New year

Here we are ready to welcome the new year, desperate to be rid of this one.  We are putting all our hopes into 2021 being a better year, longing for the life we had and thought we had a right to.   We’ve endured 9 months of restrictions and fear, we’ve missed our friends and family, our freedom, some have lost dear ones to this virus that has taken over the world.  We all have our stories to tell.

I’m trying to take from 2020 something positive, to realise what I need and what I don’t, to make better use of my time, value what I have and who I have in my life, live a little more the way that suits me.  We’ve spend the last six months quietly and simply and happily in our house in Italy.  I’ve been much healthier eating like an Italian and unintentionally lost weight, almost a stone.  Who thought I’d be going into 2021 with a winter weight of 9.5 stones, see I was right to keep all those too tight clothes,  it’s just a pity they are back in the UK.  

The first part of the new year will be hard with Covid raging worse then ever but there is hope, we have to stay strong and believe.  Mr FF says the weather here in the mountain will challenge us through January.  It’s not so cold, we’ve only occasionally been down to minus one but when the cloud comes down we get dark damp days when there is nothing to do but sit in front of the wood burner, watch old films and snooze.   Next day the sun comes back clear and warm and we are outside again, even during December we’ve often eaten breakfast and lunch on the terrace.  The days are get longer, we already have 2 hours more daylight then we would in Yorkshire and when the sky is blue it’s the finest cheeriest blue ever.  As from the Covid restrictions there are lessons to be learned living in isolation, which we do from a location not a medical view.  We are busy and content, more in touch with the seasons and nature than we could be in the penthouse.   We are trying to step lightly on the earth, growing a lot of our food, hardly using the car, though we sometimes resort to technology when we long for a chat in the English language that is not with each other, or the cats.

I hope 2021 brings tanti belli cose (many beautiful things) and a return of all we love and need which isn’t necessarily the same as all we miss. 

Happy New Year  Buon Anno