MERCY!

A little rain & a catch up

Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom and goodness has provided us with a little sprinkling of a shower this morning and may her name be praised. If her aim was to remind us all of the infinite value of water for the survival of all things, she has succeeded. The temperature is finally sensible and now I can think straight.

I feel as if I have been away for 100 years. In reality it has been one week.

On Wednesday last I began my journey. I took the train to Paris and stayed the night. Straightforward enough save that as I exited Gard du Nord I thought it was a fine evening and that I should walk the 20 mins to Hôtel Panache (always where I stay. Very reasonable if you book early, which I did not). Minutes later I was as wet through as I have ever been and so were the entire contents of my luggage. I stood laughing in the street as lightening blasted around me. What else was there to do?

[ Paris. 25 June 2025 ]

By the time I got to my hotel, I had only a few hours to eat, sleep, and dry everything out before heading on to Milan. So I dashed out between showers to Monop a few doors down for a très chic supermarket salad, and set about trying to dry all of my clothes, tech, and Emma’s wedding present with a hair drier. The faint scent of mildew would follow me around for the rest of the trip.

Very early on Thursday morning, still damp, I took an Uber to Gare de Lyon and hopped on the train to Milan. There is no passport control, no luggage scanner, no visa checks - remember when we, too, had seamless inter-Europe movement? I just got on the train like it was any old thing and headed into the Alps.

[ View from the train. 26 June 2025 ]

If you ever have the time to take a leisurely trip across Europe, may I recommend to you the Trenitalia Frecciarossa? It was the most incredible journey. There are two carriers - one French and one Italian - who run this route, and the Trenitalia was a dream (the French TGV service, which I used on Monday to travel back, was… fine). I have never been to the Alps, nor seen them. Now going back is all I can think about.

While I wrote about this journey before I left, on the other side of it the experience feels profound. This was not simply moving from A to B. This was seeing the world in the true sense. A grand tour. Clear, aqua lakes and snow-topped mountains, hillside ruins and forest-covered hills and unnumbered gardens and stone barns and timber chalets. I saw all four seasons. In the space of a few hours I saw more than I have in the months prior. Such beauty that by the time I reached where I was going my soul was satiated.

But we’re not there yet.

[ Milano Centrale. Oh how I miss EU. 26 June 2025 ]

[ La Torre. 28 June 2025. Taken with a Flashback ]

I picked up my rental car from just outside the train station in Milan. It was blisteringly hot. By the time I was in the little, red Fiat 500 I was starting to melt. Wrong side of the car, wrong side of the road I kept telling myself. Plus, remember how to drive a manual. I asked Best Coffee where I could find the best coffee and set off to find it, and a parking space.

Almost immediately upon setting off I clipped the wing mirror of another car. Instantly I wished I had not stopped the rental car guy from upselling me the more expensive insurance. The driver yelled at me a lot in Italian. I do not speak Italian. I stood dumbly as he raved, checking the mirror, the casing, testing the electronic mechanism this way and that, caressing it. Without understanding one word the other said, we agreed that nothing at all was wrong with the mirror and on I went.

I parked illegally (I think) and found an excellent iced latte at Orsonero Coffee. I could have wept with relief and gratitude. I drank it like it was the elixir of youth. I then spent a good deal of time going from pharmacy to pharmacy looking for a self tanning mitt per the bride’s request. No luck. Almost as if the Italian people do not often use tanning products. It was the kind of hot that as soon as it touched my skin even for a moment, my instinct was to flee from it.

Having failed in one of the very few bridal errands I had been assigned, I went on.

The drive from Milan to my Tuscan hillside hotel was mostly fine. It took me a minute to learn how Italian motorways work. Which is to say that they don’t really, and it is every man for himself. A number of people (men) in Porsches drove up behind me within inches of my bumper and flashed their headlights wildly. I came to understand that this meant ‘move aside so that I can continue to drive greatly in excess of the posted limit’. It was not entirely relaxing. Cliches are cliches for a reason. Italians drive like lunatics.

But winding through the hills of the Parco Nazionale dell'Appennino Tosco-Emiliano as the sun set listening to this song on repeat, I wept for the beauty of it and for the unfairness of my witnessing it and David being gone.

It was dark when I reached the bottom of the drive at La Torre. Some considerable time later, and having again cursed my decision to stick with the ‘Basic’ insurance package, I reached the top.

And so began a whirlwind of meeting wonderful, new people, catching up on a decade of news with long-neglected University friends, and glorying in the abundance of joy that overtook the tiny village, that galloped through the dramatic hills and whispered through the thick forests.

[ The entrance to Emma’s family home, one of my favourite places of earth imbued as it is with almost two decades of happy memories. 27 June 2025 ]

[ The internet says this is Brunfelsia, also known as Yesterday-Today-and-Tomorrow, which is the most beautiful thing I can imagine to have beside your front door when you get married. No, YOU’RE crying. 27 June 2025 ]

[ Campsis growing on a pergola where the rehearsal dinner was held. 27 June 2025 ]

[ La Torre Agriturismo, which had an abundant potager supplying the most incredible food. 27 June 2025 ]

[ Just a causal rehearsal dinner. 27 June 2025 ]

Aside from failing at a second bridal directive (collect the hair stylist from the town and drop her off at the house. Journey time 10 mins) and accidentally kidnapping the bride’s hairstylist for over an hour as we failed to navigate our way through the baffling hills of Tuscany with no phone signal and gradually-fading good humour, it all went off without a hitch.

My best friend of 18 years married her best friend from high school at her family’s home on a Tuscan hillside. So many, many good things squeezed into one sentence.

Oh, actually there was one small hitch. It was 36° the whole time. For the North Americans among you, that is about 96°f. Yes. Our glad-rags were all soaked in sweat the whole time. And it is largely what we talked about until after sunset when the temperature abated slightly and we reverted to the usual (a) ‘what do you do for a living?’ and (b) ‘how old are you kids now? OMG they’re so grown up that’s crazy’.

[ The stunning chuppah. 28 June 2025 ]

[ Happy, sweaty people. 28 June 2025. Taken with a Flashback ]

As always, my favourite part of the event was the post-mortem brunch on Sunday, after which I remained in my air conditioned room recovering, venturing out only once the sun had gone away. There was a slight lack of nuisance to the air conditioning such that it was either ON or OFF. I think my body is developing a cold as a result of going instantly from 36° to -5° to 36° to -5° to 36° to -5° several times per day.

As climate change drives species to extinction it is safe to say that I will be one of the first to go. I cannot properly function over 25°c. And neither can an iPhone, so really when the heat is over 30° - sweaty and techless - who would want to survive?

And then, yes, I did the whole journey in reverse on Monday. The drive back to Milan was made more dicey because it was 6am and I hadn’t had any coffee. The people working at the rental car place do not care at all about their work (thank god) so I handed the keys back and bid them ‘ciao’ without so much as an inspection of the returned vehicle.

The TGV service from Milan to Paris was busier and the air conditioning less effective. A horrible French woman complained constantly to the mother of a young girl that the child was playing too loudly (the young mother and child were black and though I don’t speak good French I didn’t need to to understand the tone) such that the poor mother and child retreated to sit in the vestibule by the loos for the whole 7 hours. Seeing the Alps in reverse did nothing to diminish their staggering scale and beauty.

I arrived home late on Monday night to be greeted by my sweet pups who would react with no less excitement if I had only been away from home for an hour.

I haven’t felt such a over-brimming of happiness in a very, very long time, and the joy hangover™ is vivid. This was not helped by the fact that it was the hottest day of the year in London yesterday and anytime I tried to get up and do anything at all I immediately wilted into a chair.

I did water my poor garden, though, and deadheaded the roses, so standby for a garden update. For now I will take advantage of the cooler weather (thank you, THANK YOU, Mum Nature) and will finally unpack.