Up on the Roof

I was having a siesta in my bedroom during one of the recent rainstorms when a telltale “plink, plink” reminded me I hadn’t yet done any maintenance on our roof this year. Like most of the local houses ours has a flat roof made of stone blocks. Every year we need to clean and inspect it and look for cracks. So, for the last week Sue and I have been on our knees crawling over the roof and applying various potions and compounds. Each year we try new and more expensive materials hoping that this will obviate the need for a new roof and each year the roof stays watertight for a few weeks before a new “plink, plink” is heard somewhere or there is a sudden outbreak of mould in an unexpected place, sending us back up to look for leaks. And then the summer comes again and bakes everything dry and we forget there is such a thing as winter and then yet again we are taken by surprise by the autumn rains and so it goes around.

Still apart from the pain in my back and in my knees, there are compensations for being up on the roof on a sunny autumn day. The country is green and fresh and the cloudscapes are magnificent. The heel of Italy is in the very centre of the Mediterranean and is like a fulcrum around which revolve all kinds of weather systems from Europe, Africa and Asia. As a result we get to see all sorts of clouds from light little fluffy things through to great towering thunderheads. Being near the edge of a steep ridge sometimes they come at us unexpectedly from over the horizon, spreading like black ink dropped into a water tank. One autumn I saw an airship emerge from the low clouds blowing over the ridge and drone its way to the south as if the dotted cumuli were enemy flak. It turned out to be advertising “the Palm” development in Dubai. Not long afterwards Sue was offered a job in Qatar and it seemed like it had been a portent.

The roof is also a good place to take in the sights and sounds of our little hamlet. Occasionally Milly pads up the stone steps to the roof to check on what we are doing, then she trots to the edge of the roof and looks down on Paolo’s dogs in their pen a few metres away. This invariable sets them off barking. If Paolo is at home this will then cause him to shout at the dogs to be quiet, unaware that Milly is staring insouciantly down at them. More often we hear and sometimes see Erminia stumping around her terrace, letting out little grunts of pain with each step. My favourite sound is when she and her neighbour Yanine conduct a conversation in dialect across about a hundred metres, so neither of them has to leave their houses. Their speech is nothing like standard Italian and I can barely understand a word, but it feels as though I am listening to something timeless. Certainly it is a dialogue that has been going on for at least fifty years.

So now I am indoors writing this blog and the rain is pouring again. I am keeping an ear open but, so far there is no trace of a “plink, plink”, although there is a definite smell of damp in the air ...