With Sue away in Borneo and me not working, the time can weigh heavy. Especially on a grey, wet day like today. Like so often in my life I feel in a kind of limbo. In ten days I'm heading for the UK for a month to try to get my career as a humanist funeral celebrant up and running. In two months I'm leaving for Asia to spend several weeks with Sue. And, in less than a year we will have our occupational pensions and financially our lives will be transformed.
Normally I would go for a run or a bike ride to get my daily fix of exercise, but pressing my nose against the window and looking at our damp and chilly terrace I decided to go for a walk instead. I took the car and parked on the steep escarpment that leads down to the Adriatic and then walked a circuit I often did with our little dog Milly.
The walk takes you up a steep fire-break and along the top of the pine-fringed ridge to the hotel Lo Smeraldo ("the Emerald" in English). The fire-break is muddy and it's hard work trudging up the wet and slippery slope. Milly always used to trot ahead and look down impatiently at me, unaware of how much more difficult the incline is without the benefit of four legs. More than six years ago now I used to do this climb two or three times a week as part of my struggle to lose weight, improve my fitness and overcome depression. It was like I was dragging myself out of a pit.
My mood may have changed since that dark and difficult time, but the country hasn't. Even in this cold and dank atmosphere it is still magnificent - a product of thousands of years of building and cultivation. As I stood on a carpet of lichen and wild flowers at the top of the fire-break and looked out over the coastal plain with its ranks of ancient olive trees, I realised that this country too played its part in helping me climb out of that pit.
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