This will lift your heart

(When the world is going to shit)

A scene in the utterly delightful My Family, currently on Netflix

We decided to get away, so of course it decided to rain. My local park on Saturday had been a riot of colour: of leaves the colour of gooseberries and frothing pink cherry blossom framed by a blue, blue sky. The colours seemed to have unleashed a torrent of joy. The wood pigeons by the pond were cooing and humming. Children were laughing. Couples were curled up on the grass, in not very much, kissing.

The sun gods must love the Brits. We are always so pathetically grateful.

Perugia airport, on Sunday afternoon, was swathed in mist and rain. We ran from the plane to the terminal. We ran from the terminal to the car. The green hills in the green heart of Italy (which is what Italians call Umbria) were as green as it’s possible for green to be. We can certainly see why. It has barely stopped raining all year.

We dashed into the house and have barely left it. We gaze out at grey clouds. We gaze out at rain. There have been moments when I’ve felt as if I’m in an aquarium. Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink.

That, of course, is not true. In Italy there is always something to drink. Negronis the colour of jewels. Aperol Spritz the colour of a ripe peach. Golden whites and ruby-red wines. There is always wine, there is always pasta, there is always parmigiana, there is always gelato and these things keep the spirits up when the rain does its best to dampen them down.

And there is also, now, the story of my family. Not of my family. I’ve already written that story. The story of my family is called Outside, the Sky is Blue. That’s how keen I am on a blue sky. No, the story of this family is on Netflix and it’s called Storia della mia famiglia in Italian and, for some reason, just My Family in English. It’s the story of a Neapolitan family that finds itself transplanted to Rome. It was recommended to me by my friend Eva and it’s wonderful.

In my last post, I wrote about The White Lotus, a tale of careless rich people with cold eyes, cold blood and cold hearts. My Family is the noisy, messy and yes, joyous, opposite. The antidote, if you like. When the basic premise became clear, I groaned. Oh no. The last time we dug out an Italian romcom to watch in bad weather, the young, handsome male love interest was diagnosed with cancer. And – you’ve guessed it, flashing spoiler alert – died. Not exactly what the doctor ordered.

This time, in the first episode, the young, handsome main character, Fausto, goes to the doctor. And it is not good news! He has a tumour! It’s terminal! Here we go again. Here we go on a roller coaster that will have you swinging wildly between laughter and tears.

Fausto is passionate, impulsive – and utterly irresistible. From the day he spots a beautiful blonde in a bar in Rome, his life takes on some breathless twists of its own. The blonde is cold, withdrawn and mentally unstable. And, ahem, British. (One would like to think this isn’t how Italians see Brits, but I couldn’t swear on a Bible that it isn’t.) He has two sons with her. They are so sweet I wanted to wrest open the TV screen and scoop them up. Alas, I couldn’t save them from their father’s death. (Sorry, but it was pretty clear from the moment he saw the doctor. And also, I think, from the blurb about the show.) I couldn’t save them from their chilly mother, who has, after one explosive incident, only been allowed to see her children under certain conditions. I could only watch as Fausto tries, before he dies, to weave together an unconventional support network for his children. It involves his two best friends from childhood, his coke addict brother and his hairdresser mother, who had Faust when she was eighteen. She’s fiery. They’re all fiery. Hot-blooded, volatile and often bad-tempered. But she’s a velvet fist in an iron glove. Beneath that ferocious exterior, there’s a soft heart.

We gobbled it up, this treat. Six episodes in three days. On Tuesday night, when we finished the last one, I felt bereft. But then, yesterday, salvation arrived. The clouds parted. The rain stopped. The sun came out. The hills were alive with the sounds of birds singing. There are cuckoos. I’ve never heard so many cuckoos! There are blackbirds. There are starlings. There are Great Tits. (No need for tittering.) There are eagles swooping out and over the valley. It felt to me as if the world was slowly coming to life. It felt like a hallowed place, after a storm.

The green, green hills of Umbria. (Now I know why they’re so green.

I wandered up to the village. I ordered a glass of Grechetto. Mirko, who runs the restaurant that also serves as a bar, wouldn’t let me pay. I sipped the wine – flinty, fresh, and with just enough bite to make the tongue tingle – and looked out at the buildings that had stood there since the Bourbon marquises created an imperial fiefdom in the 11^th century. This area was a free zone between Tuscany and the Papal states until 1803. It was run by an elective monarchy and governed by the most senior member of the Bourbon family. The palace still stands. We stayed in it once while we were waiting for the paperwork to be completed on the house we’re now in. (It took 18 months. A blink of the eye in Italian time.) The apartment we stayed in was huge, hot and full of photos of nuns. We slept in a windowless room full of frescoes. Very beautiful, but we could hardly breathe.

These past few days I have felt able to breathe again. I don’t like the rain. I’ve realised, relatively late in life, that I only really like the countryside when the sky is blue. If that makes me a fair-weather human, then so be it. I’d rather be looking at a lovely sofa than at grey clouds and rain. But there’s something about this landscape, this place, something in the air or perhaps in the stone, that makes me feel safe. Perhaps it’s something to do with all those centuries when this tiny area was in charge of its own fate. Perhaps it’s some sense that history happens somewhere else. There be dragons, there be always dragons, but not here.

My blessed glass of wine in the village. Thank you, Mirko!

Or perhaps it’s just that I’m giving myself a break. Sure, I’m still looking at the horrors cropping up on my phone, the ones that make me feel that we are all being sucked into a vortex. Yes, a madman is essentially running the world. Yes, he is supporting a fascist dictator who has invaded another country. Yes, he is blowing up the global economy. Yes, he is destroying democracy. Yes, he is sending innocent people to concentration camps. Yes, he is destroying freedom of speech. Yes, he is acting like a mafia boss. He has placed a giant horse’s head in all our beds and we now have to sleep next to its entrails.

And yes, it makes me miserable. Quite a lot of the time, I just want to howl. But here, just for a few days, I’m following it, and thinking about it, less.

I don’t want to say I turned my head away at the moment in history when I was alive and everything changed. I don’t want to say I had my fingers in my ears and just fiddled while Rome burned. I also know I can’t overthrow him, or his fascist regime. From the bottom of my heart, I wish I could.

I suppose the real question I have been grappling with is this. Am I allowed to be happy? When these terrible things are happening, am I allowed to have a lovely time?

I know there are always terrible things happening. Gaza is happening and is horrific almost beyond comprehension. Sudan is happening, at a scale that’s almost impossible to grasp. These alone are enough to break a heart. But what’s happening now feels more personal because it has the potential to destroy the whole Western way of life. It’s my home that’s being dismantled. The home called “liberal democracy”, that thing that’s deeply flawed but still, as Churchill said, better than all the other forms of governing that have been tried.

Perhaps the European version will somehow survive, even though our key protector is now very clearly our enemy. Perhaps Trump will go, and Vance won’t win the next election, and the MAGA virus will somehow be wiped out.

We have to hope.

We have to hope.

In the meantime, are we allowed to be happy?

I don’t know, but I do know that the neighbours are coming for aperitivo tonight, and the last time they came at Easter they brought five trays of home-made nibbles, and home-made Easter cake, and home-made strawberry liqueur, and our Italian really isn’t up to the task, and nor is their English, and it will be a challenge, but it will be fun, and I am.

In this bar, there were about 40 men - and me. They could certainly teach some British men a thing or two about how to have an animated conversation.

Buona Pasqua! Happy Easter!

I would really love to hear how you’re you coping with the news at the moment and also if you have any recommendations for heart-warming TV viewing. I’ll respond to all comments, of course.

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