Eating, drinking and being dotty

Tuesday mornings should all be like this

I feel as if I have been away for months!  It’s only been ten days, but I’ve got that strange, disconnected feeling you get after a break, and I can hardly blame jet lag when Italy is only a couple of hours away on a plane.  It’s almost impossible to believe that only the day before yesterday we were enjoying coffee in the Piazza Anfiteatro in Lucca in the sunshine, and now it’s dark and the leaves are swirling down from the trees and it’s most definitely autumn.

Tuscany was looking beautiful.  I was very sad to say goodbye to everyone at the end of the course at the Watermill at Posara but they are all under strict instructions to stay in touch and of course to let me know the moment their books are accepted for publication! 

Instead of coming straight home, I met my dear friend and Chief Plotting Advisor at Pisa Airport, and we took the bus to Lucca.  I’d been for the day when I was at the Watermill a couple of years ago, and thought it was charming then, but I liked it even more this time.

The dog show at Lucca for 'i bastardini'

I have to confess that in three days we didn’t visit a single church or art gallery, in spite of the fact that increasingly we are turning into dotty middle-aged Englishwomen with synchronised eavesdropping and cackling laughter (in the film of our lives, I would be played by Judi Dench, while Maggie Smith would be CPA). On Sunday we walked round Lucca’s wonderful walls, and stopped and talked to every dog we met, finding out their names and ages, which was the extent of our very limited Italian.  Then we were delighted to stumble upon a wonderful dog show for mongrels to raise money for a dog’s shelter, where we came across a number of them again, were able to clap and cheer for the ones we “knew”.  Honestly, it was the highlight of the trip.

The sea at Vernazza - get that glitter!

We recovered from all the excitement of the dog show with a day trip to the Cinque Terre on Monday.  An opportunity to see the sun on the sea for one last time before winter and to plot my latest romance on the walk between Monterosso and Vernazza.  Apart from that, we spent an awful lot of time eating and drinking. I was a little taken aback when I looked at my photos to see how food obsessed I am - take a look at my album on Facebook if you don’t believe me! – but there’s something so beautiful about the way food is displayed in Italy.  I just can’t resist it, which may explain why I am now the size of a small duomo and none of my clothes fit any more.

Now I’m home and it’s back to work (sigh).  My next big deadline is 31st October, so I need to crack on and not let myself be distracted for the next few weeks.  No more trips away for me for a while, that’s for sure.