Departures

Villa Casamanza, Nr Perugia, Umbria, Italy

Our last four guests of the summer 2008 departed this morning. As we hoped, it has been a good week and everyone seems very happy to have been here. Vicky and Susie are first to go and manage to leave Vicky's insulin in the fridge. You would have thought something like that, which so dramatically affects one's life, would be something never forgotten. But then I suppose people leave passports and tickets behind when they go away.

Sad to have reached the end - but I have got very fired up about this next week when I will be living on my own at the villa. I have lots of reading that I want to do aimed mainly at the MSc. I want to do some practice note taking and begin to think seriously about how I am going to approach my study. And I am planning to visit some of the nearby art exhibitions in Perugia, Assisi and maybe Siena. So a week of study and culture.

After everyone has left, Linda and I have a quick trip down to Perugia, just the two of us - Emma preferred to do yet more yoga (she has been doing two classes a day from some downloads we have from the excellent http://www.yogatoday.com/ website). So a little bit of relaxation for the two of us together. With hindsight, it would have been really good if Linda could have stayed on this week, but we didn't manage to get it organised with all the many changes that took place to next week's arrangements.

So we sit and read the papers in a street cafe in the Corso Vannucci and then, with some effort, find the entrance to the underground streets of Perugia, the Rocca Paolina. This has a photo exhibition on show as well as an extraordinary collection of Indian and Asian musical instruments. I am very excited about the latter and will try to come back and see it next week when I have more time.

Last packing for Emma and Linda, a final meal of fried peppers and eggs at the outside table, and then off on the long journey back to Pisa airport to drop the two of them off. The round trip takes me over five hours and I skip dinner and have an early night - I intend to be up first thing tomorrow and then working all day.