I Forgot to Say… «

I Forgot to Say…

Tuesday 12th August 2014

I survived the Vitello Tonnato. The veal wasn’t hard and dry. I didn’t have to commit. Nevertheless, it should have been cooked for less time and on Friday which is Ferragosto (or Ferragamo, as Val, emailing as the Titular Abbess of Aleppo, puts it) I will repeat a Vit Ton as it’s traditional for Ferra – this time getting it completely right.

On Sunday night, I led a small party, i.e. Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, to Muriel Spark’s grave. We spent a few quiet moments there, meditating upon Death. Muriel in Death was somewhat pushed aside on this occasion. Laura and Matt were rather more taken with those who had died young in tractor accidents as described on their tombs. In the drama of the graveyard, Muriel didn’t quite win. Afterwards we looked at the little village nearby and wondered how you might fit in a swimming pool were one to buy a property there. Then we meditated on Tuscany itself and how nowhere else in Italy, however lovely, will exactly do – for me at least. Laura has condemned the butter of Tuscany as ‘quite dreadful’ and Matt has condemned the bread but to me these items are the essence of the hard, pared-down, bare life of Tuscany, so beloved of the English through the generations and me since 1975.

I omitted to mention that Connor Cadaux, of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays, and Cesar Kaiser were here last week for four nights. Cesar Kaiser immediately set out to destroy me. ‘Why do you write your blog? Nobody reads it,’ he said. ‘It’s not Coronation Street,’ I explained, indicating his favourite prog, ‘it’s my monument in my lifetime.’ They have recently married and are now given over entirely to high-minded sight-seeing, including Etruscan remains. This is a new walk of life, different from the highways and by-ways of all-night Vauxhall.

I will not be destroyed.

There’s also the question of Val and the pici – which is an adored Tuscan speciality pasta. But more of that later.