The oil

This morning a chap pulls up in the ubiquitous Suz-zuki jeep as she is pronounced hereabouts. Looking for the one they call the ‘scozzese’ - the ee-landerrre, the kilted one. He has heard from the consigliere I talked to yesterday that I was looking for a milling partner.

A confused conversation ensued. I explained that I’dleft my quintals with the mill but my interlocutor seemed to think was yet to take them to the mill.

The upshot is that F and I drive down to the mill with his two sacks - two sacks! - of olives in his ever-hotter jeep, him telling me how to preserve potatoes as if I’d come up the Arno in a pistachio boat.

We go through the same Eastwoodesque procedure of looks, obeisance and acceptance. My oil is ready but containers have I none. I buy three 5l tins at €3 a piece and the younger woman now sorting me outs fills the tins and then uses a step up to get the necessary purchase to drive the stoppers in.

Soon we are on our way home again, F railing for all he’s worth at every good-for-nothing politician under the sun for the right piecemeal f…ery of right piecemeal improvements that are made each year to the tortuous Casentino to Arezzo road.

I’ve yet to try the oil. It really is - in all its lovely 11 litres - extra virgin, pretty much cold processed, locally grown with minimal shit sprayed or added, oil. No crafty second or third pressings. Just the real essential stuff, the essence, full of the antioxidants, phenols, and Zoe-love-in add ons. It’s so good, says Pres-elect, that apparently you can inject it directly to ward off Covid, malaria , dengue fever and the ubiquitous pols looking to take the populace and their roads for a ride.

It was, as they say, a journey. I’ve loved - you’ll understand in a sometimes confused and understated way - every coruscating, prickly, scratched minute of it. From the planting, to the endless rotavating , pruning and grass cutting and then the ladder-wobbly, perilous picking to the final treasure of the oil and its life-enhancing and forgiving quality.

Post script: as I pondered writing this entry I was podding the last of the cannellini and borlotti beans.