AUG 30th

Aug 30. Leaving Hotel Sacre Cuore just before midday and the sat nav immediately takes me onto an unmade road. It isn't even a farm track and it falls so steeply that I don't think me and Roisie can turn around and go back. We plough on and come out at a junction beside the main dual carriageway. How did sat nav know that? I open the throttle and off we go! Me and Rosie have a wee problem. I don't think she'll mind me telling you that when she's half full it's too early to fill up. 5 litres is the minimum that self service will serve. When she's quarter full then we're already a bit low and not for the first time I find nyself on the road with the warning light on, no garage in sight, it's a Sunday and we're in trouble. After another ten scary miles we're nearly empty and I leave the main road and drive into the nearest town wishing it wasn't a Sunday in August. And we come upon a petrol station right away. It's self service, and the machine doesn't take credit cards. None of them do. A kind person changes my 50 Euro note, and the machine gives Rosie 10 Euros worth of fuel which should get us all the way to Pisa. When we rejoin the dual carriageway we pass a service station within half a mile. Ho hum.

The road from Perugia to Pisa is the same as the road from Pisa to Perugia. We did it a fortnight ago. We leave the dual carriageway and climb over the chianti hills. There are thousands of square miles of vineyards in these hills. And I must have missed the view on the way south. The road follows a high ridge and you can see for miles in every direction. Sometimes me and Rosie stop and let the landscape take our breath away. We drive for 30 miles and don't see another car. Me and Rosie practice leaning over into the curves like real professionals. Arriving into Pisa and sat nav takes me to within 50 yards of Hotel Galileo where I'm sleeping tonight. There it is at the end of this one way street where sat nav directs us. I'm reluctant to disobey the no entry sign so I explore another way. There is no other way. So I break the law. Rosie's locked up for the night. She refuses to have her photo taken in front of the leaning tower. She will have nothing to do with anything so vulgar. 'If your blog readers want to see the leaning tower then can get the tea towel,' she sulks. So I wander up to the tower and take this picture on my own.

Many years ago I came here and enjoyed a fabulous 'La Sonnambula' in the little opera house. Colin Steele never cracks a note. Chet sometimes did. The brass players of The Pisa opera always do. I love it. It's got a rustic quality that I'm very comfortable with. Of course there's nothing on tonight. It's August. But look at what they've got coming up. 'Tosca' in January and 'Candide' in March.


Decide to treat myself to 'Candide' for my birthday. The problem with 'Candide' is that the overture is just the best piece of music ever. So cheerful and so mischevous. You just want them to play it again. How on earth are these rustic brass ever going to get their lips round that? The restaurant I wanted to go to is closed on Sundays. I check it out anyway and discover that it is closed for August! So I find somewhere else and eat like a lonely prince, drank the whole bottle, and stumbled home to bed.

AUG 29th

Aug 29. Feeling my age this morning. Barney's dad is 8 years younger than me so I let him check the oil. He looked at the book and found where the dipstick was, wiped it clean, put it back, and then drew it out like King Arthur and there was the oil level - perfect. No problem! One last photo of two people in love.

So off we go! Me and Rosie together burning up the kilometres from Bagni San Filippo to Perugia. And there's Silvana at this most Catholic of hotels. A lapsed convent with a bar. She presents me with my clean laundry, is it really two weeks since I was last here? - a large cool beer, a shower, a couple of hours with John Muir in Alaska, and me sitting here with a campari soda con gin high above Umbria in the early evening sun. I don't know how the hierachy shakes up and down here but it was the chap who's been working in the garden who opened the bar for me - and what a heavy hand he had with the gin! I was well gone before dinner. And what a dinner! Lasagne and then seconds. Roast beef with courgettes and aubergines and then seconds! I made a good stab at the litre of wine and I hope the doctors and nurses at Addenbrookes will be pleased with my failure. Semi-freddo with chocolater sauce and just sober enough to take this picture of the Umbrian moon in the sunset.



Buona notte, Tutti.

AUG 28th

Aug 28. It's time to leave Manciano.


It takes me all day to pack up my few things and load them onto Rosie. I have arranged to stay with two new friends, Barney and Suzie, in Bagni San Filippo. It's vaguely north and I'm zigging and zagging here and there like a man who is lost. The idea is to reach Livorno in time for a late ferry on Aug 31.

There are hot volcanic springs here too so the three of us go out for a dip before supper. Barney is a foodie and celebrates all the local produce. He celebrates the landscape and the empty roads. If only he and Suzie could live here! If only! But Italian bureaucracy stifles their ambitions and his stories about trying to get electricity connected or buy something on the internet have reduced them both to surrender. And they're packing up to return to London. They show me the spare room where I can sleep but I've set my heart on the hammock under the vine in the garden.

Some bees have gathered in the parasol which shades the table where we are eating and they're building a hive. A little boy comes by to show us the snake he has just caught. The neighbour's cat drops in and fouls the path.

AUG 27th

Aug 27. Last day in Manciano and Umberto has invited me to join his parents at the swimming pools of the grand hotel where he works at the reception. I have to turn up at 3pm. It's still very warm but the clouds are gathering. It's dark and hot. No thunder. No rain. But thrilling bolts of lightning. The water is hot, full of sulphur, and the air is full of rotten eggs.

I took a picture so you could see the darkening sky over the swimming pool. Can you see the white bouys floating on the water? I have to swim under the ropes to reach the steps which is the only way out of the pool. I pulled myself under the dark sulphuric waters, made one mighty powerful butterfly stroke and knocked my head against the side of the pool. Just as well I'm not a very good swimmer otherwise I might have knocked myself out! And that's my haircut postponed for another day. The wind is getting up and I thought I'd better get me and Rosie home before it turns nasty. But nothing happens on the ground - the drama is all in the sky and when the sun goes down the clouds light up.


At midnight I couldn't tell you if it was cloudy or not but there are 14 stars twinkling and I am alone.

AUG 26th

Aug 26. It is ten years since I first came here to Manciano. Corelli had just opened and was enjoying some success and I treated myself to a week of Italian lessons at the school here. I was quite taken by an advertisement that described Manciano as 'off the tourist track' and I came here for three lessons a day for a week, one to one, with three different teachers - Stella and I talked about families,Umberto and I talked about theatre projects, and Marie-Therese and I didn' talk much about anything. She was determined to teach me how to conjugate Italian verbs properly but she was easily subverted because she was football crazy - a Fiorentina fan 'una tifosa al fegato!' Which means 'from the heart' except it really means from the liver. On the Wednesday night Fiorentina beat Arsenal at Wembly and Battistuta scored one of the most extraordinary goals I have ever seen beating Seaman at his near post with a shot he could never have seen. So grammar flew out the window that day and I still don't conjugate. Marie-Therese married another of her students - a young German boy who worked as a cameraman and who filmed Simon Rattle's very first concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, Mahler 5, a TV programme I watched at home in Cambridge with no idea there was a Manciano connection.

Here I am, ten years later, with Stella in Bar Centrale and I learn that the school is closed. Stella soldiers on with a few private students. They don't pay as much as I did because with no school there is no middleman - no admin etc. And it just occurs to me that it surely wouldn't be difficult to find 30 or 40 students a year who would like to stay in this beautiful spot and learn Italian. One of her students, Walter, comes twice a year from Canada and he's 92. This tells me firstly that you are never too old and that secondly you will never find a teacher who is ever so patient. So I have great pleasure in introducing you to Stella. I told her how grateful I was to the surgeon and everyone at Addenbrookes and she tells me how grateful she is too ....

I spend the afternoon in Yosemite with John Muir in the middle of the 19th century. It's one helluva ride and I hope it will percolate through my odd chemistry to emerge on stage with music that scales the heights of the Sierra Nevada - maybe sometime next year.

Supper with Umberto's mum and dad. They used to run a newspaper stall in Rome but now they are retired. I remember when I first met them they told me about a customer who came every day and took two newspapers, concealed one inside the other, and only paid for one. They never challenged him and once a week the thief went to church to light a candle and pray for their ancestors. We all eat pizza together and Umberto's mum get's a poroblem off her chest. They have an apartment in Rome and water from their terrace leaked to the balcony below and now there is some litigation going on regarding the division of reconstruction costs. It's an old story. Umberto works in the rather expensive hotel in Saturnia and I have been invited as his guest to the swimming pool tomorrow.

A domani! Ciao!

AUG 25th

'Got up, got out of bed' but didn't drag a comb across my head, had breakfast, did my washing, read, ate supper, and went back to bed. Here's a picture of my washing hanging out to dry in a hallowed spot.


The football T-shirt on the left is number 11 'Pasolini' - the late great Italian film director - a Christian, a Communist, and a controversial poet. When the Italian police broke up the student demonstrations in the late sixties he called the students 'bourgeoise' and the police, 'the sons of the working class.' He filmed ' The Gospel of St. Matthew' and without changing anything revealed a revolutionary message. He was murdered on a piece of wasteland outside Rome by 'a rent boy.' Don't know if he ever played football but if he did he would have played like Cantona. Number 11 is the old fashioned 'outside left' and that seems just right.

Tomorrow I'm meeting Stella for breakfast and Umberto for supper so that's the last solitary blog from this recluse - I'm rejoining the world tomorrow! Ciao!

AUG 24th

I would like a haircut. There are three barbers in Manciano - there's a barber- for- a- long- time, a barber-for-short-time,and a barber in-between. That's where I went some years ago and found myself in the hands of a man who only knew two words of English - 'David Beckham.' I came out shaven with a razored streak of lightning on each temple. I want to go back. A 'David Beckham' today would be less severe. But I'm having trouble with Italian doors. There was the little door to Beatrice's terrace in Rome and now the door to the terrace in Manciano. I am too tall for little doors!. And my head's a bit the worse for wear. It would be more of a bloody haircut than a David Beckham! All I did today was get up, eat breakfast, read, cook supper, and go to bed. Here's a picture of my breakfast.


Ciao!