It’s a dirty job but...

So, you know how I was moaning a while back about being snowed under with work, not having any time off blah blah. Well I may have forgotten to mention that I had a little reward planned for myself. Another job, of sorts, but ever so slightly less arduous. I’m dog-sitting in Tuscany. Well someone had to do it! And no-one else offered (although it may have slipped my mind to widely advertise the vacancy).

So here I am or rather here we are. The daughter and I have been out here for a week so far and it’s been gorgeous. We’re in a small village clustered on a hilltop looking across wooded valleys to several other similarly huddled collections of pan-tiled roofs and precipitous walls.


We’re having lots of lovely long walks in the woods, olives and cheese on the terrace and a daily ice-cream. We also seem to have the dogsitting bit sorted. We walk her (Eilidh, a sweet-eyed collie who thinks cars are sheep) a couple of times a day, water and feed her, play ‘Where’s the bone?’ and give lots of cuddles (the daughter’s particulalrly good at this). So far have succeeded in not losing her on aforementioned long walks, have remembered to save her some pizza crusts and stopped her eating next door’s cat. In return she has honoured us with choosing to sleep in our room and snore softly.

Hubby is joining us over Easter and then later I’m going to be here all on my ownsome for a week. Hoping to get lots of writing done, especially in that final week, but so far have been a bit distracted by scenery, ice cream and vino.

Our neighbours are lovely (and quickly forgave the near cat-eating episode). They don’t appear to mind my creaky attempts at Italian conversation (mainly lots of nouns strung together with smiles and ‘Si, si’). I lived out here for a year a while ago and was pretty fluent but most of it seems to have deserted me and I have left my trusty phrase book behind in England. I’m hoping that my fluency will start to return over the next couple of weeks as the neighbours do seem very keen to chat (hope they’ve not been trying to tell me anything really important).

Looking forward to tomorrow as it’s market day in the nearby town and I get really excited by the piles of fresh fruit and vegetables and the lovely shoes. Will also need to stock up on Tam Tams – little spongey chocolatey cake things to which the daughter and I are now addicted.

My internet connection seems a bit temperamental but I’m really enjoying catching up on blogs and news in the evenings when I can (and when I’m not being further distracted by the extensive DVD collection in this house – think I’ll have a bit of The Mighty Boosh tonight.)

Eilidh is now licking my leg – either she loves me or needs to go outside for a wee. I quite like our late night mini-walks – the view is very sparkly at night as all the other little hilltop villages are lit up like Christmas trees. Just hope next door's cat isn’t lurking behind a wall.