Day for night

A long day in the saddle. Strummed. Hoed. Transplanted. Watered. Weeded. Spread last of muck. Tied up toms and cukes. More watering. A brief siesta and on.

In Italian they say, ‘L’orto che vuole l’uomo morto’. In short, the land wants you dead.

Read recently 1million acres of marginal, often terraced land was abandoned in post-war Tuscany. We've got just four of them and you can see why a steady factory wage in Florence or Bologna held such appeal to the sharecropping mezzadria here. Poverty hunger submission were all too prevalent.

Although sometimes at my wits end and with my different machines it is just playing, the shops round the corner and money in our pockets.

To be ground into this hard baking ground, to be broken by a system of landholding that could crush the spirit was and is a terrible thing for all its beauty and endeavour.

Night came and stepping away from the house and it’s thermal heat was like dipping in a cool stream, the fireflies flashing in the growing dark (extra).

All the while hearing about the ‘cavorting charlatan’ (Max Hastings) who would be prime minister.