Apres le deluge ..

Faced with periodic power outages we went to the local restaurant for lunch yesterday to escape the wailing banshee wind,driving monsoon like rain and dark scudding clouds. The storm had one great advantage - it provided the villagers with a fresh topic of conversation which they ruthlessly exploited. No sooner had we arrived and sat down than our waitress breathlessly rushed up to inform us that there had been a 'disaster' two kilometres along the road in the next village. A mud slide had coming storming down the hill and through the front doors of the local clothing store covering the ground floor in a thick layer of sludge. Village life in Italy is marked by events such as this.

The loss of the clothing store would indeed be a catstrophe in the life of the local community. Although our little market town is far ( some would say very far ) from being stylish it nonetheless harbours pretensions to be the local fashion centre. This reputation for being the Milan of the Tiber valley is built around one 'trendy' store that sells every designer label known to man - as long as the label is Italian or purports to be. From the window displays it would seem that brightly coloured jackets with fur collars and (to me) illogical slogans sewn onto their backs in Japanese and Norwegian are the must have item for fall 2009.Call me old fashioned but I for one will not be walking around in a dayglo yellow number with the admonition ' Shrank now sparkle ! - Trondheim 2025 ' emblazoned across the back and down the arms. Who designs these things? There must be a high probability that they've been churned out, deep in Yangtse territory, by a factory owner who knows nothing of the outside world other than the information he can glean from a quick reading of an old travel guide to Scandinavia.

The boyz are alone with me again for three days while the 'font' is travelling.Wilf came on the morning walk but Digby remained behind at the front gate.It's very hot and humid here after the rains ,so maybe it's causing his arthritis to play up.