Tuscany - where 'bugs is normal'

 

Well, that’s what the instruction sheet for our Tuscan villa said. Except for the poolside mossies that attacked poor Barney with gusto and a trail of ants that once appeared overnight in our dining room to feast on a jam smear on the table, we weren’t that bothered with them, in our otherwise sumptuous hill top temporary home a few miles from Lucca.

A tile set in the wall told us the villa dated back to 1659. It had plenty of room in which the nine of us could lose ourselves. Except for some modern paintings that were in such execrable taste that the more sensitive of us had to take them off the walls and hide them away, the villa made us all feel very privileged as we looked down on the village below us and across the valley to the hills opposite. There were statues, fountains, the biggest swing Philippa had ever tried, a private chapel with a mock Della Robbia Madonna, an olive orchard, a swimming pool where much time was spent, even though the water temperature was on the testing side and loads more. We thought all these opportunities for conspicuous consumption rather explained the great automatic iron gates, the metal shutters and the heavy iron door before the upstairs bedrooms that a 19^th Century owner had installed to keep any revolting peasants out. After dark, we even had fireflies in the grounds and as Beth's picture of our poolside gazebo shows, the grounds took on a magical atmosphere.

Not that we entirely escaped our share of social realism: Philippa became waste management supervisor (it was amazing how many bottles we generated) and looked

after the four rubbish and recycle bins we had to feed and move outside the automatic gates. They each had to be locked – ‘this is Italy’ our hostess explained.

Our presence in Tuscany was thanks to Cherry who planned a celebration to commemorate our 50^th wedding anniversary this year. She was virtually with us, in photographic form presiding over the dining area, in the rather special toasts to her memory, and a long trail of lighted candles in any number of churches, cathedrals and baptisteries.

A sadder reminder was Leonard Cohen’s ‘Alleluiah’ playing in one of our pizzerias.  She would have enjoyed it though,  and the whole week.

And so, in our various ways, did we all. The Lombardo restaurant in the village, Santa Maria delle Colle, made for an elegant first night.  The village’s very basic pizzeria was nothing less than terrific – no tourists, unvarnished locals, excellent pizzas, very cheap, football in the background, the real Italy we thought.  

As true foodies,  Beth and Christopher conjured sumptuous meals for us all out in the gardens, conducted us to the best restaurants wherever we went and led an enthusiastic Martha and Philippa to a pasta making course in Lucca. Barney insisted on pizzas everyday naturally. Chiff was barbeque supremo, even in the occasional rain. Martha did her ‘good waitress’ thing. In short, everyone chipped in to the mammoth task of feeding us all, and clearing up afterwards, even me to a very limited extent.

Philippa arranged for a local chef to come and cook us all a meal for Chiff’s somety-something birthday. Followed of course by extreme bingo where, she tells us after long experience, the contestants fill up several sheets at the same time. Participating in that was one of the most intellectually challenging things I’ve done for a long time.

It wasn’t all food and after dinner entertainment, though. Simon and Ruth came over a few days earlier, reconnoitred the area and recommended the quite spectacular Calomini monastery up in the hills which Team Powell and I visited on our last day.

 

Quite amazing, but then so was so much else.

Beth and Christopher were particularly taken with the romantically decayed Villa Reale. I could see they were rethinking Walthamstowe. I liked it too, especially as the young woman guardian asked me if I was 65 and so entitled to a reduced fee. There were the excursions to Lucca – massive town walls, the Duomo in black and white Carrera marble and the famous Giulini tower with the oak trees on top where the heat and unregulated press of people caused Philippa to have a melt-down. A gin-and-tonic in the forum, where I had sat it out tapping away on my lap-top, restored her equanimity. And of course, there was Pisa, where all the world’s people seemed to be. They all clambered up the leaning tower.

I excused myself on account of having done it years ago shortly after it was built and my hip was hurting, but did make the baptistery roof where there was one of those special moments. A young woman, presumably one of the staff, just sang a few single notes; everyone stopped. The sound swirling around the domed roof was magical. Outside there were the inevitable photos of people holding up, or pushing over, the leaning tower. Martha injected some class into the proceedings by adopting a variety of improbable balletic poses against exotic backgrounds for the delectation of her teachers and colleagues back home.

Some of us did other towns too - Pistoia (where ‘pistols’ came from) and Pietrasanta – both much, much quieter. Only Beth and Christopher did Florence, in fact rather more extensively than planned as a couple of strikes delayed their departure by two days. In contrast, we had  a more tranquil time going out on the boardwalks,

through the reedy marshes of Lake Massarosa and some of us, at Philippa’s urging went mountaineering into the steep wooded Tuscan hills behind Calomini, stopping only with much panting on coming across a little old stone building embowered in nature, just ripe, I thought, for development as a writer's retreat.

It was all surprisingly varied – some places standing room only, for nearly all the others we were on our own. Often, it sometimes it seemed quite literally. At the Villa Oliva, Team Powell and I found the gate closed but an old and dubious notice said it was open. When no one answered the bell, we went in anyway and roamed around goggling at the fountains until apprehended by a gardener who appeared from somewhere, charged us (for a tiny entrance fee not with an offence) and then disappeared. Later, looking for an apparently non-existent loo, we stumbled up various stairways  in an extensive stable block (grander than Versailles our leaflet said) came across a door with a bunch of keys attached and found ourselves in someone’s living room, before hastily retreating. Only in Italy !

There was always something to marvel at. Both Chiff and Barney expressed amazement at how much really old art there was around, admittedly with rather different levels of approval. Much was totally unexpected, like pictures and statues of the fat people associated  with the Columbian artist Fernando Botero in Pietrasanta where he apparently lives or representations of American Pony Express riders in the repurposed cloisters. And then there were the amazing five layered villages of cinque terre which Ruth and Simon discovered just before the rest of us arrived .

Of course, not everything was perfect. Barney was eaten by the wildlife, I had hip trouble, Philippa had an ear infection and Ruth, now decidedly round, found introducing an oblivious little one to the delights of Italy quite tiring at times. The drivers in the party encountered some quite idiosyncratic motoring with much high-speed tailgating, refusal to make way for cars getting on the autostrada and a widespread tendency to pull out in front of you without warning. Chiff driving his big white Audi (we were the first to hire it) found himself entering into the spirit of the thing but agreed it was probably the time to go home.

That took some doing too. Pisa airport was terribly overcrowded and the plane was late; Christopher and Beth as already mentioned spent more time in Italy than originally allocated, but found that a couple of extra days in Florence, with the airline contributing to the cost wasn't actually all that bad -apart from the initial stress. But over we all undoubtedly had a lovely time, thanks to Cherry, even if we did need a holiday afterwards.