First Monday in August

Warm and overcast. This morning I woke to the patter of tiny raindrops and the hope that it was enough to revive my wilting chilli peppers. But as soon as I hit the bathroom the sound was gone - perhaps it was all a nice dream...

Today is the first Monday in August, the month when all of Italian civilisation grinds slowly but surely to a halt. In Carmine Superiore, we conversely ascend to the height of the social season as each house bids welcome to its owners or to their guests, and our open-door policy brings chatty neighbours at all hours of the day and evening. 

The garden is producing - if you can find anything amid the foot-high grass that I'm feeling just too chilled out to tackle (next year, next year). Tomatoes, aubergines, a second round of strawberries and roses, blueberries, blackberries, chilli peppers and zucchini. The lavender is all but over, but my excuse for not tidying it up and putting it into twee lacy bags is that there are still butterflies and bees hanging about (and I prefer hanging about reading).

The children - a multitudinous and ever-changing cast - have plenty to entertain them : sticks to sharpen into lethal weapons, trees to fall out of, siblings to scar for life, streams to damn, wildlife to catch and cage, cats to torture with love. Younger brothers shoot their older brothers with stones from improvised catapults, older brothers boost younger ones onto high walls overlooking dizzying drops in the hopes of doing away with them. Younger girls trip over bath towels made to serve as princess ballgowns, and the older ones huddle in corners trying to reconstitute lipsticks stolen from mother and then snapped in two. Morning and evening the joyous ring of children arguing, insulting one another, laying down the law and demanding justice, sounds through Carmine's streets and rattles Carmine's stones.

The holidays are here!