After the long drives of the last two days, I have some time in hand so 6:00 finds me reading Kelly's Two Steps Backwards. This is actually quite funny, but though it is set in the area of France we want to look at buying in, her actually circumstances are totally different from ours in that she has bought a ruin.
Down the autostrada to Pisa and meet Wife and Daughter whose journey has been uneventful. It is two more hours drive to Trasimeno. By the time we get there, the hazy cloud has lifted and it is sunny enough to spend a couple of hours by the pool.
One of our favourite activities of the past couple of years has been pre-meal drinks by the lake. Usually Wife and I would read, but tonight Daughter wants to tell us her latest thinking about work and her plans for India.
Our dinner is at Il Molo, our favourite Passignano restaurant. The menu has changed a little from last year and we are not able to identify Wife's favourite starter. Regradless, the meal is excellent and we are all feeling very relaxed as we ended the day eating ice cream from one of the bars by the lake.
Sunday
I had to work for an hour or so this morning sorting out the option spreadsheet that Jerome had sent me. He has had a few very busy days and there have been a few errors in trade recording. Nothing too serious but an unrelaxed start to the day.
It is blindingly hot today and we settle for a day by the pool. Daughter is still very brown from her trip to South America. For once, I have decided to take a more sensible approach to sunbathing and so have started with factor 30 cream.
I mainly spend the day reading Safranski's biography of Heidegger. I am particularly interested in the way that he deals with setting the scene as it is as Heidegger approaches adulthood, and in his method of treating the very complex ideas associated with early phenomonology. Both of these sorts of issues are ones that I would face in my planned biography writing.
Several breaks during the day for ice cold drinks or ice cream. Otherwise, we are out most of the day. Wife and I discussed more details of the French project and a possible timetable related to our summer holiday and half term in October. We might be ready to look and buy somewhere by then. However, there is loads of detail outstanding about this project. Our next task might be to meet Jerome and his girl friend to get an outline of their plans.
More drinks by the lake, where it is very windy, then a meal at what we call "the red restaurant". The first two courses were superb here, but I was rather disappointed with my main. We do have many memories of great meals here though. So maybe we'll have another one later in the week.
Monday
Somewhat overcast first thing (as promised by the weather forecast) so we decide to have a morning out in Cortona. At the very least, this has plenty of leather goods shops and sure enough, Wife and Daughter spend 45 mins choosing handbags. There is a photographic exhibition further up the main street with some superb landscapes - just the sort of picture I should be taking.
Widely considered to be the best bag shop
Daughter post-bag-buying
This is actually a modern painting that I really liked - but painted in egg-tempera. The books are mostly volumes of Cicero
More ice cream and a slow drive back to Passignano for siestas and more reading. Wife and I had a quick trip to the supermarket and have bought our first wine of the holiday.
Late afternoon there is a major thunderstorm. For dinner tonight we go to a rustic pizzeria at the end of town which is surprisingly good. Then Wife and Daughter want to watch the final of The Apprentice.
Watching The Apprentice
Tuesday
Its sunny again and another day vanishes in sunbathing by the pool. Daghter has been reading Banerjee and Duflo's Poor Economics, very much her current theme given her India plans. I am currently reading Documentaries - A Very Short Inroduction on Wife's Kindle.
I am also thinking about making a short film called "How to make a fishing video". When I get back to the UK, one of my first projects is to sort out my last fishing video and get ready for the new season's fishing and video taking. Once I am up to about video 15, I thought I could make my "How to" film then. Thinking about how I would do this has already given me a number of good ideas for improving my own films.
I have also remembered that I have some old film that my dad shot when I was very young and I am thinking about getting that transferred to dvd.
We went into Perugia for dinner tonight, eating at one of the places on the main street - very nice indeed. More ice cream (we are now of two a day)
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