Just So you know… 20/03/2025
It seems appropriate to start writing this blog the day after my birthday – we will skip over my age… suffice to say I am still surprised by it!! My passions are my animals and painting.
So here is my painting of my boy Busta. I first started painting soon after I moved to Italy about twenty years ago… a friend started up a watercolour class, and I was hooked. Before Italy I had worked as a Weather Presenter at Sky News for 13 years; I had a lot of good friends there and I was sad to leave, but it was definitely time to go, especially as I had bought a house in Tuscany a year previously.
I actually took a sabbatical for 6 months to spend time here, and during that time, three delightful kittens were born to a wild mother in my back garden.
Clearly, she didn’t have enough milk for them, and I was soon feeding them. They became very precious… Gizmo was my boy, and the girls were Principessa Tiramisu and George – yes I got the naming wrong with George, but the name stuck anyway.
And I also have four wonderful dogs. They were not a plan, they just kind of happened to me as a result of being a volunteer at our local stray dogs’ kennels. The first one I brought home to save his life…. as his mother, pregnant when she arrived at the kennels, didn’t have enough milk, and he was about to die.
He was less than three weeks old and needed to be given milk every 3 hours night and day. I only planned to save his life then find him a good home – but we fell in love!! As he was permanently hungry, I called him Bust-a-gut, not a good name choice in Italy, as most Italians cannot hear the difference between Busta, and basta, which means stop, enough. Or worse still short for bastardino.
And if you try to spell it out, it would appear that rather unfortunately I named him envelope or paper bag!! To be continued….
Just So You Know… Part 2
Busta was driving me and the cats mad, he was so full of beans, it was obvious he needed canine company… and so the arrival of little Albi.
Busta had already met him and his siblings down at the kennels, but all the others quickly got adopted, whereas Albi didn’t. When I asked why, I was told that everyone said he was too ugly! To be fair, he looked more like a little rat than a dog, as he basically had almost no coat – he was effectively bald!! But after a few weeks of good food, he grew his lovely white coat, and Albi is short for albino, even though he actually isn’t as he has very naughty black eyes.
He was exactly 20 days younger than Busta, although already two months old when I brought him home, and they have been inseparable ever since. To be continued…
Just So You Know… Part 3
And then along came along my two girls – just two days old!! Once a month we have a walk from the kennels, and it’s a great opportunity for socializing.. for the two-legged of us, and of course for our four-legged friends. One Sunday when I arrived I got a particularly warm welcome, and it transpired that they were desperately seeking carers for six one day old pups who had been rescued from a plastic bag in a rubbish tip. (Really, how could anyone THINK of doing such a terrible thing?) Initally I said no way – already the servant of 3 cats and 2 dogs. But in the end I gave way, and ended up taking home two delightful tiny, tiny little things no bigger than mice. This time they needed to be given milk, at first
Betty and Doris at one week old
using an eye dropper, every two hours day and night; and because there were two of them, I had to set my alarm for just an hour and a half… it nearly killed me. At nights I kept them in a small box on my bed, so that if by chance I mis-set my alarm then their little squeaks would waken me.
I never intended to keep them and gave them the worst names I could think of – but I was so tired, the worst I could come up with was Doris and Betty. I tried to find homes for them, but apparently everyone but me knew that I would end up keeping them!! And what gorgeous girls they turned into.
My two boys are now 11, and the two girls are 10, and they are such great company.
Sadly, my initial three cats have crossed over the rainbow bridge, (a phrase I heard for the first time here), but my little Fifi, dumped on my doorstep when less than four weeks old is still with me. That’s nothing short of a miracle, but it’s also another story….
Hello Hoopoe 28th May 2025
When I was working ghastly shifts at Sky News I spent my life chasing sleep, and thus used blackout curtains… now a happy retiree in Tuscany I leave my curtains and shutters open so that I wake to the light. The other morning I was greeted with the wonderful sight of a Hoopoe bird ducking and bobbing on my windowsill. I first read about Hoopoes in a Leon Uris book (Exodus maybe?), and always thought of them as from Africa, so it was so special to see one here. After a few days it became obvious that he/she was servicing a nest in a hole in the wall of the old house opposite.
A few days later on the main road I saw the sad remains of a dead hoopoe and was surprised at how really upset I felt. Imagine my pleasure when, a few days later, I saw my hoopoe still happily stuffing food into the hole in the wall. I don’t know what kind of bird I saw on the tarmac… but my hoopoe is still safe and sound.
Goodbye Socks… Hello Bikini 1st June 2025
In twenty years here I don’t remember such a cold wet May… it really was pretty miserable. There were even some days I didn’t dare drive the dogs to the fields for their walk as the mud was too deep on the tractor tracks – one time needing to be towed out was sufficient!! Now within a couple of days the temperatures have risen by about ten degrees. Goodbye socks, hello bikini as we go into the high 20s. Last year the hot season was so long, I never heard so many Italians complaining, and it was the first summer I really found it too hot for me… at 3 oclock in the morning it was still in the 30s in my garden!!! Let’s hope this summer is a bit cooler!!
Fifi’s Op 14th June 2025
My tiny cat Fifi is so precious, and in my eyes very, very beautiful, despite being born with only half a tail. Back in mid June I could see that Fifi was not doing well. Her proper name is Fiorellina (Little Flower), and she is so precious. As it happened my DIY friend was coming that day, and he has always had cats, and he suggested we took her to a vet he knew and thought highly of. To cut a long story short, it transpired she was in really bad pain, and that the only way of taking her out of pain was an operation – to remove her eye. I still cringe when I write that, but apparently it is not uncommon with older cats. I couldn’t leave her in pain, so I agreed to the op, which they did two days later.
At 17 I thought there was every chance she wouldn’t make it through, but she is a little fighter, and I was overjoyed when they told me that she had. The problem is that her other eye had never really worked properly, so she now sees rather poorly; consequently I was very worried that she would fall off something, especially while still wearing the cone of shame. In fact, for the first few nights, until I got myself better organized, I slept on the floor with her. As ever the law of sod prevailed, and my DIY mate had gone away for a while, and so I had to set about doing some DIY for myself.
She loves sitting on my table with me, so my first effort, terrified that she would fall off, was to build a circular cage right around the table, with a kind of opening for me – it’s where I eat, paint and where I am writing this – and it’s not a very big table. My next effort was to make her ‘bridge’ wider and safer. The bridge goes from the settee area in my small sitting room, over to her eating area and cat flap, and was put in place a year or so back when it was clear that she could no longer jump up to her eating area.
Finally, terrified that she might decide to jump or fall out of a window, I made screens for each window, using the same green plastic-coated wire netting that I had used for the table cage. None of this was very easy, and the wire kept cutting me, but eventually the windows were safe. Just as well as all of this was done in the hottest weather, and I really needed to have the windows open from about 3am onwards, once I was sure it was cooler outside than in. Certainly not my best summer ever, but then again, I still have my tiny half-tailed one-eyed little lady – less than two and half kilos, and in my eyes the most beautiful creature ever created!! So perhaps it is my best summer ever!!
Just One of Those Days 8th August 2025
OMG What a nightmare!!! The men are here to fit an air-conditioner unit, but it’s all gone desperately wrong!! I have always hated a/c, but this is a very hot house, attached on what would have been the cooler side, with no two windows in a straight line, so airflow is not what you would call good!!
Also, I have 4 dogs and 2 cats, and summers in Italy are getting hotter. When it’s still 30C outside at 3 o’clock in the morning it’s almost impossible to cool the house down. My house has stone walls almost 2 foot thick, and these are generally very good at protecting from both cold and heat… BUT… once the sun has beaten down on them for several weeks they actually turn into radiators – and that’s really bad news!!! Hence the dreaded a/c unit. But because of local regulations, (a department known as the Belle Arte), you cannot have those great big ugly a/c boxes on walls facing out onto the street.
And guess what? All my bedrooms face out into the street. So, the only solution is to put it on the wall above the lower garden… then it must pass through my bathroom at head height, and into the first bedroom, (the dogs’ bedroom actually). BUT… since my house is set into the hillside (like so many round here in rural Tuscany), I have to come up a flight of stairs from the hall entrance from the road. Sooo… the guys need to be working at a height of 6 or 7 metres above ground… and guess what? They have decided they need a scaffold – not in the estimate! The guys themselves are really nice and helpful – but I was really fed up with their boss who did the helpful – but I was really fed up with their boss who did the estimate. I shouted at him down the phone and he said I had to pay for the scaffold. I said I wouldn’t, and that he could tell his guys to stop work, take everything away and I wouldn’t bother with the a/c… and I wouldn’t pay him a penny!!! He of course immediately phoned his men and told them to find a way. I felt a bit sorry for them – as Marco said, ‘we are stuck in the middle’. As is generally the way, a resolution has been found… they have done most of the work…
I need to get a bloke in to cut back some of the foliage at the base of the wall where they need to put their long ladders. For now, they have gone off for lunch and will be back sometime next week to finish the job. But isn’t it just sod’s law, that having had a period of relatively fresh cool weather and even some huge thunderstorms, today is the start of the next bout of really hot weather.
This time though, I think the nights will be cooler, thus allowing the house to cool down. The workmen said they will be back next week… but then again, around here pretty much everything closes down for the first two weeks of August as everyone takes their annual holiday; for just about anything you have to wait for ‘dopo Feragosto’ – ie after the 15th August…. So, fingers crossed…
Painting and Dancing 13th August 2025
The last few days I have been working on some paintings for an exhibition a painting group I am in is having in northern France. Needless to say this has involved rootling through drawers and wardrobes to see if I have any older paintings I want to submit… and I came across this… my little Fifi…
And this is one I did recently from a foto I took many years back… that’s my neighbours’ roof, but thankfully not one of my cats!!
Cat on a Hot Tile Roof!
This morning Marco is here to finish off the work to install my backup ac machine. Since my bedroom was 28C last night, and we have at least another week of the hot weather, then it may actually come in useful – for the dogs if not for me.
Last night I couldn’t open the windows til some time in the middle of the night when the outside temperatures finally dipped below 28!! Then, in the morning, currently around half nine, I wander around the house, small thermometer in hand, to check if the air outside the window is still cooler than inside the room!! And that’s what you call the ‘Browbeating Heavy Leather Resurrection window-shutter Shuffle!! Only those of my generation will get that reference – but its still one of the best dance records ever!! Check it out… Ashton Gardner & Dyke PS I always thought the line was ‘make the bees sad’, and that’s what I always used to sing at the top of my (appalling) voice; but listening to it again now after many years I realise it actually was… ‘make the peace sign’. Ooops!!!