Down to earth

Down to earth with a bump today. Two trips to the dentist and €240 later - mostly recoverable. A trip to Obi - the German DIY chain in Italy. I was after fireproof plasterboard and refractory bricks for the stove. The assistants are great and knowledgeable. I almost ordered the firebricks when I noted they weighed 10kgs - way too much for a wood stove.

Then a trip to a Suzuki dealership in a very non-Renaissance part of Florence. They do a small 4x4 now available as a hybrid with excellent miles to gallon and qualifying for free parking in Florence. A flame red one is available in January on the never-never.

It was freezing coming over the 3000ft Consuma pass yesterday at 4pm. Ice is hard to spot under the pine trees. I descended gingerly on the all-season tyres from Stefano’s. A 4x4 just gives that more grip and we could go off-roading on the Casentino’s high mountain tracks.

Back in Blighty the mighty Terry cast our votes for us in Edinburgh. I voted SNP more as an anti Brexi votes than a pro indie one but that’s an open book for me.

The late afternoon light was stunning driving back through Florence. This is a very cropped random shot from stopped traffic.

We’re listening to Toots and the Maytals with dread and heavy hearts. The reckoning is a couple of hours away.

Meanwhile in Italy the 50th anniversary of the dreadful fascist bombing of a farmers bank in Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969 has been leading the national news. This was the beginning of a hard-right reaction to student and worker protests and the entry of the Socialist Party into a government coalition. Seventeen people were killed and to this day no-one has been found guilty of this terrible crime.

The so-called Strategy of Tension gave rise to other bombs in Brescia and ultimately in Bologna when I happened to be living near to the station.

It’s good that the good people in Italy are remembering and commemorating Piazza Fontana. As they said back then and now: Ora e sempre resistenza. Now and forever resistance - which of course echoed the heroism of the Italian resistance movement in the latter years of the IIWW.

Those days in Bologna will stay with me forever. No-one has been convicted of that bombing that killed 85 people on the 2nd of August 1980.