It's a Beautiful Day

I'm sat in our land basking in the Autumn sun in what Sue calls our "mediteranean garden" - a corner set aside for her to try different plants, now sadly bare.  I'm going to be on my travels soon, so I'm experimenting with using my iPhone to make a post.

Sometimes the country here is so beautiful I want to stretch out my arms and hug it.

Autumn Fruit

We're on the cusp between summer and autumn here in Puglia.  I love this time of year - it's still warm, but the storms that mark the end of summer have made the country green and lush and the leaves are turning gold.  The air is full of rich smells - bonfires and fermenting fruit.  The market is overflowing with ripe produce such as melons, peaches and prickly pears and the vendemmia or grape harvest is just round the corner.

This photo is of stuff I picked from our land during ten minutes of wandering around.  The colours reflect the season so well.  There's a lot to do on the land at the moment.  Right now I'm pruning the fig trees, which haven't been touched for four or five years and are tangled and overgrown. 

Whenever I prune trees I have Erminia's dead husband Paolo invisibly at my shoulder whispering advice - "you prune olive trees to look like a wine glass, but figs like an umbrella".  At the time he told me this I had no idea why, indeed I was suspicious that it was just irrelevant folk lore.  Now, after ten years looking after our acre of land I understand what he was getting at:  figs are a fragile soft fruit which you can't easily pick from a ladder, so you prune them like a parasol whose canopy is within reach of the ground, making the fruit low-hanging and easy to get at. 

Like so much of the old bugger's advice it's obvious when you think about it. 

Parting

I had an afternoon flight back to Puglia yesterday and so was able to spend a few hours with dad in the morning before driving from Lincoln to Stansted airport.

Dad spends a lot of time waiting for things these days - his carers coming and going four times a day, me bouncing to and fro from Italy and one much bigger thing.  To alleviate the boredom he reads, watches TV and snoozes.  The snoozing is taking up increasingly more time and occasionally he even nods off mid-sentence, sometimes waking with a start and looking round in bewilderment.

For me the time with him passes slowly and I catch myself checking my watch every few minutes.  Conversation is difficult because dad is slurring his words quite badly these days and so I invariably have to ask him to repeat what he says, which is frustrating for both of us.  The slurring is worse when he's tired, which is most of the time now.

When the time finally comes round for me to go I lean down and give him a hug and a kiss and reassure him I will be back before he knows it.  But there is now a strong sub-text created by the mutual acceptance that every parting between us could possibly be the last.

The Medals on the Wall

I'm writing this on the sly while dad watches 'the Third Man" on the TV at a volume which is making my ears bleed.  He resents my tapping away at the computer, but if I don't do something I start to go stir crazy.

I'm here with dad in his little suburban bungalow in Lincoln for four days before heading back to Italy.  I keep my sanity by going out in my hire car to the malls of Lincoln and aimlessly window shopping or by running errands and doing "odd jobs" that dad decides he needs doing.

Yesterday I noticed that the glass in the display case where dad keeps his medals was cracked and I bought a picture frame with the intention of remounting them and hanging them on the wall.  He seemed pleased with the result as I took a step back to admire my handiwork.  The one on the right with the blue and white stripes was issued by the UN for his service in the Korean "peacekeeping operation" in 1953.  Some things don't change.

I thought putting his decorations on the wall would be a way of drawing attention to them, which might spark a new line of conversation with his carers and visitors and that it might help his morale to reflect on his life in the Royal Marines.  As I looked I had a sudden vision of them laying on top of his coffin, then I quickly shook the thought away.