My laptop is dead. I haven’t heard back from the plumber about the leaky radiator. The sewage people are rustling up a sizeable quote for a new pump. The toaster is only toasting one side of the bread. There’s a storm coming. The news from Gaza and the subsequent global reverberations are horrific. The engine warning light has come on in my car. I sent a picture of it to the mechanic asking him what it meant, and he said not to worry and to keep driving until it loses power. So now I get in the car wondering when and where it might give up and I am very much hoping that will be outside a coffee shop which is also next to a book shop.
All of this said, I am still basking in the Italian afterglow of a happy week. It’s been five years since I travelled outside the UK and, while this trip was taken under the heading of work, it was the very opposite of hard graft. I stayed in a tiny village on the Umbrian Tuscan border as a guest of Villa Pia, a 15th century manor house, originally built as a weekend retreat for wealthy Florentines and now a communal family hotel. It glows in the sun, with plaster the colour of ripe peach, weather bleached pale blue shutters and a large courtyard filled with terracotta pots of abundant herbs and pelargoniums spilling over the edges. A forlorn, unloved little dog arrives from the village each morning to stretch out on the sofa in the breakfast room and sit on our feet under the dinner table in the evening, waiting for chicken scraps. Everyone is welcome.
I was also there for the Bland Badger creative retreat, the excellent collaboration between photographer, Charlotte Bland, and designer, Ros Badger, who have joined their names, expertise, style and passions to offer an unforgettable week. While they founded and run the retreats, there is a small team of professional tutors who help instil the magic. Take a bow, florist and writer Amy Merrick, mixed-media artist Lousia Dunn, floral designer Nadine Gibbon and calligrapher Kate Ridyard, to name a few. They are as important to Charlotte and Ros as the ship’s crew is to the captain. So too the team at Villa Pia - led by Morag the owner - who run the hotel and work in the kitchen. It’s a powerful combination of professionalism and friendship which puts the guest at the heart of the experience. There are other places I know who could do well to learn from this.
I am quite bad at being in the moment and rush through the days in a flurry of work deadlines, what’s for dinner, school pickups, dog needs a walk and the laundry is out in the rain. None of that at Villa Pia. Without the daily grind, I settled into a different routine of morning workshops – book binding, collage, flower arranging, calligraphy, floral crown making – and afternoons of swimming, writing and reading while others took hikes to the ancient chestnut forests or cookery lessons with the head chef, Gessy, the woman responsible for the long table of incredible salads at lunchtime and the four-course dinners every evening. When I came home, I tried to recreate the Torta Della Nonna (ricotta and lemon tart) and let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it tastes.
This sounds like an advert, but it isn’t, it’s an enormous thank you to everyone who made the week as unexpectedly special as it was. And to the gang of glorious women who I spent my halcyon days with – Brits, Americans, Israelis, French, Russian – and our honest conversations around culture, politics, monarchy, art and how Brits define ‘snog’ and ‘shag’. I also never expected to be describing the humble hedgehog. The Americans responded with a weather predicting groundhog, palmetto bugs which turned out to be a cuter name for the cockroach and the fulsome description of apple cider doughnuts. And if I can’t get to a Savannah oyster roast or a Rhode Island Porchfest soon, I may well combust.
There was a universal language of delight through crafting and eating together. Caroline, a returning retreater, said it was incredible to watch a bunch of people who had never met become firm friends in a matter of days. Pauline, a photographer living in San Francisco, talked of the electrical energy it created. Katy likened it to American summer camps with kids finding their tribe and how we needed to continue the connection and inspiration once we left.
Anyway, you will be pleased to hear I am back and entrenched at home for the foreseeable. I promise to keep my Italian memories mostly to myself from now on, unless I suddenly remember something important like the piadina (flatbread) stuffed with salami, chicory, tomato and scorzma, I ate on the street in Arezzo. Or the sunset over the swimming pool which matched our aperol aperitivo. Or the table decorations of wild pears, egg yolk yellow flowers from Jerusalem artichokes, golf ball sized chestnuts and olive branches. I haven’t even mentioned the courtyard brocante and tables piled high with vintage Italian linen or the final feast where we wore our handmade floral crowns and danced to Elvis Costello and Scottish reels (because they were the only CDs we could find).
OK, OK, I know, enough now. I’ll get my coat (which I actually need because it is freezing here. Unlike Italy…)
It's only now that I able to begrudgingly comment on your trip to Italy. Nope, I was mistaken. I'm still furious I wasn't invited
LB, love this - words, food and a place of true inspiration x