When Eugene said “Come and stay” it was an easy decision. Neither Marianne nor I had been to Italy and September is a good time of year to visit, not too hot and the tourist season is winding down, and it fit in with our plans to go to the UK to see family and friends.
I haven’t seen Eugene for 46 years but he’d contacted me via this blog so I was fairly sure I’d recognize him – I did. We’d shared a house whilst in the Rhodesian army doing basic training for SAS selection which he’d passed but I hadn’t. I went on to join the RLI (Rhodesian Light Infantry) where I was seriously injured and we’d lost touch over the years.
Eugene stays in a house his father bought after WW2 when he’d left the foreign service and started trading in property near Cortona in central Italy. Eugene has lived there for around 20 years and has been speaking Italian since he was 11 though the local population are reasonably conversant in English.
The house is up a road that even Zimbabweans would describe as bad, as it’s on private land, and we soon had to abandon the idea of driving our hire car up and down it after a tyre was knocked off its rim. Eugene’s cars coped with it admirably (it’s amazing where a Fiat 500 can go) and together with Roger, another of Eugene’s friends from his SAS days, we coped.
Cortona is a well touristed village that dates back to pre-Christian times (not in its current structure) though we were lucky enough to be visiting at the end of the tourist season so there were no oppressive crowds. I was very pleased to find an art gallery that actually had Salvador Dali prints and a sculpture and prints of Picasso. Naturally they were well out of my price range but it was nice to look and the young gallery attendant was very friendly and not at all tourist-jaded.
My brother Duncan had come over from the UK and Marianne’s sister Mandy joined us from Cape Town where her travel business is based. We did a lot of catching-up and sampled the local cuisine – yes Italians really do know how to make good pizzas!
From Italy it was back to England to visit a friend in Manchester then on to Shropshire where Duncan lives. The weather was surprisingly good for an English autumn and we managed an afternoon out to Powis Castle in nearby Welshpool in Wales. The countryside was green like only English countryside can be.
Then it was on to Shirebrook to meet old friends who used to live just up the road from us in Harare. Gordon and Judy had to move to England after they could no longer afford to live in Zimbabwe. They get by but are not very happy (as I write this Gordon is in hospital). Fortunately they have a rather round little dog, Kita, whom they adore and a marvelous dog-walker Illy.
In Attleborough we met up with Meryl Harrison whose book, Innocent Victims, Marianne helped type up. Meryl is one extraordinary brave lady who rescued farm animals during the dark days, in the early 2000s, when Robert Mugabe’s thugs invaded white-owned farms. The owners were often forced out with just what they could carry and pets were left behind and Meryl and her team went about rescuing the animals.
All too soon we were back on the plane to Zimbabwe via a bitterly cold Johannesburg airport – 50C IN the terminal! Of course we got a rapturous welcome from the dogs when we got home, a little too rapturous from Themba for my liking…
Zimbabwe Absurdity 