So, at last, after four days of travelling and waiting around, I finally got to see a departure board! Admittedly there were fewer flights than usual on it, most of them delayed, but at least mine was one of them.
I arrived at Pisa in the early hours of the morning, to the accompaniment of thunderstorms, but no earthquakes here. Odd that I missed the Cumbrian quake, after going all the way to New Zealand for the experience!
This morning I woke to a rainy, windy Peralta, but at least it's warm and the sun is peering round a cloud as I write, glinting off the rain dripping from the olive trees.
Went for a brief walk today, dressed up like an arctic explorer and barely able to move for the layers of padding and fleece. After almost two weeks of sub-zero temperatures everything is frozen solid. Last night was -18 though by mid-day it was a balmy -9.
kitchen window
Despite the central heating and the double glazing there was ice on the inside of some of the windows.
But the view outside was spectacular - an ice fantasy.
Everything is clothed in ice crystals - trees have morphed into coral reefs against the blue sky - every twig disguised in white.
Even the fences have become ice sculptures.
It is utterly beautiful - but as cold as Siberia and anyone who stops long enough to look risks hypothermia. I took photographs until my camera froze.
I met a very cold horse
Getting in and out of the front door has become hazardous - the mill has waterfalls of icicles - some nearly six feet long.
Tomorrow I'm off on my travels again. Down to London for a meeting with publishers and the sales team. Authors are sometimes asked to meet the sales reps and 'pitch' the book to them. The reps are the people who are going to sell your book to the book shops and you need them on your side. So I will be working very hard to persuade them that it's a wonderful book - however nervous I feel about it!
So here I am again in the cybersphere, courtesy of a new router, several yards of cable, and the help of a very kind young man in India who talked me through a foreign language of pinging, subnet masks and internet protocols, being very patient with someone who doesn't know her DHCP configuration from her static IPS! The benefits of globalisation!
Rafts of ice on the river
At least, if I can't go anywhere today, I can get on the internet. For the first time since the snow began, I've felt it prudent to stay at home. It's been snowing for days and the temperatures haven't managed to get above freezing since last week. Big, fast running rivers aren't supposed to freeze over, but that's what's happening at the moment.
We don't have temperatures as low as Scotland or Wales (-20 last night) and we don't have as much snow as Northumberland a few miles further east (more than 5 feet and still falling), but there's enough to cause havoc. This is what the main road looks like and it's very slippery.
You have to dress like Scott of the Antarctic just to go to the Coop for a pint of milk, and - yes, it does take some time! But the snow is also beautiful and my inner child keeps eyeing the sledge under the stairs and thinking .......
If I've been very quiet here it's because I have no internet access. Probably because of the weather, my router, my broadband filter and my broadband connection have all been trashed! I'm posting this quickly at work in a gap left by a student cancellation. We have a lot of snow here, though not as much as east of the Pennines, and there have been electric storms with thunder and lightning mixed in too. I made it to Wendy's book launch (lovely party!) but then woke up to six inches of snow and eveything frozen solid. It took two hours to dig the car out because we live down a lane at the bottom of a steep hill which doesn't get used by anyone else. Since then I've left the car on the main road. On Saturday I managed to get to a literature festival event where I was booked to do a talk on Katherine Mansfield, but had to abandon the car at one point and walk the last three quarters of a mile on streets like ice-slides. Driving back (very carefully) the temperature plummeted to -11 degrees. It's rather like living in Scandinavia, though at the moment it's a bit warmer over there. Hot water bottles, furry slippers, scarves, gloves, thermal underwear - you name it, I'm using it! Even the cat is curled up on a cushion next to the radiator with his nose under his tail. If I look at him he opens one eye as if to say 'If you think I'm moving, you must be mad!' Hope to have the internet up and running again tomorrow when I've solved the mysteries of network connections and ISP addresses.
Snow fell in Italy before Christmas, in places where it doesn’t usually snow. Laura, who is 65 and has lived in this village for her whole life, can’t remember it ever snowing here - except perhaps the odd flake trickling down out of the sky on a very cold day. But just over a week ago, Tuscans - right down to the edge of the Mediterranean - came out of their houses to find the roads six inches deep in the white stuff. All great fun and very pretty. It only lasted a few days before it began to melt. And then on Christmas Eve it began to rain - and that’s where the trouble began. Rain in the Tuscan Alps is never ordinary - you either get a light mizzle or you get the fully grown up version as seen in Hollywood movies with six fire hydrants trained on the set. So on Christmas Eve we stayed beside the fire and listened to it drumming on the roof and rushing down the gutters. Christmas Day was bright and dry and we didn’t have the TV on all day - or the computer. So when we went out on Boxing Day to take members of the family to Pisa Airport we were totally unprepared for what had happened.
Swollen with snowmelt and rain, all the local rivers, including the Serchio and the Arno, had broken their banks. The main autostrada to Pisa was underwater, the secondary ‘A’ road (SS Aurelia) was also flooded and the train line was under water too. The police had blocked off all the roads, but no one had thought to provide details of a diversion. We drove around for hours frustrated at every attempt by the flood water.
This isn't the river - this is a new channel cut by the flood across fields and through a raised flood dyke. Eventually we found a way through, by driving more than half way to Florence and then coming back across country in a nose-to-tail traffic jam that stretched for miles. We missed the plane, of course, and then had to find a way back. The route we had taken was closed by an accident, another was closed because the bridge was down ...... We made it home eventually, but a trip that would take 45 minutes each way normally, had taken us 8 and a half hours. Then, because their flight had been re-scheduled to the following day, we had to do it all again..... Landslides up in the hills have caused even more problems, sweeping away roads that provide the only link for small communities. It will be months before the roads and railways are completely restored. The President of Tuscany has declared a state of emergency. It seems England isn’t the only country in Europe to have problems dealing with weather!
