Erminia

Returning from a cycle ride this morning I surprised our neighbor Erminia as she walked up our drive. "Docco!" She exclaimed with a broad smile. For Erminia my English name "Doug", ending as it does in a consonant, is profoundly unsatisfying and so I have been "Docco" practically from the moment we met six years ago.

Suddenly our dog Milly trots out of the house barking hysterically whilst wagging her tail - her normal reaction to Erminia. This in turns brings Sue onto the terrace fresh from the shower with towels draped around her head and body. "Ciao Erminia" she cries, "how are you?" Erminia stumps her way up the drive with her old walking stick, falls onto a bench and gives her standard reply - "tired!"

Erminia is in her eighties and has lived in our little hamlet since she got married more than sixty years ago. Her husband Paolo died a couple of years back, but she is the matriarch of a large family who all live nearby. It's our good fortune that not only is she a genuine "contadina" or peasant farmer, but also a woman of great intelligence who takes a real interest in the peculiar foreigners who have come to live next door. She has taught us an enormous amount about life and good food, while in turn we have taught her a few things too. It was, for example, a bitter pill for her to swallow to learn that after sixty years of marriage there are men who actually take their own boots off.

Today, as ever, we talk for a few minutes about the weather, the vegetable patch and the latest death or disaster. Then she demands that I take her blood pressure as she usually does about once a week. I tell her to keep quiet and not to look at the dial as the cuff is pumping up around her wrist, but she always ignores me. "What does it say?" she asks, though I'm sure she can read the thing just as well as I. "Err ... 140 over 80" I say. "Hmm ... not bad", she replies. Suddenly, she raises herself to her feet with a grunt of pain and says "I must go"before stumping back down our drive with a cry of "ciao!" "Ciao Erminia!" We cry.