Il Melo Blog

Lunch at Giovanni and Rita’s. As often seems to be the case, we are not the only guests; there are also Alberto who seems to be their financial advisor and a young Indian whose name I don’t catch. He is working with Giovanni on the farm and on his construction jobs and speaks only a few words of Italian. I try him with English but he doesn’t speak that either. Lunch lasts a good hour and half and he sits there unable to communicate, seemingly quite self contained. They understand that he doesn’t eat meat (I’m able find out that he is a Hindu and from Delhi) but cannot resist offering him prosciutto. And, to be fair, you have to be a good veggie to resist some of the best ham you’ll ever taste; made right here for their own pigs thanks to a law which allows farmers to slaughter and butcher a couple of pigs for their own consumption each year. While we’re hoovering down mountains of dead pig, Rita takes a shovelful of hot embers from the stufa (stove for heating) and puts them on the barbecue outside the back door where she cooks sausages, rabbit, ribs and pork steaks. It would be hard enough to move after all this food but when you add a couple of tumblers of Giovanni’s red and finish off with mistrà (anis firewater, homemade of course) I find it hard to drive back down the hill let alone go back to working in the fields as Giovà does. Time for a nap!

The kids are building complicated dens in the bedrooms (a favourite pastime, especially when the weather’s not great) and I’m finishing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – absolutely brilliant and unputdownable. What a tragedy that the author died before it and his other two books were published. Can’t wait to read the rest of the trilogy.

In the evening I watch the Italian Cup semi final between Fiorentina and Inter. The first half is exciting with lots of chances (mostly missed by Gilardino) but once Inter score early in the second half it’s game over with Mourinho’s massed, and well organised, defence closing things down and limiting the increasingly desperate Viola to half chances and long range shots. I suspect they’ll find it harder to do the same to Messi and his mates in the Champions’ semis.