Aloe! Aloe! The Remake: Extras.

One of the advantages of our house stems from its being situated on two parallel roads, Via San Pietro and Via Roma: all the village’s facilities are within easy reach.  Via San Pietro hosts the baker’s, the post-office, the chemist’s, the town-hall, the hairdresser’s, the doctor’s and Luisa’s bar; Via Roma has the grocer’s, the parish church, the museum, the nearest set of dust and recycling bins,  and Pompeo’s bar. It also has the theatre (I guess you’d call it the village hall in Ambridge). 

   If one’s life were a series of DVDs then certain annually recurring events would be remade each year with a slightly different twist. Last year’s annual march in support of ALOE was rather disappointing: a week of wet weather had led to its avoiding the woods. This year the DVD contained an Extra: the march was preceded on Saturday by a concert of mediæval, folk and celtic music in the theatre. It was scheduled to begin at 9 pm. Old habits die hard and being British that’s when we turned up: nearly a decade of living in Italy should have taught us better. The photo above shows the audience at nine. At ten, when the show at last got going, the house was packed.

   Yesterday’s march was a distinct improvement on the previous year’s. For the first time Pat able to come and the route not only avoided the roads, but began with a completely different itinerary from all the other occasions I’ve gone on the march. It went via Smerillo’s fessa - or fissure in the rocks - a local attraction of which we’d previously been completely unaware.