Snow bomb

We’d been working away: F on his scaffolding tower in the teeth of the gale and me sweeping, hoovering and spraying the dust back to eternity. When this snow bomb crept over the Appenine crest. Not really a bomb but enough to excite the normally supercool F to a shout to look.

Tomorrow they’ll be gone like winter swallows. The silence rolling back in again across the rising case numbers and now the presence of the Brazilian variant in the valley.

Of course I’ll be off the hook, trying to keep up and caught up in the transformation they’ve brought about in three short weeks. But it’s been a good time to be seen and witness and witness and see, to cherish the confidences given of Enna in Sicily, of Brasov and Bucharest in Romania. The guys and their accumulated skills and experiences, their stories, frustrations and laughter, the long hard roads they’ve trodden to be where they are in the world.

And all this time my little nipotino ( grandson) waving his arms and smiling down the phone, so far away.