The white road

This is where we are living down a 'strada bianca' that kicks up a dust storm. It is very quiet. A hare lolloped down the road in front of me.

An overcast day today. I took The Principal into her new workplace - photos of this to follow. The junction at the top of the steep hill is murder at rush hour but we were later today. The hill up to her work villa is maybe 1 in 5 and has a really tight bottleneck with high walls and the drivers just pummel down the hill towards you as you try and creep through while motorbikes overtake.

Later I decided to get a 'codice fiscale' like a national insurance number but by the time I got to Pontassieve, which is much bigger than I thought, the municipal offices were surely about to close for lunch.

I stopped in at the co-op at Sieci and bought a few provisions. We have been suffering from headaches and I wonder if the wine is doing this - it is very good for around €5 a bottle.

So I dropped down the price range to a 5 litre box of local co-operatively produced wine for €10.  A quick test suggests it is remarkably good although it's headache producing qualities will be examined  with more rigour at a later date.

I listened in to BBC Radio 5 on the internet as I ate some lunch. How things have changed since I first lived in Italy back in the early 1980s.