Saturday 19 June, Preci, South East Umbria

Sometimes this blog writes itself...

A beautiful walk along a deserted valley. The banks of the burbling stream were carpeted with wild strawberries. The series of small waterfalls at the end were perfect for paddling. The children spent their time throwing sticks in and watching them bounce down the cascades before fishing them out of a pool downstream. Half mature tadpoles darted between little toes. An idyllic setting for a picnic.

At the bottom, I was popping the kids in the van when the lovely old lady we had passed on the way down feeding her poultry stopped and talked at Laura. After a few minutes of this, and clearly encouraged by Laura's 'gift' of appearing to understand everything that is said to her in any language, we picked up the phrases 'cafe?' and 'casa?' as she pointed at her house. Feeling anything less than an affirmitive would have caused affront, we smiled, grabbed our phrasebook and made ourselves at home in her kitchen. Plied with wine, magnificent coffee, sweet bread and orange juice, everything was going as well as could be expected in a communication vacuum, and the lady seemed delighted just to have someone to talk to.

Groping round for conversational gambits, Laura pointed at a sepia tinged photo hanging on the wall of a smiling man and two mischievious boys. It captured a beautiful moment when the lady's sons and late husband were working together to bring in the smallholding's harvest. The lady reached up, with trembling hands. Her cataract clouded eyes misted with happy memories. Time slowed down. Her brain struggled to control her emotions and her shaking hands. The picture fell from her grasp and the frame shattered on the floor.

Laura knelt, frantically picking up the glass as if they were pieces of her conscience. She knew she was to blame. Tiny fragments were everywhere but the lady waved away further attempts to help saying (we think) that she had a Hoover. Laura surreptitiously picked up some further shards and dropped them into the bin.

'You do realise,' I said after we had made a slightly shambolic exit, 'that the dogs are probably going to eat the cake crumb and glass confection on the floor?'

With a fixed smile on her face Laura replied. 'Yes, and I'm sure I've just seen her disappear back up the hill with what I thought was the bin but is clearly a bucket of scraps she keeps to feed her collection of geese and poultry.'

And so we left the lovely valley of San Lazzaro, leaving a trail of broken memories and lacerated intestines in our wake.