hen we arrived in Umbria searingly fierce cold wind; the
to live, we groped our traditional ‘lazy’ wind that
way right down from Turin blows through you rather than
through a dense yellow fog and going round you. The ‘scirocco’
from that day on were forced to from the South is warm but just
revise our expectations about the as unwelcome because it usually
weather. This area of Italy, brings rain, and since Italian
possessing no coastline at all, houses are constructed in the
has a continental climate of belief that it never rains and
extremes. Winter is winter. indeed that water does not really
Summer is truly summer. It is not exist, the rain gets in
the place for someone who likes everywhere – under the doors,
their whole year to pass in a round the windows, through the
blur of comfortable uniformity. basement walls.
We had heard of fortunate ex-pats And can it rain! Thunderstorms
sunbathing on their terraces on are frequent in this mountainous
Christmas day; this I am prepared area. They can be heard
to believe. Direct sunlight here, approaching across the valley,
while giving an extraordinary booming and echoing, attended by
clarity to everything it touches, great fissures of light splitting
is also extremely warm at any the darkness (they usually happen
time of year. While it lasts. But at night). These days we take the
every other sort of weather is precaution of unplugging the
very fully represented. telephone and the laptop because
once a bolt of lightning hit the
We live on a hill aptly named television aerial of our
Windy Hill. There are two semi-detached neighbours, causing
prevailing winds. The a noise that sounded like every
‘tramontana’ from the North is a pane of glass in the house
imploding, plunging us into something like seven hundred
darkness and projecting a piece square miles of valley, bordered
of our lamp switch and some vital at its furthest side by mountain
innards of our phone several feet ranges and punctuated by minor
into the air. hills and ridges. More often than
not we are above the level of the
The best thing of all about the mist which lies in the vast
winter is the wonderfully concavity like the waters of some
uplifting sight of the snow on mysterious Scottish loch, pricked
the mountains. I never get tired here and there by dreamy blue
of looking at its pure white islands with the great shoulders
creaminess. Cars come down from of the high mountains rising
the mountains to the snowless beyond.
valleys with a coating of snow
several inches thick. But But nothing beats the warm days,
sometimes it snows lower down as particularly those of early
well. In our first winter we were summer before the appearance of
involved in the construction of a the troublesome little flies
snowman, which lasted until our which supplement their staple
golden retriever knocked it down diet of grape juice with human
in his efforts to seize the sweat. The summer is when Italian
carrot nose. Snowchains are houses come into their own with
compulsory equipment on some their terraces and balconies,
roads. Fortunately I’ve never yet split levels and other subtle
had to fit them in anger. ways of blurring the boundaries
between indoors and out. No-one
After the snow on the mountains, need try to get brown in Italy –
the most visually rewarding it just happens.
weather phenomenon is mist. From
our house, we have a view of My favourite place to be on a
warm day would be the Piano vibrating to some ecstatic cosmic
Grande, a dried-up lake bed high rhythm. These moments should be
in the Sybilline mountains where kept as antidotes – breastplates,
wild flowers carpet the meadows if you like – against the days
with every hue imaginable. I have when you think that you might as
been there when the crickets were well have stayed in a country
singing from the grass and the that at least doesn’t claim not
larks were singing in the sky and to be cold.
the whole atmosphere seemed to be
About the Author:
Damaris West is the Managing Director of worldwide tutor organisation Anysubject Ltd which she runs from the Italian office. Anysubject provides tutoring in all academic subjects, musical instruments and foreign languages. See more about Anysubject Ltd at http://www.anysubject.com and more articles at http://www.anysubject.com/helpful-guides.asp
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