La Zappa

This archetypal Italian digging hoe is a zappa. They come in all sorts of weights, shapes and sizes. Great for stony ground and soils s that compact easily - most of Italy.

Thank you for your comments on the potatoes. We planted 20kg last year and got through them all. Problem with Italy’s warm autumns is that spuds are prone to sprout without cold storage. Could leave them in the ground but last season were attacked by eel worm.

In despair yesterday at failure to test residents and staff at my mum’s residential home where a resident has died of Coronavirus I got in touch with an FT journalist. He was really helpful and got me to write the question I wanted to put to those in charge. He said he’d raise it in the Westminster lobby meeting with government spox.

Meanwhile The Times published an article today where care home organisations said they think probably half homes have the virus and that a third of staff are absent. If anything like so this is a massacre about to happen.

Never have I felt so powerless in the face of power.

Yes, of course, the crisis unfolds with electric speed. But it was foretold. Nothing was done to prepare and day after day they lie, they bluster, they promise better times, they arse cover and deep in the machine they still can’t accept that their strategy was fatally wrong and that this failure blights nearly everything they do.

Long may the Zappa break ground and expose the arrogant complacency of those who should have known better and should have acted with the foresight and caution their subjects expected of them.