Is nobody here?

and other memories

Just to let you know. Seems some folks think I’m writing about what is happening at this moment. I am not. I am attempting to trace how I came to be where I am today. I have decided to pause in posting past memories to write up notes for time at the stables, because I had observed many human interactions that require more space and time than I dedicate to these posts. Summer is also upon us in the mountains of Friuli Venezia Giulia and I would like to share some of the landscape and flowers I find. I’ll come back to writing about past happenings whenever my notes are ready for presentation.

In the writing that follows I share a few details of daily life at the stables, reflections on my relative’s visit to Italy way back in 2007, and notes on the positive aspects of sometimes being able to act pathetic

The stables

When I moved to the stables I didn’t know how long I would be living there. As it turned out it was at least two years. I was fairly happy. I enjoyed working with the horses. I had time to ride, time to train Nutmeg, although sometimes I was too knackered to even think of eating. I had enough free time that I could begin to think of attempting something else. I had time to write, to collect my thoughts, to go through my old diaries and indicate what could be useful. I also had time to observe the people, horses, cats, dogs around me. Sometimes I had no time at all, and would go to bed in extreme pain related to using pooh scrapers with handles too wide for my hands.

People who came to the stables really didn’t know what to do with me, or where to place me. I had been there so many times as the owner of my horses, and was still an owner of equines. It always amused me that I would be there, possibly with a pitchfork in hand, or pushing a wheelbarrow filled with manure, and someone would arrive and say: “Is no-one here?” And I’d be standing right in front of them. One day the vet came for one of the horses. “Is no one here?” he asked. So he calls Mama Stables, then Bossman, then he calls Bossman brother, who I hear telling him:“They say no one is there, even when Rosemary is there!”

“Is no one here?” Depending on how I was feeling, I too would follow the people around like a friendly puppy as they searched for the person I told them was not there. This happened for a while, until it was accepted that I knew what was I was doing, and could be of some help. It also became one of the reasons I was asked to leave, as people started to think I was the owner, and would look for me rather than Bossman.

Visitors from America

During the early days at the stable my brother and his second wife decided to visit Italy. In fact they had been planning this trip for a while, and I had invited them to stay with me at Tolfa at the bed and breakfast, which they would have been happy to pay for. As I was no longer there, I had spent days trying to think of places to take them, somewhere they could stay. For entertainment I thought I would take them to visit my friends, because my pals would have liked to meet them, and then realised my relatives would probably want to make their own plans, and travel to places they had dreamed of visiting.

I found them a room at an agritourism where they raise racehorses. My brother and his wife were to arrive at Fiumicino airport and I went to collect them. They texted me as I arrived to tell me they would be five hours late because they had missed their flight from France. I rushed to move my car from the short-term expensive parking, and had to fight to escape the electronic gate at the parking lot, which seemed to want to keep me in until it felt I had been parked long enough. I finally achieved my freedom, along with my car, and found a less expensive parking space.

I went to meet my relatives, and discovered I had been standing in front of the wrong arrivals door. As usual, whenever I met or was being met by my brother at an airport, he found me before I saw him and surprised me with his snorting laugh. His spouse appeared minutes later saying she’d thought I was the woman in the yellow dress and she’d been following her.

It was late. First I took them to the agri-tourism (LB Stud link below) and they were showed their room and given the keys. We went to look for a place to eat around Lake Bracciano. Finally we found somewhere, they gave us food they didn’t need to cook: Mozzarella, prosciutto, a salad, bread, which cost a lot of money because it was August, and we were in tourist season and territory.

Like most of us coming to Italy on a vacation we have possibly dreamed about for decades, we arrive wanting to visit everything. They came wanting to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Pompeii, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, Vesuvius, Positano, and they only had two weeks. My brother was a truck driver at the time, and used to driving long distances. They decided to rent a car, which they did. I went with them to Rome, and while waiting for the time to pick up the car, showed them the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and all the places along the way, Piazza Navona, Campo de' Fiori, the Colosseum, the Forum. My brother’s wife took a zillion photos.

That first trip from Rome back to Bracciano, we got lost. My brother was at the wheel, and was not used to driving in Italy; although it is a lot like I remember driving in Kingston, Jamaica. When I was driving in Rome, I discovered that if you make eye contact with the other drivers they will let you into the line of traffic. Writing this, I know I didn’t tell my brother this technique was a possibility, and realise this may work better if you are a woman and not a man. I have not had to drive in Rome for years so don’t know if my tactic still works.

Then brother and his wife took off for their drive around Italy.

When they returned they told me they had been to Pisa and to Florence. At the height of tourist season, they had just driven up and found places to stay. In Pisa they stayed in a hostel, and in Florence, a small hotel, where their window opened onto the noisy street outside. They thought this was just wonderful.

Before brother and his wife left for the States I gave them my treasures. A cup and saucer from Carton, my mother’s ring that I had wanted him to give to one of my nieces, my silver christening mug with my name and date of my birth engraved on it. My life was so nomadic I wanted these treasures to find a safer place. I felt my brother was more steady, stable and settled than I was, or would ever be.

I know we could have had a better visit if we had been living in the same house. If we had got up to eat breakfast and drink coffee together. Eaten home cooked meals at the same table. Sat and talked while listening to the crickets in the long summer evenings, while watching the light change, and there would have been fireflies. I know they had a good visit without all of this, and took away memories in their hearts, and on the memory card in their camera stowed in their luggage.

On acting pathetic

One day my dear friend and former neighbour called to ask if I could come with her to the hospital because she needed to pick up a copy of her x-rays. We went in to the hospital in Bracciano. We were told we needed a note or a form from radiology. We went to radiology, and were told they only handed out those forms in the morning. It was still morning. However, if we were to go to the second to last door along the corridor to the right, there may be someone who could help us.

My friend was walking slowly with her hand on my arm as though to hold herself up. I was beginning to be worried. In the room we were directed to we found a young woman who told us “No!” she couldn’t give us the form. Then suddenly, glancing at my friend hanging onto my arm, she changed her mind, and started looking through a pile of x-rays while explaining that she was a doctor and not an archivist. Then we had to go to a nurse who said, “No! No! It can’t be done,” then, after hearing my friend sigh dramatically, immediately changed her mind and said, “Yes!” and gave us the required piece of paper, and we went to pay.

A short while later a man walked down the corridor waving the duplicate x-rays. My friend touched me on the arm and declared, “We did this in less than an hour!” I had been very worried because my friend, in all the time we had been in the hospital, had seemed so frail. In fact I had been glad we were at the hospital so that if anything had happened she would have been cared for instantly.

As we were walking back to the car, safely across the parking lot, my friend switched from being a doddering, fragile, ancient woman into her usual sprightly self. “I was worried,” I admitted.

“Oh! Don’t you know?” she tells me. “The trick is to act pathetic.”

This is something I have never tried. It is almost against my nature. I tend to stand square, as though I should be brandishing a sword. Remembering my friend’s advice, I resolved to wear pink and walk slightly stooped if I ever needed an official document. As I am short already, this may or not be noticed.

Anyway, while living in Jamaica, if I had to go on official business to government offices, and felt it was something that could take a long time, I would carry a sandwich and a book. I would go into the office, make my request, and be told it would take a long time. I would say, “Don’t worry! I have my book,” and would pull out out along with my sandwich. This seemed to have been sufficient to speed the delivery of official document.

Extra thoughts

As it is the end of spring and going into summer in the northern hemisphere, next, I will share photos of the trees and flowers growing on the pastureland around where I live. I want to share the dog roses in bloom, and the horse chestnut in the courtyard, which is already being battered by early summer storms.

That’s all for now, thank you for reading

Here is the link for LB Stud, where I stayed in 2014 or 2015. They seem to have added more structures and a swimming pool: https://www.agriturismolbstud.com/ (Abre numa nova janela)