Junefinnigan's Weblog

Benvenuto to all my loyal and new followers,

The busy valley below our villa
Photo J Finnigan

“Did you call me to attest to your insanity?”  My man is staring up at me from the garden, whilst I am hanging out the studio window with a hoarse throat.  “No goddamnit” I croak, “I wanted you to remind me what it was you said to your London friend, when he asked you what ‘the sounds of Tuscany’ were.”  “Oh, yes, squeaky tractors of course.”  Well, it depends on the time of year, however, at this moment in time my man is right.  Ancient squeaky tractors are currently rattling their way up and down between the vines, rotovating the soil.  this goes on for quite a few weeks, whilst imported workers are trimming and tidying the vines.  Meanwhile,   the pruned branches from the olive trees are being dragged into piles and burnt.  So the air is rather smoky at present.

Last weekend in Fiano, Benedetta had gone off to the coast to celebrate her twenty-third birthday, so her mother Laura was holding the fort at the bar/alimentari alone.  Over coffee there, I told my man about the quotes I had had for translating my novel into Italian and that they were all very expensive.  I explained that I had been asked for the number of ‘characters’, rather than words, and wondered if they included the spaces.  “Ha, I’m surprised they didn’t want to weigh the book, they weigh everything else here!”  he groaned.  You may laugh, but what my man said is very true.  If you order a sandwich, the Italians slice the bread and weigh it, slice the cheese/ham and weigh it, and weigh tomatoes and/or salad before slicing.   So, back to the book, I may have to postpone the translation, until I make a lot more royalty money from the English version.

Yesterday, our beautiful nine-year old granddaughter arrived to stay overnight, whilst her big brother went down to Perugia to play rugby with his team from Siena.  Sadly, the result went heavily against Siena this time.  Our girl introduced her granddad to a new game of cards, which they are currently playing at her school.  There was a lot of shouting, laughter and slapping of hands on the table.  “What’s going on?”  I enquired.  “Oh its this game called Manaccia” my man replied, “It’s a bit like snap with attitude!”  Earlier in the morning, we had dropped down to Certaldo to buy Primula and Pansies, but were disappointed because our usual lady was not in the market with her plant stand.  However, all is not lost as  we managed to get some plants in Montespertoli this morning.

Giant Emperor Moths on Garden Lamp
Photo P Finnigan

My man called me down to the garden a couple of days ago and  I was amazed to see two, probably newly emerged, Giant Emperor Moths hanging off the bottom of one of our garden lights.  This light stays on all night, so they probably had toasty warm feet.  Fabulous, and my man managed to capture this picture for you all to see!  I must say that all the signs are here now for the end of any

The first baby fig of 2014
Photo P Finnigan

cold weather; ants, flies, dragonflies, butterflies flitting and dancing together,  six bats emerging at dusk and the first baby fig on our tree!  However, it’s a bit chilly this morning….

Enter, the much adored Silvio Berlusconi.  Oh no, things are sadly on the downward slope for SB.  Italy’s highest appeal court has upheld his two-year ban from

Silvio swallows the pill.
Photo Indiatimes

public office, after which he ‘auto-suspended’ himself from the ‘Federation of Knights’ ahead of a meeting, where he expected to be stripped of the title.  Described by many Italians as ‘Il Cavaliere’, he will now have to get used to being simply Mr Berlusconi!  Meanwhile, he has scotched rumours that his children will stand as candidates for his party Forza Italia in the EU elections.  What to do next, that is the question?  When you are the sixth richest person in Italy, one’s choices are very limited…….

Oh, I nearly forgot.  I promised to send you a snippet from my new novel ‘The Bolivian Connection’ to be published later this year.  I will send you a taster mid-week as I am now under pressure to get on with the day job.  Nevertheless, life eez good, life eez now!

Have a great week.

Amore June xx

PS here is the link for my Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/author/junefinnigan

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