. I fill the horses’ water container filling a bucket in the kitchen sink and pouring it into the container. They gather around to drink.

Peter calls and I miss the call. He’s left a message. When I call back his phone is busy and I call him on his cell phone. Debbie, his second wife answers. “He’s on the phone with his sister in Jamaica. Who is it?” “His other sister,” I tell her. When he calls back he tells me he’s been sick with bronchitis. He is losing weight. Has lost weight. He tells me he doesn’t get sick pay. I’m surprised. I thought everyone in America got paid when they were off sick. What kind of a country is that? At least he is getting a pension. I hope.

He tells me the Department of Transport rules are changing on the 4^th of January. I’m surprised that he even keeps up with these things. He apologises for not sending me the cowboy boots I’d wanted for my 50^th birthday in June. I tell him not to worry about it. “It was your 50^th birthday,” he says. People from Jamaica visited him and Debbie for Christmas. I don’t tell him that I’m on my own. Not such a bad thing, as it is my choice and I enjoy the country quiet. I know I have friends just round the corner, celebrating in front of their fireplaces or snoozing through the afternoon.

I take Porgy on what I think will be a two hour walk, it takes twenty minutes. I don’t know how the same walk on horseback can take so much longer, maybe because I don’t walk from A to B and meander because its not me who’s doing the walking.

For lunch I cook mushrooms with cream and butter. These are the huge feathery mushrooms I’ve been growing in the cellar on my mushroom block. I don’t need to eat anything else all day.

Liza calls to thank me for the present and to tell me about her Christmas lunch at a local restaurant with a bunch of friends. Dried up salmon and lamb. Some kind of vegetable. A sorbet between the first and second course and…NO DESERT. I know the place. Two televisions blaring at opposite ends of the room both turned to a different channel. The sound of voices and the tvs bounce of the walls. I get a headache and my teeth hurt just thinking about the noise.

Saturday 27

Divine. I don’t know that even my father would have succumbed to such a breakfast. Coffee with a dash of Tia Maria.

Today I opened the studio and it was a pleasure to see the tidy shelves. Now I have to concentrate on tidying up the right hand side of the studio.

Horses gallop around the garden. Pepita threatens to crash through the fence, she didn’t succeed. Matisse complains about the food I put down for him. He doesn’t like beef with rice. Only fish, fish, fish.

I went to Anthea and Luigi’s open house. Luigi wearing his red Babbo Natale hat. I’d found a couple on the road with a black Labrador, who finally showed up. Another couple was there, the man works for the BBC covering the Pope. I may have even heard him on the news. Lena was there with her two youngest children. Her husband and elder son were out all day somewhere doing boy stuff. She wanted to kidnap me and take me to see an exhibition in Bracciano. I just wanted to go back to my house and hide from the cold and the wet and the wind.

I take Porgy out for a walk on the lead. At the holes in the fence he turns to look at me with his paw raised. Poor baby. Maybe he’ll find the missing Navaho and Cherokee.

Sunday 28

Navaho is back. He must have come in the night. Porgy “told me”. As we went out he makes a sharp right and I see that the door to the cantina is open. Navaho comes up the steps. Of course there’s no Cherokee. He licks my hand, “Breakfast?” Just like any man who’s been out for the week chasing a woman in a fur coat and the right kind of perfume.

Later Matisse looks out the window. He’s heard a sound. Maybe it’s Navaho in the cantina. I only hope he doesn’t knock over my highly productive mushroom block.

I find a photo of all the dogs together in the spring. Do I really need a puppy?

Monday 29

Rain. Can I face the road to Viterbo in this rain? Navaho has gone again. He’d come back to be refuelled and now he’s gone again. Porgy gets taken on walks on the lead. I don’t feel like being dog less.

Mirto calls and tells me she spent Christmas serving a Christmas dinner to the homeless. She talks of moving out of Rome.

Tuesday 30

Navaho has again returned. He looks sideways at Porgy who is now tied up to the table leg in the kitchen so he won’t eat Matisse’s food. Matisse skips out into the rain. I take Porgy for a walk and he doesn’t want to go because it’s still raining. I walk him around the house. Bop Bop. There’s Matisse trapped behind the huge plastic sheet I’ve used to cover over the porch. I let Matisse back in by opening the living room door from inside the house. He comes in slowly as though doubting that he is entering the place he now knows as home.

Wednesday 31

I begin to prepare the rooms for the electrician to begin his work. He is supposed to up date the wiring and put in an earth. If the electricity is in order I can think of doing a bed and breakfast here.

At Remo’s I hear that someone has had four horses stolen, and another person five. Remo and Lele now take it in turns to sleep in the car down by the horses. I know that I’ll be up at every sound in the night looking for horse thieves in the night.