RUPERT M. LOYDELL revisits a region of the past

(Monday). It is like coming home but not. New Fences, benches and fittings but same pink and orange dusk as the warm light disappears.

It is early in the season. So early that the pool is not ready for use and the grass is still rich green.

The effort to travel increases. What to select, what to leave behind, how to reassure myself that it will all be OK.

Family dynamics are weird, the ebb and flow of love and cynicism, rudeness and shared memories. We dip bread into oil for supper, with a glass of homemade wine. We should have asked for cheese.

(Tuesday)

At five o’clock it is cool but already bright. The windows are wide open and the air rushes in. Breakfast is late and makeshift: bread and oil again, melon slices, cups of tea.

We are going shopping at Hypercoop. It is not as fascinating or different as it once was but there is cheap wine and good olives, cheeses and bread. A big gluten-free section too.

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Everything is now still. The sun overhead is not moving, shadows are crisp and defined. I try painting through the shutters but the stripes of colour do not work. In a moment I will hook the shutters back whilst everybody else is asleep.

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Watching the sun go down. Blue, purple, grey. Flecks of orange, white. Trails of car lights across the valley. A dog barks, a bat flies by.

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That feeling of being abroad but not doing anything. Apart from the hear and the view you might as well be at home. I am waiting to go out, waiting to see art, to eat different food.

The heat increases, the doors and windows are shut. The house goes dark. We are heading out.

(Wednesday)

In the Arezzo museum, weatherworn statues and paintings no longer required for worship are arranged in empty rooms, numbers that refer you to a notice board.

Awkward English versions, rough cut stone and carved folds. Decontextualized crucifixes and empty reliquaries.

Cold tiles, polished wooden doors, grids of light from ancient windows.

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Rows of pillars, grey against cream. Badly lit paintings containing dwarves, rabbits, angels; the drowned and saved; Mary in her glory, Jesus as a child.

Pale memories of stories handed down as pictures, threatening lessons to be learned. Abuse of power. Hell awaits.

I cannot see. The varnish is gloss and cracked, the colours dark and chipped. Frescoes have been torn from walls and hung again in empty rooms.

Traffic and pedestrians pass by, we have the place to ourselves apart from the guard on her laptop and the old lady who knits. Both say hello, watch carefully as we look around the museum.

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     worn paving stones

     courtyard striations

     layers of time

 (Thursday)

Montevarchi, the local town, feels worn out. The weekly market has moved out of the centre to the park we used to frequent when the children were younger, and there are empty shops for sale. The newsagent’s kiosk has gone, the main square where we saw a Gypsy band perform and Patti Smith once played is desolate.

The fascist tower at the end of the main street glowers with power over nothing. The café we have been to before is closed but we did discover a chaotic secondhand shop full of dusty books, unwanted china and old postcards, some of which we bought.

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We are hanging around in San Giovanni Valdarno because Italians do not take time seriously. We are sitting in the square waiting for the museum to open. A backpacker is asleep in the ‘cave’ where miracles happened under the church, two men are mending phone lines, everyone else is at home.

The outdoor colours are sun-faded, it is cooler today. Earlier, the manageress of the restaurant we had lunch in, poured us glasses of limoncello by way of an apology for delays and a malfunctioning toilet door. She offered us more but we moved on.

Slowly, people appear. Shop shutters slide up, the museum guard pedals into view. Inside, the angel will still be telling Mary she is pregnant or about to be. Gold and white light. Intervention. Angelic appearance. Annunciation.

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The fact that one of Fra Angelico’s three Annunciation altarpieces is in this small town still seems like a secret, although each time we visit there are more people. Even so, I get a quarter of an hour to sit alone with the painting.

The angel is brighter
     than we remember.
     The Virgin is veiled,
     the dove projected
     down from Heaven.

     Blue and reds:
     human and holy.
     The angel holds
     Mary in his gaze
     to tell her his news.

     Adam and Eve flee
     Paradise, are sent
     into exile. Gabriel
     hovers uneasily
     over weightless colour.

     Does everything
     mean something?
     Mean anything?
     Time is interrupted,
     past and future changed.

     Stories persist.

Everything is symbolic, has a specific meaning but if you put all that aside you are left with an angel facing a woman. There is lots of gold, red and blue; the angel is clothed in pink.

The frame is newer than the painting, so there are strips of flat colour each side to make up for what might be missing. And much of the floor, along with the view from the window, is insubstantial, an abstract palette to help the perspective work.

Saturated colour, spirituality, theology, metaphor and symbolism. The remnants of a story that used to power the world.

 (Friday)

This morning the sun is back. No mist, no rain, a breeze and a view all the way to the horizon becomes a day of waiting. For the others and for the forecast thunder and rain, which duly arrives late afternoon, causing tourists in Florence to shelter in cafés whilst locals stride on or unfurl small umbrellas. It is big, splodgy summer rain, the sort we do not often get in England.

The science/zoological/anatomical museum is as haphazard as it sounds. A floor of gorgeous minerals, a locked hall of skeletons, and a vast collection of preserved animals and drawings with views into other rooms full of waxwork body parts and medical dissections.

Schoolboys run through the displays as the guards get visibly irritated. The entrance courtyard is shaded and worn, paving stones cracked and polished in equal parts.

We drove, due to a train strike, and caught one of the new trams from a park-and-ride. The city is as busy as ever but we skirted the centre and crossed the river.

For lunch, salads and meat, special pesto with pistachios added, circles of grilled aubergine. The air conditioning provided a backbeat to the busker who could not sing, a pulse of cool air and engine noise, a relentless human hum.

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In Santo Spirito there is a Giotto or School of Giotto crucifix (depending which information board you read) above the altar, and a Donatello annunciation I have only every known in reproduction.

It is one of those vast empty churches built like a barn, which would be quiet but for the recorded command for Silence!, which is by far the loudest thing.

In the sacristy, a room at the side, hangs an early work by Michelangelo, only displayed because of its maker’s name. If you pay to visit you can also enter the cloisters.

 (Saturday)

Fireflies or glowbugs in the bushes after dark. Like fairy lights or fairies themselves, like fading traces on the screens of old televisions shutting down. Pale fluorescent, green white light. There but not there, somewhere else.

‘You can see,’ says my daughter, ‘why people believe in magic creatures. I would if I had seen these when I was younger. Well, I believed in them anyway.’

An unexpected surprise, one of the week’s highlights. Soft interruptions blinking on and off in the warm night.

(Sunday)

In Arezzo’s main square, ‘Hotel California’ is being played on a squeaky violin; the drums and guitar never arrive. The restaurants which overcharge are overcrowded with no locals to be seen. It is hot again and now the music is popular classical although you can hear the diners’ chatter from where we stand.

Mid-afternoon, swifts diving and soaring. Dry heat, lazy lunch, warm wine and blurry vision. Crap versions of well-known songs. Tuscan towers and churches. Deep shadows and burnt stone. Sunshine and architecture as time travel.

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The church is now a museum and you cannot go in at all unless you pay. There is a glass panel behind the doorway which tends to reflect the light back, and most of the piazza has been cordoned off, although I found a shady corner where I could sit.

The posh café we visited only once remains closed. If you peer through the shutters the art deco chairs are still in place but there is more dust. The town has not changed for the better, is dirtier and emptier. Only the heat remains the same, even though it should be cooler now. Spring has become summer, summer may disappear or simply become a month or two of absolute heat.

The woman who stuck her fingers in her ears on the tram in Florence is now visiting Arezzo. There is also a squeaky dog in attendance, which sounds like a soft toy, not an actual animal. Earlier, I met Fred (short for Alfredo) outside the cathedral. He was somewhat hairy and did not squeak but barked.

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On the way back to the car there were sirens behind us, which turned out to be police motorbikes preceding and escorting a procession of classic cars up to the cathedral square, where speeches were made and prizes awarded. I sent photos to my cousin and told him how we all cheered when the oldest car just made it up the hill on its second attempt.

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Half a book I am struggling with left to read, only what is left in the cupboard to eat. A glass of wine left in the bottle.

Tonight, aerobatics by a pair of bats, a silent owl’s descent, and the gradual flickering arrival of fireflies again as dusk becomes night.

More bites and itching, a knocked-off blister top and a mosquito bite up my nose – these insects are keen!

 (Monday)

The prickly pear plants in Gropina have been cut back but what seems to be the same dog guards the track they grow on.

The church lit by light bleeding through thin alabaster windows is cool and empty. It is devoid of any ornamentation apart from an ornate pulpit which seems to show Celtic figures, animals and patterns.

There is no concession to tourism beyond the same few postcards there have always been. The church simply waits, squat cracked grey, damp patches throughout.

   © Rupert M Loydell