Early

Up early to finalise leaving the house for a week on the off-chance that prospective buyers will be shown around. Not that that seems likely.

I leave the house at 7:30 putting the big chain on the gate. I stop to drop off rubbish and recycling and then head up the winding road to the pass. The verges and fields are overflowing with spring grasses and flowers.

I get to the new parking lot we are trying out and take the shuttle to Florence airport. I have coffee, buy an Italian paper and while away the time until we are all boarded. The guy sitting next to me, heading for a big conference on rocket propulsion in Glasgow, tells me his mother lives just a few miles from us. As we plunge down through very low cloud I tell him it is ‘haar’. As we stand in the long grim border entry queue he jokes with his colleague it will be the only word of Scot’s they will know as they navigate there way around Glasgow.

J is there to meet me and we head back into are occasional Edinburgh life.