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 
Their heroes and mine
11 08 2014It’s Heroes Day today, a public holiday when we are supposed to remember those who died in the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe. This is nothing unusual; the war dead are remembered in various ways all over the world. At the time of the so called liberation struggle I was in the Rhodesian Army and did not see those against whom I was fighting as liberating anything. That could just be a point of view I guess – one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and all that. Except for the fact that over the years a number of the ruling party faithful have been interred in Hero’s Acre (the national cemetery) who status as heroes are dubious. Others who should have been buried there were left out. There is a certain financial incentive to being a national hero in that the family remaining get a substantial pension.
Anyway, like I said, today is the day that Zimbabweans are supposed to remember the fallen. There are celebrations all over the place and earlier this week I had a request from a local farmer for donations towards the party to be held today on his farm where the local branch of ZANU-PF, the ruling party, has its office. I ignored it, after all, they are not my heroes. I was hoping to be able to tell him this in person but aside from two missed calls yesterday morning from a local number that I did not recognise, nothing has come to pass. Yet.
Seedlings of course don’t take holidays so this morning I went into work to see how things were going. Fine of course. It was also an opportunity to catch up on a bit of work as I will be away for 3 weeks at a horticultural congress in Brisbane, Australia. It was worth it on another count as I spotted this spider on a daisy.
Hey, I’m with stupid!
I have seen this type of spider on cosmos and it was white to match the flower. I wonder if they have the ability to change colour depending on the background or they have to spend their life on the plant to get the right colour? It was pure luck to see it with a fly as when I took the first photo it was just patiently waiting.
Of course I didn’t have my big SLR with its very special macro lens so my cellphone had to do – I was quite impressed with the result.
Tomorrow is another public holiday – this one is Armed Forces Day. It is traditional for the president to address the crowds at the National Stadium just outside town and watch military parades and a flypast by the Air Force with the 4 lonely remaining fast jets that are still flying. There is a football match afterwards to help pull in the crowds. Whether the armed forces will be celebrating remains to be seen. Rumours are rife that they have not been paid and junior officers have been sent on forced leave to cut costs.
So who are my heroes? They are the firefighters who went back into the damaged reactor at Chernobyl, knowing full well that they would not survive. They are the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers after the 9/11 attacks knowing that they were going into a hideously dangerous situation because that was their job. They are those who work for MSF and the International Red Cross and without fanfare get on with the thankless task of helping Ebola victims (and others) survive. These are the people I admire.
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Tags: Armed forces day, cellphone camera, Heroes' Day, Rhodesian Army, spider
Categories : News & Various, photography, Social commentary