Baby, it’s cold outside. Our first night home in the Lunigiana, gushing toy water meter fixed—a victim of a hard freeze— thanks to Francesca and Armando, they who know who to call always, recalcitrant pellet stove coaxed to start (finally, after ministrations of an hour or so). Floor tiles cold as a Republican. Then dinner: roast chicken, roast cauliflower, roast potatoes, all calculated to keep the oven blasting away.
Next day: Fivizzano market day. Stinging rain, a man in orange courageously picking tree branches off the road, a medieval piazza normally packed with vans and vendors curiously devoid of all but two favorite stands, one vegetable, one fish. So dinner: persico and porri, perch and leeks.
The nearly empty market reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode where a man notices floor 13 marked on the elevator index, a surprise, he’s never seen it before, so he punches the button out of curiosity. It’s an empty floor save a single display case with a single, jeweled object in it—exactly, EXACTLY, the one he’s been searching for. Oddness ensues.
A stop at the Bar Pasticceria Ricci to bellow ciao and have a sheet of mortadella strung between slices of focaccia. They heat it for me. Hurray. It warms my hands deliciously, the olio oozing from the bread—a balm.
All in all, it’s good to be home. Oddness be damned. Where are these flies coming from?