Italian farmhouse

http://www.booking.com/city/it/seggiano.en-gb.html?aid=327522;label=webp-ta-og-cat-listing-image;sid=19d98b878e034ddb009a7bd3b14220e4;dcid=4;breadcrumb=hotel& – not THE farmhouse!

I am sorry I didn’t get to write last week, but I am going to argue that I rang you – not as I appreciate, that I am under any obligation to do either, but once I am in a routine I tend to stick to it. Last week was subsumed with cover for sick colleagues, a Scarman conference on Tuesday, a crisis at Hitchin Town Hall where they’d logged the wrong day for a wedding and we had to get agency staff because of the working time directive, and just generally trying to be around for the children and get food etc in for the week-end. I also had an evening with Jenny who was triumphant from a major seduction of erring husband – although some of the glow seems to have worn off this week as he is still humming and harring and saying the most undermining things. A* was LOVELY to me last week, but that seems to be diminishing as she gets bored with nothing to do this week – she goes to Amsterdam for a week next Monday. I seem to remember feeling tired. I also seem to remember feeling upset at some point and applying for a job in Cambodia! I think I mentioned that to you on the phone.

The Easter week-end was nice – perhaps desperately dull by most people’s standards, but nice to stay in bed late, do my garden for the first time this year, take a trip to Ikea and eat the meatballs with chips which I like and take the broken printer to some obscure rural industrial estate which then gave an excuse for a trip and pub lunch to Old Warden which is a fantastically preserved North Bedfordshire village. I hope you enjoyed your various lunches.

I was interested to hear that you had bought your Italian farmhouse. I lay in bed last night thinking about what I would ‘create’ in your shoes which wasn’t for very long as I fell asleep, as I nearly always do, very quickly! I would have a pool – a rectangular one for swimming lengths, a patio area with a tree for sessions of eating and drinking and lots of, not necessarily expensive, objets d’art and books. Iris furnished her Italian villa beautifully with weathered candelabra, lovely old sideboards, lots of wood, giant sofas and exquisite fabrics. It was so peaceful to be there.

I also thought about whether I could live there permanently. There would have to be the proviso of doing something useful for humanity – being interconnected to others in some way. I can’t bear the thought of a solitary existence where one is left un-sustained by others’ stories or being curious, as well as caring about others’ states of existence. It would be arid and the beautiful things would be unimportant in a vacuum.

While I take on board your comment about not being able to survive without a shower I think I could wash in a river, but I would miss beer/wine, my face and body moisturiser and not having a good, professional hair cut. I pay a lot to get my hair cut as it is very fine and my current hairdresser is the only one I have had who seems able to cut it in a style that remains a style even when I wash it myself. I would also not wish to be there without my computer to email everyone. You will have to allow me an email address if I go away so I can still write to you.

I have decided I will carry on writing to you until you politely and firmly tell me not to or you have a live-in love who would find it disconcerting. You wouldn’t need my emotional input then. I am sure you think you don’t need it now, but until I have further proof to the contrary I think you do. I am softening you up to have a relationship that doesn’t involve only seeing someone once a month. Sustained human contact, including that of children, when it is of the empowering kind (I have to exclude the children from that because they extremely rarely say empowering things) is just the best. I think we could have an intellectual argument about whether it would beat having a really successful court case. I wonder if I could justify morally getting a lenient sentence for someone I knew had done it, but then I guess it’s shades of grey and even the worst people have good bits.

Ummm – on that note – have a good week.