On Harris, Walz, hope - and negronis

A summer of sweetness with a tang

Sunset at Paradiso

Let me tell you about my summer. It was lovely, thank you. That’s what I’ll say if people ask, as people tend to do at this time of year when we’re all trying to look as if we’re full of purpose and importance.

The sun shone, I will say, at least some of the time. It felt normal, I will say, at least some of the time, to look out of a window and see a blue, blue sky.

A blue sky makes me feel that everything is fine. A blue sky is my rose-tinted lens. And in the evening, in the place I go to, to see the world through a soft, kind lens, the blue sky does sometimes turn the colour of a blushing rose. It’s a colour that seems to belong to a different sphere. In that sphere, the sun rises and bathes us in its warmth and sets, as the ice clinks in our drinks that match the sky.

(Oh, I wish I could write a poem about the miracle that is a negroni. A jewel in liquid form, a party in a glass, a sweetness with a tang that makes you feel like a queen.)

The world felt far away in that magical place, that place that’s actually called Paradiso. It’s part of an old farmhouse on an Umbrian hill. It’s deep in the green heart of Italy, the country of my birth. It feels to me like a kind of womb, a safe place to crawl back to, but also a place to look up at the heavens and out at the hills and down to the valley and feel like a god. There is a kind of magic in that place. I don’t know where it comes from, but I know it is there.

When I’m there, real life feels far away. Yes, we potter around with our laptops and have Zoom meetings and send emails and catch up with the news. Anthony battles the weeds with the new strimmer. I scrub away at the red wine stains on the terracotta floor. It’s hot. So hot that most of the time we sit inside with the shutters closed. Our next-door neighbour told us, when we first saw the place, that the temperature rarely goes above 30 degrees. Every summer since, in August it has been nearer forty.

Another item on the very, very long list of things I don’t want to think about as I sip my negroni.

On the plus side, America was offering us joy. The march towards Trump had seemed unstoppable, a steady drum beat of doom. And then an old man saw reason. Not the old man who still might win the election because, let’s be clear, he still might win. No, the other one, the one who seemed to save the world four years ago but who nearly decided to flip it like a coin because his ego wouldn’t let him let go. And then a woman who had looked like a loser suddenly had the lustre of a goddess. Her hair shone. Her teeth glistened. Her smile lit up vast stadia of screaming fans. She laughed. She glittered. She glowed.

And then she chose a running mate. I fell in love with her running mate. Sure, he had, to use a phrase that’s often used at times like this, “misspoken”. He had lied about carrying arms in war. He had not been straightforward about the fertility treatment his wife had had. But oh my God, his son yelling out “that’s my dad!”. Oh my God, his folksy sweetness, his passion, his verve, his high-school-teachery, football-coachery, pep-talk-to-the-nationery charm. Oh my God, that’s a star.

It's been a while since the hopey-changey thing. Trump doesn’t bother with it. He’s more about the Armageddon thing. Starmer doesn’t really bother about it either. Yes, we had “change” as a one-word slogan that could mean absolutely anything and yes, we had the relief of feeling that a grown-up was back in Downing Street and that he would bring other grown-ups back into government. He has, and it’s a relief, and it will be better than the chaos we’ve had for so long, but oh for a tiny glimmer of joy.        

It's not yet clear whether “vibes” can win over middle America. It’s not all that clear what a President Harris would do with her power, though not being Trump is worth all the policies anyone could dream up. What is clear is that hope is the headiest drug that has yet been invented. America was built on hope, on hope and on dreams.

Hope is delicious and dangerous. (And also the name of Walz’s daughter, conceived through IUI.) Hope deferred, as the Bible says, makes the heart grow sick. Hope keeps our muscles clenched and waiting for something better. Hope says “yes, we can”. Which is a nice thing to hear when we’re the ones who can change things, but not so cheering when we’re not.   

For the first time for fourteen years, I had the joy this summer of seeing the person I voted for win. I can’t vote in the American election, of course. I can’t stop Trump from continuing his assault on almost everything I hold dear. I can’t depose Putin, or the Taliban, or the warring factions that are decimating Sudan. I can’t vote against Hamas, or against Netanyahu. (I appear to have lost a friendship over that war. It is like a bereavement. Not the same as watching your family blown to pieces, but still it wakes me up in the night with the cold thud you get when someone you love is no longer in your life.)

So, what else this summer? Someone I love is seriously ill. Someone I used to love died. He fell off a mountain. He was doing what he loved, but he fell off a fucking mountain. He was gentle. He was kind. He was deeply, widely loved. He was 58.

It didn’t feel real when I got the news, looking out at the mountains at Paradiso. It doesn’t feel real now. None of it does, but it is. The ill friend. The dead ex-boyfriend. The nation whose women have had their lives and futures wrecked. The bombs in Gaza. The bombs in Kharkiv. The men who run those countries and who use people, real people, as bargaining chips and toys.

So yes, I had a lovely summer, thank you. I was in a beautiful place. I saw hares and deer and wild boar. I ate a lot of pasta. I drank a lot of wine. I savoured beauty, nurtured hope and felt the bitter-sweet tang of knowing that we are not here for long and that we must all find our own way to hold the hands of the people whose hands need holding and do our best to keep them from falling. And we must break bread together and raise glasses together because this is it. This, here, now. Summer is over for now, but the blue sky will be back.