Mulin di Bucchio

We had a drive around in our 30km liberty zone it being an orange lockdown day and us in in a district of less that 5,000 inhabitants. The rain had pelted it down but in the narrow tightness of the upper Arno valley as it mounts back towards it source the rain stopped at the Molino di Bucchio.

This was where the first partisan in the Arezzo province was martyred in the IIWW. Shot and tortured by fascists Italians he was left to die chained to a stairway in the snow. His name was Pio Borri.

These partisan memorials are a strange echo of Highland clearance sites; the blood that never stops bleeding, the there-could-I-have-been-also shockingness of it.

Prosaically it was good to stretch our legs and take in new vistas before the rain started again.

Later we went and bought a new fridge freezer in Bibbiena, for freedom is nothing if not the freedom to spend your way into a less black mood. A toaster, kettle and scales to boot.

On the way back outside our little church we saw a death notice wrapped around a tree. Lovely Ines who made us feel so welcome in her hamlet, so treasured, died this morning at home. She was 93.