Lizards and raw prawns
A Monday to dream about. Up gradually having slept really well. Breakfast and then a day of lounging reading books, swimming in the pool and chatting, and gradually wandering around the grounds, which flick with lizards. I'm reading a book by Yoko Ogawa, which is excellent blend of the literary in the style of Murakami, with a nice dash of horror.
At tea time I sat in one of two chairs looking across the olive groves, and lemon trees and others, and Romy brought me out a glass of gin and tonic and we sat looking down on the land, which at that time of the day gets golden green and resembles a renaissance Italian painting. Utterly gorgeous. By prearrangement Tina arrived. She is a Sicilian who lived in Toronto as a child, she said she moved back here when she got married, thinking it was safer to bring up children here. I wondered why bringing children up in the birthplace of the Mafia was safer than Toronto, but did not ask.
With a helper, she prepared us an amazing dinner. The first course was a dish of sweet raw prawns and an octopus salad, mixed peppers and onions. This was followed by the smoothest potato mash conceivable, and swordfish steaks with pine nuts and raisins cooked in wine. Fabulous. Followed by what Tina called monopots of parfait. They were utterly delicious. All to bed, well fed and happy.
Below assorted lizards, and us. Right at the bottom an excellent Toby shot of the sun going down.
At tea time I sat in one of two chairs looking across the olive groves, and lemon trees and others, and Romy brought me out a glass of gin and tonic and we sat looking down on the land, which at that time of the day gets golden green and resembles a renaissance Italian painting. Utterly gorgeous. By prearrangement Tina arrived. She is a Sicilian who lived in Toronto as a child, she said she moved back here when she got married, thinking it was safer to bring up children here. I wondered why bringing children up in the birthplace of the Mafia was safer than Toronto, but did not ask.
With a helper, she prepared us an amazing dinner. The first course was a dish of sweet raw prawns and an octopus salad, mixed peppers and onions. This was followed by the smoothest potato mash conceivable, and swordfish steaks with pine nuts and raisins cooked in wine. Fabulous. Followed by what Tina called monopots of parfait. They were utterly delicious. All to bed, well fed and happy.
Below assorted lizards, and us. Right at the bottom an excellent Toby shot of the sun going down.
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