Halfway Over the Hill

( Reading time  - 5  book pages of text ~ 2300 words ) 11th July - Morning has broken and you rise from your bed with a question. Indoors or outdoors? In the city it doesn't matter: the angry roar and choking stench of traffic or the dance of fury of hundreds of dissatisfied lives, pounding on the percussion walls of your appartment cell. Here in Abruzzo, the open air beckons. I step out at dawn and am immediately welcomed by the orchestral hum of teeming, unseen life and a caressing breeze of dew-drop freshness. I raise my head to drink in the view and every time, without fail, I am arrested by the silent call of the ageless hills. Their eternal youth enveloping me in their warm embrace. The still, inescapable hills are a reminder that Old Mother Earth is here beneath your feet and they put your half-century of worries into perspective. And although we live in a time of doom-laden horizons and it feels like the beginning of the end of the world; the hills uplift me w...

 Fire and Water  ( Reading time -  4 book pages of text ~ 1800 words ) ( N.B. Names have been slightly altered in this narrative. + I will now refer to my neighbour, the Wild One  from previous posts, as Dahlia , this is the Google Voice suggestion for his actual name ) 1st July 2021  Since I planted my saplings mid-May (zucchini and lettuce now ready to harvest) it's only rained once. A few days ago, a whiff of smoke transperced the thick heat. Towards the east, over the line of trees, a haze of smoke veiled the sky. I thought nothing of it, people often have bonfires. Many people had noticed the oddity of a roadside fire and even texted their friends. It was only after twenty minutes, when it had started raging through the woods, did someone think to call the fire brigade. It took three days to put out and it destroyed 70 hectares of pines and olive trees. People gathered to watch, marvelled, and texted their friends. The land is still smouldering tod...