Hired hands …

All right. Confess. You thought we were coming away on a holiday, didn’t you? Well today found your happy holiday makers picking vegetables like peasants in a dusty field. Happily, the rain did not begin until we had finished picking; I suspect the dust will by now have become mud. We grovelled for small, dusty tomatoes; we cut courgettes with lethally sharp knives. ( Think of issuing a dozen assorted travellers with knives and letting them loose…). I found identifying the chicory a challenge, but developed a neat way with a courgette flower, while the black-eyed beans defied identification altogether. We were hailed by an elderly man, similarly occupied, wearing a large brown waterproof tied with string, holed rubber boots and an extraordinary hat. We departed to our minibus in the wake of Anna from Tre Archi, for whom this morning we were as indentured serfs..

Back at the restaurant, we learned to prepare, to dip in batter, to stuff, to chop… and then we ate the lot. No instruction needed there.

By the time we left the heavens had opened and we sat off for Gravinia in a downpour. Happily, half our time there was spent underground. You can google the town to find out why…

We got back to our hotel ten hours later after by train. The trains are magic and dead on time. It was still raining.

Himself and I had a glass of wine and a dish of orecchiette in the restaurant downstairs, and are now more or less dead in our room.

Blipping our time as agricultural labourers.