Collapse of Civilisation

Civilisation as we know it has just collapsed. The curse of modern civilisation, McDonald’s, has just arrived in Sarzana. I had been so happy that kids in this country still ate real food and knew what it was. Now… the future looks bleak. No doubt now Italian kids, like their equivalents the western world over, will succumb to the temptations of artificial food and become big fat blobs! There is still the hope that a repeat of Benevento is going to happen in Sarzana. When we visited a winery near this provincial town in Campania, the 17 year old brother of the cantina took us on a guided tour. When we passed a wrecked building, he informed us, that it used to be a McDonald’s, however they had closed permanently after having had their windows smashed repeatedly and generally proved unpopular. Somehow I don’t think the Northern Italians quite have that revolutionary spirit any more. Maybe I’m going to have to start an anti-McDonald’s campaign myself.

The weather forecast has been rather capricious recently, i.e. totally unreliable. Yesterday it was supposed to be sunny and it rained heavily in the afternoon. Today it was supposed to be mixed and it was beautifully sunny, albeit with a cool easterly wind. The next few days are forecast to be fine, so we’ll see what’s happening. We planted a few things out in Arcola today: strawberries (the plants were on special offer), courgettes, cucumbers and red and yellow peppers. I hope it’s not too early for the peppers. In the afternoon we were trying to buy a motor plough, however the plough we had recently spotted at our local hypermarket was sold out. So we went in search for something else affordable. I had seen, what I thought was a second hand plough outside a hardware store. So we went and asked how much that second hand plough was. The chap in the shop insisted it was new and wanted €450. It was the same model as the one we saw in the supermarket for €300 and it had various scuffs and wasn’t clean. He must have thought I was born yesterday, or maybe he heard the foreign accent and tried to get one over on me. Well we are going to have another hunt tomorrow. We really need to turn some soil to plant our spuds. Failing this we’re going to have to dig the old fashioned way again.